OPUS 21

by Philip Wylie

"Hattie Blaine's," I replied, after thinking it over.

  He looked out the window and shook his head. "Jesus!"

  I sketched in a little. The men listened.

  Black said, "I could send a cruise car up for her--and get her back here--"

  I shook my head. "I suspect--he'd bail out for sure, then. His life plan was based on the idea that what she had been--would be rubbed out. Forgotten. If you understand.

  But she went back to work."

  "The higher they are the harder they fall!" Black was grimly amused at the accuracy of the cliché.

  And the younger cop said, "It isn't possible to be smart all ways at once, is it?"

  "What do we do?" I asked.

  He looked at me some more. "Take a shower and put on dry clothes, Mr. Wylie.

  We'll figure for a while. These things can last hours."

  I did that.

  They didn't figure much.

  "The best we can do," Black informed me, "is to get set up there on the roof. The angle's bad--but we have two good men. If he shows signs of definitely going, we'll take a chance and try to rope him."

  They'd been out on the narrow terrace, talking to him. The young cop was fascinated. "He told us that he was working out a personal problem against a background germane to the problem and equivalent to the other stresses of his life. Something like that. What the hell does 'germane' mean?"

  "Appropriate," I said. It was near enough. "When those double-domes go nuts--

  they still keep talking in their double-dome lingo."

  "The nut," I said, "never realizes he's nutty. He thinks you are. That's why there're so many of them."

  The cop nodded. "I'd say--the majority of people, sometimes." He shrugged. "I guess when you get into the atom-bomb class of brains, you get pretty chinchy everywhere else."

  I shook my head. "The fact is otherwise. The brighter they are--the less likely they are to pull one like this. Only--they still do, occasionally."

  Captain Black absently tossed his smoking cigar butt into the artificial fireplace and stepped over the windowsill. We could hear him, down the terrace, talking to Paul--

  but not the words.

  "He got a family we could send for? Anything like that?" the young cop asked.

  I shook my head. "His mother died--not by what's called suicide, but by the psychological means that amounted to the same thing. He's a case of a dame-starved kid growing up with too much emphasis on dames and too little knowledge about what they're really like."

  The cop gazed at me with a different speculation. "Tough for you."

  "I can stand it. I like him. It makes me angry. And it's--embarrassing."

  ' I'll say."

  Time passed.

  "They ought to have a gadget!" I talked to pass more time. "Something that they could shoot at a man on such a spot. A light, large net discharged by a Very pistol--

  maybe--that went too fast to duck and tangled you all up."

  The cop wiggled his chin affirmatively. "The number of good, practical ideas buried in Headquarters runs to thousands."

  Captain Black came in. "No dice."

  Then Dave Berne arrived.

  His eyes were the same faithful blue, but unnaturally vivid. He patted my back and shook hands with Black, whom he knew. He stood in the room a moment, peeling off a light-weight jacket and looking at the yellow roses. Then he went over and leaned out the window.

  "Hi, Paul!"

  "Et tu?" Paul called back.

  Dave chuckled. "You've got quite a crowd down there. Had trouble pushing through!" He pulled his head back and said to us, "What gives?"

  We told him such plans as existed.

  Dave listened and smelled the flowers and moved his eyes to whoever was talking. Finally we'd finished and he grinned. "Well," he said, sighing a little, "let's go and get the damned fool in."

  He went and I went after him and the others stayed, peering into the fading light.

  Dave whispered to me to hang back a little and I did and he moved on along the parapet till he came to a point just out of range. Paul was watching him with a wary, scornful expression. Dave leaned over the parapet and looked down--and Paul took a look, too.

  "Funny," Dave said. "All those yokels. I suppose most of 'em will go along home pretty soon. Suppertime. And soon be too dark to see the fun, anyhow. But some of 'em would hang around all night--even though the street is a God-damned stove-top. Waiting.

