Easy and Hard Ways Out (25 page)

“I used to,” said Schneck, boosting himself a little higher and revealing a gray boat-neck sweater. “I worked here from nineteen fifty-six right through the purge of 'sixty-three.
A
's great ‘I fired them all' purge. You probably haven't been here long enough to remember that one. I guess you don't remember.”

Brank, recovered somewhat, at last began to make some connections. “Wait a minute. Are you the guy—Wizer says things about a—Are you the guy who used to have a glass cubicle all his own in the Microwave section? Wizer always points out these marks on the wall where a cubicle used to be.”

“Yes,” said Schneck with carefully exaggerated sadness. “I used to have my own cubicle once. Once.”

“And you were fired by Ardway? Elton tells some crazy story, it never made any sense.”

Schneck chuckled affably. “Oh, it's very simple really. It happened because I used to wear elevator shoes at that time. Big ones. I'm monstrously short, you see. Ardway called me in and gave me the message and, for some reason or other, I decided to take off my shoes then. Didn't care about impressions anymore, or some such impulse, I guess. At any rate, several people saw me when I left the office, and I guess that's when the rumor started. The rumor.”

“What, uh, exactly—”

“That he'd turned me into a dwarf,” said Schneck. “Of course, only about half the engineers really believed … Oh, what's the use? It doesn't matter. It doesn't.”

Brank nodded slowly. He considered the possibility he was dreaming. “Did I hear you correctly before when you said you
lived
here? I guess you meant you'd worked here and—”

“I've lived here since I was fired,” said Schneck. “It's really quite pleasant in the men's room. Pleasant.”

Brank shook his head. “You mean you actually do live here in this men's room?”

“Your encouragement of my writings and drawings has meant a great deal to me,” said Schneck. “A great deal.”

“But you can't
live
here. I mean, don't they check? How do you get food?”

Schneck seemed bored. “Oh, I take a small amount from the cafeteria at night. Stealing, I guess it is, but I believe they owe me something. I received no severance pay, of course.… And as for checking, they usually just look under the stalls and check for feet. I stand on a toilet bowl and crouch down and they never see. Sometimes I have to scamper over a cubicle wall, but I've really become quite good at it, and besides, you know our Maintenance Department. You know.”

“But it must be horrible for you.”

“Horrible? Why? No. No, it's wonderful for me. Course there are minor annoyances—Rocco turns off the lights every night, the toilet paper is too thin—but a few well-placed memos and you'd be surprised at the kind of action one gets. And then of course, there's my work, you know. Filing the bits of pipe, the urinal handles, the toilet paper rollers. I'm in no hurry. No hurry at all.”

“But for what—”

“To make a gun, obviously. I figure another two years or so. Actually I don't work on it all that hard, and besides it's not as easy as you think. The file gets dull.”

“And when it's through …”

“I'll kill them both, I imagine,” said Schneck brightly.
“A
and Ardway. Both. But there's no hurry.”

Abruptly he put a finger to his lips and ducked down. Brank heard the door open, footsteps, and then, after thirty seconds, heard a urinal flush, more footsteps, the door open again. Schneck's head popped up over the partition.

“Klapholtz, from Accounting. Didn't wash his hands, you'll notice. Remarkable how many secret slobs we have. Guys who don't flush, spitters, writers on cabinet walls—I know all of them. You learn a lot here.”

Given time, the mind can accommodate anything; already Brank had accepted completely the fact that he was carrying on a conversation with a homicidal dwarf engineer who lived in the men's room. “If I may ask—and you don't have to answer, of course—but why exactly did you get, uh, were you—”

“Fired?” Schneck smiled. Brank saw he was a dental disaster, teeth yellowed, missing, disarranged. “I disagreed with some decision they'd made. I called
A
a shithead, a senile shithead, to be precise. Rupp was there, disguised as a telephone repairman. I got no severance, nothing.”

“What about your family? I mean, don't they—”

“No family. Widower.”

Brank looked at him. “Why don't you find something else?”

“You mean another job?” said Schneck. “What for? I've had other jobs. They're all the same. Just the names change, that's all.”

