Seconds (14 page)

He seized the telephone. “Operator? Let me have long distance, please.”

“One moment, sir.”

His heart was pounding painfully and the receiver seemed terribly heavy in his hand. He had the feeling that he was under the solemn and reproachful observation of Charley, of Bushbane, and of John, and as he glanced guiltily around the room he saw, in the full-length mirror on the closet door, Antiochus Wilson regarding him suspiciously. The lips of the image moved. It whispered: “You fool . . . !”

“Long distance,” said the operator cheerfully.

“Ah . . . never mind. I'm sorry. I'll call—later.”

He put the receiver down. For several minutes he stared silently at the image in the mirror, waiting for it to move or speak again, but it merely eyed him with sullen audacity, and only when he slumped back on his pillow and swung his legs up on the bed did it vanish.

But still he sensed its presence. It was there in the room with him, slipping stealthily from one mirror to another, watching him. The telephone buzzed. He sat upright. Charley again—or Bushbane, possibly. No, by God, he would not answer. Swiftly he pulled his tie tight, grabbed his coat and hat from the chair, and went out of the room, letting the phone ring on and on behind him.

In the lobby, he hesitated, not knowing what to do. A family group paced past him on the way to the hotel dining room—a lean young man holding a small boy by the hand, accompanied by a young woman, evidently in the middle stage of pregnancy; and right behind them, a stout gentleman in a well-tailored suit escorting a thin, beaky woman wearing mink and flowers. Three generations celebrating some anniversary, Wilson decided. He could almost smell the odor of long relationships—familiarity, apathy, weariness—that seemed to radiate from them. The child was tired and fussy. The young wife looked slightly nauseated, and the older woman was recounting some complaint to the portly gentleman, whose face displayed a look of disciplined boredom. The man's eyes rested for a moment on Wilson's face, and in that moment Wilson seemed to catch a glimpse of envy, self-pity, and, as the man turned his head away again patiently toward his wife, a mild despair.

“A table for one, sir?”

Wilson stopped short. It seemed that he had trailed along behind the irritable family group right up to the door of the dining room, and the headwaiter was addressing him politely, looking somewhat askance at the coat and hat he still held.

“Um, oh, no.” Wilson was confused. “I think I'll eat later on, actually.”

“Very good, sir.”

He turned away and went hesitantly back through the lobby, where tall mirrors glittered in the brilliance of chandelier light. Everywhere he glanced he seemed to see the image of Antiochus Wilson. He stopped and turned to face it. The figure in the glass had the appearance of reality, of being a living man, and yet was without substance . . . a fleshless apparition, this reflection of himself. He stepped closer to it; obediently, the image advanced to meet him. He wondered whether it would not be possible for him to merge with it finally, so that he might become forever fixed in the coldness of the shining glass, a two-dimensional representation of a man—

He started nervously as he heard his name being cried aloud by a bellboy. He turned hastily away from the mirror. The page-call—that would be Bushbane, growing anxious. Or perhaps Bushbane had telephoned some Denver reborn to seek him out and help him over what Bushbane had called “a tough moment.” My God, yes, there would be plenty of reborns to call on; they must be spread over the entire country by now. That tweedy fellow standing at the registration desk—he might be one of them. Bushbane's Denver correspondent, dutifully answering a summons to assist a comrade temporarily in distress. What would the man suggest? A game of chess? Chinese girls?

Wilson hurried out to the street. If he had to converse with someone, he would prefer that plump gentleman who had so gloomily ushered his family into the hotel dining room—the whining grandchild, the bilious daughter, the skinny son-in-law, the irritable wife—all the sour proofs of a life in depth. With such a man, one could at least have the reassurance of an unimpeachable reality.

“Cab, sir?”

“Y-yes, thank you.”

He had the impression that the man in tweeds had spotted him and was lumbering in his wake.

He climbed into the taxi. The driver's vicious little face stared at him from the photograph on the licensing permit. The man asked: “Where to?”

“I want to go to—to a night club. I don't know the town. You pick one.”

The taxi moved out into the midevening traffic. Wilson glanced through the rear window. He saw no tweedy figure emerge from the hotel, but it mattered little. There were so many of them that he could not hope to elude their kindly pursuit. Indeed, how could Charley have phoned him so soon after he had checked in at the hotel, if he had not been followed and watched every step of the way?

“ . . . You want something big with a floor show, mister?”

“Well, yes. That is—no, not exactly. I thought some place a little quieter.”

The driver hesitated, estimating his client's intentions. “You sure it's a night club you want, mister?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, well, okay . . .”

