Easy and Hard Ways Out Page 11

  He began again to concentrate until suddenly he became aware that he was hungry, terribly hungry, and that he missed being home in his kitchen, missed talking to his wife, his daughter, really missed them now. He hardly spoke to them anymore, they’d grown apart so fast … Jesus, Jesus, where did the time go? He turned again to the window.

  f. The Man with Only Four Sick Days

  He was on the second leg of his trip, the Long Island Railroad. First had come the ride to the station, next would be the subway, and finally the walk home. He felt tired, slightly feverish even, but refused to admit it to himself. “I had only four sick days the whole year,” Rocco liked to tell the boys. “Four. The Rock is healthy as they come.” The train bumped and chunked jarringly, metal parts worn to sloppy fits, pitted surfaces, rust—Rocco intuited these things instantly, made repairs. Grinding operations swam through his head, refinishing, lapping, polishing. He thought of the walnut desk he’d made for his daughter-in-law, how beautiful and perfect it was. The display cabinet he’d made for his son’s rifle collection. The patio that had taken six weeks. “Thanks,” they’d said. One word. One word for six weeks. A thought about the Accounting men’s room flashed through his mind. Yes, he’d opened the circuit breakers. This time he was sure. Why don’t you retire already, Dad, his son had asked him. Retire for what, he thought now. Retire so I can build you more cabinets. He remembered how he’d explained the construction to Eddie and little Gino, how rapt their attention had been when he told them about the miters and the glue and the special stains. The kids, they appreciate, he thought. Why the hell should a man with only four sick days retire?

  g. Glances

  Some, like Mills, weren’t even going home, were headed to schools instead, grimly forgoing an evening’s rest to sit in classroom rows of wooden seats, straining to hear, to fight off the daze, taking groggy notes. For a few, there was the peculiar loneliness of those who remain after hours in lighted office buildings on cold autumn nights. But mostly, for the remainder, mostly there was numbness, a lazy swirl of office replays, a robotic travel routine, a thought of someone at home, and perhaps, on very rare occasions, a fleeting moment of disorientation, a lifting up of the head and a quick, puzzled glance around.

  AUERBACH LABORATORIES

  Inter-Office Memorandum 11/26/66

  From: S. Rupp

  To: S. Brine

  cc: ——

  Subject: Anonymous letter

  I have recently received three unsigned letters accusing one of the engineers in the Microwave section, Harvey Brank, of being responsible for the prank paging. Kindly check into this, but focus the investigation as well on determining who wrote the anonymous notes, since these accusations are often spiteful retaliations resulting from personal feuds or jealousies. The letters are available in my office for your examination.

  S. Rupp

  SR:sr

  X3+5Y2=ALMOST

  When the others had gone, he began to work in his notebook, writing numbered lines of equations alternating with passionate I love you, Chris’s written very small but very intensely. The process reminded him of occasional dreams he had in which women’s sex organs were mixed with mathematical formulae, the idea in the dream seeming to be that if he could somehow solve the technical problems he would be permitted access to the organs. He slammed the notebook shut as Christine entered the office.

  “I’m ready to leave now, Dr. Brundage, if you are,” she said.

  “Yes. Fine,” said Brundage, walking over to the clothing rack to get his overcoat. He helped her on with her coat, a whorish-looking, belted vinyl one, touching her shoulder awkwardly and dropping his own coat as he did so.

  “Thank you,” she said, and Brundage grunted as he bent down.

  They walked rapidly through the halls, Brundage concentrating desperately to avoid getting lost before they reached an exit. At the door finally, Chief of Security Brine asked to inspect Brundage’s briefcase.

  “Sorry ta bother ya, Doc, but we’ve had a little problem lately—some sonofabitch been sneaking out pieces of soap from the men’s rooms.”

  Brundage opened the briefcase. “That’s quite serious,” he said. “Perhaps the Russians are trying to copy our Lifebuoy.”

  Christine smiled.

  “All right,” said Brine, “so it’s amusing. Today soap, tomorrow the H-bomb.”

