Easy and Hard Ways Out Read online

  Lingenfelter’s life is a goddamn crisis, thinks Rupp.

  Lingenfelter looks like a marsupial, thinks Marchese.

  The dragon lady brushes some dandruff near Fish’s coffee into an ashtray she holds next to the table.

  “Well, it’s, uh, it’s appárent we can’t do any more today,” says Redberry.

  “But McGuinn is coming in two weeks,” says Lingenfelter. “I promised him personally we’d have it ready. Jesus, we’ve got a crisis here. Jesus, this is some calamity zooming in.”

  Look at that, thinks Marchese. Look, Lingenfelter has hair on the outside of his ears.

  Fish is visualizing a box on female employees’ time cards that they can check when they have their periods so EPICAC can include the effects of menstruation in its production estimates.

  Lingenfelter’s chair begins tilting backward and he waves his arms wildly to stabilize himself.

  I wouldn’t mind grabbing a little of that vampire lady’s ass, thinks Rupp. I wonder if her underwear is black, too.

  “We still can’t do anything about it today, Ed,” says Redberry. “Tomorrow, with the status reports, we’ll have something to work with.”

  The men begin to push themselves back from the table, to stand up. The wooden box crackles.

  “Perhaps, Herb,” says the box, “there is one thing we can do today.”

  Redberry, whose head has been at thirty degrees to the vertical, quickly tilts it to fifty. Contortions begin at a weak point in his face and radiate outward. The others stare at the speaker in fascination.

  “Perhaps we can remind ourselves,” continues the box, with electronic severity, “that we are all executives here, each of us ultimately and solely responsible for his area, and that a failure in that area is a failure in the man. And that corporate bodies, if they are to survive, must reject failures the way human bodies reject foreign tissues. Perhaps, Herb, today is a good time for each of us to meditate on the consequences of being foreign tissue.”

  The voice ceases. Redberry dives for the knob on the side of the box, turns it.

  “An excellent suggestion, Dr. Auerbach. Truly excellent. We’ll definitely pursue this. Thank you.”

  The others nod solemnly, begin to file out. The black-garbed lady collects the cups and saucers. Redberry sits without moving and the secretary takes great pains not to make any loud sounds that might disturb him.

  “Cancer,” he says softly, after a few minutes.

  “Pardon?” says the secretary.

  “Company has a cancer,” he says, running a rough hand through his red crew cut.

  She stops. “You mean Dr. Auerbach?”

  “No. No. Not him, not him. The company. The corporation. We’re invaded, infested. We’re going to have to operate, to cut, and even then it’ll take maximum effort from everyone to pull us through.”

  “I’ll do the best I can, Mr. Redberry,” says the secretary, running over and sharpening a pencil.

  “I know you will,” says Redberry.

  Later, the secretary advises a friend to sell Auerbach stock.

  GOING HOME

  a. Beneath the Polar Ice Cap

  Five P.M. Already dark out. Going home. Brank sat stiffly in the front seat and watched the stream of red tail lights strung out before him. Blood corpuscles oozing through a jammed and narrowed artery. It was cold, and Brank retracted his neck into his coat. He twisted the heater knob in disgust, knowing it would produce no results. The instrument panel glowed dim green. It seemed to add to the feeling of absolute, utter encapsulation he had at these times. He was steering a submarine through arctic waters. Dark when he left in the morning, dark at night when he returned. Discombobulated headlights streamed at him from opposite lanes, luminous marine life, other subs. The people who went when he came, and vice versa, they and he part of a natural law: migration of red lights upon removal of occupational necessity is always balanced by an equal and opposite diffusion of yellows. His feet switched automatically from gas to brake and back to gas. His mind played portions of tapes of the day’s events mixed in with irrelevancies. Goddamn crazy Brundage, I’m gonna report that fuck to somebody. Who?Nice of Peretz to … Goddamn Ardway, making him talk into that machine. That Ardway, he … LoParino is sick lately. There’s something—I wonder why he ever married Ellen. She’s nice, but she’s so fat, and her skin … Oh, Mavis, that Mavis, boy, could I give it to her real quick, I’d just like to reach up her dress—it could be while she’s at her desk adding up some figures—I could reach right up the front and just grab a handful. I’m gonna get Joanie tonight. I’m gonna pull down—Iwonder if she’s making home fries for supper. I hope she puts in smothered onions with them, I love … Jesus, I gotta make up something for Smo’s dream. Martian vaginas. How can anyone possibly … Automatically his eyes scanned the gauges, gas, generator, oil pressure, temperature. He was freezing. His breath was fogging the windshield. LoParino says he has no responsibility anymore. I don’t believe it. You can’t just—Iwonder if it’s true. I still feel I owe … I wonder if he’s really gonna leave Ellen flat. How can he—Icouldn’t do that to … People depend on you, the world is tied together, it’s part of being human, we’re all connected, interlocked, doesn’t he… It’s irresponsible not to be responsible. I wish I could be like that. Maybe I can. I’m that way quite a bit already. I don’t give a microshit about anything, really. His submarine navigated smoothly through the inky polar sea. Follow the red lights. Follow the red lights. Dark when you leave, dark when you return. Every single solitary day, year after year after year. God, he thought, God, what am I doing here?