  Waiting and hoping. Hoping. Imagine it! Hoping to see a human being come sixteen stories in slow somersaults. Hoping to see him hit and spatter. Hoping his feet will burst and his shoes will fly off--the way they do, sometimes. Hoping they'll be a Christ-to-be-Jesus big puddle of blood to tell the family about--and blood spattered up to the second story. And a dent in the sidewalk. What the hell is wrong with a bunch of yahoos that'll stand around for hours on account of a hope like that?"

  "Very graphic," Paul said.

  Dave took a long look, then, at the surrounding roofs--the vertical rows of windows, some now electrically lighted, and some flared with the last copper rays of a sun that was going down in Jersey behind the Orange Mountains where I used to make field maps when I was a Boy Scout. He took still another look at the blue-powder sky, drew one deep breath, and hopped lightly up astride the parapet.

  Paul was startled.

  So was I.

  And so were the cops. They yelled, "Hey!"

  Dave made a "cease-fire" gesture behind his back. He inched along the parapet toward Paul, a ways. "You're going inside in a bit, son," he said quietly. "I haven't decided. And don't rush me."

  "But you will. Look, Paul. You know me--pretty well. And you know a good deal about me. From Phil. So listen. I'm a no-account yid bastard who never got--and will never get--a fair shot at using the ability he thinks he has. All I can do is outsmart other corporation lawyers--and get paid big dough for it."

  Paul said sneeringly, "If you want to start a self-pity contest--"

  "Nope. I was thinking about something else. Pride. Real pride. Things to be proud of. One's you. You weren't born behind any eight-ball. You've got ten times the brains of Phil, here, and me put together. You're in there fighting. And you're a guy--one of the guys who run about three in a hundred--who can look at a yid like me and not see that two thousand year old, imaginary eight-ball. I appreciate that. I'm proud some people can be like that."

  "Don't be childish."

  ' I'm not. I'm just pointing out that--potentially--you're valuable. I have no value.

  You--and the guys like you--can probably figure out the stuff we need to go on fighting for freedom. You can probably lick the new tyranny, and maybe even without carving holes in the country and paying out the best young blood. And then we'll have a chance to go on with the liberty scrap. That's what you can do. It means a lot to guys like me--who never had a chance to draw one free-and-equal breath in his life. Not you as a person.

  You as ideas. So all right. That's that. Maybe you hate your job. Maybe it's a wrong thing.

  Maybe all the world has left, for now, is a choice among wrong ways. Personally--if that's so--I take our choice. America's. I'm no Stephen Decatur--but that's how my feelings go."

  "If you don't mind," Paul said, "I'd just as soon be spared the patriotic harangue."

  "Sure. I'm through. And you're coming in, soon, now." Dave let go of the ledge, pulled back his shirt sleeve, and peered at his wrist watch. "You're coming in--or I'm bailing out. In five minutes, Paul, my son, if you don't get off--I take off."

  I was listening to Dave's voice and a terrible fear possessed me. But Paul heard only the shouting of agony within himself. "Wiseguy," he said.

  Dave smiled a slow, gentle smile. "Wiseguy? Maybe so. But how long this wiseguy lives--is up to you, now."

  "Do you think I believe you? Do you think I'm so stupid?"

  "I mean it." Dave looked up from his watch and his eyes fixed on Paul. ''I'm not kidding, son."

  I could see the colo
r change in Paul's cheeks. He'd been pale. He became ghostly.

  He locked eyes with Dave Berne.

  The slightest stir moved the hot, early-evening air.

  People sat at windows and on roofs; people stood in penthouse gardens with highballs and binoculars, enjoying the sensation, making a new ritual of it. A flashbulb blazed lip and died in the instant, on a setback, across and down the street, where some news cameraman with a telephoto lens was getting a shot for his tabloid.

  "I have," Dave said quietly, "about two hundred seconds left."

  "What a cheap thing to do!" Paul spoke harshly.

  Dave smiled even more and he nodded. "It's all I have--my life. Cheap--I said so."

  Paul stood up.

  It was horrifying. He'd been sitting that long while. His arms were cramped. His legs must have been asleep. He tottered to his feet, rocked on, the near-motionless air, careened his arms, stamped, glanced down with a round and dreadful focus of his eyes, caught his balance, and looked triumphantly at Dave.

