Night Gallery 1 (17 page)

He was in a hospital corridor, the rain dripping from him. He heard muffled bells and announcements on a loudspeaker, and murmuring voices, and then a doctor came over to him. The doctor fiddled nervously with the stethoscope around his neck. His voice was grimly professional, struggling to conjure up a personal sympathy to cover a most impersonal death. "You're . . . Mr. Lane?"

Lane nodded. "I came as fast as I could. One of my neighbors told me that—"

He stopped abruptly, seeing the look on the doctor's face.

"I'm afraid you're too late, Mr. Lane. It was pneumonia. We did everything we could but—"

Lane didn't hear anything else.

"You're too late, Mr. Lane." The words flooded his brain, echoing and reechoing, smashing against the walls of his consciousness. Too late. Much too late. And always too late. He was late that bloody dawn in Normandy when the funked-out kid got caught in the hedgerows and he'd lost a race with a German tiger tank, having to throw himself into a ditch at the last moment while the tank turned the kid into a screaming, mincemeat pancake; he was too late telling his father that it was time to slow down, that at age fifty-five-plus, a man had to slow down to a walk. And then his father was dead of a heart attack. And he was too late in his own realization of time passing—much as Tim Riley had failed to note that dingy little bars with sawdust floors were becoming extinct, along with the nickel beer and the free sandwich—and it followed that he was too late in his own awareness that the soft sell, the friendly passing of the time of day, and the honoring of the word of mouth was an ancient salesmanship long since passé And with Katie—God, how late he'd been. How belated had been his awareness of her frailty, her littleness, and the thin line that separated humans from extinction. Late. Always late. So Goddamned late. Then he closed his eyes and covered his ears against the noise inside his head—because he couldn't take any more. He simply couldn't take any more.

It was an anxious, tight-lipped Jane Alcott who on the following day tried for the fifth time to reach Randy Lane's apartment, only to hear a filtered voice answer, "I'm sorry. Mr. Lane's apartment isn't answering."

"Thank you," she said, putting the phone down. Then she looked up and saw Harvey Doane standing there by her desk.

"I could have saved you the trouble," he said. "Your boss spent the night in the city jail. Little squib in the morning paper."

Behind him Pritikin appeared, carrying his briefcase. He stopped, looked first at Miss Alcott and Doane, then at the closed door of Lane's office.

Doane turned to him, smiling. "Oh, Mr. Pritikin. I'm afraid we're minus a sales director this morning."

If she could hit him with something, Miss Alcott thought. Something heavy on that pompadoured, Edwardian hair—or strangle him with that broad six-inch striped tie.

"Lane's sick?" Pritikin asked, and it was an accusation.

"I would imagine so," Doane chuckled, "after spending the night in a drunk tank!"

There was an ice-cold silence.

"Should you hear from Mr. Lane," Pritikin said to Jane, "tell him I'd like very much to see him at his earliest convenience." Then he continued on into his office.

"Just a small suggestion, Miss Alcott," Doane said to her. "Always play the favorites."

She looked deep into the boyish face and the Vaseline smile. "That applies to thoroughbred horses, Mr. Doane. You happen to be a jackal!"

She wasn't aware of how loud her voice was until she noted the line of secretaries staring at her.

Doane felt almost nauseous with humiliation. He sensed the eyes of the women on him. Then he cleared his throat. "As of the moment, Miss Alcott—
you
are unemployed." But he was conscious that this was a skimpy face-saving item that saved nothing. This bosomy broad had laid him out, and precious damned little could be salvaged. He retreated back into his office, but too late to escape the last salvo.

Miss Alcott had risen and was regarding him steadily. "At last," she said, "I have something to thank you for. Because not to have to work for you, Mr. Doane, is my most cherished ambition."

The double doors at the far end of the corridor opened, and Randy Lane appeared.

Miss Alcott's eyes widened. Doane turned to look in that direction.

Lane looked bearded, disheveled, a little lost as he walked very slowly past the secretaries at their desks, each of whom gave him a little side look and then stared, fascinated, at the tableau of Doane and Alcott. It was a collective holding of breaths, waiting for the Confrontation.

Lane walked past both of them, directly into his office, and closed the door.

"Are you going to tell him?" Doane asked tersely. "Or shall I?"

