An Unfinished Season by Ward Just

Author:Ward Just
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

THE KING OF CHICAGO

7

YOUR FAMILY had some trouble, didn’t they?

We were sitting in the living room of the Brules’ third-floor apartment, the failing sun casting long shadows in Lincoln Park. The crowns of the trees in the park seemed close enough to touch through the open windows. Dr. Brule was fussing at the cocktail table, breaking ice into a bucket, cutting lemons, and inspecting the bottles. He had poured a scotch for me and a Dubonnet for Aurora and now he was uncertain what to prepare for himself. He had greeted us in the foyer and after kissing his daughter had said, Hello, Wils, without any introduction from her, motioning for us to follow him into the living room. He was dressed casually in khakis and a faded green polo shirt. His feet were bare. I did not recognize him at first without his tuxedo. Aurora had excused herself and now we were alone, Dr. Brule at his drinks table and me on the long couch, the walls crowded with abstract paintings and a sculpture I recognized as one of Brancusi’s birds in flight. The room had the look of a professor’s parlor, academic journals on the coffee table, the couch well-worn, the far wall thick with books floor to ceiling with a sliding ladder to reach the high shelves.

The room was in deep shadow and Dr. Brule’s voice seemed to come from it, a doctor’s voice, I thought, a bored baritone. I did not answer right away when he asked about my family’s troubles because I did not know what he meant, other than Squire’s death, and he would not have known about Squire. The silence lengthened and finally I asked him if he meant the strike.

Yes, he said. The strike.

Thank God it’s over now, I said, and when he did not reply I added, It was hard on my father.

Dr. Brule was silent again, concentrating on feeding ice cubes into a shaker and pouring the gin over the ice and waiting while it settled.

Hard on all of you, I imagine.

My father mostly, I said.

He poured the contents of the shaker carefully into a goblet and brought it brimming to the cocktail table, where he placed it on a coaster. Then he stepped to the window and stood staring over Lincoln Park, the trees moving in a light breeze, a sliver of Lake Michigan beyond. The silence lengthened. I wished Aurora would return. The ice in her Dubonnet was melting and I believed I was not far behind. The examination had begun and I did not think my newsroom anecdotes would carry me very far. I remembered Aurora telling me of her father’s terse descriptions of people he saw in the street and imagined him sorting through the ones that might fit me, “anxiety neurosis,” for example, or “chronic maladjustment.” Whatever test he was devising, I was failing badly. His posture at the window reminded me of a military man’s. I noticed him slip his feet into loafers, the loafers highly polished, a professional soldier’s spit-shine before taking review of the troops.

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