Easy and Hard Ways Out Page 21

  Schneck: “Of course. Don’t forget, I’ll see you at the inspection Friday morning. I’ll just walk in casually, they’ll never guess where I came from. I’m known, they can’t ignore me. Where are you headed now? You’ll see, I’m known.”

  “Oh, yes, Brundage. Yes, you should have his signature, but he’s an odd one. Can’t tell. Cohen is in his lab, isn’t he? Something wrong with him too. Steals soap. Every time Rocco puts out new bars, Cohen steals them. Also, towels. Takes huge amounts of paper towels. Must sell them or something. Something.”

  Brank was quite surprised about the soap. He knew Cohen was cheap, but that cheap? In the afternoon he entered Advanced Devices.

  Cohen: “Well, that depends. How much do I get for signing? Just kidding. Gee, I really don’t know. I mean I generally never … Sometimes the guys bring cards around, you know, for retirement dinners, weddings, that sort of thing. Well, anyway, I never sign. It’s a policy of mine. I mean, what’s the point? I mean, what do you get from it? Name one concrete thing.”

  “That’s not concrete. Go ahead, name something, even something small. Don’t be ashamed. I mean, I save things like paper clips and old pencils, so don’t be ashamed.”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t agree. Listen, what’s one name more or less anyway, right? Hey, before you go, gimme the final price on that pig of yours.”

  Brank found himself suddenly more receptive to the idea that Cohen was stealing toilet articles from the men’s rooms.

  Hands: “Oh, you’re not getting me to fall for that one. You probably just need a token black signature, right? Should I use Negro writing? That’s a jest, but you know, as a child, I used to read Captain Marvel and Superman comics and color in the characters black. Does that tell you something?”

  “Right. Where I come from, opportunity doesn’t even knock once, so I’m not about to throw away the position I’ve achieved here.”

  “What do you mean, what position is that? You should—” Peretz: “Who is it that … Oh, Brank. Yes, yes, hello. I’m still doing the high-power coronas. I’ve been getting some scalp discolorations lately, dizzy feelings. Ardway said it’s from the overhead light bulbs here in the lab, only how can they … Of course, I didn’t say anything.”

  “Yes, I still work with the tape recorder, but my wife has been telling me I should stop. Stop everything. I don’t know.”

  “Frankly, I’d like to sign, but I’m really afraid of the consequences. I don’t see how you can just walk around like this. I, frankly, could never bring myself … I can’t bring myself … I—Give me the pen. Quick! Quick!”

  Got him. Poor sonofabitch. Brank headed toward Brundage’s office. He glanced at the wall clock; an hour and fifteen minutes before quitting time.

  “I’d like to see Dr. Brundage,” he said to Amelia, the hulking, aged secretary.

  “Doctor’s not available,” said Amelia, buttoning her gray woolen sweater. “May I take a message?”

  “I just want to see him for a minute.”

  “I’m sorry, but he’s not available.”

  “Is he in?”

  “He’s not available.”

  “Listen, I’ve really got to see him.”

  She stood up then and loomed over him, giant turtle back, cropped hair, and red beet-face staring down. “Not in,” she screamed slowly. “Not in.”

  At which point Brundage came bursting out of his office, briefcase flying behind.

  “Dr. Brundage, Dr. Brundage, I have a petition here—”

  Brundage brushed past, rushed out the door.

  “Dr. Brundage!”

  No answer. Hurried walk through the corridors, Brank trailing.

  “Dr. Brundage!”

  Brundage racing along, moving with incredible scientific vigor, Brank panting alongside, falling behind.

  “Dr. Brundage, can’t you spare just a minute. They’re going to fake the inspection and—”

  Brundage momentarily makes a wrong turn, opens the door to a closet used for storing broken mop handles, hurriedly doubles back. He and Brank reach the outer door together. The guard makes a lightning check of Brundage’s briefcase for stolen soap, then waves him through.

  “Dr. Brundage!” pleads Brank, one last time.

  Brundage, still walking, turns his head briefly in the parking lot. “No time,” he yells. “See my secretary.”

