Players (7 page)

“This is the kind of place,” Lyle said, “where the ketchup always comes out of the bottle without having to hit the bottom. Don’t ask me what that means but it’s true. I like this kind of eerie sameness about this kind of place. It’s metaphysical.”

“My drink is way too strong.”

“I’ll get another.”

“It’s all right.”

“No problem, I’ll get another.”

“No, it’s all right.”

“It’s all right,
Lyle
,” he said. “We’re using names today.”

Everything he said and did seemed all right to her. It was all right to come for a drink so long as she didn’t stay too long. The walk over here was all right. The place itself was all right. It was all right to sit either at the bar or back here. Again there was a lull as they watched the other customers. Everybody seemed to be having a better time than they were. It was hard to tell whether Rosemary was uncomfortable. There were shades of blandness from genial to serene; hers was closer to the median, lacking distinctive character, dead on.

“So you’ve been with the firm how long?”

“About three weeks now.”

“Before this, what?”

“I had a job where I was on the phone all day talking to buyers. That was crazy. Then I was a stewardess, which was all right at first, places to see. Then a friend got me a job in a shipping office. That wasn’t too bad but I got mononucleosis. I was a temp for a while after that. Then I got this.”

“We hope you’ll stay.”

“I have to see.”

“Do you smoke, Rosemary? See, I’m using names. Mustn’t forget that.”

“Some people can never quit. I smoke for a few days and then I stop. Getting addicted to things is in your personality. Somehow I can stop.”

“Where do you live?”

“Queens.”

“Of course.”

“You should see the rents, what difference.”

“My powers grow stronger with age.”

“But you have to get there,” she said.

“What about when you were a stewardess? You were right there. You lived in a high rise with four hundred other girls in their neatsy-clean uniforms. Always near the phone. Sorry, love, I’m on standby. Roach coach to San Juan.”

“I’m lucky I have friends with a car,” she said. “Except the traffic.”

“Can’t trust those porta rickens to sit there like civilized folks. I don’t mind the cha-cha music but when they start in with the green bananas, it’s too much, the FAA ought to do something, banana peels coming out of the overhead compartments not to mention in the seat things inside that wrinkled cloth. You know that wrinkled cloth?”

He caught the waiter’s eye and gestured. The man brought two more drinks. Lyle felt a strange desolation pass over him. They sat awhile in silence. He watched a man at the bar put a partially melted ice cube in his mouth.

“This is my last,” Rosemary said.

“If it’s too strong, I’ll get him to take it back.”

“I don’t think it will be.”

“Cigarette?”

“I just finished but all right.”

“How did you get your job, this one, if I can ask?”

“This girl I used to know’s brother.”

“She was with the firm, or he was, I guess.”

“He used to be in the stock market but not our company.”

“Maybe I know him.”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“What’s his name?”

“George Sedbauer.”

“You see me pause,” he said. “That’s the guy got shot.”

“I know.”

“His sister was a friend of yours and you met George through her and then he more or less recommended you or gave your name to someone.”

“He told me who to see and all.”

“Did you know him well? I didn’t know him at all but a friend of mine knew him and we talked about it after it happened, Frank McKechnie, in this bar right there.”

“I met him at a party type thing. We were introduced. His sister Janet. He was very nice. I used to laugh.”

“How long ago was this?”

“Two years? I don’t know.”

“But you had time to get to know him fairly well.”

“I liked his macabre humor,” she said. “George could be very macabre.”

Briefly he envied Sedbauer, dead or not. He always envied men who’d done something to impress a woman. He didn’t like hearing women mention another man favorably, even if he didn’t know the man, or if the man was disfigured, living in the Amazon Basin, or dead. She turned her head to exhale. The waiter came out of the kitchen, talking.

“What about something to eat? I’d like to hear more. We can go somewhere decent. I just thought this place was convenient and not the big cocktail hour with huge swarms.”

“I can’t stay.”

“Another drink then.”

“This one’s full.”

“I’d like to hear more, really.”

“About what?”

“You, I guess. I think it’s interesting you knew Sedbauer. I was a few yards from the body when I guess he died. The man who did it was George’s guest that day. Did you know that?”

“Yes.”

