Seconds (15 page)

Someone bumped him hard from behind. He turned, but the transgressor had passed on. He tipped his hat humbly, nevertheless, and said, to no one in particular: “Sorry.”

H
e almost expected to find Emily at the station to meet his train. There were some wives parked in idling cars waiting for their husbands (not many, it was true, for this was an early train), but as Wilson strolled among the homebound commuters, he recalled that Emily would not have been there in any case, for in recent years he had used the grey sedan to get to the station.

He glanced involuntarily toward the parking lot. The car—it was still there, its identity proclaimed by the badge of rust on the right rear fender and the crumpled edge of the bumper where he had struck a telephone pole once, backing up. Emily had not come to meet him . . . but the sedan was waiting right where he had left it on that summer day, as if he had gone nowhere, as if nothing had happened . . . and perhaps if he went over to claim it, climbed in behind the wheel as usual, and drove on home—

“Pardon me.”

He leaped back, startled by the voice. A thin, elderly man reached past him for the door handle.

“I-I'm sorry. I—”

“Not at all.”

The man slipped inside, glanced at his watch, and jammed a key into the ignition.

Wilson stepped aside, confused, anxious to explain. “I didn't mean to be—to be—”

“Be glad to give you a lift, except—” The man's voice was overridden by the racket of the engine, and the clash of the gears as he shifted into reverse and backed out to swing around and head for the parking lot exit.

Wilson drew his hand from his pocket, where it had been fumbling for his old car keys; he pulled out, instead, his Denver hotel room-key, and at the same time he caught a blurred glimpse of Antiochus Wilson grinning in reflection from the window of the grey sedan as it passed by.

He set his shoulders and started back toward the station. She had sold it. One car was all she needed, to be sure. Even so, he was annoyed that he had not been given the opportunity to dispose of the car himself, for it had been, after all, not an item of family property but rather a personal belonging used only by him, like his cuff links.

He dropped the room-key into the mailbox and telephoned for a taxi.

Waiting for it, he became possessed by the idea that Emily would immediately recognize him—not so much by his voice or his eyes or gestures, the things which the company had been unable to alter, but by the indefinable and possibly even extra-sensory knowledge of his presence, which a wife was bound to have after a quarter-century of marriage. Intuition: the surgeons could not have protected him against that. With Sally there had been no real test, for daughters are accustomed to judge their fathers in terms of superficial external things, but a wife—! How embarrassed Emily will be, he thought. How flustered and confused. To see a stranger suddenly as her husband, the former source of all the binding intimacies of love, of money, of tolerance and coldness, breakfasts and garden planning . . . it would drive her mad. Well, not mad, exactly. Emily was not the kind of person to be driven mad, he reflected. She would consult not a psychiatrist but a lawyer, if indeed she decided that she required any assistance to deal with what she would instantly define as a Social Situation, the resolution of which must be deferred at least until her party was over. And then, he wondered, when they were alone together again, what would she do? Fall on her knees before him to beg him to come back, whatever his changed name and face might be . . . or wait, with suppressed consternation, for him to make the first move? Somehow, he could not quite imagine Emily on her knees, and as for his making the first move, or a move of any kind—

His taxi had arrived. The driver was honking. Wilson hurried to it.

Would she scream, he wondered? Faint . . . slam the door on him . . . or fix him with a look of warning while meaningfully introducing her fiancé—or new husband?

Too late to turn back. He croaked out his address, then sank back sweating against the seat, his eyes closed to shut out the sight of streets and houses which seemed, at this moment, only too grossly familiar.

The taxi stopped; he spilled a handful of change on the floor in back. “Never mind.” He thrust a bill at the driver and got out, stumbled on the curb, and only with great difficulty kept from flopping to his knees. “I'm all right,” he said, and plunged ahead toward the front door of his house, over the flagstones whose precise positioning he himself had supervised a dozen years before.

He rang.

“Mr. Wilson?”

“Ah, yes—”

The maid who answered was a woman he had never seen before. For a moment he was possessed by the idea that she was Emily, transformed, but then he saw his wife behind her in the foyer. He shuffled forward.

“Mr. Wilson—please come in. I'm so glad you were able to come, after all.”

“Thank you.”

He waited for the accusation in her eyes, waited for her to gasp and puff; stood there dumbly fingering his hat until the maid finally took it from him, as he stared at Emily with pleading to get it over with, his lips ready with a phrase:
Yes—it's me.