  ORDER FROM CHAOS, AND VICE-VERSA

  For days afterward, except for the obligatory meetings with Ardway, Brundage had sat paralyzed in his office. Skipping lunches, eating only lumps of sugar from a bowl on his desk, he created endless cinematic variations on the main theme. Christine’s husband had not shown up. Using all his mathematical skills, Brundage had solved the puzzle of her complex undergarments, the last hook unleashing a dizzying cascade of unspeakably voluptuous female parts. Overwrought, he’d spent himself immediately, skipping such formalities as insertion. He was unable to work. Urgent jobs were left undone, unthought about. Once, in a moment of clarity that lasted only an instant, he realized that perspective was finally his, true priorities at last established. Forget equations, advances, achievements, A MAN LIVED IN HIS BALLS. First and foremost concentrate on firing that wad in the best place; then, and only then, take care of the rest. A setup. The truck driver husband with the IQ of a sweat sock bounded out of the closet, held a Gillette Super Blue to Brundage’s shriveled manhood. Pay up, a thousand a month, or I’ll cut it off a quarter inch at a time. That’ll make four slices, joked Christine, the remark hurting Brundage nearly as much as the anticipated mutilation.

  Motives. He couldn’t figure it out. All his life nothing good had happened to him; why should it start now? It seemed to run counter to natural law, a tiny, perverse kink in space-time that would soon straighten out and thrust him back to his properly miserable existence. Why would a woman like that ever want to commit adultery with someone like himself? Her explanation of being attracted to intellectual men, though reasonable in the abstract, was preposterous in the particular. There were plenty of younger, better-looking intellectual men, and besides, attraction was one thing, laying them was another. Could she have a father complex? Some fascinatingly twisted and neurotic older-man hang-up? A briefcase fetish? An overwhelming need for impregnation by a recluse?

  He’d begun to think it was a spur-of-the-moment, one-shot affair when, a week later, she’d brought him the gift. It was in the afternoon, a rainy Thursday, when he’d looked up and seen her in a doorway, white lab coat snug against her bulbous breasts. Brundage, who’d been paring his toenails, quickly slipped on a shoe (omitting, in his haste, the sock) and said, “Chris! Chris, come in and … how did you get past Amelia?”

  “Oh, I just waited,” she said, closing the door behind her, “until she went to the ladies’ room.” She walked toward him, fixing him with hypnotic, earth-mother eyes. “I have something for you.”

  Brundage simultaneously felt the stirrings of an erection and cold in his foot. He grinned a half-grin; he hadn’t received a present since he was a child. She removed a package from the pocket of her lab coat and handed it to him. Brundage, head tilted in gorilla wonder, tore at the wrapping, used the nail clipper to help undo the Scotch tape. A thin cardboard box was revealed, and on the box, printing: STUD. FOR THE TOTALLY MASCULINE MAN. Brundage opened the box, withdrew a pale green bottle of aftershave lotion.

  “It smells divine,” said Christine.

  “I’ll take a sniff,” said Brundage. He twisted the bottle cap, but couldn’t budge it. He set it on his desk, took a deep breath, gripped it firmly and tried again. Nothing. “I’ll try later with a pliers,” he said.

  Christine picked the bottle up from the desk. “It’s really … wait.” Her face tensed, she hesitated a moment, then unscrewed the cap till it came off in her hand.

  “I must’ve loosened it,” said Brundage.

  She held the bottle near his nose, and he inhaled. Lemon-lime and alcohol. Sickening. “Beautiful,” he said. “Beautiful aroma.”


  “Wear it,” she said, looking up at him. “Wear it a week from today.”

  “What’s a week from today?” asked Brundage.

  “The next time we can see each other. Maybe the last time, I’m not sure. Tony found something in Phoenix, some trucking business, and we may be moving soon. He’s supposed to close the deal this Thursday—he won’t be home—and if he does, we’ll be gone by Saturday night.”

  Brundage, beset by a dozen different emotions, two dozen, a hundred, felt himself begin to black out. He sat down. “Christine, you mean you’re leaving, and yet you want me to … I don’t really understand.”

  “We started something,” she said. “And we never finished. What I wanted then, I still want. I want to have you any way I can, Ken, even if it’s only in memory.”

  Brundage felt as if he were hearing movie dialogue; such words from such a person could not possibly be directed at him. He suppressed the urge to look over his shoulder.

  “Christine, frankly, I’m at a loss. I mean, of course I’m attracted to you, and I’ve told you how I feel about your work, but are you sure, you know, that what we’re doing … that you won’t have any regrets?”

