Easy and Hard Ways Out (3 page)

Regarding your memo: N. Klapholtz is merely a programmer for
EPICAC,
and the latter is only a machine, however sophisticated. Its letter to you was the result of an automatic sub-routine, and so you needn't be so touchy about it. For God's sake, it sends letters to
everyone
, even me.

Best,

V. Fish

V.P., Accounting

VF:mp

AUERBACH LABORATORIES

Inter-Office Memorandum
10/30/66

From: H. Ardway

To: S. Brine

cc: S. Rupp, file

Subject: Prank paging

This is to remind you again that the person or persons who have been using our paging system to play practical jokes is or are still at large, and still causing frequent disruptions. Broadcast requests for Emiliano Zapata to call the stock room, or for Martin Bormann to report to Accounting, or even the name “Dick Hertz,” besides striking certain immature minds as amusing, are apt to be contagious and could result in serious lack of respect for authority, not to say loss of working time. Kindly implement whatever steps are necessary to get this nuisance off the air.

Yours,

H. Ardway

Chief Engineer

HA:sl

THE GREATEST DISTANCE BETWEEN TWO POINTS IS AT 6:45
A.M.

a. The Direction of the Undershirt

It happened with greater frequency as he grew older, and today was one of the days. Brank found himself by the side of the bed, his undershirt half on, half off, and for the life of him he couldn't think whether he was going to sleep at night or getting up in the morning. It was dark outside, and his mind was absolutely empty, numb actually, and he remained in stasis for nearly a minute. His eyes finally found a clock.
Seven
. He did not go to sleep at seven o'clock. Good. He was getting up, and therefore he must be putting the undershirt
on
. Good.

“It's late,” said Joanie, in a sleep-muffled voice from the other side of the bed. “Come on, Harv, it's time.”

He remembered he'd had a dream. He'd been about to cup the left breast of Mavis, from Accounting, in his palm. An excellent dream. He made a mental note to try and somehow resume the cupping tonight. He staggered into the bathroom, ran an electric razor over his face, and stood in front of the bowl to urinate. A face appeared between his legs.

“Brucie! Watch out, Brucie! I'm making.”

Brucie backed away on all fours, then stood up and peered in the side of the bowl. “I want to see the bubbles.”

“Brucie, I haven't got time now,” said Brank, flushing, then walking back to the bedroom, where he withdrew a pair of pants, a tie, and a shirt from a closet. Joan was sitting up in bed watching him.

“I feel sick,” said Brank.

“It's because you just got up.”

“No, my stomach hurts.”

“You have to eat something. I keep telling you this no-breakfast business is bad for you.”

“I need the extra sleep.”

“You'll feel better as the day goes on.”

Brank finished dressing. “Are you going to be home today, Mommy?” said Brucie.

“Daddy,” corrected Brank. “And the answer is no. I have to go to work today.”

“Why?”

“To make money.”

“Why?”

“Because we need money to live.”

“Why?”

“Because our society has designated money as a medium of—Joanie, will you take him downstairs?”

Joan, nightgown-clad, marched Bruce downstairs as Brank finished putting on his shoes. He grabbed his wallet and keys and quickly followed. Joan was waiting with his coat.

“Listen, maybe I should take a little rest today. Maybe—”

“Harv,” she said sharply, and in her look was all the suppressed anger and disappointment and anxiety of the fifteen years they'd spent together, years in which he'd held twelve different jobs, three alone since Bruce was born.

“All right,” he said.

She slipped the coat on his back, and he struggled into it. When he was ready, he kissed her on the cheek, peering absent-mindedly down the front of her loose nightgown. From the second step, Bruce was peering too.

“What are those?” he said. “Elbows?”

“Never mind,” said Brank, sweeping him up and kissing him good-bye.

“Will you be home tonight, Mommy?” said Bruce.

“Yes,” said Brank, opening the door.

“Is Mommy an engineer?” said Bruce.

“Yes,” said Joan.

“And he drives a train?”

Brank stepped outside. “Not that kind of engineer,” he said, walking toward the curb. He stopped suddenly and turned around. “And will you stop calling me Mommy, for chrissake?” he yelled. But the door had already closed.