  b. Bullshit and Emily Dickinson

  “I wonder,” said Coletti, “if she’s ever been fucked.”

  “Probably not,” said Mills. “An’ it’s a shame too, because she’s a beautiful broad.”

  Coletti grinned.

  “I don’t necessarily mean physically beautiful, you guinea hump, you. Ah, you’re hopeless. You’re such a crude bastard.”

  “Oh, pardon me,” said Coletti prissily, “if I accidentally offended your delicate mick sensibilities.”

  Mills just shook his head.

  Pat squinted through the windshield of her Ford and mused on her vanity. She needed glasses, so why not get them? Who was she impressing, or, more to the point, why would she care about anyone who would be impressed by a triviality such as her appearance with and without glasses? The answer came almost before the end of the question. The question was posed by a layer of her that wasn’t really her, the layer that played the role of the dispassionate lady engineer for whom there was only mature, objective reality or nothing. The answer came from a layer that scorned the very existence of the first layer: I want to look attractive, sexy, sexed-up, you pompous ass. I want people to like me, I want to flirt with my eyes, to widen them in amazement when men tell me stories, to crinkle them at their jokes, to lower them when I’m unhappy so maybe someone will notice. Put my eyes behind panes of glass, and you put me in a museum.

  Of course, she did not think these things in anything like coherent sentence form; they came to her in a rush, and they were not taken as seriously as they seemed to want to be. Because this layer was not her, either. Partly she was both and partly neither; perhaps most of her time was spent in a grinning and sardonic consciousness perched somewhere outside, a cracker-barrel sensibility watching lackadaisically as the other layers battled and commenting to itself with comic insouciance.

  In a half hour she’d be home and the evening would begin. Preparing the supper for the two of them. The two empty chairs at the table. So how was the job today, Trish? Fine, Ma. Fine. Did you meet anyone interesting today, Trish? No, Ma. Rereading the morning Times, hearing the old lady’s sucking, chewing noises, glimpses of her fitful mastication, pronounced, arrhythmic. Clearing the table, standing at the sink doing the dishes, the sight of her own hands in the water, forty-four years old, puffed, emery skin, veins. Watching television. How’s that young man who’s going to
school? He’s doing fine. He sounded like a nice person to me. He’s married, Ma. Sitting on bridge chairs next to the richly upholstered, sheet-covered couch. Watching. Handsome detectives who never died. Handsome doctors who never lost patients. Handsome lawyers who never lost cases. Handsome, intelligent, virile, successful men. Actors in housewives’ fantasies. How about some dominoes, Trish? A little later, Ma. I’m going into the kitchen. Writing poetry at the kitchen table. Terrible, childish, maudlin things immediately ripped up. Springtime, the sky, flowers, a fountain, the poetry of nature. Bullshit—ripped up. Loneliness, sensitivity, Emily Dickinson, depression, longing. Bullshit—ripped up. The callousness of the world, the suppression of women, the lack of fulfillment, the boredom. Ripped up. Milk before bedtime. A book to read. Trish, all I ask is you just not reject it out of hand. That’s all. Ma, I’m happy the way I am. I don’t want to be a nun. I don’t believe in it, any of it. Lying in bed. Breathing. Thinking about visiting her brother Jerry on Saturday. Playing with John and little Davy. Thinking about the lab. Her lab. Her boys. Lubell. Thinking his job was really behind, that she really ought to speak to him. Thinking how lost he seemed, how dependent; and his wife so homely. The boys. Thanking God, whom she didn’t believe in, for at least, if nothing else, letting her have the lab. Men. Skin tingling even as she fights it. Tingling. Her breasts, nipples. Breathing. Thinking: Allen pressed against her, his tongue, his hands on her behind, his muscular thighs. Tingling. Her abdomen. Breathing, breathing. Him rubbing against her as she stood rigid. “I thought you might want a break—” Her thighs. Her crotch. Pressed, rubbing. A moment’s experience at age nineteen extended and stretched in her mind to cover a lifetime of emptiness. Age twenty-five and the boys were all gone, taken. Loneliness, sensitivity. Sleep.