  That’s it, shmuck, said an inner voice. Go salvage the loss from the win.

  “You’re too considerate,” said Christine. “Intelligent, and considerate. Who could resist the combination? Of course I’m sure. Meet me at my apartment right after work. We’ll go separately, just so there’s no suspicion. You remember how to get there?”

  Brundage, in a daze, nodded.

  She bent down, kissed him gently on the forehead, a soft, wet, sericeous kiss. Visions of genitalia swept through Brundage’s head.

  “Wear the lotion,” she whispered, and left.

  His wife had hired a private detective who trailed him to the apartment, took twelve poorly focused coital snapshots to remember the occasion. Disdaining divorce despite Brundage’s generous alimony offer, she gave the photos to the Daily News, which printed two showing blurred unnatural acts (eyes of subjects masked by thin black bars to conceal identities). SEX-CRAZED NOTED SCIENTIST, the caption began; a week later Brundage was expelled from the IEEE.

  He hadn’t handed in a progress report for two days. Already, Ardway must’ve received a computer notice apprising him of the oversight. Brundage didn’t care. This was going to be a turning point in his life, some sort of crazy culmination, values restored to their proper order. On Thursday morning, he was as nervous as a high school boy on a first date. He’d gotten a haircut the day before, bought a new pair of slacks, even brushed his teeth. He was becoming human! And he knew it, could feel it. There was something to care about now; no, someone to care about. Some one. He paced his office. He noticed his stomach bulge, tried a few tentative toe touches. He opened his engineering notebook, closed it immediately. He looked out the window; a light snow had begun, the flakes blowing and swirling in the gusty wind. Won’t stick, thought Brundage.

  Lunchtime came and went, unnoticed. Amelia’s instructions were to admit no one that day, absolutely no one, for any reason. In the afternoon, as always, he began picturing Christine undressed, began imagining the details between her legs, the exact pattern of hair growth, its thickness, measurements of the opening’s length, width, and depth in centimeters, angular orientation in degrees. Disgusting, fascinating thoughts flew through his mind, Daily News photos of unnatural acts: would she do … oral sex? The very word sent shivers through him. Oral. In fifty-four years he’d never thought it possible, resigned himself to a life unblown. What would happen? Would he pass out? Have a punishing heart attack? Stroke? He called Harriet, said he wouldn’t be home till late that night. Big crisis in the office. She accepted the information passively, a bad sign, a sign of some damn thing or other, thought Brundage, but he didn’t care.

  Three thirty. He sat hunched in the office, a clenched muscle, tight with stored energy. Christine would be leaving now, a little early, getting home, waiting. Again he rose, looked out the window. A few cars had already started to exit the parking lot, windshield wipers beating like rubber wings against the snow, tires already skidding on the slippery ground. Maniacs, thought Brundage. Look at them. He heard a man’s voice outside his door as he cut short his reverie and went to slip on his coat and peaked hat. He could hear Amelia and the man arguing as he locked his briefcase and gave a final glance around. This was it. His date with destiny.

  He opened his office door vigorously, caught a brief tableau of Brank being shouted at by Amelia, rushed through the lab and out into the hall. He fled through the corridors, Brank at his heels, yelling words at him, petitions, causes, desperate, crazy things that were unrelated to Brundage’s getting into bed with a passionate woman and losing himself in her flesh.

  “See my secretary,” he shouted over his shoulder in the parking lot, as he fought his way through the snow to his car. He had trouble starting and was late leaving the lot. The Expressway was jammed, strung out with accidents and stalled cars; even the tow trucks couldn’t get through. Brundage, the earlaps on his hat still down from force of habit, sat immobilized in the tie-up, left with nothing to do but watch as the storm howled and raged around him. An hour went by. An hour and a half. Precious seconds stolen from him by capricious fate. God, he had to get out! He was being buried alive. The car in front came to life, rolled a few feet forward. Other cars began tentative movements. Creeping. But moving, thank God, moving.