Miss Alcott stepped out from behind her desk. "You put your hand on that doorknob," she said softly, "and I'll break it off at the wrist."

She waited just long enough to see his face burn red; then she went into Lane's office.

He was standing behind his desk as if waiting for her. "Jesus," he said, "I'm a dull Goddamned man—and I'd count it a favor, Janie . . . honest to God I would . . . if you didn't look at me sympathetically."

"Okay," she said, "no sympathy. How about a cup of black coffee instead?"

He shook his head. "Add this to my long list of accomplishments. I now have a record of arrest."

"I know," she said.

He squinted, scratched at his beard stubble, and looked a little confused. "You know," he said, "a great deal can happen to a man in twenty-four hours."

Then the phone rang. Lane looked at it briefly, then ignored it. Jane Alcott finally moved over and picked it up. "Mr. Lane's office," she said. She looked worded, covered the mouthpiece. "It's Mr. Pritikin."

He took the receiver from her and sat down in his chair. "Randolph Lane here. Yes, sir, I quite understand. Oh, yes, indeed. I know all about corporate images. That, too, Mr. Pritikin. I know the value of good public relations. Oh, yes, indeed, sir. I'm close to an expert on that. I quite understand. I'll have vacated my desk by—" He stopped, looking at his wristwatch. "Would ten minutes be okay? Fine. And thank you for telling me."

He put the receiver down, pointed at her. "No sympathy. You promised."

"No sympathy," she repeated, the sharp, yearning hunger for him twisting at her insides.

He stood up, opened up a couple of desk drawers, fumbled around and picked up nothing except the bottle of half-consumed whiskey. He cradled this under his arm like a football and then picked up his wife's picture. "I don't think there's anything else around here," he said, looking around the room, "that belongs to me or that I want to take with me. When you do your housecleaning for Mr. Doane—if you should run across anything, just—"

She cut in. "I won't be working for Mr. Doane—or anyone else around here. Wherever you go—-that's where I go."

He looked at her a little enigmatically. "That's biblical," he said, "and it's very sweet." He shook his head. "But I'm afraid that won't be possible. Where I'm going, Jane, I don't think they'd let you in."

He laughed a little as he came out from behind his desk and moved toward the door. He turned to her. "Good-bye, Janie, dear. I've been late . . . too late all my life. Now I'm going to go back and stake a claim to some of the better moments. And this trip . . . I'll be a son of a bitch if I'll be late for this one!"

He left the office and moved down the row of secretaries' desks, conscious of their staring at him but not giving a damn about them or anything else. When he passed the switchboard operator, she called out to him. "There's a call for you, Mr. Lane."

Lane leaned over the little partition separating the switchboard area, picked up a phone. "Mr. Lane no longer works here," he said, "and Mr. Lane no longer lives here. And Mr. Lane is no longer available. And if you're interested in plastics . .. I recommend a Mr. Harvey Doane. He is of the new breed . . . and should you not know it . . . the new breed is built out of plastics!"

He put the phone down and moved out of the office, announcing over his shoulder to the gaping switchboard operator: "If anybody should ask . . . I've gone to a homecoming at Tim Riley's Bar. My
homecoming.
"

Mr. Pritikin sat at his desk and was surprised and not very pleased when Miss Alcott entered his office, unannounced. She stood a few feet from his desk, and he noticed that she looked very pale. "What is—" he hegan to say, and then shut up.

"For Mr. Randolph Lane," Jane Alcott said, "who has just departed the premises. One small lonely word on his behalf. Since nobody else seems to give a damn. In exchange for twenty-five pretty good years, you've given him the boot and the back of your hand. Now he's alone and fired and a little frightened. Maybe the least you could have given him, Mr. Pritikin, would have been a gold watch. That wouldn't have been bad. But just a . . . a word . . . a gentle word would have been better. Just a reminder to him that he's not obsolete. He's not unloved. He's not a relic to be carted off to the dump. Now he's chasing ghosts . . . when all he really needed was that one word to tell him that he had
worth
. That much you could have given him."

She stood there silently for a moment, her head down; then she looked up. "That much, Mr. Pritikin," she said very gently, "
you should have given him!
"

Before he could answer, she had turned and left the office.