  "You're kind of forcing my hand," he said.

  Dave stood up, too, then--very quickly, and without tottering. Stood up--and looked at his watch. "I mean, too, of course, Paul, that if you go--I'll also go. I'll try for you--and standing, like this--we'll go together. You see--you have no choice but to go in, or take me along. And there's only about a minute left."

  I went closer. "Dave, for the love of God!" My voice was a cackle. "If this thing has to be gone through with--I'm the guy. After all, Dave--I've only got a little bit left anyhow! Get down, for Christ's sake--and let me get up--"

  Dave hardly glanced at me. "Be quiet, Phil. Stay where you are." He turned again to look at Paul.

  And there they stood, swaying slightly, their eyes, their wills fastened together in conflict over the simple stake of life and of death. They defied each other--against the pale-blue heat of the evening sky. A murmur came up from the street, a muddled sob, as the watchers noted the change of position, the new precariousness, and sensed the imminence of climax. The sound boiled and grew and beat the bricks all the way up from the infested thoroughfare.

  "Half a minute," Dave said, above the susurration.

  I couldn't move.

  Paul couldn't tear away his eyes from Dave: each instant stood alone and almost still. "Ten seconds," Dave said. And he turned around--facing nothing--to jump.

  A great cry escaped Paul.

  He toppled on the terrace--and passed out.

  Dave about-faced and stepped down lightly.

  11

  It was twenty-one o'clock, which is to say, nine that evening.

  Dave had eaten dinner with me and gone off to another meeting of his maestros.

  To look, he said, for the silver lining of the silver screen.

  Not even mentioning Paul.

  Not seeming to be affected.

  Paul was in a hospital.

  A private hospital. The cops had wanted to send him to Bellevue for observation.

  But Dave had persuaded them and arranged to have my nephew taken on a stretcher down the service elevator and transported by ambulance to a safe place.

  I'd called Ricky and told her about it. Told her again that I'd be back in Buffalo by the following evening, in all likelihood.

  And I'd called Karen, my daughter, and warned her of what she would see and read when the morning papers reached her country doorstep in Connecticut.

  Nine o'clock.

  The next day would be Monday.

  I waited.

  Dr. Adams was late. The charred cigarettes piled up.

  At last, he phoned from the lobby.

  Come up.

  One of those psychiatrists about whom interviewers write: . . . nothing of the abnormal about him; he would be mistaken anywhere for a successful businessman . . .

  Because Dr. Adams took considerable pains to look exactly like a successful American businessman who would be mistaken anywhere.

  dark, chalk-striped suit, polished brown brogues, foulard tie, fifty-one years old, seventy-one inches high, a hundred and seventy-one pounds, heavy horn-rims in his breast pocket with the Parker 51, smoothly brushed iron-gray hair, smoothly brushed iron-gray eyebrows, smoothly unbrushed iron-gray eyes, the outdoor complexion that is imperative for indoor men of distinction, and the prize already awarded for filling in the last line of the limerick:

  Healthy, wealthy and wise. You couldn't help liking him if you tried, and believe me, I tried. I tried because Adams (Hargrave H. P.) was the head of the private hospital where Dave had sent Paul and I wouldn't have one of those top-notch third-rate psychiatrists fooling with my nephew.

  He said he'd always wanted to meet me and I said I'd never heard of him and he laughed because he was amused, not because he laughed when he didn't know what else to do, like an American businessman.

  He sat down in one of my chairs and refused a drink and said, "Tell me all you think I ought to know about Paul."

  Three hours and several hundred questions later he left.

  Paul was going to be all right.

  Not soon--but someday when he'd learned the masochisms, sadisms, castration complexes, repressed homosexual feelings, mistaken anima identification, archetypal possessions, and other data not shown by the meters in his laboratory.

  Hargrave H. P. Adams had plenty of what it would take. I wouldn't have minded asking him some of my own questions. He had come up with a few suggestions and formulations unknown to me. . . .