“I think it’s interesting. I wonder what happened between them. George was in trouble with the Board, you know. Did you know that? The Exchange Board of Directors. George was apparently a little this way and that. Not quite your run-of-the-mill dues-paying member. I wonder what he was doing with this guy wearing a guest badge and carrying a gun. We go through all those days not questioning. It’s all so organized. Even the noise is organized. I’d like to question a little bit, to ask what this is, what that is, where we are, whose life am I leading and why. It was a starter’s pistol, adapted. Did you know that?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, she said. You are well informed, he exclaimed. Where is the check, they inquired.”

She smiled a bit at that. Progress, he thought. It wasn’t macabre, perhaps, but it had a little something all its own.

Pammy was writing a direct-mail piece on the subjects of sorrow and death. The point was to get people to send for a Grief Management brochure entitled “It Ends For Him On The Day He Dies—But You Have To Face Tomorrow.” The brochure
elaborated on death, defined the study known as grief management and offered a detailed summary of the company’s programs (“Let Professionals Help You Cope”) and a listing of regional offices. It cost a dollar.

Pammy had written the brochure months earlier. Ethan, in one of his moments of feigned grandeur, had called it “a classic of dispassion and tact.” There were others in the office who considered it too “nuts-and-boltsy,” like a four-page insert for radio condensers in some dealer publication.

“Death is a religious experience,” Ethan had said. “It is also nuts-and-boltsy. Something fails to work, you die. A demonstrable consequence.”

In a context in which every phrase can take on horribly comic significance, she thought she’d done well. Her job, in the main, was a joke, as was the environment in which she carried it out. But she was proud of that brochure. She’d maintained a sensible tone. There was a fact in nearly every sentence. She hadn’t let them print on tint. If people wanted to merchandise anguish and death, and if others wished to have their suffering managed for them, everybody could at least go about it with a measure of discretion and taste.

“Say it, say it.”

“Maine.”

“Again,” he said. “Please, now, hurry, God, mercy.”

“Maine,” she said. “Maine.”

There was activity on the floor. Lyle left post 5 and stopped at the Bell teleprinter. A young male carrier went by, blond shoulder-length hair. Lyle pressed the E key, then GM. Feed him to Ethan. Paper slid along the floor before settling. There was a second level of noise, very brief, a clubhouse cheer. He
stepped back to get a look at the visitors’ gallery. Attractive woman standing behind the bulletproof glass. He looked at the print-out as he walked back to his booth. Range for the day. Numbers clicked onto the enunciator board. Eat, eat. Shit, eat, shit. Feed her to us in decimals. Aggress, enfoul, decrete. Eat, eat, eat.

He went to the smoking area, where he saw Frank McKechnie standing at the edge of a noisy group, biting skin from his thumb. Lyle isolated two members of the group and began doing a routine from a comedy record he’d recently bought. It was something he felt he did particularly well. It suited his careful stance, the neutral way his eyes recorded an audience. He could read their delight at his self-containment, the incongruity of enclosed humor. They began to lean. They actually watched his lips. When a third member of the group edged in, drawn by the laughter, Lyle ended prematurely and went over to McKechnie, who looked off into the smoke that rose above the gathering.

“So where are we?”

“Who knows?”

“We’re inside,” Lyle said.

“That’s for sure.”

“It’s obvious.”

“It’s obvious because if we were outside the cars would be climbing up my back.”

“The outside world.”

“That’s it,” McKechnie said. “Things that happen and you’re helpless. All you can do is wait for how bad.”

Lyle didn’t know exactly what they were talking about. He exchanged this kind of dialogue with McKechnie often. He’d watch his friend carefully throughout. McKechnie seemed to take it seriously. He gave the impression he knew what they were talking about.

“I want to ask you about this man who shot Sedbauer.”

“Huge page in today’s paper.”

“Sedbauer’s guest.”

McKechnie made a motion with his thumb and index finger, indicating a headline.

“Mystery of Stock Exchange Murder Unraveling Slowly.”

“So far I like it.”

“Gunman, obscure background, dum dum dum, carrying, get this, a bomb on his person, dum dum. Suspected terrorist network. Confusion over identity. Links being sought, dumdy dum. The guy refuses to talk, see a lawyer or leave his cell.”

“He had a bomb
when
on his person?”

“When he was caught. After he shot George. He was standing right over there. A miniature explosive package. I quote.”

“Nice.”

“Where are we, Lyle, as you put it so beautifully yourself?”

“We’re inside.”

“Where do we want to be?”

“Inside.”

