Player Piano (12 page)

Katharine got Anita on the line, and Paul told his wife what he was up to.

“Have you thought out what you’d say to Kroner if he told you Pittsburgh was still open?”

“No—it’s been a hell of a day.”

“Well, I’ve been thinking about it, and—”

“Anita, I’ve got to go.”

“All right. I love you.”

“I love
you
, Anita. Goodbye.” He looked up at Finnerty. “O.K., let’s go.” He felt somehow conspiratorial, and got a small lift from the feeling. Being with Finnerty had often had that effect. Finnerty had an air of mysteriousness about him, an implication that he knew of worlds unsuspected by anyone else—a man of unexplained absences and shadowy friends. Actually, Finnerty let Paul in on very little that was surprising, and only gave him the illusion of sharing in mysteries—if, indeed, there were any. The illusion was enough. It filled a need in Paul’s life, and he went gladly for a drink with the odd man.

“Is there somewhere I can reach you?” said Katharine.

“No, I’m afraid not,” said Paul. He planned to go to the Country Club, where he could be reached easily enough. But, on an impulse, he indulged his appetite for secretiveness.

Finnerty had come over in Paul’s station wagon. They left it at the Works and took Paul’s old car.

“Across the bridge,” said Finnerty.

“I thought we’d go to the club.”

“This is Thursday, isn’t it? Do the civic managers still have their big dinner there on Thursdays?”

The civic managers were the career administrators who ran the city. They lived on the same side of the river as the managers and engineers of the Ilium Works, but the contact between the two groups was little more than perfunctory and, traditionally, suspicious. The schism, like so many things, dated back to the war, when the economy had, for efficiency’s sake, become monolithic. The question had arisen: who was to run it, the bureaucrats, the heads of business and industry, or the military? Business and bureaucracy
had stuck together long enough to overwhelm the military and had since then worked side by side, abusively and suspiciously, but, like Kroner and Baer, each unable to do a whole job without the other.

“Not much changes in Ilium,” said Paul. “The civic managers will be there all right. But if we get over there this early, we can get a booth in the bar.”

“I’d rather share a bed in a leprosarium.”

“All right; over the bridge it is. Let me put on something more comfortable.” Paul stopped his car just short of the bridge, and traded his coat for the jacket in the trunk.

“I wondered if you still did that. That’s even the same jacket, isn’t it?”

“Habit.”

“What would a psychiatrist say about it?”

“He’d say it was a swat at my old man, who never went anywhere without a Homburg and a double-breasted suit.”

“Think he was a bastard?”

“How do I know what my father was? The editor of
Who’s Who
knows about as much as I do. The guy was hardly ever home.”

They were driving through Homestead now. Paul suddenly snapped his fingers in recollection and turned down a side street. “I’ve got to stop by police headquarters for a minute. Mind waiting?”

“What’s the trouble?”

“Almost slipped my mind. Somebody swiped the gun from the glove compartment, or it fell out, or something.”

“Keep driving.”

“It’ll just take a minute, I hope.”

“I took it.”

“You? Why?”

“Had an idea I might want to shoot myself.” He said it matter-of-factly. “Even had the barrel in my mouth for a while, and the hammer back—for maybe ten minutes.”

“Where is it now?”

“Bottom of the Iroquois somewhere.” He licked his lips. “Tasted oil and metal all through dinner. Turn left.”

Paul had learned to listen with outward calm when Finnerty spoke of his morbid moments. When he was with Finnerty he liked to pretend that he shared the man’s fantastic and alternately brilliant or black inner thoughts—almost as though he were discontent with his own relative tranquility. Finnerty had spoken dispassionately of suicide often; but, seemingly, he did it because he got pleasure from savoring the idea. If he’d felt driven to kill himself, he would have been dead long ago.

“You think I’m insane?” said Finnerty. Apparently he wanted more of a reaction than Paul had given him.

“You’re still in touch. I guess that’s the test.”

“Barely—
barely.
”

“A psychiatrist could help. There’s a good man in Albany.”

Finnerty shook his head. “He’d pull me back into the center, and I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.” He nodded. “Big, undreamed-of things—the people on the edge see them first.” He laid his hand on Paul’s shoulder, and Paul fought a reflex that suddenly made him want to get as far away as possible. “Here’s the place we want,” said Finnerty. “Park here.”