It was cold and still dark out, the sky an icy landscape of chilled grays and blacks. The frost on his blighted lawn crinkled under Brank's shoes as he made his way to his car, opened the hood, and reached in with his hand to free the linkage leading to the choke. Finished, he let the hood slam shut, then walked around to unlock the door, and slid into the torn leatherette seat. He floored the gas pedal twice and turned the key in the ignition.
Ruhruhruhruhruh. Ahruhruhruhruhruh
. Nothing. Again.
Ruhruhruhruh. Ahruhruhruhruhruh
. Well, thought Brank, I mean if she doesn't start, I guess I can't go. I mean you can't fight nature. He began to spring from the car, then decided on a last attempt, proof he'd spared no effort.
Ruhruhruhroooooooooooonnnnnnnnn
.

Shit.

He released the emergency brake and pulled away from the curb, night lights from the utility poles and houses still brilliant in the darkness. In his rear-view mirror, he watched the frozen vapors of his exhaust curl out behind him. He came to a main street and drove faster, joined now by several other cars, all heading toward the highway. It was only autumn and he was already shivering; he'd have to get that damn heater fixed, it was impossible. The sky began to lighten a bit, the hard edges of the clouds blurring into a reddish-gray haze. He came to the highway, made his way down the entrance ramp, and waited for an opening. When one came, he adroitly blended in, a skillful segment in a great serpentine procession, a metallically churning, tormented monster that daily bucked and jerked the punishing million-mile distance from home to work.

b. Suffering In

In another part of the procession, a small, thin-haired man concentrated intently on steering his Buick in the increasingly heavy traffic. He sat propped up on several pads, and his diminutive fingers gripped the wheel so tightly they were numb. Because of some odd muscular or skeletal construction, his natural expression when tense was that of a slight grin, and that, combined with his small size and the large steering wheel, made it appear as if a child had taken over the car. Of course, no child could have even begun to cope with what Stanley Steinberg contended with every day just getting to work.

In the first place, he had tunnel vision—his sight was limited to two imaginary tubes that extended directly in front of him and excluded everything else. In the second place, he had a condition that involved the manufacture of large amounts of mucus by the linings of his nasal passages. The condition, neither allergy nor cold nor sinus, was there nevertheless, and produced extreme and consistent discomfort in Steinberg and amusement in others, who called it psychosomatic. The third problem was an acute awareness of the openness of windows, or more precisely, the amount certain windows were opened and the necessity of controlling this very important parameter. Thus, the process of making it into work in the morning involved the delicate counterbalancing of these very powerful forces—the need to keep both hands on the wheel and oversteer wildly to compensate for lack of peripheral vision, the need to remove at least one hand from the wheel to blow his nose, which if unblown would make his eyes water and blur what little vision he had, and the need to remove at least one more hand to adjust the window opening, which if too small would expose him to possible asphyxiation from the imaginary carbon monoxide filtering up through the floorboards, and, if too large, would create a draft and cause him to sneeze uncontrollably.

Superimposed on these physical difficulties, interwoven and patterned around them in some arcane psychological motif, was a set of what could only be called longings—incomplete, half-verbalized, and often contradictory desires that took turns preying on his mind. He'd forgotten to shave again today, and a button was missing from his coat—how many times had these things happened since Rose had been confined to the wheelchair? How many nights had he spent working on reports till 2
A.M.
because there was no reason to go to bed, no sleep without exhaustion? And why was he now pushing himself in to work on this freezing, worst of all possible mornings? The obvious reasons were not real, the real ones obscure. He thought about getting off the highway at the next exit. Ah, but what if he didn't show up and something important happened? What if just today they decided to fill the often-mentioned, about-to-be-created Assistant Chief Engineer vacancy, and he was out and they gave it to Brundage, or worse, to Pat? What then? He'd kill himself, that's what. Because at fifty-two years of age, you don't get any more chances. He'd been Microwave Section Head now for fourteen years and he'd bided his time most carefully. No, he'd have to go in. Even if it meant tortured explanations to Ardway as to why he was nearly six weeks late with the phase shifter, and painstaking extraction of minute amounts of useful work from the paper-bound and erratic Dubrowolski, and avoidance of Brank and Dorfman, who made a mockery of lab discipline. For Rose, he'd go in.