The place the driver selected was almost pitch-dark inside. The air was heavily scented with perfume and liquor. In one corner, a man in a blue tuxedo sat playing a piano with an illuminated keyboard; nearby stood a girl apparently nude but wearing flesh-colored tights and tiny stars on her breasts, moving her arms about in imitation of some Oriental dance of gesture, as yellowish and roseate lights alternately passed across her.

Wilson sat at a tiny table and ordered brandy. Gradually his eyes adjusted to the darkness and he perceived the shapes and shadows of the other patrons, spotted with the glowing ends of cigarettes. In time, he was able to identify male and female by their clothing, but their faces remained indistinguishable in the gloom, and he was thankful both for that and for the fact that their conversations were whispered, perhaps out of consideration for the performers. He felt peaceful, and anonymous. The brandy comforted him. He gazed placidly at the girl, and thought that he would be content to remain as he was indefinitely, sipping liquor and watching the awkward and pretentious movements of her arms. She reminded him of Sara Jane, a resemblance that was heightened when he noticed that she seemed to be chewing gum.

A woman sat down at his table. “Do you mind? I'm waiting for someone and it's so crowded—”

“Not at all. Please, um.”

He had been caught off guard and had not had time to rise, which slightly annoyed him, for the woman appeared to be a lady, well-dressed and with a pleasant voice.

“Would you let me offer you something while you're waiting?” he asked, anxious to prove his politeness.

“Well, really, it's awfully kind of you, but—”

“A little brandy? It's rather good.”

She smiled. Or at least he thought she smiled, for even at close quarters it was difficult to make out the arrangement of another person's features.

“Let me order anyway,” he insisted. “You needn't touch it, if you don't want to.”

“All right, then. Permission granted.”

“Splendid.”

A waiter was nearby. Wilson placed his order more loudly than he had intended, and he realized that he was getting drunk. No matter. He turned back to his companion, and, lighting her cigarette, saw with satisfaction that she looked like a decent, cheerful woman. A bit too much rouge for his taste, but perhaps that was the custom in these parts.

“You know, you're the first real person I've had a chance to talk to for a terribly long time,” he said earnestly.

“My goodness. That sounds grim. Where are you from?”

“California. A bunch of phonies out there. I mean it,” said Wilson, “literally. You know, they take a man at face value out there.”

“So I've heard.”

“No, you don't understand.” He felt a great impulse to unburden himself before Bushbane arrived to lead him away. “There are some people I've come to know who aren't at all what they seem. I mean, they're decent fellows and all that, but they've turned their backs on the past, in a sense. Some of them have changed their names, even,” he added, aware that he was not expressing himself as freely as he should, perhaps through the intervention of a subconscious allegiance to Charley and the others.

“Sounds like movie stars,” she said.

“No, no. Quite a different thing. Hard to explain.” He sat moodily for a moment. The rose and yellow girl had vanished. In her place stood a young man, whispering a song into a microphone. “The point is,” said Wilson, “that a man likes to be liked for his inner qualities. That's what I mean. Face value is all very well for the ordinary sort of human experience, but suppose you change the face? Then you lose the value, don't you?”

The woman laughed softly and touched his hand. “You'd better let me have your brandy, too. It's good, but it's not that good.”

“No, I'm serious. I mean, it's nice to know you can change your face, but actually going ahead and doing it has certain drawbacks. For example, I'm a grandfather—and at the same time, I'm
not
a grandfather.”

“You don't look like a grandfather to me.”

“Exactly. Face value.” Wilson paused self-consciously and sighed. “You must be wishing your husband would show up so you wouldn't have to listen to any more of my nonsense.”

“I'm sure it isn't nonsense. It's just a little complicated. And it isn't my husband, as a matter of fact. I'm a widow.”

“Oh, I'm sorry.”

“I've gotten quite used to it, really. It's been almost a year. I was lonely at first. Well,” she added, with a decisive note in her voice, “I'll tell you something else, too. I've just about come to the conclusion that the person I've been waiting for isn't going to come after all—”

“What a nuisance.”

“—and I've been thinking that what you need right now is a good strong cup of coffee. I hope you won't think I'm the kind of woman who goes around picking up strange men in bars, but it occurred to me you might like to see me home. I'll make you some coffee and I'm sure you'll feel much better.”

“I'd—I'd like that a lot.” But he was confused by the fact that her knees were now touching his, and that she was very gently massaging his hand with her fingers.

“Good. Well, you pay the bill like a good boy, and we'll set off . . .”

In the taxi, they exchanged a long, hearty kiss, and then sat comfortably close in an embrace.

