Being Invisible

by Thomas Berger

  “Mary Alice, Fred Wagner.”

  “That’s a coincidence. I was just over here looking for you, Fred.”

  “Well, yes, I’m ill, Mary Alice, much too ill to get in there today: headache, fever, and so on—”

  “Vomiting, diarrhea?” asked Mary Alice.

  She could always provoke a wince. “No, no, not that.” Even though his plea was designed to be forwarded to Jackie Grinzing, Wagner could not resort to ugliness. “Double vision, and my head is throbbing with each word I speak. Tell Jackie for me, will you please? Her phone was busy last time I tried. I can’t keep calling. I have to try to get out now and see my doctor.” He added the last note to forestall Jackie’s trying to reach him as soon as she received the news.

  “Sure,” said Mary Alice. “I’m really sorry, Fred. I hope you feel better soon. I’d volunteer to write your copy today, but in fact I’m having a lot of trouble with my own and wanted your help—which is how I happened to be in your vicinity.” She would have talked more, and despite the banality of the subject, Wagner might have hung on awhile, for Mary Alice’s telephone voice was very gentle, even sweet, qualities that struck just the right note for him at the moment, but he could hardly stay on the line interminably and sustain the simulation of illness. He therefore produced a groaning thanks and hung up.

  The call he expected from Jackie, however, was not quick in coming. Therefore he did not dare fall asleep, for if the telephone rang while he was unconscious he was likely, with his instinctive tendency to respond to the peremptory summons of a bell, to pick up the instrument. He could not have held his own with Jackie in the ensuing exchange. There was no precedent for his claiming to a sudden indisposition: in six years he had never before been sufficiently ill to stay home from work. To make a performance believable now he must be incommunicado all day. Then, on his return the following morning, he would have to bring along a supporting document from a doctor, say an illegible prescription for a placebo, which could be easily obtained from his physician, a hurried practitioner who was never offended by the simple disorders that could be treated by capsule.

  However, he could not call Dr. Leprak’s office at a time when Jackie Grinzing might be trying to get through: a busy signal would nullify his alibi. There was nothing for it but to beg admittance at Leprak’s office after 1 P.M., if the doctor’s schedule remained the same as it had been during the previous year, when Babe had visited him several times with regard to a menstrual irregularity that proceeded to correct itself as soon as she proved to be nongravid. Wagner could not see what was so deplorable about having a child, though true enough he would not have been the one who bore it.

  Until Jackie called, he had a morning to kill in another fashion than by sleeping. It would have been too easy to regret having destroyed the manuscript of his novel: good taste forbade him that bogus emotion. The story he had been trying to tell therein was essentially an autobiographical account of the period between the onset of the illness that kept his mother an invalid for many months and her death. What was wrong with this for purposes of fiction was that it had already taken place in time: to write about it was either to be a reporter or a liar, in either of which roles he would have felt as though he were corrupting private histories. Yet he had little gift for impersonal literary invention: he could not put himself inside supposititious skins, feel the heartbeats of fancy as if they represented the circulation of his own blood. ... Invisibility was his proper medium.

  Wagner arrived at this conclusion while in a state of somnolence, not fully conscious but not asleep either. Indeed it was the same state in which, utilizing the flashlight-pen, he had scrawled out those incoherent dream-thoughts. But this one survived his full awakening, perhaps was what had awakened him.

  He stayed awake when he heard the sounds of an incursion into the outer room of the apartment. It was someone bold and by no means stealthy, no doubt Glen the super or a professional admitted under his auspices: the roach-exterminator or perhaps a plumber in quest of the origin of the water that dripped mysteriously onto a lower floor. If such people appeared at times on Saturday, surely it was standard for them to work on weekdays: an apartment could never be considered one’s castle, especially with an attendant functionary like Glen.

