Abel’s tailor had been a man from London named Keith, and twice a year Abel strode into the Drake Hotel, arriving at a suite that provided vast views of the lake. In these overheated rooms, while the radiators hissed, Abel would be measured by Keith with a cloth tape, and in gestures so subtle, so assured and quick, Keith would place muslin against Abel’s shoulders, his chest, down the length of his arm, marking it with chalk. The swatches of fabric were laid out in the other room, and almost always Abel chose what Keith suggested. Only once or twice did Abel suggest that perhaps the fabric be more subdued, or that the stripes might just be—perhaps—too wide. “I don’t want to look like a gangster,” Abel joked, and Keith answered, “Oh, surely not.”
When word came that Keith had died of cancer, Abel was astonished. That astonishment had to do with death, with the wiping out of a person, with the puzzlement that the man was simply gone. The simplicity of the goneness was something Abel was familiar with; he was not a young man, he had known the death of others, starting with the goneness of his own father. But what followed this astonishment was a searing sense of shame, as though Abel had done something unsavory all those years by having Keith build his clothes. He found himself murmuring the words out loud, when he was in his car, or alone in his office, or getting dressed in the morning, “I’m sorry. God, I’m so sorry.”
Even while he voted as a conservative, even while he took his annual bonus from the board, even while he ate in the best restaurants Chicago offered, and even while most of him thought what he had thought for years, I will not apologize for being rich, he did apologize, but to whom precisely he did not know. Waves of shame would suddenly pour over him, the way his wife had endured hot flashes for years, her face instantly bright red, rivulets of perspiration forming on the sides of her face. She could not be jovial about these incidents, the way he saw some women at the office were. But he felt he understood better now, the uncontrolled assault she must have felt, just as he felt the uncontrolled assault of his shame, which, he was perfectly aware, had no basis in anything real. Keith had had a job. He had done his job well. He had been paid well. (He had not really been paid that well.)
But when Abel came across two men in the manufacturing department one day, the first making a snide remark about “being part of a company involved with sheer corporate greed,” the second rolling his eyes, replying, “Don’t be a stupid, cynical youth,” it was this second man that infuriated Abel, who said to him, “We need the cynicism of youth, it’s healthy. Stop degrading the efforts of mankind by calling them stupid, for the love of God!” He worried about this later, because the workplace was not what it had been for most of his career, it was now a petri dish of potential lawsuits, and Human Resources was kept busy, though admittedly far less than at other companies. Abel was, in fact, respected. He was even loved. (Dearly, by his longtime secretary.)
But the point was—the sense of apology did not go away; it was a tiring thing to carry.
—
“I married way up,” Abel said out loud, and for some reason he wanted to chuckle. “Oh, I did. She seemed as lovely as a Christmas tree to me. I don’t mean she looked like a tree, just that she represented all—”
“Here we go, here we go.” Linck McKenzie was back, holding out his hand.
“Thank you,” Abel said. He saw Linck McKenzie standing in the doorway; he heard Linck say, “You know, you’re a good man.”
But a darkening came now to the edges of Abel’s vision, and a sudden pain moved through his chest; in a moment he thought he might be sliding from his chair. He heard Linck on a telephone, saying Hurry, and this made him remember something earlier, Please, would you hurry, but he could not place it, and then there were lots of sounds and doors opening, and he saw an orange strip that he understood he would be placed upon.
A woman large and muscular enough that he thought she was a man, her hair cut short like a man’s, was in a uniform and helping—“dyke” is what she’d once have been called, this went through Abel’s mind. What marvelous authority she had as she got him on that strip of orange stretcher, asked him if he knew his name. He must have said it, because she began to talk to him. “You stay right with me, Mr. Blaine.”
“I’m sorry,” Linck kept saying in his ear. Or maybe Abel was the one saying it. He wanted to say “taxes.” He did not know if he said it, but he wanted to say to this marvelous woman, strong as a man, that she was what the taxes were for.
“Mr. Blaine, I have your granddaughter’s pony with me. Do you know the name of your granddaughter’s pony?” this big square woman asked.
He must have said it right because she said, “You hold right on to Snowball, we’re going to take you to the hospital. Are you able to understand me?” He felt a hard plastic thing placed in his hand.
Linck’s face was there as they closed the door of the ambulance; he seemed to be saying something.
Abel shook his head. He thought he shook his head, he could not tell, but he wanted to tell Linck McKenzie—so ludicrous that it was absolutely liberating—that he’d had a lovely time, which must be ridiculous but was not. He felt the chill of a fluid filling his veins, and so perhaps they had hooked him up to something and given him a drug, he couldn’t find the words to ask— And then later, as the ambulance went faster, Abel felt not fear but a strange exquisite joy, the bliss of things finally and irretrievably out of his control, unpeeled, unpeeling now. Yet there was a streak of something else, as though just outside his reach was the twinkle of a light, as though a Christmas window was there; this puzzled him and pleased him, and in his state of tired ecstasy it seemed almost to come to him. Linck McKenzie’s voice: “You’re a good man.” This made Abel smile even as his chest felt as if rocks were piled upon it. The calm voice of that wonderful big woman told him, “Mr. Blaine, you hold right on,” and he thought perhaps his smile appeared to them as a grimace of pain, but what did it matter, he was moving very quickly and easily away now, leaving them, flying—how fast he was going!—past fields of green soybeans, with the most exquisite understanding: He had a friend. He would have said this if he could, he would have said it, but there was no need: Like his sweet Sophia who loved her Snowball, Abel had a friend. And if such a gift could come to him at such a time, then anything—dear girl from Rockford dressed up for her meeting, rushing above the Rock River—he opened his eyes, and yes, there it was, the perfect knowledge: Anything was possible for anyone.