Flash and Filigree (14 page)

“No tickets,” said Frost whose own speech now seemed to come with painful effort.

“You handle our admittance,” the Doctor went on lightly, seeming for the first time to take in their physical surroundings, looking keenly about, craning his head at the marquee above, “What’s being presented? I know very little about video.” But they had already passed too far beneath the marquee and, even now, were turning into the carpeted foyer of the Studio—where there was as yet, by sign or token, no evidence of what was in store—and the Doctor had suddenly become quite nervously, buoyantly alert to things. “Eh? What’s the nature of it, Frost? What’s it to be?”

“Quiz-show,”
Frost managed at last, his words now as thick and heavy as doom itself.

T
HIS STUDIO-AUDITORIUM
is quite large and, as such places go, comfortable enough.

Dr. Eichner and Frost were admitted without difficulty and took two of the few remaining seats near the back. The studio audience was at capacity and in a gala mood; apparently, some phase of the entertainment was already under way. On stage, or rather, in the studio proper—situated dead ahead on a slightly higher level than the audience, and weighted to the right by the glassed control-booth—obvious last-minute preparations were at hand. Five heavy chairs at a large forum-table was the center of things, while all around them great cameras and microphones were being shifted and given final adjustment by men in shirt sleeves. At the table, each place was set with an ashtray, a drinking glass, and a small decanter of water, which were checked and rearranged from time to time.

The audience, meanwhile, was not idle but engaged in clamorous exchange with a well-dressed young man standing at a microphone near the first row of seats on the left. He encouraged their response by laughing a great deal and leaning forward with broad winks and grimaces. He spoke in an unusually loud voice, almost shouting.

“Say, I think we’re going to have a lot of fun here tonight! Come to think of it, we
always
have a lot of fun here, don’t we?”

He beamed fanatically and cupped one hand to his ear in an exaggerated attempt to hear the audience’s reply.

“Yes!” they cried.

“I mean, DON’T WE?”

“YES!”

At this, Dr. Eichner, who had been unobtrusively scanning the rows ahead for a sight of Treevly, sat bolt upright in his chair, stunned and confused by the roaring crowd. He was on the verge of appealing to Frost when, suddenly he caught sight of Treevly, sitting at the end of a row very near the front. The Doctor immediately reached into the inside pocket of his coat to withdraw a small pair of binoculars, Zeiss 6 x 15, and proceeded, without being unduly conspicuous, to train them in Treevly’s direction where, as he saw, the two friends maintained a spirited commentary, nudging one another, and nodding in turn with approving laughs toward the young man at the microphone. With each audience response, Treevly would cup both hands to his mouth, and apparently join in at the top of his voice, while his companion watched him with evident admiration, glancing around animatedly from moment to moment to get the reaction of those nearby. Then Treevly would face him again and the two of them would laugh riotously, exchanging looks of merriment with their neighbors. It was obvious that the pair were great favorites at the studio.

Dr. Eichner continued to scrutinize them through his glasses, making several side remarks to Frost without turning his head—so that he failed to notice the glazed lethargy that had come over the latter, slumped forward in his chair eyes seemingly focused on the back of the person in front of him. However, just as the Doctor was about to force the glasses on Frost, a loud buzzing resounded through the Studio, signifying that the program would be on the air immediately. The young man at the microphone dramatically raised his hands, so that the show opened on a sea of hushed titters and coughings. Then he did a spectacular, backward-somersault terminating in a French split, at which the audience roared, and turning around he presented the host, a rotund, proudly self-effacing man who came striding jovially on stage at that instant.

The program, as it developed, was a popular radio and TV quiz-show, called “What’s My Disease?” and the host, who served as moderator to the panel, introduced its four members as they ceremoniously entered and took up their places at the table: a prominent woman columnist, a professional football coach, an actress, and a professor of Logic from the University of Chicago. The panel members were good-naturedly jibed by the moderator, and they smiled a great deal in return. They seldom looked directly at the audience, but rather at the moderator who assured their constant liaison with the audience by continually turning his glance from them to the panel members and back again, always with a show of serious goodwill.