When Randy Lane finally reached Tim Riley's Bar much later that night, two hard-hatted construction workers were just taking the front door off its hinges and carrying it out to a truck parked out front. Two other men inside were removing the last of the electrical fixtures. The truck's lights had been left on to give illumination to the scene.

Lane stepped through the opening to the bar and almost ran into one of the hardhats as he walked past Lane carrying two rolls of wire.

"What's going on?" Lane asked.

"What the hell does it look like?" the workman answered, without stopping. "We're knocking the place down."

"Tonight?" Lane called to him through the opening.

"Overtime," the workman said from the sidewalk as he headed toward the truck. "We're behind schedule. You wanna get out of the way, mister?"

Other workmen went in and out past Lane. There was the sound of a pneumatic drill from another section of the ground floor, and outside another work crew went industriously at the job of knocking down the walls. One of them had gone behind the bar and was starting to hammer at the big mirror that hung behind it.

"Wait a minute," Lane called to him, running towards the bar. "Wait a minute."

He vaulted the bar, seized the man, and whirled him around.

He was looking into the face of Tim Riley, and suddenly the lights were on.

There was a red-white-and-blue bunting stretched across the bar. "Welcome Home, Randy." The booths were filled. The jukebox was playing in competition with the piano. People walked back and forth with beer mugs in their hands, laughing and singing.

And then he saw his father at the piano and walked over to him; his father, with the barbed-wire white hair that stuck straight up, and the perpetual grin, and the kindly wrinkled blue eyes. His father winked at him. "How are you, Randy?"

"Fine, Pop," Lane answered, "just fine." Then he turned and saw Katie. He held out his hands to her, and she approached him. He took her to him, holding her very closely and very tightly, kissing her hair. "Hello, darling," she said to him.

"Katie," Lane answered hoarsely. "Katie . . . God, how I've missed you—"

Tim Riley came out from behind the bar and walked over to Lane, slapping him on the back. "Good to see you, Tim," Lane said. "Awful good to see you."

"And you, Randy—good to see you. What's more, it's on the house!" He beckoned to an aproned waiter, who drew a beer and slid it expertly down the bar. Tim caught it deftly and handed it over to Lane.

Then Lane's father began to play "It's a Long Way to Tipperary" on the piano and the crowd began to move in around them. Lane looked at the faces. He knew them. Pete Denovitch—dead of a heart attack in '54. Played ball with him on the school football team. And there was his wife. They called her Brownie. A tiny woman, barely five feet tall. And there was McDonough, his stiff policeman's tunic opened up with an undershirt showing through. He knew them all. Their names, where they lived, what they meant to him.

He put his arm around Katie and kept looking at her profile, holding tight to her, touching her, caressing her, and every now and then leaning down to kiss her.

Then all the people faced Lane and held up their beer mugs. After a moment their voices died away and all was silent. It was then that Katie very softly began to sing "Auld Lang Syne," and then a chorus of soft voices joined her.

Lane turned her to him, staring into her face, which somehow seemed shadowed—the features hazy. "Katie," Lane said, "no sad songs for this occasion. This is a homecoming!"

From someplace far off he heard a wall crumble and a glass break, then the sound of the pneumatic drill.

"Go ahead, Katie," Lane said louder, "sing." He looked around the group. "All of you—sing. This is an occasion. I mean . . . it's not every day a guy comes back." His voice was louder and more supplicating. "Please . . . everybody sing!"

His father stopped playing the piano and turned to look at him. "Randy," he said softly.

"Go ahead, Pop. Give us a couple of choruses of 'Tipperary.' Go ahead, Tim—play the piano for him." He whirled around to face the crowd. "Everybody . . . everybody sing!"

Glass was being shattered and plaster cracked and wood splintered, and then all noise stopped for tho second time. Again it was absolutely still.

"How 'bout that, Randy," his father said to him. "They're tearing down Tim Riley's Bar." He looked over to Tim. "That's what they're doing, Tim."

Riley nodded.

"Don't pay any attention!" Lane shouted. "Forget about them! Come on, everybody. This is where it is—right here. This place. This bar."

They just stared at him.

He grabbed Katie. "I'm back, Katie. Understand? It's 1945 and I'm back. We're going to get married. You and me. Then we're going to buy a white two-story house. That's what's going to happen. But let me tell you something . . . let me tell you
this
right now . . . we're going change everything. We're going to do it right this time. I'm not going to lose you, Katie."