  Wagner was somewhat annoyed now—perhaps irresponsibly so, for his own well-being might not be immune to some general menace like escaping gas—but certainly not apprehensive about burglars, Babe having taken with her the few objects of value they had possessed, including the miniature TV with the postcard-sized screen, the little netsuke baboon brought back by her father after a sabbatical in Japan, and a pair of sterling asparagus tongs, for all these had been her own before marriage. However, Wagner did not relish being seen, even by a janitor or a man whose job took him elbow-deep into toilets, in the disreputable nightclothes he had been wearing probably ever since Babe’s departure, having no memory of recent alternatives: pale-blue sleeveless summer-pajama coat, stained with coffee and yolk of egg, worn above the jockey drawers of daytime service. The latter were changed occasionally and worn on a body that was often bathed, but in Wagner’s solitary existence the pajama top was one of those things to which he was blind except at such a moment as this.

  He could have sprung up and found a robe, even quickly pulled on pants and dropped a shirt over his head. But why bother? It was easier, and for that matter more amusing, to become invisible. His intention was sooner or later to wander out and, unseen, identify the purpose of his visitor, should the repair or adjustment, if such it was, leave more problems than it had answered, or if the roach poison had been distributed near an open box of cornflakes.

  He inserted his feet into the rubber sandals that served as bedroom slippers and shuffled into the living room. Glen the super was there all right, but it was unlikely that his companion had a role in the maintenance of the building: the sluttish teenaged Todvik girl sprawl-sat on one element of the modular sofa, a cigarette drooping from her sticky red lips.

  “You fucker you,” she was saying to Glen, who stood before her in his dark-green super’s clothes, “how much you really holding back for yourself?” When she moved her head the dependent ash on her cigarette almost let go but not quite.

  “Be careful with that smoke,” Glen said, putting out a dirty palm as ashtray. “I earn my money: I always got to pick up after you. You won’t flush the toilet, and I’ve found used rubbers on the bedside rug.” He made a face. “Yuck.”

  She tapped the ash into his hand. He went to the kitchen and could be heard running the water, presumably flushing his palm. When he returned he brought a fragment of aluminum foil. After fashioning it into a little receptacle, he presented it to Miss Todvik.

  She made a face at him. “Where is the old bastard?”

  “Probably got detained at his place of business.”

  “He must make a fortune selling furniture,” said the Todvik girl. “And he can only pay twenty-five?”

  Glen shrugged. “Well, business ain’t so good at the moment.”

  “Naw,” said she. “The truth is you’re a lying prick. He probably paid you fifty, and you’re taking as much for pimping as I get for doing the dirty work.”

  “Now, come on,” said Glen. He looked genuinely hurt, but was probably acting. “I don’t see you getting off your big fat lazy ass and hustling for yourself, and you’re not the kind to join the stable of some nigger with a white suit and a Cadillac and get the shit kicked out of you if you don’t hand all your earnings over. So quit complaining. You can’t say I don’t bring you clean, respectable guys.”

  She grimaced. “If there’s anything uglier than a potbellied old man, I don’t know what it could be.”

  “How about an old woman?” the super asked resentfully. “I’d hate to see you in a couple years. Your tits will be hanging to your knees.”

  She shook her head. “What can you expect from a faggot?” She got up. Glen was right: she did seem awfully flabby for such a young woman.
She swaggered across to the Early American dry sink that served as liquor cabinet and swung open its doors. “Doesn’t that stingy asshole ever buy a bottle of anything?”

  “Cunt!” cried Glen. “I’m not queer. I’m getting into half the broads in this building, and you know it. If you don’t think Kinney is paying you enough, then gimme back the money and get out. I’ll find him somebody better-looking, which won’t be hard.”

  “You mean you’ll blow him yourself,” said Miss Todvik, trying simultaneously to slam shut both parts of the double door, but the compression of the internal air prevented this from happening, and she kicked the panel on the right.

  “Goddammit, didn’t I just say be careful?” shouted Glen.

  “Wagner ain’t going to notice. He went around in a dream even before his old lady walked out. I practically rubbed against his dick one time on the elevator, and he never got the idea. No wonder she left.”

  “Good riddance,” said Glen. “She had too high an opinion of herself.”