After a moment’s distraction, Dr. Eichner re-trained his glasses on Treevly, and was only vaguely aware of the other developments going forward as the moderator took his place at the end of the table and the first contestant was brought in. The contestant could not be seen, but was wheeled in, completely obscured in a sort of raised, shrouded cage.

“Can you speak?” asked the moderator.

“Yes,” was the muted reply.

“All right, panel.”

The first questions proceeded rapidly, suggesting, by their tone a tediously familiar pattern.

“Local or general?” asked the football coach.

“Local.”

“Manifestations visible?” asked the woman columnist.

“Oh, yes.”

“Is it—your face?” asked the actress, taking a flyer.

“No.”

A buzzer sounded, tabulating the error and the moderator made some note of it on his pad and threw a significant glance at the audience. The audience reaction was mixed—a sigh of relief that it
wasn’t
the face mingled with disappointment that the actress, apparently the darling of the panel, had been wrong. She, in her turn, seemed good-naturedly abashed, even blushing a little.

“Are these manifestations,” began the Professor, raising his voice to be heard, “above, or below, the waist-line?”

“Below.”

“Is it of the limbs?” he continued.

The answer was hesitant. “—Yes.”

“A
single
limb?” the Professor hurried, hard on the scent of it now, as the moderator beamed knowingly and the rest of the panel began to smile in anticipation.

“Yes.”

“
Is
it elephantiasis?” demanded the Professor.

“Yes.”

The moderator took up the triumph quickly, and with grand good humor. “Yes, it IS
elephantiasis
!” and at that moment, as the shroud was dropped and the contestant revealed to them all, the audience took in its breath as one in a great audible gasp of astonished horror, and then burst into applause for the Professor, the contestant, the moderator, and the whole panel, while the latter exchanged informal congratulatory gestures all around, the actress especially animated in showing her modest appreciation of their victory.

“What’s going on here?” demanded Dr. Eichner, suddenly irate, of Frost, as the questioning of the second contestant moved under way. Frost, however, sitting like the leaning Buddha he resembled, seemed now to have lost consciousness, though his eyes remained partially open and he was in no apparent danger of falling off the chair. The Doctor turned his glasses onto the panel and scrutinized the proceedings there, muttering inaudible asides as the questions and answers went forward:

“Is your condition local, or general?”

“General.”

“Are the manifestations of this condition
visible
?”

“And how!”

This brought a laugh from the audience, and tolerant smiles from some of the panel. The actress, however whose turn it was, remained darkly serious. “Is it your face—” she began, but was brought up short by the woman columnist who reminded her with quiet firmness:
“General.”

“Oh, yes, well, it wouldn’t be that then—thank goodness!” and she turned a winning smile to the audience, who murmured accord. Then she seemed at a loss for the moment.

“Can you talk?” she blurted.

“Well—”

The audience roared, but with forgiving good nature.

“No, I mean, can you
walk
?”

“Oh, yes.”

The actress gave a sigh of relief and let the questioning pass on.

“Is there pain . . . generally?” asked the football coach, raising one eyebrow.

“No-oo.”

“Is this a progressive condition?” demanded the Professor.

“Well, yes,” said the voice uncertainly.

Dr. Eichner tried to rouse Frost. “This is fantastic!” he said. “Come to your senses, Frost!” He grasped the great man’s arm, but Frost’s mind could not be reached. People around them began to shush the Doctor. He looked at them in astonishment, then returned to scrutinize the panel with his glasses.

Meanwhile, things were coming to a head on stage.

“You
did
say ‘scales’?”

“Yes.”

A murmur of consternation in the audience.

“Is it Ichthyosis?” ventured the woman columnist.

“Yes!”

“Yes, it IS
Ichthyosis
!”

The covering was removed with a flourish, and the crowd gave their customary gasp of repulsion, and then burst into applause.