They had circled several blocks and were back at the head of the bridge, by the same saloon Paul had visited for the whisky. Paul, with uncomfortable memories of the place, wanted to go somewhere else, but Finnerty was already out of the car and on his way in.

Gratefully, Paul saw that the street and saloon were almost deserted, so there was a good chance he wouldn’t see any of the people who’d watched his confusion the day before. No hydrants were going, but from far away, from the direction of Edison Park, came faint band music—a clue as to where everyone might be.

“Hey, your headlamp’s busted,” said a man, peering through the doorway of the saloon.

Paul passed him quickly, without getting a good look at him. “Thanks.”

Only when he’d overtaken Finnerty in the damp twilight of the inside did he turn for another look at the man—at his short, broad back. The man’s neck was thick and red, and glinting behind his ears were the hooks of steel spectacles. It was the same man, Paul realized, the same man who had been sitting by Rudy Hertz—the man whose son had just turned eighteen. Paul remembered that he had promised this man, in the panic of the moment, to speak to Matheson, the placement director, about the son. Perhaps he hadn’t recognized Paul. Paul slid into a booth with Finnerty, in the darkest corner of the room.

The man turned and smiled, his eyes lost behind the milky, thick lenses of his glasses. “You’re entirely welcome, Doctor Proteus,” he called. “It isn’t often that anyone can do a favor for anyone in your position.”

Paul pretended he hadn’t heard, and turned his attention to Finnerty, who dug a spoon around and around and around in a sugar bowl. Some of the white grains spilled over, and Finnerty absently drew the mathematical symbol for infinity in them with the tip of his finger.

“Funny what I expected from this reunion, what I guess everybody expects from affectionate reunions. I thought seeing you would somehow clear up all sorts of problems, get me thinking straight,” said Finnerty. He had a candor about his few emotional attachments that Paul found disquieting. He used words to describe his feelings that Paul could never bring himself to use when speaking of a friend: love, affection, and other words generally consigned to young and inexperienced lovers. It wasn’t homosexual; it was an archaic expression of friendship by an undisciplined man in an age when most men seemed in mortal fear of being mistaken for pansies for even a split second.

“I guess I looked forward to some sort of rebirth too,” said Paul.

“But you find out quick enough that old friends are old friends, and nothing more—no wiser, no more help than anyone else. Well, what the hell, that doesn’t mean I’m not damned pleased to see you again.”

“No booth service until eight,” called the bartender.

“I’ll get them,” said Finnerty. “What’ll it be?”

“Bourbon—plain water. Make it a weak one. Anita’s expecting us in an hour.”

Finnerty came back with two strong highballs.

“Is there any water in it?” said Paul.

“There was enough water in it as it was.” Finnerty swept the sugar from the table with his palm. “It’s the loneliness,” he said, as though picking up the thread of a conversation that had been interrupted. “It’s the loneliness, the not belonging anywhere. I just about went crazy with loneliness here in the old days, and I figured things would be better in Washington, that I’d find a lot of people I admired and belonged with. Washington is worse, Paul—Ilium to the tenth power. Stupid, arrogant, self-congratulatory, unimaginative, humorless men. And the women, Paul—the dull wives feeding on the power and glory of their husbands.”

“Oh, now listen, Ed,” said Paul, smiling, “they’re good-hearted people.”

“Who isn’t? I’m not, I guess. Their superiority is what gets me, this damn hierarchy that measures men against machines. It’s a pretty unimpressive kind of man that comes out on top.”

“Here come some more!” called the man with the thick glasses from the door. From far off came the sound of marching, and the thump of a bass drum. The noise came closer, a whistle blew, and a brass band exploded with music.

Paul and Finnerty hurried to the door.

“Who are they?” shouted Finnerty at the man in thick glasses.

The man smiled. “Don’t think they want anybody to know. Secret.”