For an instant, his car veered out of lane. Someone blew a horn and yelled “Sonofabitch!” as Steinberg quickly corrected while simultaneously suctioning a glob of escaping mucus back into his nose. When the first tentative crescent of sun appeared in the sky, he opened the window an additional eighth of an inch, which in no way interfered with his doing what nature had so superbly equipped him for: suffering.

c. The Three

Across the Long Island Sound from Steinberg rode the Three, Dorfman, Potamos, and Cohen, a car pool from the depths of the Bronx. The driver this day was George Potamos, a stoic, heavy-set individual who bore without complaint his colleagues' obvious and continual perversion of his name. Potamos's car was a piece of rolling junk with many pointless, impressive extras that he had installed himself.

Next to him in the front seat, Dorfman was reading the
Wall Street Journal
and eating his morning unusual food. Dorfman was a man of medium height, gray eyes, and brown hair that he combed forward; though he was thirty-six years old, a normal person could not tell whether he was twenty or fifty.

“Hey, Dorfman,” said Potamos, finally, after half an hour. “What shit are you eating today?”

“What I'm eating today is not shit,” said Dorfman precisely, turning to the bond transactions. “It happens to be feta cheese, from Greece.”

“From Greece,” mimicked Potamos. “From Greece. Why the hell can't you eat American food for once, for chrissake? Every goddamn day you gotta have something different. In fact, why must you eat at all, huh? This is a car, for chrissake, not a restaurant. Every weekend I gotta clean out your lousy foreign crumbs.”

Dorfman did not look up. “Simply because your diet is so terribly mundane is no reason why I shouldn't enjoy the foods appreciated by people whose taste buds aren't vestigial. And as far as your car is concerned, I think it's quite clear that I'm getting the worst of the deal considering what I drive and what I have to ride in.”

Potamos was about to respond when the man in the back interrupted.

“I think George has a very nice car, Sheldon,” he said. “It's not what you'd call luxurious, but it starts, it runs, it does the job, and, uh, what did this little honey cost you again, George?”

“Three-fifty.”

“And it cost only three hundred fifty dollars. I mean, if you buy a new car for four thousand and you hold on to it for—”

“Cohen,” said Dorfman, “all right already. We've all heard your used-car spiel. Enough.”

“He wants to eat his yak cheese in peace,” said Potamos.

“Sheep cheese,” said Dorfman.

Cohen leaned back in the seat and watched the great suspension towers of the Throgg's Neck Bridge loom up in the distance. Like Steinberg, he was a physically small man, only in his case his size seemed to be a way of concentrating a great energy rather than, as with the other, the end product of a grinding operation on a formerly larger being. His black hair sat in a neatly sprayed pompadour atop his head, and his bright, feverish eyes darted incessantly in all directions. He was handsome, straight-nosed, nattily dressed, a little-boy-sized man with shiny shoes.

“I think you made a wise choice with this car, George,” he said.

“At least someone appreciates it,” said Potamos.

“He's patronizing you, you asshole,” said Dorfman.

Potamos said nothing. Dorfman folded his paper, noticing the bridge for the first time, its steel cables gleaming in the morning sunshine like a giant harp. “How come you took the Throgg's Neck instead of the Whitestone?” he said to Potamos. “The Whitestone is faster.”

Potamos slowed as they approached the toll booth.

“You could've saved ten minutes if you'd taken the Whitestone.”

Potamos said nothing.

“The Whitestone is empty at this hour.”

Potamos spoke deliberately. “Do … one … of … you … engineers … have … a … fucking … quarter? Hmm? Or do I turn this fucking bomb around?”

“I'm out of change,” said Cohen.

“Here,” said Dorfman, reluctantly fishing two dimes and a nickel from his pocket and handing them to Potamos. Potamos paid the toll and proceeded onto the bridge.