SEIZE THE DAY
297
with cavernous distortions underneath. Together, the two men gazed
at
it.
Then Rubin said, "Your dad
is
in to breakfast already, the
old gentleman."
"Oh, yes? Ahead of me, today?"
"That's a real knocked-out shirt you got on," said Rubin.
"Where's it from, Saks?"
"No, it's a Jack Fagman-Chicago."
Even when his spirits were low, Wilhelm could still wrinkle his
forehead in a pleasing way. Some of the slow, silent movements of
his face were very attractive. He went back a step as
if
to stand
away from himself and get a better look at his shirt. His glance was
comic, a comment upon his untidiness. He liked to wear good clothes,
but once he had put it on each article appeared to go its own
way. Wilhelm, laughing, panted a little; his teeth were small, his
cheeks when he laughed and puffed grew round, and he looked
much younger than his years. In the old days when he was a college
freshman and wore a raccoon coat and a beanie on his large blond
head his father used to say that, big as he was, he could charm a
bird out of a tree. Wilhelm had great charm still.
"I like this dove-gray color," he said in his sociable, good–
natured way. "It isn't washable. You have to send it to the cleaner.
It never smells as good as washed. But it's a nice shirt. It cost sixteen,
eighteen bucks."
This shirt had not been bought by Wilhelm; it was a present
from his boss-his former boss, with whom he had had a falling
out. But there was no reason why he should tell Rubin the history
of it. Although perhaps Rubin knew. Rubin was the kind of man
who knew, and knew and knew. Wilhelm also knew many things
about Rubin, for that matter-about Rubin's wife and Rubin's
business, Rubin's health. None of these could be mentioned, and the
great weight of the unspoken left them little to talk about.
"Well, y'lookin' pretty sharp today," Rubin said.
And Wilhelm said gladly, "Am
I?
Do you really think so?" He
could not believe it. He saw his reflection in the glass cupboard full
of cigar boxes, among the grand seals and paper damask and the
gold-embossed portraits of famous men, Garcia, Edward the Seventh,
Cyrus the Great. You had to allow for the darkness and deformations
