Searches & Seizures (39 page)

Something else was true. For the first time in his life this man, this in-his-best-moments hypochondriac who feared illness and saw mortality in the headache and the common cold, who prized experience and blessed whatever of geography he had seen for its mystery and disparateness, who honored the accomplishments of others and waited in suspense for their new inventions and next books, who melted at all kindnesses to himself as involuntarily as he grew stiff-necked at slurs—this same fellow sat on his mourner’s bench (even now taking a certain—yes—pleasure at the juxtaposition) and quite seriously, and for the first time in his life, considered suicide. At last a quick and even violent death was preferable to what he now understood he had always, if often unwittingly, endured.
He had been left out.
Jesus, it was the complaint of a kid in a schoolyard, a thing fat boys confessed to their pillows. Only that. Wallflowered by life. Left out. Not through conspiracy, as little through fault, luck of the draw in an unlucky world. Left out. Many are called but few are chosen. And some, like himself, weren’t even called. Left out. How do you goddamnit like that?

In the books he’d read and films he’d seen the characters found a parade and joined it. They bought loud clothes and a bunch of balloons. And the triumph of pure trying was satisfying, even thrilling, as all existential assertions are thrilling, as all little motions are—the cripple’s faltering step and the mute’s first word, garbled, ripped from a torn cone of throat and lovelier than an aria. Energy admirable at long range, other people’s wills and small defiances a beautiful metaphor. How he’d wept when men climbed the moon, the more impressive for its pointlessness. How impressed he’d been at apothecary measures of all strangers’ bravery, little guys’ puny resistances, Denmark’s treatment of its Jews, his father’s sideburns—all that judo of the spirit. But what did any of that come to? A life of stumble, of maimed conversation, effort a lousy substitute for results—and in the end just another compromise. Why
should
he settle; why
should
he make deals with his needs? Why
should
certain men live? There was nothing for it but to cut throats and slice wrists. To be or not to be, you schmuck. Why couldn’t he do it, then? Fear? A little, but nah. Scruples? The notion that as a suicide he would end up with even less than all those compromised cripples and mitigated heroes with their qualified lives? No, no. Why then? Because by now he had lived too long with a sense of justice, with the conviction that if you pay and pay eventually they must give you something for your money, that otherwise they would be shut down. Christ, he thought, his blood still in his veins, his brains and liver and other organs where they were supposed to be, his internals stashed away in the drawers and cupboards of his belly like things in a well-ordered household, I am religious, I am a religious man. I believe in God.

About a month after coming to Chicago he received the shipment from Missoula. When the Railway Express man came to his door, Preminger, forgetting it was he who was responsible, was very excited. Packages, boxes and cartons addressed in an unfamiliar hand still had the power to give him hope. When he saw that they contained only his own things—his books and typewriter, his small, cheap assortment of dishes, cutlery and glasses, his everyday clothes (he’d brought with him all his grand stuff, dressing for his father’s death as for a cruise)—he was disappointed and didn’t even bother to unpack it all. What had he expected? Toys? Rich gifts from mysterious admirers? There wasn’t even a letter to give him the gossip about the few people he knew in Montana, and he guessed that the sender, a graduate student who lived in the same rooming house and with whom he’d gotten drunk once or twice and gone to a few movies, must have been pretty pissed off for all the trouble he’d caused him. He had known it was an imposition and had made his request with a greater urgency than he’d felt, pleading his altered life, hinting that windfall kept him in Chicago, not so much to boast as to get his acquaintance off the dime. “Oh, and listen,” he’d said on the telephone, “don’t bother about the liquor.” (A half-bottle of Scotch, a fifth of Beefeaters still in its cellophane truss.) And told the student to keep his Activities book. (A not inconsiderable gift—about a hundred dollars’ worth of tickets for plays, concerts and football games.) But the booze and tickets had been sent as well, a sign from the West—that new life or no, he was a pain in the ass. He moved the stuff onto the bed in the second bedroom where, along with the deflated basketball and the odd game or photograph that had survived his father’s compulsive redecorating, they already seemed further vestigial artifacts of a prior life.