  Oh, bullshit, thought Pat as she drove. She laughed to herself as she remembered how, when she was in her twenties, she’d walked around wearing a diaphragm, just in case she was raped. Preventive maintenance, she thought. It occurred to her that she should give the car a tuneup pretty soon. She’d take a Saturday and do it, put on some old clothes. She felt good, tired, but healthy. Screw the poetry tonight. Tonight she’d see a movie.

  c. Dog Racing

  Wizer pedaled, hunched forward over the handlebars. He felt himself part of the machine, felt his pumping legs, his eyes as one with the bicycle, his body a mechanism, lubricated and efficient, without consciousness. He rode mostly through the streets, occasionally on highway access roads, occasionally, for short stretches, on the highway itself. “You could be killed,” his wife had told him years ago, soon after he’d begun riding the bike to work. He’d shrugged, a perfect expression of his feelings. So what would be his epitaph. There were thoughts now as he rode, only it seemed as if he were watching them or aware of them rather than having them. He himself was anaesthetized, a machine.

  Brank. Brank was a wise guy. That mirror on his desk. A wise guy. Pedal more slowly. Steinberg will want to can him soon. Brank is too smart for Steinberg. Brank is like, who was it, Dr., uh, Salk, Shick, no, Dr. Schneck. Schneck. Cold. Should’ve worn a heavier coat. Rita will tell me Ah should’ve worn a heavier coat. Rita picture: black hair, pinched face, tight, unsmiling lips. Rita naked: tight little tits, ribs showing, abdominal scar, tight black triangle, need a chisel to get her legs apart. Getting laid, how long ago. A year? More? She calls it. Whenever she wants. Bump in the road, steer, down-shift. Bump. She’s very, very slightly retarded. I wouldn’t even use that word, really. Mental dysfunction, I would say. Dr., who was it, uh, Pell. No, Paul. All these doctors. Paul. About his daughter Beth. Picture: nine years old, black hair, pinched, vapid face, unsmiling. Unable to read. Crier, tears for no reason. Could she know?

  He rode past a large colonial-style home and a dog jumped out at him from a driveway. It was huge and sleek, a gray-brown, German shepherd type, and it snarled as it began to chase him. He’d been pedaling idly and it was almost upon him before he could pick up speed. He glanced down and back, saw the foam on its lips as he dug furiously at the pedals. The bike responded with leaden slowness; he felt as if he were pedaling in oil, in a dream, his legs turned to putty. The dog was galloping now, maniacal; he caught a glimpse of a furry body pulling even with his bike. He thought: I’m going to die. I’m going to die. His breath came in erratic, staccato gasps. He concentrated on pumping his thighs. He felt something touch his heel. He waited for the teeth in his leg, the chilling, numbing pain.

  He was safe. The dog was still chasing, but it was falling behind. The bike continued to pick up speed as he shifted into progressively higher gears. He looked around and saw the dog fading back, still running, but fading. Son-bitch, thought Wizer. Damn thing would’ve probably ripped me ta shreds. His breathing became more normal. He relaxed. Three more blocks and the dog was gone. He pondered his escape. Ah guess, he thought, when the chips are down no one is really that ready to die after all. He began to slow again. The fast pedaling would make him early for supper. He thought he might stop off awhile at the library. No sense spending any more time at home than he had to.

  d. Return of the Three

  Potamos drove in silence and listened to the conversation of the two engineers in the back seat.

  “I heard you’re doing deep knee bends,” said Cohen.

  Dorfman turned slowly. “What do you mean, you heard? What is there, a news service that reports on my activities? How did you hear?”

  Cohen ignored him. “What’re you doing, building your legs up for skiing? Huh? Is that it?”

  Dorfman did not answer.

  “I ski a little myself in Van Cortlandt Park,” said Cohen. “Pretty nice setup they got there.”

  Dorfman sucked loudly on a wintergreen mint. “It’s a terrible setup they have there. I’d never be seen within a mile of there. I ski in the Austrian Alps on my vacation. That’s skiing, not Van Cortlandt Park.”

