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The breeze gusted, flapping the scalloped edge of the red umbrella and ruffling the wings of the Answer Man’s salt-and-pepper hair. He looked down the empty road with an expression of deep melancholy.
“Fall is a slow time for me, and October is the slowest month of all. I think more people are able to find answers on their own in the autumn.”
He continued to look along the black ribbon of road winding its way into the blazing trees for a moment. Then his eyes cleared and he looked back at Phil again.
“Why didn’t you just ask me something specific?”
Phil was caught by surprise. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“What you really wanted to know is if I’m a fake,” the Answer Man said. “And if you had asked me what your mother’s maiden name was, for example, or the name of your fifth-grade teacher, something I couldn’t possibly know unless I am what I say I am, you could have found out.” He shook his head. “People without your intellectual advantages usually ask exactly that sort of question. People with them—people with a Harvard education, let us say—hardly ever do. It goes back to what I said. Smart people labor under a dual disadvantage: they don’t know the answers they need, and they don’t know what questions to ask. Education doesn’t inculcate mental discipline. You’d think it would, but it’s often just the opposite.”
“Okay,” Phil said (nettled). “What is my mother’s maiden name?”
“Sorry,” the Answer Man said, and tapped the sign that said $25 PER 5 MINUTES. “For that you need to pay.”
“You crooked me!” Phil exclaimed humorously. He didn’t feel humorous; he felt exasperated. With both of them.
“Not at all,” the Answer Man replied equably. “You crooked yourself.”
Phil was about to remonstrate, then didn’t. He could see the man’s point. This was a kind of intellectual three-card monte.
“It’s been interesting, sir, but twenty-five dollars is a little high for a fellow not long out of college and thinking of starting his own business, so I better get back on the road. It’s been fun passing the time of day with you.”
As he started away, Phil thought—no, he was sure—that the man sitting beneath the red umbrella would say, Business being so slow and all, maybe I could give you five minutes for twenty dollars. Hell, I’ll make it fifteen. Fifteen simoleons and you can set your mind to rest about all sorts of things. And when that happened, Phil decided, he was going to pay right up and sit right down. The man was obviously a charlatan, and a screwtip in the bargain, but what the hey. He had a twenty, a ten, and two fives in his wallet. Even with a splurge here, that was more than enough to buy a tank of ethyl for the old jalop’ and a good lunch at a roadside restaurant. Phil thought that even hearing the questions—spoken right out loud instead of just knocking around in his head—might go a good way toward solving his problem.
The self-styled Answer Man was right about one thing, Phil thought; getting good answers was mostly a matter of asking good questions.
But all the Answer Man said was, “You drive safe, now.”
Phil walked to his car, crossed around the slightly dented front fender, and looked back. He still expected the Answer Man to offer him a cut rate, but the Answer Man seemed to have dismissed Phil entirely—he was looking over toward Vermont, humming and using a small twig to clean beneath his nails.
He intends to let me go, Phil thought, nettled all over again. Well be damned to him, that’s just what I’m going to do.
He opened the driver’s door of his Chevy, hesitated, then closed it again. He took out his wallet. He removed the twenty and one of the fives.
Just hearing the questions out loud, he thought again. And I don’t have to tell anyone that I stooped to paying a fortune teller during a depression.
Also, it might be worth twenty-five dollars just to see the smug son of a buck groping around and making excuses when Phil did ask him for his mother’s maiden name.
“Change your mind?” The Answer Man tucked his nail-cleaning twig into the breast pocket of his shirt and picked up his satchel.
Phil smiled and held out his money. “For the next five minutes, I’m the one asking the questions.”
The Answer Man laughed and pointed a finger at Phil. “Good one, my friend. I like you. But before I take your money, there’s one rule we need to get straight.”
Oh, here it comes, Phil thought. The hole he intends to wriggle through.
From his bag, the Answer Man removed what looked like an old-fashioned Big Ben alarm clock. When he set it on the table, Phil saw it was actually a giant-sized stopwatch, with numbers running from 5 to 0.
“I am not a psychiatrist or a counselor. Nor am I a fortune teller, although I’m sure that’s what you’re thinking. Here’s the point: don’t try asking me any questions with should I in them. No should I this, no should I that. I answer questions, but I’m not going to solve your problems.”
Phil, who had planned to ask the fellow if he should join the firm or open his own office in Curry, started to pull back his money. Then he thought, If I can’t couch my questions in a way that skirts his “should I” prohibition, what kind of a courtroom lawyer will I make?
“I’m in,” Phil said, and handed over his money. Into the Answer Man’s bag it went.
“I can’t keep calling you son, son. Perhaps you’ll give me your name.”
“Phil.”