But she merely smiled and gestured toward his coat. “If you'll—”

“Oh, my coat.” He struggled out of it. From the living room came the sound of voices, male and female, slightly subdued in expectation of another guest. He let the maid take the coat, conscious that Emily was regarding him oddly but without surprise, as if he were no more than an eccentric stranger.

He could not bear waiting for recognition. It was intolerable for her to treat him so aloofly. “You have a lovely place, Mrs.—um. I almost feel as though I've been here before. Why,” he added, gazing around the foyer, where the sturdy grey walls he remembered had been made remote and brilliant with white, “you've redecorated.”

Still no reaction. Only the fixed little hostess smile on the plump unaging face.

“Thank you, Mr. Wilson. Shall we—?”

“Of course.” He followed her humbly, out of place. Had she missed the cues—or ignored them?

As they entered the living room, he looked about swiftly, searching for familiar objects, but everything was altered there, too, or gone: some chairs missing, others disguised in new upholstery; the old bookcase vanished, and hanging in its place a gigantic Chinese scroll painting. The solid brown draperies, too, had given way to some light fleecy stuff that billowed saucily in the window-drafts, and where his stout curved reading chair had been there now perched two little flimsy wooden affairs that would split if a man sat down hard on them.

He was only hazily aware of meeting the other guests. There were two men and two women, none of whom he knew, and he failed to get their names.

“Antiochus Wilson—the painter? Why, I've seen your work. Didn't you do that magnificent seascape with the people upside down?”

It was an eager woman in purple, wearing a pince-nez.

“No, I don't believe—well, yes, actually, I suppose you mean—”

“You called it ‘Marine Lights'—that was the title. Oh, and I remember you did the sun green, the way it would look to a fish.” The woman pressed insistently at him. “You
did
mean to show how it would look to a fish, didn't you?”

“Quite right, yes. A fish.”

The mantel had held his father's Victorian pipe-rack, an octagonal castle of pipes; it, too, was gone. He glanced toward the French doors and saw dimly through the shivering veil of curtains a strange garden, spotted with new shrubs and little brick paths. The roses had been moved, it seemed.

“Excuse me, but the symbolism of the fish,” the woman went on, edging around to command his line of sight, “it was so—so right, somehow.”

“Thank you.”

“So—deliciously ironic. I mean,
lurking
beneath the surface”—she giggled—“in contrast to the mannered—I mean
deliberately
mannered, of course—the mannered innocence of the swimmers.”

He smiled and backed stealthily in the direction of the study, his old retreat.

“I teach art,” the woman purred, keeping pace.

“I'm sure you do.”

He caught a glance of satisfaction from Emily across the room. With her customary adroitness, she had neutralized him with this creature; eccentric or not, husband or not, he had been disarmed and would cause no trouble.

“And I paint a bit myself.”

“I see.” He sipped his drink and with his free hand casually turned the knob of the study door.

“I'm on exhibition now—”

“Really.”

“—in a show. A one-man show.” The purple woman smiled and pressed her flat bosom modestly.

“Wonderful.”

He glanced inside the study. It wasn't there. Desk, chair, hearth, all gone. Even the walls. She had had them knocked out to enlarge the dining room. He turned accusingly toward his wife. She had no right to do that; to change things around, perhaps, but not to destroy, not to obliterate.

Emily saw him coming and stepped forward calmly, in full command. He stared at her, then lowered his eyes. If she knew, then she did not care; but probably, he thought, she did not know—nor would have known a year ago if, as his former self, he had come home in someone else's suit with his face disguised, say, only by a paste-on mustache.

All he said was, lamely: “Your dining room is . . . very nice.”

“Thank you, Mr. Wilson.” She was exactly, precisely the same. Everything else was changed, done over, replaced, and different—even her friends had been disposed of, in favor of these strangers—but she was without a mark.

She moved a step closer. “You said you wanted a memento, I think.”

“Ah, well—”

Her attitude politely expressed: You have come. Now you may go.

He remembered how she had phrased the invitation over the telephone: “ . . .
but if you'd care to drop in.
” The “but” had clearly meant: Don't come. He had ignored it, very well. But now it was time for him to leave, before the politeness chilled.

“I have something. Here.” She had maneuvered him into the foyer. She stooped and from behind the closet door picked up a package about the size of a liquor bottle, neatly wrapped. “It isn't a painting, I'm afraid, but—”

“Thank you.”

“—it's all I have.”