  Brundage wondered about Christine. Where was she? Caught like him, or had she somehow made it home? Taken off her dress, put on a nightgown and silk robe. Made a cocktail, and sat down in an easy chair to wait, thighs carelessly (of course) spread apart. Traffic again stopped dead. Brundage began looking around, a caged animal. He turned to one radio station after another. “… although Sanitation reports over ninety percent of the roads sanded,” “… small craft warnings have been …” He shut the radio off abruptly and yelled, “Useless! Useless, idiot assholes!” His life’s blood was draining one drop at a time and they gave him small craft warnings. Wild-eyed, he pressed his foot on the accelerator, hurtled and skidded onto the shoulder of the road, and somehow made his way to within a few feet of the next exit, where a large hearse formed an impassable blockade. Twenty-five minutes of stagnant agony. He looked behind him; he’d cut in on a funeral procession.

  He began to pray without sentiment: Please, God, I’m sorry the man is dead, but he’s had his. To him it makes no difference if this storm lasts a thousand years. Whereas, look, to me, it’s life itself; couldn’t you just move the bas—I’m sorry, the departed—a few feet forward? A few feet is all I ask. Abruptly, the hearse rolled forward several yards, and Brundage drove out the exit, not pausing (since he didn’t really believe) to say thanks.

  He cruised slowly through the streets, trying to get his bearings. He’d gotten off the Expressway two exits before he was supposed to; his best bet was to head in the same general direction he’d been going. The night was pitch-black, the occasional street lamps serving only to illuminate the falling snow. He pressed ahead, driving on for nearly forty minutes before finally admitting to himself that he was lost. He searched the streets for passersby of whom he could ask directions; he saw no one. Who in his right mind would be out in this weather? He tried desperately to remember the route he’d taken two weeks ago. It had seemed so simple … a few honey-voiced instructions from Christine and they were there. He spotted a police squad car, pulled alongside, and rolled down his window.

  “Officer! Say, officer. Would you know where—”

  And then it struck him. He didn’t even have the address! Of all the incredible bumbling stupidities, gross ineptitudes, not only did he not know where he was, he couldn’t even ask where he was going. How could he—

  “Uh, never mind, sorry,” he said, and rolled the window back up. He drove a few more blocks, and tried to think what he should do. This was ridiculous, this whole business. This just didn’t happen to a person. Other things happ
ened—the husband discovered him, his wife found out, Christine became pregnant, he got VD—those were the things that happened, not this. Not getting lost. This was crazy; it didn’t fit. How would it sound, a fifty-four-year-old man explaining why he missed his date to get laid: “I got lost.”

  All right, he had to think, to calm down. Maybe he could still save it. It was past eight. Looking up Christine’s address in the phone book was out; she’d mentioned long ago she had an unlisted number. There was only one hope. He’d go back to the office, locate her records in Personnel, find her address and phone number there, call, say he’d be over immediately. He felt better. He made a U-turn and headed back toward the highway.

  “Which way to the highway?” he asked the two patrolmen in a parked car after he’d driven around for nearly twenty minutes. He could not be sure if they were the same officers he’d queried earlier; patrolmen, after all, looked alike. One of them pointed a finger, and Brundage continued in that direction, finally locating the Expressway and getting back on. Although the snow had assumed blizzard ferocity, traffic at the later hour had lessened and he managed to make it back to the Labs in a little over fifty minutes. The parking lot was still about a quarter filled—night-shift workers’ cars, and a few late-staying daytime executives’. Brundage felt the snow seeping into his shoes as he trudged to the entrance.

  “See your badge, sir?” asked the night guard, who didn’t recognize him.

  Brundage fumbled through his briefcase, finally came up with a yellowed square of plastic, a ten-years-younger Brundage caught and preserved in two dimensions, a beetle in an Ice Age glacier. The guard nodded and Brundage went inside. He walked through the corridors, empty nighttime echoes hurrying his stride. He avoided scrupulously the area of the Accounting men’s room, where, years before, also late in the evening, a man had emerged suddenly and grabbed him by the collar, a fiend with hairy knuckles who’d screamed into his face, “I’ll kill them both,” and then had pushed Brundage to the floor and run off. He got to the Personnel office and peered through the translucent door panels into the darkened interior. The clock in the hall read five after ten. He tried the door, and miraculously, it opened. Inside, he turned on the lights. There were five desks in the room. He walked to a wall lined with file cabinets, the drawers labeled with letters of the alphabet. Placing his briefcase on the floor, he tugged at the drawer marked “P.” Christine Parness. Oh, Christine, love of my life, wait for me, please, please, I’ll find you in these cabinets and come to you.