“Those both are right answers.”

“I prepared.”

“Wait and see how bad,” McKechnie said. “That’s all you can do. I’m getting ready to raise the barricades. There’s a serious health problem in the family. There’s my brother piling up gambling debts and making midnight phone calls complete with whispering and little sobs. Bookies, loan sharks, threats. Very educational. Interest compounded hourly. Then there’s my oldest, who has a hearing problem to begin with and now out of nowhere who’s found sitting on the floor in his room just staring at the wall. Twice last week. Has trouble moving his arms. Doesn’t want to talk. He’s too young to take drugs. It’s not drugs. We had him to the doctor. They did these scans they do. Nothing definite. So now we’re thinking of a shrink for kids. Did you ever feel you were in a vise? I walk around thinking what happened.”

“Let’s try to have lunch next week.”

McKechnie reduced his cigarette butt to a speck of tobacco and a speck of paper. He dropped these on the floor. Then he jumped about a foot in the air, landing on the specks.

“Enjoy that?”

“Very advanced,” Lyle said.

“I used to be better. You should have seen me.”

“It’s something you couldn’t do in the outside world. They’d point and say ya ya.”

“Why don’t we have lunch right now as a matter of fact? We’ll go upstairs.”

“I don’t eat up there anymore.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know, Frank.”

“There has to be a reason.”

“I suppose.”

“You don’t know what it is.”

“I just haven’t been up there in a while.”

“Lyle, I’m not exactly a promoter of tight-ass social customs. I don’t have decanters full of sherry that I wheel out for my guests with their Bentleys parked outside. But there’s nothing wrong with eating at the Exchange. It’s halfway civilized and that’s something.”

“It’s inside.”

“It’s inside, right. It’s convenient, it’s quick, it’s good, it’s nice and it’s halfway fucking gracious, which is no small feat these days. So stop being stupid. You’re talking like a jerk.”

“No pissa me off, Frank.”

Pammy had dinner with Ethan and Jack. They went to a place in SoHo. She was excited. Dinner out. Somewhere in her waking awareness there were glints of anticipation whenever Ethan and Jack walked into a room or when she picked up the ringing phone and it was one of them on the other end. Most people in her life were dispiriting presences. She looked forward to being with these two. If Ethan ever left his job, she’d sink into stupor and mutism.

The restaurant was full of hanging plants. A young woman arrived with the wine, telling them their food order would be delayed.

“There’s a smoky fire in the basement right now. The kitchen staff is down there arguing over whether or not they want to pee on it. I opted out, unless they rig a swing, I told them. Distance is not my thing. There’s Peter Hearn the conceptualist
and his dog Alfalfa. I can never uncork without rupturing myself in the worst places, unless you don’t consider sex important. Do you ever see how they uncork, with the knees? I’m sorry but I refuse to do that. It’s degrading. I give a little bend, which is gruesome enough. More than that, forget about, you’ll have to go somewhere else.”

They started on the wine. Smoke seeped into the main room but nobody left. There was no food being served. Everybody felt obliged to crack jokes and to drink a little faster than usual. A situation such as this could not be allowed to evolve without comic remarks and a trace of sophisticated hysteria, Ethan’s mouth slid gradually into a secret grin. A woman at the other end of the room coughed and waved a handkerchief. Jack took the empty wine bottle to the waitress, who returned eventually with another, which Jack opened. Pammy wondered if her face was blotched. Wine did that. The man with the coughing woman ordered another round. Another man came out of the basement and began carrying plants out the front door. A two-inch needle, a sect ornament of some kind, was embedded in the flesh beneath his lower lip, pointing downward, its angle of entry about forty-five degrees. Jack hit the table and looked away, trying to suppress his laughter. The man left plants on the sidewalk and came back in for more. Wine squirted out of Jack’s mouth. The room was filling with smoke. There was noise in the street, then wide beams of interweaving light. About ten firemen walked in. Pammy started to laugh, chewing at the air, her face blazing and clear, transcendently sane in this rose-stone glow. The firemen waddled around, bumping into each other. Ethan finished off another glass. The room seemed physically diminished by their
entrance. They were outsized in helmets and boots, stepping heavily, lifting themselves like men on skis. Pammy couldn’t stop laughing. The firemen cleared the place, slowly. Everybody was coughing, bottles and glasses in their hands. They trooped out, disappointed at the lack of applause.