  “You mean she wasn’t one of the ones you were balling?” asked the Todvik girl, and added with heavy irony, “According to yourself, that is.”

  Glen was stung. He pursed his thin lips and said, “Oh, yeah, let me tell you something.”

  Wagner moved between them, intending to kick him savagely in the groin if he proceeded to stain Babe’s name. But at that moment the two-toned chime of the doorbell was heard.

  “Get in the bedroom and in the sack,” Glen said in a loud whisper. “If he sees you undressing, he’ll think you’re thirty years old. And put out that motherfucking cigarette.”

  She stuck out her tongue at him, gave him the red-smeared, smoldering butt and the foil ashtray, and went towards the bedroom with an exaggerated, hip-swinging walk.

  Wagner had to leap aside, or Glen would have collided with him on the route to answer the chime. The super opened the door on a man who in addition to being the old and protuberant-waisted specimen the girl had foreseen, was also baggy-eyed and pouchy-throated.

  While stepping across the threshold he asked, “And the young lady? Has she arrived?” He removed his felt hat and held it respectfully against the chest of his topcoat.

  “Don’t you worry about that,” Glen said. He jerked a green shoulder in the direction of the bedroom. “She’s waiting for you, hot as a firecracker.”

  The comment did not please the old man. He frowned. “She’s just a young girl like you promised? I didn’t pay you no hundred bucks for some worn-out old bag from off the street.”

  Glen put a finger to his own lips and lowered his voice. “Let’s not talk business details now, Mr. Kinney. Get in there and go to town. She’s just a little schoolkid.”

  The only attractive expression available to a man of Kinney’s age was the paternal, but in reaction to Glen’s promise his was hardly that. He all but showed his tongue as he hastened down the short hallway and into the bedroom.

  Wagner followed in stupefied horror: he had no idea of what to do.

  The Todvik girl had moved quickly. Her clothes were in a heap on the bedside chair, and she was sitting up in bed, propped by both Babe’s pillow and Wagner’s, the sheets and blankets lately vacated by Wagner drawn up to just below her large, spongy breasts. Though having surrendered the cigarette to Glen, she already had another in her sticky mouth. She now withdrew it so as, with lips in fake-prudish compression, mockingly to chide her superannuated customer.

  “Why, Mr. Kinney! Ain’t you the dirty old man!”

  Kinney stopped just inside the doorway, still in his overcoat and holding his hat as if during the unfurling of the flag.

  “Polly Todvik,” said he, with a disapproval of his own, and not sounding as though it were mock, “what are you doing, smoking like that, at your age? I should tell your daddy!”

  Polly shrieked more in amusement than in indignation, “Why, you old fuck you!”

  Kinney shouted, spraying spittle, “Me? I come here to measure for the new bedroom set, you dirty little pig-girl.” He whipped a tape measure from the pocket of his coat. “Filthy little hoor, don’t you stick your naked boobies out at me! You cover up, you little tramp, and take away the smoke from out your mouth.” He was thrusting a forefinger at her now, jabbing the air to make repeated points.

  Glen ran in from the living room, Wagner stepping aside just in time. “Why you giving Mr. Kinney trouble?” he shouted at Polly. “Sorry, Mr. Kinney.” He turned solicitously to the old furniture merchant. “You just go ahead and get your clothes off. She’ll do what she’s told. She’s just being temperamental, you know? She’s just a dumb kid.”

  Kinney’s face was colorless, except for his lips, which looked blue. “Oh, yeah?” he shouted. “What you got going here for yourself, you criminal, a hoorhouse? I only come about some furniture. You think you can shake me down, you two pieces of turd? I’ll see you in jail!” The hand holding the hat was now crushing it against his heaving left breast. He was gasping for breath.

  “Jesus sake,” cried Glen. “You having a heart attack?” He called to Polly, “C’mon, we got to get him outside before he dies here.”

  She sprang naked from bed to take Kinney’s left arm, or rather to try to pry it away from his chest, for the old man resisted her strenuously.

  Wagner moved to stamp out the burning cigarette Polly had dropped on the rug.