“Of course.” Of course, of course, he thought, staring at the package. It was a miracle that even this last small remnant of himself had survived, and perhaps if he had been delayed a day or two, it, too, would have been cast away.

There were voices, his and hers, reciting the formula of goodbye. He was at the door, clutching his coat and hat and package.

“Your late husband,” he began, but it was pointless. She would hear nothing; nor, ultimately, did he really wish to speak. Everything that might have been said had either not been said or said and forgotten long ago, and there remained only her good breeding and his despair.

“Goodbye.”

“Goodbye, Mr. Wilson.”

He turned; behind him, the door clicked. He moved heavily over the flagstones, his hands absently feeling the contours of the package. It was urn-shaped. Halfway to the street, he stopped and tore at the wrapping. Having disposed of everything else, had she now given him the only thing that would be left—the literal remains of the departed banker (or rather those of the cadaver that had taken his place)—the ashes?

But it was only a cup, a tennis trophy awarded to him in his final year at prep school; he had won no others. One word stood out: “Champion.”

He remembered that he had neglected to telephone for a taxicab, but there was a car idling at the curb, a strange man sitting behind the wheel, and another, whom he recognized, standing outside holding the door open for him.

“Hello, Bushbane,” Wilson said humbly, getting in.

Chapter 6

H
E HAD
no heart to speak. He sat quietly beside Bushbane, holding the tennis cup in his hands, while the limousine moved powerfully along the streets of the town, drawing in through its windows the odor of spring. The yards of the houses were fat with flowering bushes and heavy-headed blooms; the air had the laboratory sweetness of gasoline. It made him drowsy.

“I'm sorry, Wilson,” Bushbane said, finally.

“It doesn't matter.”

“No, I suppose not.”

It was the hour of return for the commuters from the city. Men in dark suits with briefcases, their ties loosened, their hats tipped back, were climbing out of cars. Some of the earlier arrivals had already changed into sports clothes and were wandering about in the gardens with their wives, snipping at the flowers, squirting poisons here and there with little spray guns. Wilson recalled that late in the evenings the fogging machines would make their rounds, spraying, too.

“They're killing the bugs,” he explained.

“Eh?”

“The bugs. They're spraying all the time, to keep the bugs off. They've been doing that for years and years. I did it, too, Emily and I. We sprayed the garden.”

Bushbane gave him a stealthy glance.

“My point is,” Wilson continued, absently toying with his tennis trophy, “that the bugs are mostly gone now, but they keep on spraying out of habit. No bugs, Bushbane. The program is a tremendous success. No birds, either,” he added, anxious to present a complete picture of his observations, “because the birds lived off the bugs, you see, and now the birds have had to go elsewhere for a living.”

“Yes. Well, I never did much gardening myself.”

“If you spray long enough—if everybody sprays long enough—I mean, if it's a community project to do a thoroughgoing job of spraying . . . well, you're bound to get rid of the bugs, Bushbane. And if that means losing the birds—well, you can't get something for nothing. I think that's what I'm trying to get across.”

“Quite right,” muttered Bushbane.

“And the flowers,” Wilson went on. “They're flowers that couldn't possibly have been raised when I was a boy. Gigantic. Perfect. Look at those roses in that yard, Bushbane. Roses like that simply didn't exist years ago, except perhaps in a hothouse, under controlled conditions. And now, everybody can have them . . . all you do is feed and spray, feed and spray. Only, as I say, the funny part is that most of the bugs were wiped out years ago, but still people go on spraying. I wonder, suppose they left off spraying for a while, would the old roses come back, do you think?”

Bushbane cleared his throat. “Well—”

“The species would be different, I guess. They'd have to be,” said Wilson, thoughtfully.

“Wilson, I can well understand how you've been subjected to a strain—”

“And the bugs would be different, too. Not that it would matter much, because it occurs to me that the bugs no longer have any useful function, in the sense of cross-fertilization, at least in some of the newer varieties of flowers . . .” He yawned enormously, and noticed that the limousine now had turned onto the superhighway, where it was cruising along at tremendous speed toward the setting sun.

“We're going to the airport, I suppose,” he asked, sleepily.

“Actually,” said Bushbane, “there's a stop we need to make in town.”

Wilson nodded and closed his eyes. “Oh, it doesn't matter about my clothes at the hotel. Don't stop on my account, Bushbane.” There was no response. “I'm afraid,” he added, yawning again, “that I've put you to an enormous amount of trouble.”

