Being Invisible (3 page)

Dad, no longer living, would have been proud of him now. “What if I were invisible, Dad, and could go everywhere unseen? Wouldn’t
that
be something?”
Play tricks on family members, fool friends & policemen,
as the mail-order copy of yore said in touting the instructional manual on ventriloquism.

How could India-Indian fakirs walk on red-hot rocks? By telling themselves they can. I wish I were invisible, said one Wagner to the other in the looking glass, who was not exactly himself, for the parting of the hair was on the wrong side, as was the scar on the knee, the arched eyebrow, and the longer half of the scrotum. His real feet were quite different one from the other, but that fact was not evident at the moment, for his right foot, the left one in the mirror, could not be seen. He was standing on air on that side, his leg ending at the ankle... no, at about mid-shank... but soon the entire calf was gone, as was most of the other leg, which suddenly had caught up and passed its twin.

Wagner was inexorably disappearing before his own eyes. However, as soon as he recognized that fact and reacted to it with an access of emotion in which fear was predominant, the process was promptly arrested and he stayed visible from waist to head. As yet he had looked at himself only in the mirror: it might well be (and he was praying for that state of affairs) that what he saw, or rather did not see, was some trick of or flaw in the silvered glass: this effect was surely of the fun-house kind, though how and why the mirror had been altered was inexplicable.

He bent now and stared at his actual feet, that is, where they had been, where indeed they certainly must still be planted, else he would not be standing. Despite that truth of physical law, when he could not see his feet or legs he immediately lost his balance and fell to the bedroom floor.

He lay there for a while, breathing as though he had been doing heavy labor, then, ingeniously, this half a man pulled himself by clawed hands and digging elbows near enough to the bedroom door to swing it open to the point at which the mirror went back into its own dark corner against the wall.

With his reflection no longer before him, Wagner had no trouble in rising to his feet. Yet he would not look down for a while. First he went to the liquor cabinet, in the living room, and took a draught of the only bottle left therein: a half pint of kirsch, which Babe had purchased as long as nine or ten months before in response to a newspaper food-page suggestion as to how to transform a mélange of frozen fruit into a
grand luxe
dessert. Kirsch taken neat was sufficiently revolting to make him feel less unworldly. He drank some more, grimaced not as violently as the first time, for his tolerance was already building, found the courage to look towards the floor, and saw both his old familiar feet. Even the persistent corn on the left little toe was now a friend.

Wagner refused to believe he had been hallucinating, though that would have been the obvious assumption of many a man. He simply wasn’t that sort. Reality might be unsatisfying, but he had yet to find an acceptable alternative. Half his body had been invisible for a while—yes, it was back now, as he had finally had the courage to ascertain without taking a third drink of kirsch—but it had been gone for a few moments anyway.

He had not been in a condition to go out for coffee until almost noon.

B
EFORE HIS NEXT EXPERIMENT
Wagner drank the remaining quarter-inch of kirsch, with a purpose to settle his nerves before facing the full-length mirror. It was amazing how quickly, as a nondrinker, he could feel the alcohol. He stripped, went before the glass, told himself to become invisible, and did so. He had forgotten he was holding the little bottle from which he had drunk, but the vessel vanished along with his person. The implications of this event were interesting.

He returned to visibility, put on clothes, and easily disappeared again. One problem with fictional invisible men had always been the clothing or lack thereof: they had to remove it to be unseen, which is to say, could vanish only when naked. This was an inconvenient state of affairs in wintertime, and when rained or snowed on, the man’s corporeal outline could be seen. Wagner also believed he could remember from one of the movies on the theme that the police caught an invisible malefactor by spraying empty space with opaque liquid or fine powder. He now dusted his head with talcum but could not see it, then shook his hair clean and next inundated his crown with water. He and his clothes were soaked, but all remained unseen. Anything, any substance or object that came in contact with the invisible Wagner, was perforce itself put into a state in which it was undetectable to the eye.