On the wall behind the panel, like a backdrop for a stage of players, was a large board of multi-colored lights depicting the human body’s interior. This board was evidently connected with an electric audio-response device, so that the lights reacted to sound—blinking and brightening as the volume and rapidity of speech, laughter, whistling, etc. increased in the studio. As the questioning became faster and more enthusiastic, the anatomy of lights would intensify, becoming brighter and brighter, until, after making a peculiar wavering glow when the audience took in its breath at the unveiling of the contestant, it would flash into climax with their final burst of applause, shuddering and raging with intolerable brightness for fully half a minute. Then it would die down and glow, faintly pulsating at each question and response as they got under way again, to build once more to the very end.

“Goiter-colussi?”

“No. No, it isn’t Goiter-col—”

“
Multiple
-Goiter!”

“
Multiple
-Goiter . . . it is! It
is
Multiple-Goiter!”

“Ooooooooooooooooooooh!”

And as the crowd abandoned itself to cheering applause, the board of lights burned and throbbed as though they had been short-circuited. The strange radiance of color and refraction given off by the board caused the faces in the audience to appear separately stark and isolate, and often rather distorted.

“It isn’t . . . . . . . .
Giant Measle
?”

“Yes! It is! It’s GIANT MEASLE!”

“Bah,” shuddered the Doctor angrily; he began to scan the audience with his glasses. “I’m clearing out, Frost,” he said in a terse shout. “Keep your man covered and contact me—back at the Mayfair.” So saying he stalked unsteadily out of the Studio, waving aside the protests of the door-guard, and leaving behind Frost, whose face now reminded one somehow of nothing so much as cold, polished stone.

R
ALPH AND
B
ABS
had settled more or less comfortably in the convertible at a huge drive-in theater, and now Ralph was preparing two whiskey-and-cokes into paper cups he had just produced from the glove compartment.

“Be prepared, that’s our motto,” said Babs brightly. The darling girl was beaming; Ralph had suggested that after the film they go to Monsieur Croque, a dapper supper-club on Sunset Strip. And, for the occasion, Babs had worn her smartest black shantung, simple but not severe, a clever dress with a thin, gleaming line of pink-pearl buttons that parted her breasts like a smoldering arrow. Her hair was caught back with two small combs, leaving a vibrant white length of throat, which she managed to arch with becoming defiance, feeling the pulse of it beneath stretched sinews. At first glance, on the fleeting instants when her face was in repose, she might have resembled the ingenue of some deadly-chic Lesbian set, but under this polished veneer the girl felt herself all vulnerably rounded warmths of satin and lace.

“Well, here’s to it,” she said, looking mischievous as she raised her cup.

“Here’s to the
ladies,
” Ralph countered, “—bottoms up!”

Babs made a face of disapproval, first in mock reprimand to shame Ralph’s toast, and then in earnest distaste for the drink in her hand.

“Uh-uh,” she said significantly, shaking her head and returning the almost full cup. “No, thank you! More
coke
for me, please.”

Ralph posed a look of quizzical reproach at her as he added more coke to the cup, while Babs, in her turn, seemed to withdraw genteelly toward her side of the car and, as though she might be placing the boy on probation, actually started looking at the distant screen, where, at the moment, a two-weeks old newsreel was on view. While they sat in relative silence—for Ralph had shut down the small amplifier the attendant had attached to their window—as one of hundreds of couples, each housed separately dark within the vast parking lot, seeing the stale, mute heartbreaks of world news, it gradually started raining.

Ralph rolled his window part way up and, seeing that Babs was having difficulty with hers, leaned over to help her, kissing her lightly on the temple as he did.

“Oh, it’s going to rain!” said Babs crossly, unmoved by his attention. “And I didn’t bring a
scarf
! Oh, how awful!”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Ralph, “maybe it will be nice.” He cheerfully made some adjustments inside the car, touching the cloth top here and there, and closing the hood ventilator. He turned on the radio and found some soft music, while Babs looked on hopelessly. Under the varying refractions of light from the screen and the radio dial, her still face did like a marvelously sculptured thing in certain half-lights, taking on qualities of beauty that were at once permanent and elusive; and her eyes seemed to contain little pieces of fire.