Being Invisible (12 page)

On the way back to the office he stopped off at a five-and-dime and stole a little pocket mirror. At his building he had to share the elevator with a sudden crowd of lunchtime returnees. His presence was unknown to the others, and with innocent brutality they crushed him into a corner. The man just ahead turned to see what could be the baffling obstruction, and flooded him, at the range of four inches, with foul breath. He was not released until the car climbed to three floors above his own and the throng departed as one.

Finally arriving at his own offices, he went to the men’s room and into a booth. He became visible there and inspected himself in the pocket mirror. There was some blood on him, but less than he had supposed: a few drops, now dried brown, on his left lapel, none on his tie. He was able to make himself presentable with a saliva-moistened handkerchief.

He brought the beautiful new bills from his pocket. They were so fresh and crisp as to have cohered as if they were yet in the teller’s drawer. He felt the emanations of their power. He would not have been astonished had the stack emitted an audible hum of generatorlike might. He counted them. He had taken twenty-two bills. That was two thousand, two hundred dollars, a long ton of money to obtain during a lunch hour with very little work.

Pascal was standing before the mirror when Wagner emerged. Even in his discomfort the former never missed so slight an event as another man’s leaving a toilet stall. He was angled over a washbasin, face all but touching the glass, palpating his upper lip.

His reflection spoke. “It feels all puffed up.” He pulled his face back. “How’s it look to you? Swollen?”

“No,” said Wagner. “Why? Were you punched?”

Pascal winced in reproach. “Didn’t I say I was going to the dentist’s? He gave me not one shot but two. Then drilled for what seemed like an hour, but said it was only a minor cavity.” Now he poked out a cheek-swelling with his tongue, deflated it to add, “Hope never to see a major one.” He moved quickly so as to accompany Wagner out the door.

But Wagner certainly did not want to be seen leaving the men’s room in such company, in view of the vile charges that had been anonymously placed against him.

He snapped his fingers. “Damn.” He showed the sick smile with which one sometimes confessed to a weakness and said, knowingly, “Go ahead. I’ve got to finish what I came here for.”

Pascal would have argued—that’s the kind of guy he was—but Wagner grimaced, put a hand to his belt buckle, and returned quickly to the booth. He heard Pascal reluctantly leave, but would wait awhile anyhow, for the other, keen on sharing the banalities of routine dental work, was capable of lingering in the hallway. Or even, for the door now was reopened, of returning for more facial examination, anything to keep Wagner captive. Goddamn the man.

Wagner therefore decided, rashly, to become invisible: let Pascal cope with the mystery of where he had gone... But might it not be more likely that in Pascal’s quest to understand he would prove more intrusive than ever?

While Wagner was pondering on the matter someone went into the booth just next his. That did it; he must leave before the new arrival began to strain.

Invisibly, he stepped from the stall and went towards the door, but before he got there it opened to admit the sallow-faced clerk whose sullen manner made visits to the stockroom so unpleasant. It was no surprise that this young man moved more quickly now than when filling an order, but what did seize Wagner’s interest, just as he caught the door on its way back to the jamb, was what the stockroom clerk, whose name was Terry something-or-other, now said aloud, for it was identical to what he had heard the day before, from the large, bluff man in the men’s room of the accounting department.

“Artie?”

The difference now was that Artie answered, saying, “Yeah,” from the booth next to the one Wagner had vacated.

Terry proceeded to join Artie.

Wagner was not tempted to remain and replicate Marcel’s celebrated eavesdropping on the transaction between Charlus and Jupien. By accident he had successfully carried out the assignment that he had rejected when Jackie Grinzing tried to impose it upon him. There was something chagrining in the experience. He had to remind himself that he was also the man who had marched into a bank and taken, with impunity, $2,200: simply plucked it up from a cash drawer, with nobody the wiser. This was the perfect crime, achieved without so much as the threat of violence... though it could hardly be called victimless. No bank would be likely to write off two thousand dollars or believe that the person nearest the source of the loss was without guilt. Of course the teller would be blamed, that pretty and pleasant-mannered young woman. Losing her job would be nothing beside the certainty that she would be prosecuted for grand theft. He had simply destroyed a life, which had proved an easier accomplishment than he could have imagined. The fact was that taking the money at gunpoint would have been preferable, furnishing an obvious villain.