Anyway, to his own eye. At this point the process had yet to be tried on anyone else. And for a while it seemed as though this might never happen. Suppose it was only an illusion of his own organs of sight? He could easily make a fool of himself, thus aggravating the very situation from which he wanted to escape through invisibility. Therefore some days passed before his gift was even exercised elsewhere in the apartment. Despite many complaints, Glen the super maintained a practice of making only the most perfunctory, almost inaudible knock and then letting himself into one’s apartment with a passkey. Glen was one of the last people Wagner would have liked to catch him in a failure of invisibility. So it took a while before he went even as far as the bathroom.

When he at last did so he discovered some effects he had not anticipated: e.g., urinating when invisible is somewhat like doing it in the dark: you cannot watch the stream falling. However, he could see the disturbance in the water in the bowl, and thus oriented, did not pee on his feet.

Brushing the teeth was better done with the eyes closed, as was shaving electrically according to the gauge of the fingertips, but one of Wagner’s weekend pleasures, a gracious old-fashioned shave with warm water from a mug and an antique cutthroat razor—presents from Babe at a bygone Xmas; she had a genius for giftgiving—had to be forgone if he couldn’t see his face.

In the kitchen, when at last he felt comfortable enough to go there invisibly, there were other problems. If he lifted a boiling teakettle it could no longer be seen, and though the operation was the most common of those he performed in that room, he had the greatest difficulty in pouring unseen hot water onto the instant powder in the visible cup. Scalding fingers or even his wrist was routine. Of course, slicing tomatoes or a loaf of bread would have been perilous, so it was just as well that fresh tomatoes or a genuine loaf had not been in his possession since Babe’s leaving, though it was true enough that there was no law compelling him to become invisible. At any time he could have said the hell with it and simply never done it again. Aside from giving him a hobby with which to squander his evenings, his ability to assume a state in which he could not see himself had brought him no profit whatever.

And then came the episode in the post office, his first public performance, at which he had actually lost money, followed by the inadvertent voyeurism in the elevator, which made him feel filthy and distracted him from his work all afternoon. For hours he tried without success to write new copy for an item that had been listed in a particular catalogue for several seasons but had never, according to the client, sold as well as it should have: a combination ball-point pen and flashlight, the light mounted so that it illuminated what was written by the pen. Obviously it would be of use in a darkened room, perhaps to be kept on the bedside table for jotting down those nighttime inspirations that cannot otherwise be remembered next morning. God knew Wagner had had many of them. When he sat down with the manuscript of the novel he had been working on—seventeen pages, accumulated over, could it have been?, six and a half years, but he had been a late beginner—his imagination immediately packed its valise and left on a tropical cruise. But just let him retire for the night! His brain would proceed to furnish, unasked, far too much for one sleepy man to handle, sufficient dramatic events, vivid characterizations, and complex moralities for a multi-volumed
Comèdie Humaine de notre temps.

Of course, little of this could be brought to mind as late as next morning. By the time he had the courage to confront his manuscript again, which might not be for weeks, it was as if he had never thought about it once during the interim. This certainly would not be the case were one equipped with the Write-Light Combo. So anyway he believed when he first saw the item (sometimes the client would provide samples of inexpensive products; less often these could be kept). He took it home (to do this openly one had to get Jackie Grinzing’s OK), put it on the bedside table, and for the next five nights went quickly to sleep as soon as his head touched the pillow. But on the sixth and seventh came a succession of incandescent ideas like glowing pearls in long strands. The light-pen proved its worth, and in an
ad hoc
shorthand, a literal translation of the idiom in which his mind was dictating so rapidly, he recorded the lot.

Both mornings after, he woke to notepaper covered with nonsensical hentracks such as: “G dcs N w/ mplsmcz. Lake. 12-13. mem flg d. Larry Rdwqnq, & P.
Etc.
etc.
H.O.” Not even the two comprehensible entries served any purpose: there was neither a lake nor a Larry in the fragment of narrative he had accumulated over the years.