At the head of the procession, surrounded by four trumpeters dressed as Arabs, was a florid, serious old man in a turban and pantaloons, carefully cradling in his arms an elephant tusk inscribed with mysterious symbols. Behind him came an enormous square banner, held aloft by a staggering giant, and steadied in the wind, maypole fashion, by a dozen Arabs tugging at colored ropes. The banner, which from a distance had given promise of explaining all, was embroidered with four lines of long-forgotten—or perhaps recently invented—script, and with four green owls against a field of apricot. After it came the band, which carried out the Arabian motif. There were owl-bearing pennants hung from the brasses, and the banner’s message was repeated, in case anyone had missed it, on a cart-borne bass drum perhaps twelve feet in diameter.

“Hooray,” said the man in thick glasses mildly.

“Why are you cheering?” said Finnerty.

“Don’t you think something’s called for? Cheering Luke Lubbock mostly. He’s the one with the tusk.”

“Doing a swell job,” said Finnerty. “What’s he represent?”

“Secret. He couldn’t be it any more, if he told.”

“Looks like he’s about the most important thing.”

“Next to the tusk.”

The parade turned a corner, the whistle blew again, and the music stopped. Down the street, another whistle shrilled, and the whole business began again as a company of kilted bagpipers swung into view.

“Parade competition down at the park,” said the man with the glasses. “They’ll be coming by for hours. Let’s go in and have a drink.”

“On us?” said Finnerty.

“Who else?”

“Wait,” said Paul, “this should be interesting.”

An automobile had just come from the north side of the river, and its driver honked irritably at the marchers, who blocked his way. The horn and the bagpipes squalled at one another until the last rank of marchers had turned down the side street. Paul recognized the driver too late to get out of sight. Shepherd looked at him with puzzlement and mild censure, waved vaguely, and drove on. Peering through the back window were the small eyes of Fred Berringer.

Paul refused to attach any importance to the incident. He sat down in the booth with the short, heavy man, while Finnerty went after more drinks.

“How’s your son?” said Paul.

“Son, Doctor? Oh, oh, of course—my son. You said you were going to talk to Matheson about him, didn’t you? What did the good Matheson say?”

“I haven’t seen him yet. I’ve been meaning to, but the opportunity hasn’t come up.”

The man nodded. “Matheson, Matheson—beneath that cold exterior, there beats a heart of ice. Well, it’s just as well. There’s no need to talk to him now. My boy’s all set.”

“Oh, really? I’m glad to hear that.”

“Yes, he hanged himself this morning in the kitchen.”

“Lord!”

“Yes, I told him what you said yesterday, and it was so discouraging that he just gave up. It’s the best way. There
are
too many of us. Upps! You’re spilling your drink!”

“What’s going on here?” said Finnerty.

“I was just telling the Doctor here that my son couldn’t find any good reason for being alive, so he quit it this morning—with an ironing cord.”

Paul covered his eyes. “Jesus, oh Jesus I’m sorry.”

The man looked up at Finnerty with a mixture of bewilderment and exasperation. “Now, hell, why’d I have to go and do that? Have a drink, Doctor, and pull yourself together. I haven’t got a son, never had one.” He shook Paul’s arm. “Hear me? It’s a lot of crap.”

“Then why don’t I bust your stupid head open?” said Paul, half standing in the booth.

“Because you’re wedged in too tightly,” said Finnerty, pushing him back down. He set the drinks before them.

“Sorry,” said the man to Paul. “I just wanted to see how one of those superbrains worked. What’s your I.Q., Doctor?”

“It’s a matter of record. Why don’t you go look it up?” It was a matter of record. Everyone’s I.Q., as measured by the National Standard General Classification Test, was on public record—in Ilium, at the police station. “Go on,” he said acidly, “experiment with me some more. I love it.”

“You picked a bad specimen if you’re out to find out what the rest of them across the river are like,” said Finnerty. “This guy’s an odd one.”

“You’re an engineer too.”

“Until I quit.”

The man looked surprised. “You know, this is really very illuminating, if you’re not kidding me. There are malcontents, eh?”

“Two that we know of,” said Finnerty.

“Well, you know, in a way I wish I hadn’t met you two. It’s much more convenient to think of the opposition as a nice homogeneous, dead-wrong mass. Now I’ve got to muddy my thinking with exceptions.”

“How have you got yourself typed,” said Paul, “as an upstate Socrates?”

“The name is Lasher, the Reverend James J. Lasher, R-127 and SS-55. Chaplain, Reconstruction and Reclamation Corps.”