“You're younger than I thought,” she said, studying his face.

“I'm older than I look.”

“Maybe it's because you have no family responsibilities.”

“Maybe.” He laughed, and the cab seemed to tilt. “But it's a little strange at first, even when you look in the mirror. It didn't use to be—”

“You've lost your wife,” she said keenly, as if she had divined the secret behind his incoherence.

He laughed again. “Yes.”

She touched his hand. “It makes things lonely. I know. And almost anything's better than being alone.”

“It was very sudden,” he added.

“So was mine—my husband. He went on a business trip to New York and died in a hotel. It was a cerebral hemorrhage.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You know—a stroke.”

“In a New York hotel—”

“Yes.”

Wilson's face bloomed with perspiration.

“What's wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing. I just remembered something. Tell me . . . when did you stop being—lonely?”

“Oh, about four months ago.” The taxi pulled over to the curb in front of a large and handsome apartment building. “Here we are,” she added, “home.” He did not move to open the door. “Well, don't you want to come up?” she asked.

“One thing, excuse me. How often—how many times have you been, um, not lonely?”

“I don't think I quite understand you,” she said, coldly.

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to imply—”

“Look. If you'd rather not have the coffee, you needn't.”

“It's not that. I—I just remembered I have a plane connection to make. It must have been the brandy. Completely slipped my mind.”

“All right.”

He opened the door for her and bowed.

“I'm sorry.”

“Never mind,” she said. She gazed at him for a moment. “You don't know what it means, being alone,” she said in a soft, angry voice. “Not really.”

“Oh, yes I do. Really.”

But she had turned away and was swiftly walking across the broad pavement toward the glass doors of the apartment building.

Wilson climbed back into the cab.

Chapter 5

I
T WAS
raining in New York; a slow, enveloping rain that seemed to adhere to the sidewalks and streets like a coating of grease. The tops of the buildings faded into mist, but no one looked up. People were hurrying along with their heads lowered beneath hats and swaying umbrellas, dodging puddles and each other, and plunging fatalistically into the paths of buses and taxis.

Wilson stood under the awning of the mid-town hotel where he had registered. Across the street, massive office buildings drew in and expelled their portions of the hastening crowd through mechanically revolving doors; he reflected that inside these buildings, the elevators also were in full operation . . . little steel boxes rushing up and down to eject loads of figures at various levels, and to suck in others.

He shivered, involuntarily, and glanced behind him. He had been followed, surely; even now, he supposed, he was under observation. That athletic-looking gentleman who stood just inside the lobby peering out as if waiting for a break in the rain—he could be one of them . . . or the tall man in a trench coat with a rolled-up newspaper stuck under one arm like a swagger stick who had come out of the hotel and was standing nearby, but who had declined the doorman's offer to hail a taxi. Indeed, both men might be members of the brotherhood—and others could be advancing, too, to surround him, to take him gently away so that he would be prevented from indulging in any further acts of foolishness.

The tall man turned tentatively toward him, apparently about to speak. Wilson stepped to the edge of the awning, letting the street crowd bump around him; but he went no farther, for it occurred to him, perhaps illogically, that if he went into the street and across, he might be pulled into the mechanically revolving doors of the opposite buildings and be lost inside forever. One of those doors—any one—might be the entrance to the company's headquarters, and from the rain-slick windows far above the patient clerks in their tan jackets might be staring sadly down. The hotel behind him—for all he knew it could be the one where the cadaver facsimile of himself had been discovered on a summer evening nine months ago . . . He felt uncomfortably close to unpleasant discoveries.

The tall man touched his sleeve. “Excuse me—”

“Sorry.” Wilson turned to one side and hastened off with the moving crowd. He was not ready for them yet. He needed time to think. The rain annoyed him; he ducked his head angrily and tipped his hatbrim down. Let the tall man follow him. Let them all follow him. A hundred of them could not keep him from doing what he had to do to salve his sense of injustice. It was not the company's fault, of course. The company had nothing to do with it. It was his own private, personal affair, and the company would simply have to be patient with him until he had concluded it to his satisfaction.

He turned into a drugstore, and stood breathing harshly for a moment among stacks of plastic toys and gadgets that all but obscured the soda fountain counter and the telephone booth at its far end. A row of balloons with painted grinning faces confronted him. Behind them, ping-pong balls trembled in the air, supported by invisible fingers of air, and little mechanical men shuffled jerkily to and fro on a magnetic board.

He reached the telephone booth with the tall man at his heels.

“You're Wilson, aren't you?”

