had the effective trick of all successful politicians, Elgar noticed, repetition for emphasis. Three times was the rule. Especially effective when the phrase repeated was also “three times.”
“Bravo, Mr. Copee!” he applauded. “Ever think of going into the speechwriting game? You’ve got a real knack for it. Washington could use you.”
“Laugh while you can!” retorted Charlie. “Your laugh sounds hollow, white man. Your short hour is almost up. You cannot delay vengeance forever. Soon we will ride the plains and reclaim our lands.”
“You don’t look like much of a rider to me,” Elgar said. “Too bent over. You got to get that old back straight as a ramrod.”
Charlie unconsciously corrected his posture, Elgar assisting with a slap on the back.
“Better,” Elgar approved. “More like it. Don’t let the shoulders sag, now.”
“So history repeats itself,” Copee said with bulging eyes. “First you rob me of my land, and then you come onto my reservation and dictate to me.”
“Only about the signs, Chief,” Elgar said. “This is not a commercial reservation.”
“Well, that’s good. Because I’ve just decided to pay no more of your commercial rentals. You stole my ancestors’ lands. By rights you owe me and my descendants three hundred rent-free years.”
“Well, you can’t have them, Chief,” Elgar said, facing up to him, glaring, their noses almost touching in a dangerously intimate powwow. “So you just better get on that horse and ride West. Hit that long dusty trail into the sunset, if you don’t intend to pay rent, or if your wife intends to operate a business here. Either or both. That’s all I came to say. Thank you.”
Copee said, “Our tribe is slow to anger. But you have taken advantage of our patience too long. This time you have gone too far.”
Everybody around here was sensitive to advantage taken, Elgar noted. Must try to avoid giving that impression in future.
“Charlie! No!” shrieked Fanny, back in the room in enchanting deshabille. Elgar barely had time to notice the interesting new item she was wearing, or rather not wearing. He was too busy watching her crazy husband remove something from the cushions of his chair.
A tomahawk. Which he waved over his head as he resumed his rain dance.
“The tribal wrath is aroused!” he chanted. “The ancestors must be appeased! The tyrant must leave the reservation! This is war!”
With a cute little side-arm windup, he suddenly hurled the tomahawk. Just missing Elgar’s head, it dug deeply into the wall, jarring loose a shower of plaster, and hung there trembling.
“I’ll bill you for the plaster job,” Elgar said evenly. But he was moving fast.
Fanny, holding the door open for him with one hand and keeping up a wisp of pink froth with the other, whispered, “You lucky. This ain’t nothin.’ Last month he was a Black Muslim. Next time, come around in the daytime, Landlord.”
Wheezing and puffing, Elgar tore up the street, remembering with shame that nothing had been accomplished yet in the way of measuring windows for weatherstripping. And not one “Paid” entry in any rent book, either. Worse, he felt an attack of gas coming on, and wanted badly to slow down for a burp or two. But seemed to hear moccasined feet slipping and slushing behind him.
“Borden!” he screamed as he whizzed around the corner, “Borden, there will be no cute phone calls tonight, you understand? Cancel all your other patients and prepare to see me in person. Man to man, face to face, Borden. This is war!”
3
Lankily Lincolnesque, faintly skeptical, Borden spoke with pencil poised.
“And in just what ways does this Negress remind you of your mother, Elgar?”
Even a crease in his goddamned pajama trousers. Over them a natty plaid flannel dressing gown. Though the consulting room was as seedy as ever, and floured with circa-1890 dust. On Elgar’s fees, couldn’t he at least afford a cleaning woman once a week?
“Every way,” Elgar replied. “Very massive. Very dominating. Very dangerous.”
“Yes, and very black, if I recall your description. Your mother is a large woman, yes? But she is also white, no?”
That comma yes, comma no at the end of key sentences. Suggestion of Vienna. When it was palpably clear Borden had never studied under Old Papa Whiskers in Vienna. If, indeed, under any of his disciples anywhere.
“Hey, Borden, how come I never see any of your diplomas hanging around here? Could it be you don’t have any?”
“I see I am arousing your hostility, Elgar,” Borden said, tossing a dark, damp, Gregory Peck lock back from his forehead. He did not quite make it. It hung there limply, like the little girl’s who was sometimes horrid.
“—Else why at this particular moment in our relationship would you be questioning my professional credentials?”
“Had to come up sometime,” Elgar answered. “For twenty-five bucks a session, I don’t want to be taken apart by an amateur. Destruction at the hands of a professional, or nothing. It’s my right. I demand it.”
A note of personal indignation crept into Borden’s voice, then was put down by his relentless control.
“And how many of these so-called professionals do you think would make themselves available to you at this hour? No, Elgar, they keep office hours. In nice, air-conditioned, downtown offices. Not in festering rat-holes in the Trejour Apartments, convenient to patients and to nothing else.”
Elgar felt remorse. With weak, watery eyes, long, knobby limbs, and catarrh due to chronic sinusitis, Borden was a poor second to Gregory Peck. A poor second to everybody, really, including plump, professional shnooks in plushy downtown offices. And, sniffling over there behind the owl-rimmed specs, he did look a bit rumpled and sleepy.
“Your questions are of course legitimate. I will answer them at another time. But why do you question my background and my competence now? Why now, Elgar?”
The bastard’s instincts were sharp as a coonhound’s, even when he was full of sleep. Elgar, blank, felt his teeth clamp together. Blocking. Stubborn.
“I will tell you. You are trying to involve me in an argument, a sideline. Because you do not want to hear that this woman who upset you today is not the same person as your mother.”
Elgar banged his fist into Borden’s cruddy old black leather couch, raising a puff of elderly dust. Real doctors had Danish modern, imported, the best, didn’t need ratty antiques as symbols. But real doctors had office hours and professional patience strictly limited to fifty minutes an hour. Elgar needed a lifetime of patience. His fist went through the cracked headrest, landed in a nightmare of sleazy sawdust.
“It’s hopeless, Borden!” he screamed. “Every time I try to do something, it involves people! And people are all impossible!”
“You mean,” Borden said, “they have motives