  He handed back the briefcase, and Brundage and Christine walked out the exit. In the car, instead of seating herself near the door, she sat close to him, brushing his overcoat and making his legs tingle. She gave him directions and he started out. She lit a cigarette.

  “There are seat belts, if you want to use one,” said Brundage for no reason.

  “No,” she said.

  It was dark out, nighttime, and he drove awhile in silence.

  “He’s a funny guy,” she said suddenly.

  “Who?”

  “Mr. Brine.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Brine. Yeah, he’s peculiar. He’s very serious. He carries a gun. He’s very serious. He’s a maniac.”

  “You think so?”

  “Oh, sure. Most of them are here. They’re all maniacs. Have you ever seen them drive in the parking lot? Like ants hit with boiling water. Crazy. Random.”

  “I guess I haven’t been here long enough.”

  “Oh. Well, yes, maybe. How long have you been here now, by the way?”

  “Eight months.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s certainly not much. Do you like it here?”

  “Yes. I like working in your department.”

  “I’m flattered.”

  “I find it exciting.”

  “Well, heh, I’m really flattered.” He noticed her brushing away some crumbs from his lunchtime sandwich. “Would you like the radio on?” he asked.

  “Okay,” she said.

  He put on some soft music. “It’s somewhat unusual for a woman to make a career in your field,” he said. “Not that it’s not an admirable accomplishment,” he added quickly.

  She smiled.

  “What, uh, what line is your, uh, husband in, if I may ask?”

  She seemed, for the first time, a bit flustered. “Oh, my husband? Oh. Oh, well, he, uh … Well, he’s in, uh, driving. Tony drives a truck. He’s a driver.”

  “Oh. Uh-huh. Oh.”

  She lit another cigarette. “Are you married, Dr. Brundage?”

  “Please, why don’t you call me Kenneth.”

  “Oh, fine, fine. Well then, are you married, Kenneth?”

  “Yes. Yes, I am. Uh-huh.”

  She directed him to a side street, and he turned and pulled up in front of a six-story apartment building. It had begun to drizzle.

  “This is it,” she said, making no move to leave. He became conscious of her perfume, flower-scented, but thicker, and probably mixed with her natural perspiration.

  “I have a son,” he blurted as she seemed to squeeze even closer. “He visits once a month, he and his wife. He tells me I should move. He tells me I live wrong, I need an air conditioner, I should be a dentist. He criticizes the pictures on the walls even, can you imagine?”

  The radio was playing Sinatra and her huge, liquid, limpid eyes suddenly became rainbow-colored puddles, and then very quickly her slightly too-thick lips were pressing wetly against his and chilled vinyl was thrilling his skin and inch-long fingernails were engraving his back.

  She withdrew. “Oh, Dr. Brundage, forgive me. Oh, I don’t know what—Oh, please, I’m so terribly ashamed. I—”

  “Oh, no,” he said. “Oh, no, please,” and surprising even himself he reached for her and pulled her toward him. He felt her tongue frantically writhing in his mouth and he drew it gently inward as he ran his hands over her coat and pawed clumsily at the encased treasures.

  “I’ve always been helpless for intelligent men,” she gasped as they parted for an instant. “I don’t know what it is. It’s just something I can’t resist.”

  “And I’ve always thought you made the bes
t thin films I’ve ever seen,” he said crazily. “I’m desperately sincere about that; Christine.”

  They hugged again, passionately, and then she said, “Come, let’s go up.”

  In the elevator: “I don’t want you to misunderstand. I love my husband, Dr. Brundage. Tony’s a wonderful man—kind, a good provider, the best. It’s just that ever since I was a child my father always stressed education, intellect, and somehow over the years I felt I was missing some vital—”

  “You needn’t explain, Christine, really. I mean, I love my wife, too. I won’t say there aren’t problems, and her shape isn’t exactly svelte, but still, you just don’t throw out all those years. Look, let’s be honest. All I want here is to commit a little clean, straightforward adultery. Nothing tricky or perverted. Am I right to think that’s what we’re here for?”