“Not at all. You just relax. Yes, take a little nap, Wilson. It'll make you feel like a new man . . .” Wilson obediently permitted himself to fall into a deep slumber. Bushbane's comforting phrase seemed to stretch out luxuriously before him, echoing a friendly reassurance. “ . . .
a new man
. . .”

He felt the trophy slip from his fingers; he let it fall. The steady hum of the limousine was soothing, for it reminded him that he was being borne along by a masterful and beneficent force to whatever destination had been selected for him by those who, even more than himself, had his best interests at heart; and Bushbane, too—who had been rushed out to be by his side at the crucial moment—Bushbane was still further evidence of the company's deep, almost ardent concern for his welfare. He felt an answering surge of emotion; he wanted to raise his head, to open his eyes, to express to Bushbane not only his apologies for his heedless behavior, but his thankfulness for his good fortune in having friends, in being loved, in having been forgiven, so to speak, the virtually unforgivable sin he had committed. That funny little old man, the company president—hadn't he made it clear at the very beginning that a client could never go back? And yet
he
had gone back, or rather, had tried to go back, and despite this transgression he was being treated with the utmost consideration. He sought to speak, but his drowsiness was too strong; he managed merely to shed a single tear, which lay glistening on his cheek as he slept.

W
hen the limousine stopped at last and its engine was shut off, Wilson was not much surprised on awaking to discover that the car was in an alley, dim and anonymous in the growing dusk of evening.

“Um—” Bushbane began.

“It's all right, really. Of course.” Wilson shook himself once and rubbed his face, then climbed readily out of the car before Bushbane was required to urge him. The limousine driver stood respectfully nearby; Wilson smiled at him reassuringly. “Just tell me where I should go,” he declared cheerfully, and in fact he did feel remarkably at ease and without the slightest apprehension.

A door in the wall of masonry opened. A uniformed attendant stepped out and said: “This way, Mr. Wilson, if you please.”

Bushbane remained in the car; the driver shut the rear door and got in behind the wheel again.

“You're not coming, Bushbane?” Wilson asked, as the engine shook itself to life. “No? Well, of course, naturally I understand . . .” He took a step toward the man who held the building door open for him, to demonstrate his obedience, and turned to wave to Bushbane as the limousine edged forward. “I quite understand, Bushbane. Please convey my kindest regards to Hamrick and the others . . .”

The car's exhaust coughed at him. Bushbane, drawn slowly by, peered out with what seemed to be an embarrassed expression, and tentatively moved his hand in a wave of farewell. “My kindest regards,” Wilson repeated, and with as much confidence as if he himself had planned the episode down to the last detail, he turned away from the retreating car and strode toward the open door, realizing that it was not only inevitable but also highly logical and proper that he had been deposited at this particular place, even though he was not certain what would follow.

“Just tell me what to do,” he advised the attendant, as they proceeded along a passageway. “Believe me,” he added, almost humorously, “I've had my fill of causing you people difficulties. I'll be careful to avoid that kind of thing in the future, I assure you!”

The attendant smiled politely but said nothing. At the end of the passageway he ushered Wilson into a small elevator, closed the door, and pressed an unnumbered button.

“I came in a different way last year,” Wilson remarked, as the elevator rose. “But I suppose there's more than one entrance. This is the company headquarters, isn't it?” The attendant made no reply. “Excuse me for asking obvious questions,” Wilson went on, hastily. “I realize it's not part of your job to answer things like that. I mean, you're not exactly one of these guided-tour people they have in museums and public buildings—!” He laughed, by way of further apology, but in the close confinement of the elevator cage the laugh had no resonance and sounded choked. The attendant smiled down gravely at his shoes.

“But then I imagine you're accustomed to people like me—taking them up in this elevator, I mean—and hearing them babble on in a silly kind of way,” Wilson remarked, anxious to cover the odd sound of that laugh of his, which, he thought, must have been unpleasant for the attendant to hear. “That is, people who talk more than they should . . . indiscreet people. And the strange thing is, as a matter of fact,” he continued, somehow unable to keep himself from rambling on, “that all my life—well, my former life, if you know what I mean—all my life, as I say, I've been trained to be discreet. Meaning, among other things, not to talk too much, and to be very careful about what is said even then . . .”