  Cohen smiled slightly. His usual low-brow needling tactics were beginning to have their inexorable effect. “I enjoy it myself. A little cheaper than the Alps, too. Hey, you know who also does deep knee bends? Harvey Brank. He doesn’t even ski, either. He just does bends for fun. One-legged bends, too, lots of ’em. He’s nuts, Brank. Cheap, too. He drives a worse pig than this.”

  Potamos breathed deeply. “You don’t like the car, you can leave, Bernie.”

  “Oh, don’t be so sensitive,” said Cohen.

  “He’s about as sensitive as a toilet seat,” said Dorfman. “And your friend Brank belongs under sedation. He’s always doing some pointless, megamoronic activity like knee bends, or throwing that ball up, or singing high notes, or something equally regressive. Now I hear he’s botched his Yig filter and that he’s trying to pass the blame.”

  “I hear he does a terrific number of bends,” said Cohen quietly.

  “Well, I do more!” snapped Dorfman. “I can surpass him in anything. Anything he does. All you guys with your niggling cheapness …”

  “It’s not cheapness, Sheldon,” said Cohen. “It’s just the application of sound engineering principles in everyday life.” He knew he had Dorfman now; he could play him like a piano. “For instance, my toothbrush. I never wash it anymore. I calculated that by making use of the toothpaste residues that remain after brushing, I save myself an entire tube every two years. It’s just sound management.”

  “We’re approaching the bridge,” said Potamos.

  “More of your engineering insanity,” said Dorfman. “You’re all such strangulated, tight-assed, constricted individuals. You have no appreciation of the joys of life, or anything fine or artistic or various.”

  “This strangulated, tight-assed individual is going to need a quarter,” intoned Potamos. Traffic began to slow.

  “But you’re one of us,” said Cohen.

  “I’m not the same,” said Dorfman. “You’ll see. This is just temporary for me. I’m taking courses—”

  “Quarter!” said Potamos.

  “I’m out of change,” said Cohen.


  “Of course,” said Dorfman, handing a coin forward to Potamos. “Of course you’re out of change, and of course he took the Throggs Neck instead of the Whitestone. Of course. What can I expect?”

  They rode awhile in silence, Cohen smirking in the darkness. After some minutes, he said, “It was my wife’s birthday, two days ago. You know what I bought her?”

  Dorfman did not answer.

  “Two snow tires,” said Cohen. “I mean I figured—”

  “I don’t want to hear it,” said Dorfman.

  e. Listen, God, I Know You ’re Busy, But I’m Busy Too

  In his office, Rupp sat quietly behind his desk and stared out his window at the blackness outside, at the occasional cars that passed through the parking-lot gate. He wondered where his daughter Francine was on this night. Fifteen years old, she left home for days. Uncontrollable. How often had he searched for her in filthy Greenwich Village apartments, in bowling alleys, in cars parked in lovers’ lanes? What the hell was there to do? And his crazy wife, who made his sex life unbearable, denying him what he wanted most. To see, to inspect feverishly, to pore over her female parts with clinical microscopic fervor. He prayed briefly to God to let his latest subminiaturized camera-mirror system work. Just one good close-up shot of her urinating, God. That’s all I ask. Quickly, however, he added a few lower-priority things about his daughter, and his boat that was being repaired in the machine shop, and the deadline on the F24BZ. He’d begun to pray regularly thirty years earlier, after a friend who got B’s in physics had told him of a mathematical proof that God existed. Rupp, impressed, had quickly developed a rapid-fire, sniveling prayer style, his deity a short-tempered, celestial kingpin with little time, who became angry at requests for too many personal treats. Impulsively now, Rupp threw in a last fervent line about world peace.

  Finished, he turned back to his desk, to the pile of papers that confronted him. Help from divine sources was unreliable. He preferred to depend on himself, his own ingenuity, to find out things, his own energy and dedication to stay on top and in the know. From the beginning, his mother had explained that life was competition, other people trying to get you before you could turn the tables. In elementary school he’d passed questioning notes to the other students just to acquire samples of their handwriting. Now he tapped phones, had his wife trailed by a private detective, used disguises to mingle with the workers. He especially enjoyed when they had a gripe session about management and, disguised as a machinist or security guard or assembler, he could say, “And you know who’s the worst? That Rupp.” And then mentally note who would snigger, and later write down the names on a piece of paper. A steady climb up the executive ladder: hard work and know thine enemy; life was competition.