  “Yes.”

  As they entered the apartment, Brundage felt marvelously aboveboard, almost civic-minded. He got a fleeting impression of three small rooms. Hall foyer with fish tank. Wooden kitchen table. Pole lamp in the living room. He removed his coat and realized that, idiotically, he’d brought his briefcase up with him. She led him into the bedroom and he laid it down near a dresser, then threw his coat on the floor.

  “He won’t be home for two hours,” she said. She had her coat off and one knee up on the bed.

  “You know,” said Brundage, “there are times when I think about the whole sex experience in a rational way and find it quite difficult to become aroused. I mean, I say to myself, what is an erection anyway but blood engorging normally flaccid tissue. And why should the mere sight of, say, a breast or vagina cause such a reaction? I mean, really, when you consider it, what is the female external organ but a rather unattractive, hair-covered, often foul-smelling opening into the body? I mean, why should anyone be expected to find that arousing?”

  “Oh, God,” she said, rushing at him. “I can’t stand it when you say those professorial things. Oh, do it to me, Kenneth. Quickly.”

  Brundage belched.

  He flopped down on top of her on the bed and ran his trembling, briefcase-callused fingers up her skirt. Surprisingly, she was wearing a girdle of some sort, and as he began forcing his way under the powerful garment, he felt something give in his wrist. He was about to try an alternate approach when she sat up abruptly and listened intently.

  “Oh. Oh, God. Oh, he’s coming! Oh, Kenneth, quick! It’s Tony! Quick!”

  Brundage grabbed his coat and briefcase and ran into the foyer. Christine followed as a key turned in the lock and the door opened, letting in a thickly built, heavy-bellied man in a leather jacket.

  “Oh, hi,” said Christine, going over and giving him a light kiss on the cheek. “Tony, this is Dr. Brundage, my supervisor. I worked late tonight, and he drove me home.”

  Tony stared at Brundage hostilely. “How come he came upstairs?”

  “Oh,” said Christine, “he, uh … he, oh, I told him I’d give him some guppies.”

  She ran into the kitchen and came back with a jar that she dipped into the foyer tank and in which she imprisoned some small fish.

  “I’ve always loved them,” said Brundage uneasily, taking the jar and heading for the door.

  “I’ll just see Dr. Brundage to the elevator,” said Christine, rushing to his side.

  Tony eyed him suspiciously as Brundage slid by and out. Brundage could feel the man’s gaze eating at the back of his skull, his neck. Halfway down the corridor, Christine stopped, and without facing him or moving her lips, whispered, “In two weeks he’ll be on a cross-country trip.”

  Brundage continued walking carefully toward the elevator.

  “Hey!” yelled Tony.

  Brundage froze solid. He pictured himself being beaten effortlessly to death, the man having been made incredibly tough and unreasonable by the years of low-quality, diner food.

  “Hey, you know what the Knicks did today?”

  “Sorry,” said Brundage, gratefully relaxing once again and oozing into the elevator, “I don’t follow sports.”

  He drove slowly, euphorically. Two weeks! Two weeks, and a sure thing! He passed a stop sign without stopping, rode down a one-way street the wrong way, missed turns and had to go back. He got lost, and didn’t care. What an extraordinary thing was happening to him! What a marvelous, almost religious experience! His wrist hurt, but he didn’t mind. After all, he’d sprained it in her girdle. He turned the words over in his mind. Her girdle. Her girdle. In her girdle.

  He pulled up in front of his house finally, shut off the ignition, bounded inside, and gave his wife a long, deep kiss. Before retiring that evening he poured himself a glass of milk and listened with exceptional sympathy and understanding to her complaints. Overnight the temperature dipped into the teens, and on the front seat the guppies froze and died where he’d left them.