  Glen was shouting in Kinney’s face, “You got pills?”

  Kinney’s response was a munching movement, which was eventually proved to be a gathering of saliva when he spat into Glen’s face.

  “Shit,” said the super, “now he’s frothing at the mouth.” He leaned over and wiped his cheek on Kinney’s shoulder, then sought to take the old man’s other arm.

  But the merchant pulled it free and slapped the side of Polly’s head. “Get off’n me, you dirty slut.”

  Glen was still obsessed with the need to remove Kinney from the premises. “We got to get him inna hall. Then he could of died for any reason. Nothing to connect him with us.”

  “He ain’t dying,” screamed Polly. “He’s beating me up.” She kicked Kinney with her bare foot. “You old cocksucker!”

  “Are you insane?” shouted Glen. “Going to kill him here?” He was trying without success to draw Kinney out the bedroom door, but whether or not the old man was dying, he was not cooperating in the effort. Indeed, he was fighting more savagely than ever.

  Wagner feared that at any moment now someone might damage what was left of his possessions. Of course at this point he could have made what would seem to be a supernatural intervention: could have said something from thin air, taken them one by one by the scruff of the neck and the seat of the pants in a frog-march to the front door, for though Glen was young and fit, Wagner would have had an advantage that might have stunned a giant. But he was not yet ready so to challenge the natural state of affairs, and anyway the purpose here was to get rid of all three intruders in the neatest and most decisive manner, not to provide further complications that might, by inspiring wonder, delay the general exit.

  The problem was one for which Wagner could find no help in experience. All the same, in a trice he had let himself silently out of the apartment into the hallway, where he banged on his own door and in a simulated voice of loud and heavy authority, cried, “This is the police. You in there, quiet down.”

  After a moment Glen answered. “Sorry, officer. We was just arguin’ about furniture.”

  “Just keep it down,” said Wagner.

  When enough time had elapsed for the policeman to have left, the door opened to emit Kinney, who appeared to have recovered to the degree that he could leave under his own power. He continued to shake his hatted head and murmur bitterly as he went down the hall to the elevator.

  Wagner had caught the door before it closed and slipped in. Glen and a fully dressed Polly stood nearby.

  “You stupid cunt,” Glen was saying. “Whyn’t you tell me you knew the old bastard so well?”

&n
bsp; “What difference would that of made?” she asked indignantly. “He wanted a young girl. So he recognized the one he got! I used to play on the sidewalk outside his store when I was a little kid.”

  Glen scowled at her. “You don’t have any feelings at all. Something’s wrong with you.”

  “I’m not a fucking crook like you,” Polly said. “That was more than five bucks you added to my money when we gave it back.”

  “Yeah, well, the pity was we had to give him a refund.” He threw his thumb at the door. “Go ahead, you first.”

  “I wouldn’t have returned the money, it been up to me,” she said. “He wasn’t in no position to tell, with what we got on him, looking for a young girl to ball.”

  “What you don’t know is he gives cops a discount on furniture. He could put them onto us, see, and who’d they believe?”

  Polly cocked her hip and slapped the substantial right buttock. “You don’t think a cop’d like some of this?”

  “Get going,” Glen said with disgust. “You got an exaggerated idea of your charms. Cops can fuck anybody they want.”

  He waited until a few minutes after Polly’s departure to make his own. After Glen had left, Wagner went on a tour of inspection and found that the bed had been neatly remade and the cigarette butt removed from the rug, leaving only a little place of charring. This cleanup was not however sufficient to mollify him. Glen had obviously made previous use of the apartment as a brothel, perhaps even while Babe lived there. And what was perhaps worse, the wretched super knew very well, as did the sluttish Polly, that the Wagners were separated, and if Glen knew, so did the entire body of tenants, which among other things meant that the comment of Max the doorman, the evening before, had been not innocent but knowingly malicious.

  Indeed it must be the case that he was being secretly jeered at by many, including the attractive young women whom simply as a matter of male pride he especially did not want privy to his shame, Ellen Mackintosh and Debbie Fong.