Brank looked at him with sudden, new sympathy. A compatriot, a citizen in arms amidst the toilets.

“Besides,” said Schneck, “it's interesting here. You hear things. Hear everything, in fact. For instance, I know all about your troubles with that Yig filter. Too bad. Beautiful things, Yigs. I spent several years on ferrites.”

“You know?” said Brank.

“Everyone pees and shits,” said Schneck. “And they talk. Ardway, Rupp, everyone. And if it's not them, it's the techs. They all pee and they all talk.”

“They're asking me to fake the data for the inspection,” said Brank.

Schneck let out a low whistle. “So. It's come to that finally. I knew it would. Senile old shithead. I knew it. You're not doing it, of course.” He looked fiercely down at Brank.

“I'm not sure.”

“Don't. Resist. I'll help you. Resist.”

“You? Listen, uh, Julius, I appreciate your offer but—”

“Don't sell me short. I do have a doctorate, you know, and a small reputation in the field, and furthermore I know some of the members of the Air Force inspection team. I'll appear at the inspection, and back up what you say. They can't ignore the both of us, right? They can't.” Schneck raised one arm momentarily in the beginning of some gesture, but his other hand slid off the partition and he disappeared from view.

Just then Brank heard the door open again, and two people entered. He remained silent until they'd urinated, washed, and left, but then someone else came in, and when he'd finally gone and Brank stood on the toilet to look over the cabinet wall, no one was there. He thought of calling out, hesitated, then decided against it; instead, he left the cubicle and headed for the door. He caught himself just before opening it and, though he'd done nothing to warrant it, went back to wash his hands. He dried them with a paper towel, which he jump-shot into the wastebasket.

He had two allies now, Pat and Schneck. Unless, of course, he'd gone crazy and Schneck was an illusion. In that case, it didn't matter anyway.

“I can't go along,” said Brank to Steinberg just before lunch. Steinberg sneezed four times in a row.

“NONE OF US LIKE IT”

The words came blubbering up through the collar of flesh he wore at his neck. “None of us like it.”

Pat had merely mentioned what Brank had told her, tried to make light of it even, waited for the simple explanation, the reassurances.

Instead, Rupp had said, “Press this, and you're gone. Worse than gone, I'll see to it you'll never work in aerospace again. Anywhere.”

Pat, surprised, had feigned quick recovery. “I bet I could find something in Peking.”

Rupp had glowered. “I mean it, Pat. No joke this time.” (When was it ever, thought Pat.) “Fond of you as I am, and you know I am” (Pat had no idea what he was talking about), “and as long as we've been together, and as well as we know each other, I will still stuff your career into a small paper bag if you play Drew Pearson with this one.”

Pat had said nothing, and waited for the switch. He was like the Gestapo interrogators: one man threatened and beat you, the other was sympathetic, cajoling. Rupp played both parts.

“Pat, I've been reconsidering something I told you a long time ago. Why the hell shouldn't a woman be Chief Engineer here? Hell, this is nineteen sixty-six, not the Dark Ages. Look, Ardway will probably move up to vice-presidential assistant soon, and once the position is vacant … Oh, listen, for God's sake, Patricia—” He looked at her pleadingly. (Anyone else, thought Pat, and I'd probably be head over heels in love. Sincerity, even fake sincerity, just melted her right down.) “—don't throw it all away. Not over something like this. Not now.”

“Saul, all I said was—”

“We'd told the Air Force initially three temperature cycles. After their review, they insisted on five and it seemed so easy we agreed, though we'd never tested for it. When we finally did, we didn't make it, and now there's no time.”

“But you're saying … Brank told me the spec was three, and it failed at five. But now—”

“We never told the engineers we'd accepted the spec change. Steinberg was just notified last week.”

Pat began shaking her head.

“We felt it was necessary to get the job,” continued Rupp. “We didn't want to anger the Air Force. I felt it was necessary.”