  THE BRUNT

  a. Motormouth

  Henry Ardway dwelt behind a huge wooden desk bordered on two sides by horizontal steel files, so that he sat in the middle of a U-shaped enclave, vulnerable only to someone boring a hole through the wall at the rear, a possibility to which he’d been giving increasing attention over the years. He was a thin, taut-faced man, wiry-looking, with a head covered by a surging, frizzed crew cut, as if someone had sewn a million stitches into him with thread, then pulled the whole thing very tight and snipped off the ends. He was reading a technical journal now, skimming it really (it had been years since he actually read anything), and underlining certain crucial phrases with a red (vitally crucial) or orange pencil. The color of the underlinings, though important, didn’t really matter, since they were later wiped out by a Xerox machine interested only in grays and blacks, so that the people who received the copies they immediately threw away never even noticed the difference.

  Ardway’s eyes moved in rapid, discreet hops, seeing everything, absorbing nothing. He’d long ago understood that he would never master the scientific aspects of engineering, and so he’d devoted himself to applying his birdlike, distracted energy toward other ends. Toward motivating people and writing memoranda. Toward saying everything possible about a subject in the hopes that a more powerful mind, though disdaining him, might nevertheless seize on a random phrase and solve the problem. Toward singling out minor trouble areas that these same powerful minds might think childishly trivial and ignore, but which were really important, such as determining where on the radar module to put the company emblem, or whether to capitalize all the words in the heading of a report. Toward making dozens of oaktag charts that hung on the walls of his office, charts that showed wavy black lines for goals and wavy red lines for achievements, with all the reds not only higher than all the blacks but increasing their distance, pulling away into a limitless production void. This, then, was what Ardway was good at; this, and talking very fast, faster than anyone else, more wpm than any stenographer alive. “Motormouth,” as the boys said. “The fastest mouth in the East.” “Smoke-tongue.” Sometimes, when talking to someone who spoke slowly, like Peretz or Steinberg, Ardway would fill in possible endings to their sentences after each word, often giving the speaker, at any point, as many as three choices.

  Ardway was an intense, busy, forty-six-year-old man with a wife and children he told himself he loved dearly, especially for the few hours on Sunday when he got to see them. He’d married immediately on graduating from college and spent the next twenty-six years working overtime. From the first, wherever he went, he’d made the company interest his interest, its goals his, its problems his challenge, its profits his satisfaction. Always immersing himself in the activity, the nonstop, pounding, swept-up, headlong rush forward, the next job, the coming month’s quota, the week’s progress reports, achieving, achieving, motion for its own sake, make enough heat and pretty soon you’ll get light. Let the academic geniuses sit in their little cubicles …

  b. The Magi

  They entered the office like sheep, three shlock wise men, one of whom was a woman. Instead of gi
fts they bore excuses.

  “The Air Force is coming in two weeks,” said Ardway when the three behinds had expanded to fill the leatherette couch. “Are we all ready to show them something?”

  He scanned the faces, but their eyes were staring carefully at nothing and their heads were tilted slightly down and away, their expressions that deft, subordinate neutral designed to indicate the absence of any mental activity whatsoever. He flashed a very rapid, toothy smile that was so quickly replaced by a scowl that the first gesture seemed an hallucination, an illusion. The gazes of the wise men remained focused on the carpet, the wall, a finger.

  “Well?” said Ardway. “Somebody? Anybody? No?”

  No.

  “You’ve had four months,” said Ardway into the silence. “Four months ago I asked you for your worst possible delivery times and you told me a month ago. For absolute safety I added three weeks and now it’s a week after that and we’re still not ready. Is that a reasonable summary, so far?”

  “Mmm,” said Pat.

  “Right,” said Steinberg.

  Brundage belched.

  Ardway looked at him and saw his fly was open. Anyone else he might’ve signaled to, perhaps discreetly taken aside, but with Brundage such measures were pointless. The man was an insensate animal of the barnyard variety. How often had he seen Brundage’s ripple-soled shoes squishy with fresh dog excrement? How many times had the man belched in his presence, passed wind, sucked on lollipops at high-level technical conferences? No, this type of person could have his shlong dangling near his cuff and never notice.