So much for his initial and, as it now seemed, infantile sense of earning a profit without depleting anyone else’s account. It could not be said that he was making good use of invisibility. Thus far he had collected shameful information on several persons by means of inadvertent surveillance, bilked a greasy spoon of several bucks, stolen a sum of money for which an innocent young woman would be blamed, lost some change in a post office, ruined Babe’s dinner date, and run afoul of a plastic model of Siv Zirko’s penis. There could be no satisfaction in the perusal of a record of that sort.

He really must make such amends as he could. He visibly returned to his desk, where after a good deal of sober reflection, he determined to deal by anonymous letter with all the correctable matters except the twenty-two hundred-dollar bills. He would have to return the money in person, invisibly. The mails could hardly be trusted, and even if the parcel reached the bank, the teller would get it only after it had passed through a number of other hands, some of which might be unscrupulous. The unfortunate young woman from whose drawer he had taken the bills might never see them again. No, he must revisit the bank before closing time, before she had done her sums for the day. That could be managed; it was only 1:10 at the moment. Think of that. He had made a frustrated attempt on one bank and successfully robbed another, returned to the office and accidentally caught at least two of the people who used the men’s room for sexual activities—all in scarcely more than an hour. There was an efficiency in being invisible.

As to Terry-from-the-stockroom, a note would surely suffice. Wagner was fluent in epistolary composition. It took him no time at all to type, on the same kind of paper used for copy, the following.

Terry:

Your restroom activities have become known. What you do is certainly your own affair, but there has been criticism of your doing it at the office. I gather I’m the only one so far who can identify you, and having no wish to do you harm, I thought I’d give you this warning without saying anything to anyone else. But if you don’t heed it, and the executives discover your identity, you might lose your job. You might pass the warning along to “Artie” as well, and to anyone else you know who uses his services.

That seemed to say it all. There was no need to add a phony name such as “A Friend,” because he wasn’t one.

The time was now 1:30. Wagner next wrote to Jackie Grinzing.

You have been observed, quite by accident, in a compromising situation with Morton Wilton. The person who saw you is not a moral policeman and neither approves nor disapproves of your liaison. But it has occurred to this person that if you could be observed by one, you might well be seen by others who would not be so tolerant of human foibles. Both you and Wilton, if his ring can be believed, are currently married. It would be easy for some malicious person to make trouble for you. Discretion is advised.

His wristwatch now read 2:05. This note had taken him a bit longer to compose than the one to stockroom Terry, for it was slightly elevated in literary style. For example, he would not have used “liaison” when writing to Terry, nor “foibles,” which, though one could hear its occasional use by a certain whimsical, avuncular kind of TV newsman, had Jamesian connotations: someone in “The Liar” calls the eponymous hero a “fetching dog, but has a monstrous foible.” Or approximately: he hadn’t read it since college.

It was time for him to start for the bank, if he hoped to get there before closing, which might be as early as 2:30. Being invisible had no effect on the speed at which one could move. He enclosed the letters in the manila envelopes used for interoffice mail, and because these were not equipped for sealing, had no closure but the string-and-spindle, he scotch-taped the flaps, which of course would disqualify the envelopes from further use once they were mutilated by the removal of the tape. This was why such employment of tape was forbidden under the rules for office economy newly imposed by Morton Wilton, the adulterous executive.

But were Wagner not to apply some obstacle against the accidental examination of his letters by unauthorized parties, he would once again be responsible for bringing needless discomfort, perhaps even pain, to others. However, since Gordon the messenger had been directed to remain on the alert for the illicit use of scotch tape, dropping them off at his station would probably call Jackie’s unwelcome attention to the envelopes—unwelcome even in the case of the one addressed to her, for if he knew the woman, she would first react to the infraction of the rules and only read the enclosure as an afterthought. She might also even confiscate and read the message to Terry.