Wilson turned and answered bitterly: “I'm not really sure.” But the tall man seemed so inoffensively troubled and uncertain, that his anger dwindled. “Look here,” he added, “I know you mean well, but this isn't exactly your affair. It's mine.” He stepped into the booth and pulled out a handful of change.

The tall man eyed him ruefully. “Don't do it, Wilson,” he said.

“Do what?”

“You know.” The tall man made a despairing gesture with his hands. “We've all been through the mill, Wilson. Believe me. It won't do any good.” Wilson jiggled the door handle impatiently. “I mean,” the man went on, “haven't you had enough of it already?”

“That's my business. It doesn't affect the company.”

“No, I mean for you. It's wrong for you, Wilson.”

“I'm afraid I'll have to be the judge of that.”

“Wilson, you'll be sorry—”

Wilson slid the door shut. The tall man hovered nearby for a moment and then, as he saw Wilson push a coin into the box, he backed off reproachfully and became lost to sight among the balloons.

The sound of Emily's voice so startled Wilson that he almost forgot to wrap the mouthpiece with his handkerchief, to disguise his own.

“Ah, Mrs.—um . . .” He could not bring himself to pronounce the name. And it might no longer be the one she used. The booth was stifling. He coughed.

“Yes?”

“Excuse me. My name is Tony Wilson. You don't know me, I'm afraid, but I was a fairly good friend of your late husband's, and—well, he often told me whenever I was East I ought to call him up, and, ah . . .”

“Yes?”

“Of course that was last year, before he, ahem.” Wilson laughed, inappropriately. “But I didn't want to let the occasion pass without conveying my deepest personal. My sympathies. Those of us who.” He coughed again and glanced out guiltily. A woman was waiting for him to finish. Behind her he noticed the tall man's hat seemingly perched atop one of the grinning balloons.

“Yes, it was a great loss,” Emily said formally. “It's very thoughtful of you to call.”

“Well, I was anxious to extend my—that is, I wonder if it would be possible for me to. I'd like very much,” said Wilson, wiping his brow with the free end of his handkerchief, “to pay a call, if it's convenient.”

“Yes, I see. Well—”

“Your late husband was a man of many facets,” he went on quickly, aware of her hesitation. “He was . . . well, it's impossible to talk about it over the phone, but of course naturally I have no intention, no wish of stirring up your, um, grief. I'm here just today and tonight before I go back West, and if it's not convenient, then of course, naturally—”

“Not at all.” She made the little clucking sound that meant she was thinking. He shut his eyes. He could well imagine her blinking her lids rapidly, pouting out her cheeks, poised there by the telephone stand in the foyer, considering what to do. “It's terribly kind of you, Mr. Wilson. I'm having a few people in for cocktails at five o'clock, as it happens, but if you'd care to drop in then . . .”

“You're sure it would be all right?”

“Oh, positively.”

“I'd only stay for a few minutes,” he went on, anxious to soothe away her obvious reluctance. Emily's parties were always so precisely planned. He realized how dismayed she might be at the prospect of having a stranger appear to upset the social balance. He fumbled for a further justification. “I'm a painter, Mrs.—um. An artist. Actually, I always admired your late husband's watercolors.”

“Really?”

“Not that he was a professional. But he did have . . . something. And, well, I wondered if maybe as a kind of token I might pick out one of his pictures from the walnut cupboard in the garage.” He coughed once more, hoping to cover what would appear to be a strange familiarity with the furnishing of a garage which he would not have had the opportunity of seeing.

“Oh. Well, as a matter of fact, the garage has been cleaned out.”

“You threw them away?”

“Not exactly. But anyway,” she said quickly, “if you'll come at five, I'm sure I can find something as a remembrance. Do you have the address?”

“Yes . . .”

He replaced the receiver. Of course she would have chucked out his watercolors. Why not?

He wandered out again to the street. The tall man was waiting there in the rain, humbly allowing himself to be buffeted by the crowd.

Wilson went up to him. An umbrella bobbed between them and passed on, its silver tip glistening.

“What do you want me to do?”

The tall man looked silently down at him for a moment. He seemed ill at ease; the rain was slanting into his face, but he made no attempt to shield himself from it.

“Go back to California,” he said, finally.

“I will, tomorrow.”

“You ought to go now, Wilson. Let me go with you—out to the airport.”

Wilson shook his head. “I'm sorry.”

The tall man sighed. He appeared on the verge of repeating his request, but then apparently thought better of it, and merely waved his hands clumsily in a gesture of resignation.