He paused for breath. Either the elevator was an extremely old and slow-moving one, he thought, or else the building was enormously high, for it seemed that they had been rising for several minutes. “ . . . and then when I was given my present status, this habit of discretion failed me completely, for some reason,” he added, “and—well, frankly, I did things that normally a prudent man would never have done—”

The elevator stopped. The attendant opened the door and politely motioned Wilson forward into a dimly lighted corridor. At the far end, a door stood open, as if waiting for him.

“ . . . yes, I was quite surprised at times by the way I acted,” Wilson continued. “But naturally I realize that all of that business is behind me now, and in all honesty, I can say that I'm not in the least bit sorry—”

“If you'll go down that way, Mr. Wilson,” the attendant interrupted mildly, indicating the door at the end of the corridor.

“Eh? Oh yes, of course. Absolutely.” Wilson set off at once along the polished floor, anxious neither to cause by his tardiness even the tiniest disruption in the well-ordered affairs of the company, nor to delay the commencement of whatever corrective measures had been planned to set him straight once again, for he was well aware that his second appearance at the company headquarters could have no other object.

At the doorway he paused. There was a woman in white seated behind a desk in the room, examining some papers in a file.

“I'm Wilson,” he said; at the same time she glanced up at him, and he saw that she was the woman who had visited him on the morning of his operation, and with whom he had been so unexpectedly on intimate terms. He was disconcerted by the recollection, not on grounds of morality, but rather because she reminded him afresh how deeply he had violated the trust which the company had placed in him, for now in retrospect it seemed to him that his physical union with her had symbolized the company's desire to do all that it could to prepare him for the great opportunity it was offering.

But she did not seem to recognize him. “Oh, yes, Mr. Wilson,” she said, with a friendly but impersonal smile. “Won't you please sit here, sir?”

Wilson sat dutifully, and when she indicated that he was to take a pill that rested on a plate on the desk, he lost no time in gulping it down.

“You, um, probably don't remember me,” he began, feeling that he should make it clear that he, at least, recalled their former close association, for it seemed unfair for him simply to sit there in sole possession of such a delicate memory. Then he caught himself abruptly. “Of course. That was when—” He laughed, in embarrassment. “I mean, I was different then.”

She smiled, professionally. “Yes, I suppose so,” she said. “And then, there are so many gentlemen, you know, and twice as many faces, actually, meaning Before and After, you know, so you hardly get to know someone and then they've gone off, Mr. Wilson.”

“Yes, I'm sure that's right.”

In the background he could hear a man's voice, muffled by an intervening door, speaking indistinguishable words in a sharp tone.

“That pill is a quick worker, Mr. Wilson,” the woman remarked. “Perhaps you'd better lie down now and get good and comfy. There's a cot right over there, if you don't mind.”

“Oh, yes.” The cot was in the corner; he had not noticed it when he entered. He saw that it was on wheels. “Should I take my shoes off, do you think?”

“It doesn't matter.”

He sat on the cot, indecisively wondering whether he should remove his shoes, and then he thought he would not bother. “Well.” He cleared his throat and stretched himself out on the cot. “I don't suppose you'd be able to tell me—”

“Just don't you worry about anything, Mr. Wilson.” She came over to him and patted his forehead. “Everything's going to work out for the best, sir. You just relax there and be comfortable.”

“Thank you.” He did feel comfortable. His limbs were beginning to float a little, and he was hardly conscious of lying on anything at all. The woman's hand on his forehead was cool and light, and everything was growing remote, with the exception of the man's voice, which appeared to be much closer now, as if the man had entered the room.

He heard the woman speak, but could not make out her words. With a great effort, he opened his eyes in order to make some response, and saw not her face above him but that of the man. It was familiar, too; it was scarred, unforgettably scarred.

It was the resident physician gazing down at him, and smiling, but not too pleasantly. “Well, so it's Wilson,” he said. “I thought you might be back. That's what I thought at the time, and I'm not often wrong . . .” He chuckled, as if Wilson's return were some private joke, and then bending closer, so that Wilson could see each rude discolored segment of his disfigurement, he added: “Yes, sir, Wilson. I did indeed by God think you'd be back—and here you are!” He tilted back his head as if to laugh, but Wilson heard nor saw no more.

H
is first waking thought some hours later was a startling one, and yet it seemed logical: namely, that he had been restored, surgically, to what he once was. He sat up on the cot and pressed his hands to his face. No bandages. But of course, he reflected, there had been no time for anything so involved as a new series of operations, for clearly he had been put to sleep just for the night.