Therefore Wagner now entered her office invisibly—she was still out, perhaps by now even finally eating lunch—and, after borrowing the desk-set pen to inscribe “Personal” on the flap, just above the tape, deposited her envelope in the In box. He then delivered Terry’s to the stockroom.

Unless filling an order, the man was never in evidence at or near the counter. If you wanted him, you struck the button of the old-fashioned bellhop’s bell and proceeded to wait interminably. It occurred to Wagner to wonder why Terry did not invite “Artie” into the fastness of his lair, into which no one else, not even Jackie, ever penetrated and which was surely more private than the men’s washroom—unless of course it was the very violation of social modesty, with the concomitant risks, that attracted the stockroom clerk, whose habitual sullenness might well be the symptom of a profound grievance against the way things were. Such persons abounded in the city: their statements, made in the vocabulary of vandalism, could be seen anew each day, on buildings and public conveyances and in parks. No doubt it could be expressed sexually as well.

Wagner rang the bell and placed the envelope upon the counter that obstructed the doorway at waist level. As soon as it touched wood it became visible.

His time in which to reach the bank had somehow dwindled to but eleven minutes, he now saw on the clock mounted above the elevators. Perhaps his watch had been slow; he could not check it now, for, like the rest of him and his, it was invisible.

All cars were on the ground floor. Therefore he took the now familiar staircase. Running down the steps was still a dangerous exercise, but he reached the bottom without tripping, crossed the lobby at so smart a pace he could not alter it or dodge when, at the doors to the street, he met the entering Wilton, of all people, who was two steps ahead of Jackie Grinzing. Wagner did have the advantage, though a captive of his own momentum, of being able to see Wilton, who of course was blind to him and therefore got the worst of the collision; indeed, was knocked out the door and, being palpably of slighter substance than he looked, finally lost his balance and when last seen was likely to fall to the pavement.

As to what either Wilton or Jackie made of this surely puzzling event, Wagner did not have time to pause and observe, but he did reflect that had her escort been more gallant, it would have been she with whom he might have collided.

En route to the bank, he only narrowly averted running into a series of other people, then was himself almost trampled by a husky youth who could have had no idea that a human being occupied what looked like a clear field of play.

The bank’s clock was at 2:21½ when he arrived. Good luck now ruled the swinging door: three of its compartments were filled with persons on their way to the street, and no one but him awaited entrance. Inside, however, he had to linger overlong for someone to pass through the electric gate to the back-of-counter area, and when finally a plump young woman did so, she was detained by a man playing the role of the traditional banker, i.e., middle-aged, gray-suited and sideburned; and these people effectively blocked all access to the gate... until, after an eternity, another officer begged their pardon and dislodged them, but he went swiftly through the gate and, instead of letting it look after itself, paused to see the latch close—for all the world as if he knew Wagner stood invisibly by, waiting to pounce.

But at last the young woman, uttering a series of OKs, turned from the man in gray and moved her plump person, dressed in bright green, through the barrier, the switch that controlled which was operated by an employee just inside and to the left. Paperwork was the latter’s main job, but she reserved the corner of an eye for whoever might appear on either side of the gate. Wagner followed quickly in the fat girl’s wake, but, studying the document in her hand, she moved at a deliberate pace, and the gate, in its automatic, prompt return, struck him before he could clear it. It had no significant force, and he was not hurt, but the gate was detained for an instant in its travel. Wagner noticed that and wondered whether anyone else did, but he was inside now and had work to do.

He went swiftly to the station of the teller from whom he had taken the hundred-dollar bills. She was currently occupied with a man buying traveler’s checks. To get the blanks for this purpose she moved far enough from her cash drawer for Wagner to return the notes, though he could not manage to do the job as neatly as he would have liked. The bills had been crisply new when taken; by now, what with his counting them several times, they were not quite as they had been: even a nonprofessional could have seen that at a distance.