“Saul, for God's sake, we can't—”

Rupp pounded the desk, stood up, and at that point belched the “None of us like it” remark. Pat felt apprehensive, but not cowed. Years ago, when she was in her early twenties and often went out alone in the evenings, a rash of sexual assaults on women had occurred in her neighborhood. Terrified, she'd nevertheless still kept going out, only she'd made sure beforehand to wear a diaphragm. This was her
modus operandi
then, a practical fatalism with a veneer of foolhardiness;
if it's going to happen, one way or another it'll happen, but at least minimize the damage
.

“I have project responsibility,” she said deliberately. “At least nominally, anyway. And I'm sorry, Mr. Rupp”—she watched his face pump up with blood—“but I don't see how I can accept this.”

He began to rise then, and it occurred to Pat that he always seemed about to rise, even when he was sitting. Human yeast. He started to say something, something high volume, and a large bluish vein stood out near his left temple and his neck seemed a balloon. Pat thought: bullfrog. And then,
rrrrupppp, rrrrrruppp, rrrruppp
. Then suddenly he sat down.

And he was calm. And Pat knew he'd found something, some lever to pry loose her resolution.

“The way you can accept it is this. We have a minor problem here. You know and I know the Air Force will have a thousand worse problems with this plane, a hundred thousand worse. Our problem will look like ant shit compared to those, it'll disappear. And yet, despite that, if we let ourselves be hung on this,
here
there'll be carnage. Heads will roll like oranges. And now I'll name you the first five oranges to go.”

He glanced down at something on his desk; already Pat knew what he would say.

“LoParino, Coletti, Mills, Wong, and Lubell.”

He looked up, directly into her eyes, and she thought: sonofabitch fucking bastard cocksucker bastard bastard. She felt the tears begin to come, the salty waters of rage and impotence.

“Let me, uh … think it over,” she said softly.

THE SUPER BOWL, JOHN KENNEDY, AND THE F24BZ

“I don't really see how you could be in this too,” said Brank.

“Why not?” said Blevin. “It's all fixed. All of it. They're tearing at my short hairs just like they are at yours and everyone else's.”

The conspiracy theory of history, thought Brank. “They're not tearing at mine,” he said. He'd come to see Blevin after mulling over Steinberg's remark, “Don't worry about Blevin.” Impossible. You always worried about Blevin. As Quality Control head, he had to approve everything that left the plant. Brank, suspicious, had confronted Blevin directly, whereupon the latter freely admitted his complicity.

“My weak point is that several years ago I borrowed some money. Quite a little money, as a matter of fact, from people who should have disappeared in the last Ice Age. Tiny little brains in huge, voracious bodies. The company makes me loans so those people don't confuse me with a late afternoon snack.”

“But wait,” said Brank. “Don't you report right to
A?
You don't mean—”

“To Redberry,” corrected Blevin, a faint grin just beginning to stretch his thick, porcine features.

“Then this goes right to Redberry.”

Blevin broke into a smile. “Oh, not necessarily. At least not necessarily that I know of. His interests are rather general, you know, not vested enough. Of course, you can't rule anyone out for sure.”

“It must be someone pretty high, though, if they can funnel you company money.”

“Must be,” said Blevin cheerfully.

“Rupp?” said Brank.

“Don't bother guessing,” said Blevin. “I won't tell if you're right, and besides it's irrelevant. The important thing to remember is that none of these things, these complex military systems, ever work to spec, so it's just a question of how flexible I'm prepared to be. A week ago I ran up an eighty-four-dollar plumbing bill, so this month I feel very flexible.”

“You're saying,” said Brank, “Jesus, you're saying, the whole … everything, is rotten all the way up.”

“Brank,” said Blevin, “I don't know you that well, but I'm surprised at you. How old are you? You probably believe things like the World Series and the Miss America contest are legit too.”

“Wait a minute,” said Brank, “You can't tell me that—”

“You think the Mafia doesn't pull the strings on Lindsay?”

“Gary, Gary, I don't know about Lindsay. All I know is that the Yig filter for the F24 doesn't take temperature and they're telling me to make it look like it does. And now you're saying you're part of it.”

“Yes,” said Blevin, voice rising, large flattened nose and pointed ears lending him an enraged, boarlike appearance. “Yes, I'm part of it, and you will be too or it'll roll over you.”