It was a year that the summer had its teeth in the city, the weather like a tricky currency. One watched it like the stock market. Highs in the hundreds were not uncommon. The sky was white and cloudless. There was a drought. The leaves on the trees were a golden green and rattled like gourds in the softest wind. Preminger, who’d lived in the West, sometimes looked alertly behind him when he heard this sound in the street, as if expecting snakes in the trees. People moved outside on their balconies, not because it was cooler there but to be closer to the phenomenon. It was odd to see them suspended there, on the sides of the buildings, like balloonists in baskets or a hundred teams of window washers.

One day, the first since the occasion of his public drowning, when people were sunning themselves in the chaise longues and deck chairs, Preminger went down to the pool and discovered that it was being drained. The lifeguard explained that it was always closed after Labor Day. As he stood there, the phone rang; the lifeguard excused himself, listened for a few moments and nodded. When he hung up he clapped his hands for their attention.

“That was the office,” he told them. “It seems that because of the heat a lot of the residents have been complaining about shutting down the pool. I’ve been instructed to fill her up again. They’re going to close down the other two but will keep this one open until the weather breaks.” Several people applauded. The lifeguard gestured that he had more to tell them. “Only,” he said over their enthusiasm, “only there won’t be an official Red Cross lifeguard after today, and the management says that, like always, swimming will be at your own risk, only more so. I’m supposed to fill the pool and turn my chemicals over to the Activities Committee who’ll police the pool and provide its own lifeguards.” A cheer went up, and Preminger, who’d never before been in on an eleventh-hour stay of execution, joined in.

A woman raised her hand.

“Yes, Mrs. Krozer?” the lifeguard said.

“This is the only pool that will be open?”

“That’s right. This one will service all three buildings.”

“Won’t that make it awfully crowded? What about guests?”

“Sunday rules.” On Sunday the pool was closed to guests.

Preminger raised his hand. Would they be able to swim that afternoon?

“It’s going to take a few hours to fill it up,” the lifeguard said. “Anyway, I think they mean for the committee to get squared away first. They said there’s a special session of Activities going on right now.”

When Preminger left his deck chair a couple of hours later he saw that a stack of a special mimeographed edition of
The House Organ
had been placed on one of the marble tables in the lobby. Taking one from the pile, he looked it over as he rode up in the elevator and saw that his name had been put down as one of the volunteer lifeguards.

His phone was ringing when he opened the door to his apartment.

“Hey, Montana, hot enough for you?”

“Who is this?”

“Wa’al, pardner, some folks roun’ these parts call me Harris. It’s the management his own self, stranger.”

“I was going to call you.”

“Ain’t that sumfin? Ain’t that a how-de-do?”

“I’m listed in the paper as a volunteer lifeguard.”

“Thass right, deppity.”

“Nobody asked me anything about it.”

“Mister, this yere condominium needs a lifeguard.”

“It’ll have to get someone else.”

“Rein up a sec, son. If you read that notice proper, you’d a seed that your name’s only been put in nomination. You ain’t been elected yet.”

“Elected? You
elect
the lifeguards?”

“Shoot, boy, it’s a democracy, ain’t it? Ain’t President Salmi told you?”

“This is ridiculous. No one had the right to nominate me.”

“Looks to me like a clear draft choice. Will of the pee-pul.”

“Will of the people.”

“Well, not
all
the pee-pul. Salmi dragged his feet some when he saw your name on the list Activities come up with. He’s still a mite uneasy about you since you made that speech to the Committee of Committees assembled.”

Preminger recalled his queer emotion that evening and winced. “I was very vulnerable,” he said. Then, “How did you know about that?”

“I read the minutes.”

“The minutes? There were minutes?”

