PARTISAN REVIEW
543
block again, panting but still keeping up the same rapid pace. Jekyll
lights a cigarette, then stubs it out (he's almost quit smoking), sips his
coffee, and waits. The drink is two-thirds ice, most of which he re–
moves with his fingers and drops in the ashtray. A few minutes later,
Hyde rounds the corner again.
Jekyll is willing to suppose that Hyde will keep circling the block
all afternoon, and feels like watching a while longer. But the waitress
has come over and presented him with the check so he can vacate his
table for other customers to use. Indignant, Jekyll points out that the
cafeteria is almost deserted. She won't be budged. "One beverage is
worth fifteen minutes," she recites. "It's a rule of the management. I
don't make the rules around here."
"But you can break the rules," Jekyll says.
"How can I do that?" she answers.
Jekyll pauses, debating whether he should stick to his principles
or order another undrinkable iced coffee. It is conceivable that, with
the cord that might extend from the harness of a parachute that Jekyll
could be wearing (in case he might be so foolish as to be tempted to
leap from the top of the World Trade Center) to Utterson's left wrist,
provided that at this exact moment Utterson is at the estate out at
Oyster Bay (but he isn't; he is noisily drinking his third bowl of
borscht and munching his eighth pirojki in midtown Manhattan),
something could happen which would stop Hyde dead in his tracks.
For if the rope were properly tied and Utterson were in the place he
usually is, which would put him north-northwest of the cafeteria where
Jekyll sits, then he, Jekyll, could trip Hyde as he rushes around the
block the next time. But for this feat he would need Utterson's help,
and Jekyll is never sure of how well-disposed toward him Utterson
really is.
"What's happened to your confidence in me?" That's Utterson
s~aking.
It
is the first word he has directed to Jekyll since J ekyll took
a seat at the long oval table in the pseudo-medieval refectory out at
Oyster Bay. Utterson is entertaining a
Mr.
Carew, ambivalent admirer
and prospective pupil, who, being a senior trade book editor at an
important publishing house, is arranging for the paperback reissue of
Utterson's long out-of-print, thousand page summum,
The Strange