“What difference does it make—today or tomorrow?” Wilson asked. “Look, I'm not going to do anything stupid, you know. I just want—well, I want to check up on a few matters. You people didn't really give me time to make the proper preparation when I was processed. I had no idea I would be required to drop everything all at once. That's hardly a businesslike way of handling one's affairs,” he went on determinedly. “I thought surely I'd have a day or two to complete my arrangements.”

“Like what?” The tall man spoke softly, as if the question was of no consequence.

“Well, I don't think the details are important. It's a matter of principle.” A sagging awning loosed a spout of water onto his hat. He dodged aside, too late. “Frankly,” he continued, tilting his head to let the water drain from the crown, “I'm not too well pleased with the way the company has dealt with my case. They've made a few mistakes, which they've as much as admitted, and now when all I'm trying to do is smooth out some of the rough edges, they have me followed all over the country like some criminal . . . Are you a company staff man, by the way, or are you—like me?”

“Does it matter?”

“I happen to think it does.”

The tall man stared intently at Wilson. He shook his head slowly. “Has it ever mattered? I don't mean with me or you now, but . . . well, ever. In your experience. With your father, maybe, but what I'm trying to say . . .” He waved his hands again, hopelessly. “Just go back . . . to California. I can't explain it.”

“What's my father got to do with it?” Wilson asked, but the tall man simply made one final flapping movement with his hands, turned, and walked awkwardly away in the rain, without saying goodbye. Wilson pursued him, ducking away from umbrellas and the ends of awnings.

“Look here. Wait a minute.” He tugged at the man's sleeve. “I don't get what you said about my father.”

“Oh, I don't really mean your father. I mean, in your father's time, or maybe earlier than that even.”

“But that still doesn't make sense.”

“I told you I couldn't explain it.” The tall man screwed up his features painfully, as if trying to muster the right words. “I mean, what difference does it make to people like you and me? If a man stays on the surface of things all his life, then it's the surface that counts, isn't it? There isn't really anything important but the surface. That's what I'm trying to say. And—well, here's my surface.” He grinned in a forced way and drew one hand down slowly across his face, then thoughtfully examined his fingers. “See? That's all there is—because that's all there ever . . .” He shrugged his shoulders and began walking again.

Wilson kept pace with him. “I think I see what you're driving at,” he said soothingly, for he was anxious to prolong the conversation and find out more about the tall man. “But it seems to me you're taking a pretty grim view of things. Take the inner life, for example.” He stepped aside to avoid being bumped by a careless trucker's dolly. “Everybody's got an inner life,” Wilson persisted, hastening to catch up again. “And things like love and happiness. You can't simply dismiss all of that, my friend.”

The tall man did not look at him. “I don't dismiss them.”

“Well, dammit. These things don't show. They don't appear on that surface of yours. They're down underneath, inside. That's where they are.”

“Why?”

“They've got to be, that's all.”

“But if they are, then why did you do what you did?” The man still would not look at him. They stood at a crossing, waiting for the light to change.

“Well, nobody's situation is ideal, and a man has a right to try for improvement,” said Wilson, realizing that he was in the ironical position of justifying the company's point of view to someone who had obviously been dispatched on behalf of the company. “Believe me, I have no regrets. No substantial regrets,” he amended, but as he spoke the tall man darted out through the traffic with surprising agility, and climbed into a taxicab which had just discharged a fare. “Look here!” Wilson cried out after him, but in vain. The cab pulled away, turned the corner, and was gone.

Wilson stood irresolutely at the curb for a moment, aware of the trickling of rain down the back of his coat collar, the heedless elbows of the crowd, and the grey sweep of traffic; all was in motion, except himself. The sidewalk he stood on trembled as a subway passed beneath it, the traffic signals clicked and whirred—even the massed buildings seemed busy with the noisy processes of mechanical life. Once more he was impressed by their power. It was all automatic—the revolving doors of the entryways, turning constantly at an even rate, and the elevators, which rose and descended without human operators. Some of the offices, too, he reflected, would be equipped with machines that opened doors, and that typed messages—and even perhaps some that responded to inquiries, and announced the quitting hour. He wondered idly what would happen if the machinery got out of hand and began to speed up. The revolving doors, say. If they started whirling, would those who happened to be caught in them be imprisoned and spun dizzily about, or would the centrifugal force fling them out and, by some terrific vacuum, pump in others from the street . . . possibly persons who had no intention of entering that particular building at all, but who would find themselves thrown inside, and then drawn irresistibly into an automatic elevator to be hurled up twenty stories and spat out into a strange office where a mechanical receptionist would seize their hats and coats in its steel claws—?