“It was a duly constituted meeting. Sure there were minutes, of course there were minutes. I take an interest. I always read them. I swan, it purely tickles me what these folks are capable of.” Harris chuckled. “That last is off the record, friend.”

“Sure.”

“What’s that you say? Cain’t rightly hear you.”

“It’s off the record. I swan.”

“Much obleeged.”

“Why’d you call me?” Preminger asked.

“I told you. I take an interest.”

“I purely tickle you, too.”

“As the driven snow, buddy,” Harris said.

Preminger got the name of the Activities chairman from the lists they had left with him and dialed the number. “Dr. Luskin?”

“The dentist is with a patient. This is Dr. Luskin’s nurse, Judy. Did you want an appointment.”

“No. This is Marshall Preminger.”

“Marshall, how are you? It’s Judy Luskin. Congratulations.”

“What for?”

“I heard about your nomination for lifeguard. My sincere good wishes to you.”

“Have we met?”

“Formally not, as it turns out. But I saw you at the pool. I knew you wasn’t drownding.” The fatso. “As a matter of fact it was me who told Howard what a good swimmer you are.”

“Would you give Dr. Luskin a message for me? Would you please tell him that I don’t want the nomination and that my name should be taken off the list?”

“Have you found a job, Marshall?”

“Just tell your husband, will you please, Nurse?”

Within the hour there was another call. It was Salmi and he was very angry. “You said, ‘All that’s at issue is which committee can make the most of me.’ ‘I want to do my share,’ you said. It’s in the minutes. Well, now we know which committee can make the most of you. Activities. And you balk. Is that how you do your share?”

“I wasn’t even asked.”

“You weren’t even asked. Did you ever? He’s standing on ceremonies, a born lifeguard and he stands on ceremonies. If you saw someone drowning would you wait to be asked before you jumped in?”

“That’s not the point.”

“Would you?”

“Of course not, but—”

“I told you. A born lifeguard. The instincts of a natural life-saver.”

“You’re crazy,” Preminger said. He was unable to restrain himself. “Do you know my condition? Do you know that I’ve been contemplating suicide? That I ride buses to strange neighborhoods and eat my heart out when I see the way other people live? How do you expect me to—?”

“The buses stopped.”

“What?”

“The buses stopped. Almost two weeks now and you ain’t been on a bus. You get what you need in this neighborhood and you come home.”

“Is that in the minutes?”

“It’s a community, Preminger, we told you that. It made your eyes water when I described it. You had a hard-on from it. What do you think, in a community you’re invisible?”

“Listen, I don’t—”

“Preminger, I ain’t got time for all this. It’s a heat wave, a record-buster. Scorchers and corkers. Every day an old record falls and a new one is made. Air conditioning ain’t to be trusted. There’s a drain on the power. Brown-outs are coming. The weather people have seen nothing like it in their experience. My people need that swimming pool. They’re getting up there. Swimming’s their exercise. Dr. Paul Dudley White wants old people to go swimming, the Surgeon General does. But there’s danger. It needs supervision. The regular lifeguards go back to college. They got to come out of the pool, their lips are blue. This is a job for a young man. You’re thirty-seven. Who else is thirty-seven here? Most of us won’t see
fifty-seven
again. ‘All that’s at issue is which committee can make the most of me,’ you said. You thanked us. You wanted to put cheesecake in our mouths for coming to you. We left you our literature.

“Listen,” Salmi went on softly, “you think this can last forever? It’s a natural phenomenon. Such heat is an act of God. God gave us jungles for the heat that lasts forever, He gave us deserts for it. He didn’t put it in Chicago. It’ll break—it has to. I give it three weeks, four at the outside.” He was speaking very softly now, almost conspiratorially. “On Halloween it’ll be so cold you won’t even be able to remember it, and you can go back to your—back to your thoughts. What you were talking about. But I’ll tell you something. You won’t. You’ll have different thoughts. Better thoughts.”