This experience had its effect on his efforts to write the new catalogue copy. People were probably not buying the Write-Light because, wiser than he, they correctly assumed that the idea that does not assert itself at an appropriate time comes not from the brain but the lower parts of the nervous system, the same that are responsible, especially in adolescence, for erections for which there is no apparent stimulus.

A hand cupped his shouldercap.

“I see the Muse isn’t spreading her legs this afternoon.” It was the unwelcome voice of Roy Pascal, a colleague who had the mistaken conviction that because they worked in the same office they were friends. Pascal had an instinct for arriving at moments when his presence was just enough to provide a negative solidification for a situation that until then had still retained a potential for movement.

Wagner tore the paper from the typewriter, which produced that near-scream of a platen spun too rapidly.

“Jesus,” said Pascal, “there go the cogs. But maybe that’s the only way to get new equipment. Come on, Ferdinand, let’s get that cuppa Joe.” He also used such terms as “head” for “toilet,” and “glad to have you aboard” when greeting newcomers, though it was not he but rather his father who had served in the Navy. This was but one of his many affectations.

“I’ve had all the coffee I can swallow for one day,” Wagner said.

Pascal agreed. “Me too. We’ll get Cokes.”

“No,” said Wagner. “I’ve got to break the back of this copy. I just haven’t been able to concentrate.” He had continued to stare at his empty typewriter. Pascal was the only person in the office who would engage in nonbusiness talk to one’s back. No doubt he would have preferred Wagner to turn in the chair but would settle for this. He seemed immune to feelings of rejection.

Wagner doggedly returned the paper to the typewriter. He would have liked to crumple it and bounce its ball against the partition, but management had been very strict about wastage in recent months, going so far as to ask that for original drafts the backs of used sheets be employed. Such measures had been instituted not long after Wilton’s joining the firm. Perhaps that is what he did when not being dry-masturbated in the elevator by Wagner’s immediate superior: dreamed up new economies to be imposed on the serfs.

“It’s four thirty-five,” Pascal, still there, said behind him. Wagner had assumed the bastard was gone! “It’s too late now to find the words.”

This was surely an accidental echoing of the very statement Babe had made on leaving—with reference to his novel—but it was no less cruel for that, and he was unmanned all over again, to the degree that he actually left his cubicle and accompanied Pascal to the soda-dispensing machine in the corridor on the route to the restrooms.

Over their cans of what proved to be grape soda—this late in the day everything else was gone—Pascal tried to gossip, but as he never had the real goods on anybody, he spoke in fantasy.

“I tell you Mary Alice is a lez if ever I saw one. Anybody looks like that and never dates.” He was referring to their youngest colleague, a deep-breasted sallow-skinned brunette newly out of college. Wagner was helping her to learn to write catalogue copy but had identified in Mary Alice very little potential for this sort of work. Some of her efforts were memorably inept. He had started her on certain novelty items whose appeal would be only to a limited market so far as buyers went, but which might well amuse those who scanned catalogues, inducing them to linger here and there throughout the pages and maybe eventually come across a gadget they would wish to order.

There was a breast-pocket handkerchief for the jacket of a business suit, which when removed and shaken out of its folds appeared to be rather a pair of lace-trimmed underpants. There was a miniature version of a loving cup, inscribed with a mildly insulting title, e.g., “World’s Champion Bullshooter.” There was one of the classics in this tradition, the nutcrackers in the shape of a woman’s legs. Mary Alice actually seemed not to get the feeble jokes of these infantile amusements. In her copy the fake panties were simply an “elegant lace-trimmed handkerchief” and the little loving cup was a “thoughtful award for prowess in some area which might ordinarily go unrecognized.” The nutcracker was called simply that, and the text pointed out that it was also functional with lobster-and crab-shells.

Mary Alice Phillips had off-white skin and small dark eyes. She was not the type of female to whom Wagner was erotically attracted, despite her prominent breasts or perhaps because of them as well as her tender age. He was never altogether at ease with unseasoned women. Mary Alice still lived with her parents. He doubted that Pascal had any evidence she was lesbian. The man was usually wrong.