  That brought the evening up past midnight.

  I felt wretched.

  You are apt to, when you think they're going to stand you against the stone wall the next morning. There were, of course, Tom's pills. I rolled them out in my hand and just looking at them gave me a fuzzy taste in my mouth so I rolled them back.

  It was one to think yourself out of.

  I went into the living room and climbed through the window and peered down into the glittering slot of Madison Avenue until, all of a sudden, I began to shake. I almost threw up before I could scramble back into the apartment.

  I sat down and stared at the sky.

  You could still see a few stars in the haze. The night was as close as a pressure cooker.

  My nausea left slowly; my shakes subsided.

  In states of this sort I usually try, if possible, to make a list of Things to Do.

  Things to Do on Sunday Night in the Big City, after the witching hour.

  One can walk the streets.

  Go to the Park.

  Read.

  Eat.

  (But not sleep.)

  One can take a sightseeing bus to Chinatown.

  The taxi dance halls are open.

  The all-night movies.

  Any of numerous friends--

  or my brother--

  would sit up and talk till morning.

  I could

  by simply lifting the telephone and dialing a number fill my apartment with assorted pretty girls.

  Or just Gwen.

  Why not?

  The image appeared

  the woman-lines, the dry-martini taste of a woman's libido Gwen's cuprous hair;

  and it was not Gwen at all

  but an image in myself.

  Who she was, I had no idea.

  But I knew

  I'd had enough of the Gwens in this world

  to last until my next reincarnation

  or, possibly,

  the second coming of Christ

  in Anno Double-Domini.

  (Tomorrow, I thought, begins

  another reincarnation)

  It was enough of a list.

  I had now collected sufficient Things to Do so as to go on sitting in my chair, which was all I desired to do: I had somewhat collected myself.

  The sky belched light.

  I leaned forward, looked, and half of the hazy stars were erased, gone, done for, hidden behind an invisible tumble of nimbus.

  My nerves let themselves down another degree.
<
br />   I went around the room, emptying an ashtray the night maid had overlooked, fixing myself a glass of hot, powdered coffee.

  And back to my chair.

  Now, across the parapet, across the well-learned silhouette of buildings opposite, the undersides of clouds were heated up. Their contours showed in brief, stammering flashes of lavender, as if they were gigantic lamps which some celestial electrician was trying to connect with a frayed cord.

  At my side, the exhausted curtain came to momentary life--then perished again in the swelter of the room.

  Gwen was an image. Whoever she was, I saw what I saw, looking from within to what lay within. Another item for Forbisher-Laroche: Why visit the fille de joie? Because she is more I than She.

  Yvonne, then?

  I gave the matter my consideration--and half an eye to the approaching weather.

  "Blow, blow, thou bitter wind

  Thou art not so unkind

  In this man's latitude."

  Hark ye, Sir Bughouse:

  You don't know anything.

  All you know about Yvonne is what you read in the newspaper advertisements.

  She is a collection of costly, streamlined surfaces.

  An accumulation from high-class department store counters.

  And a statistic from a book that has not yet been published owing, doubtless, to pressures from the Neo-Christian-Centrist-Totalitarian Rennaissance.

  Did you think she was a woman?

  She was a dream.

  An arrangement of electrons, a mess of mesons, in your cranium, Sir Spatterwit.

  There must be blah-diddie-blah-blah (statistics, pal) happy homosexual hours for housewives and houris

  ergo

  we, Wylie, have witnessed Onesuch.

  What a premise! What a casual conclusion.

  O Lydian ease!

  O languorous Lesbos!

  (O legislators!

  You left out the ladies!

  And our legally innocent Yvonne has homed to Pasadena's passes, also Healthy, wealthy and wise.)

  Must it not be assumed that blah people are happy and blah people are given to such excursions, wherefore blah per centum of the excursionists are happy?

  Certainly.

  But Yvonne?

  What is she?

  Sir Psychologist, Lord Hack, Keeper of the Happy Ending, can you not also hypothesize a hundred different valid denouements?