The Followed Man

by Thomas Williams

  The woman being "used up" strongly suggested that the writer was a man. The avenging male—a relative, or a lover?

  And what woman? Was murder a metaphor for the using and discarding, or was actual murder meant?

  He hadn't thought of his wife at all, at first. After nineteen years of marriage she seemed, for better or worse, his wife and no other man's concern whatsoever. And she certainly hadn't been "used up." First he'd gone back, searching for the proper woman he'd "used up" or broken off with. Presumably this had to be a woman he'd wanted less than she'd wanted him. Going back, very far back, he thought of several and stopped; no way to come to any conclusions there, really. He couldn't think of any men (boys) who might have been this writer and borne such hatred.

  But did he have time for a little chill, a little fear that this semi-literate avenging angel was real? Not quite yet; maybe that chill, if it came, would be a measure of his recovery.

  But that elite typeface again: perhaps to the avenger those small letters would seem diamondlike—hard, concise, dark, deadly.

  Then, with no transition for warning, came a vision of Helen and John, and Gracie, prisoners of height in the crowded fusel­age. Now, the heaviness of the warm bourbon in his throat, came a crise in which his deepest definition of who he was fell all apart because he was in between being a husband and a father and sud­denly was an orphan, a solitary in the world, having friends but only friends, not the blood-centered, defined prisoner of his responsibilities, heavy with unavoidable love. In the middle still, fragmented like a blown cloud, he began to fall, not a cloud but pieces of a man.

  It was unbelievable to him and must be wrong, or if true it all must be undone.

  Into the irrational again, said a voice that must have been one of his own cooler voices. It was important, the voice claimed, that he hold on, right now. And also not to fall into the bottle, because drinking while unhappy was the certain way of the lost.

  All he seemed to remember of his past were the times he had wanted to be free. The first was when he and Helen had been married about three months. Helen was out shopping and he was sitting alone in the little apartment they'd had on Beacon Hill. Suddenly, out of no context at all came a cool chill down his back and the firm knowledge that he couldn't just take his passport and go alone to Paris. He was twenty-six, Helen twenty-three. She was working for a publisher of religious and philosophical books and tracts, not making very much. He was a subeditor on the house or­gan of AFEMCO, a ubiquitous corporation whose acronym he translated as the Anti-Free Enterprise Monopoly Cartel Organiza­tion, famous for price fixing, restraint of trade and fierce celebra­tion of the American Free Enterprise System.

  Okay, think of that sort of thing instead, he thought, breaking it off in the wound. Johnny was the first born. In his arms he held the hard little body, sturdy and muscular even as a baby, always wanting to climb. Three years later came Gracie, whose green eyes always looked steadily at him, seeming to ask questions long before she had words.

  But there were times he'd wanted to be free of them all. How he had misunderstood! How could the theoretical be so wrong? It was the three wishes of a fairy tale, and the first thoughtless wish had been granted. But where were the other two wishes, the ones that might undo the first illicit one? In the bottle? No, he'd found no wishes lurking there. Now it was a question of living, or not liv­ing. Wasn't the world forever new, fascinating, beautiful? It all seemed such an abstract idea, the world.

  Yes, but he was not really sympathetic to the idea that life was not worthwhile. He was breathing, wasn't he? He had some money. Some might even consider him well-off, with money in the bank, a house in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with no more than ten thousand left in the mortgage, a car one year old and another three years old, the house full of all the furniture and appliances and gadgets and toys of the middle class. Then there had been the envelope with the flight insurance policies, addressed to him in Helen's hand. Hello from the Other Kingdom, in haste, with love.

  How far had the airplane fallen; how many minutes or seconds had they known, or half-known, that something was awfully wrong? Johnny pushes his feet against the footrest under the seat ahead of him, his square hands tight on his armrests, his body straight, his stomach doing the windmill of knowledge. Gracie senses it all, and asks, asks; no one can answer. Helen reaches for Grade's hand, always to reassure, but Gracie sees that her moth­er's neck is pale, blue-veined. Helen's woman-center is cold with the anxiety that is exactly intolerable. For herself, for them. Here it comes.

  Why did human animals get so entangled in love for each other, if at the same time they insisted upon all this height and speed and the insane momentum of their uncontrollable playthings?

  Maybe he couldn't face this assignment. He would call Martin Troup and tell him he was sorry, he couldn't. But that decision looked like the entrance to a long, sloping corridor stinking of booze and self-hatred.

  He must put an end to the memory of his wish for freedom. It was not so uncommon, after all, and perhaps his guilt was a form of self-indulgence. Now he would go out of this quiet, old-fash­ioned room, down the long carpeted corridors to the old eleva­tors, then out into the high lobby, a man of indeterminate age and condition dressed in a medium-expensive gray suit of lightweight material, sturdy shoes, conservative tie—a man not to be remem­bered very clearly by anyone whose attention he might fleetingly engage. He would eat, come back and read some more about fer­roconcrete, see the television news and then go to bed and shut his eyes.

  He'd thought of walking a few blocks to a Japanese-Korean restaurant he knew, but off the lobby was a standard chophouse of the dark-interiored sort, so he went there and had a beer, a salad and a steak, then went back through the nearly empty hotel to his quiet room.

  As he read about ferroconcrete construction he experienced a strange drying of his sinuses. He didn't like ferroconcrete con­struction or the architectural forms it took. But why should he de­velop this sudden aversion that was, what? Aesthetic? No, more than that. This was an active dislike verging on hatred, and in his mind he began to review whatever he'd offhandedly learned and seen of architecture and construction in his life, all of it mixed in time and most of it, until this moment, only mildly interesting. Classical, Romanesque, Renaissance, Baroque, Beaux Arts, Bauhaus, Skyscraper, French Norman (redundant?), Modern, Organ­ic (where did that fit in?), Slum, Suburban, Colonial, Federal, Georgian, Shack, Cave, Tent, House Trailer, Holiday Inn. And the makers—Saarinen, Wright, Stone, Wren, Pei, Fuller, Sullivan, Gropius, van der Rohe, Le Corbusier—not bad; and the one who was shot by a jealous husband? Stanford White. A mishmash of half-knowledge at best, so he couldn't understand this sudden twist of hatred that made him feel as though he were trying to breathe dust.

  He put the book down and turned on the television news; all over the world the news was death.

  Sometime or other he went to sleep, because he woke up in the night and turned off the hissing television. He didn't look at his watch; he wanted no hour there, no calculation as to the long hours that might be left before he would be called at 9:00 a.m.

  Then in a little squall of something like fear he saw that a man stood over in the dark next to the closet. He froze, half-frightened and curious. Dim light from the city sky filled the two windows and came across the room in rich, thick amber.

  He had bolted the door, he knew. No door led into an adjoining room. But he must do something about that silent presence over there. He took his pillow by one corner and with a smooth, whip­ping motion sailed it across the room at the man. It flew quietly through the shadow figure, hit the wall and dropped to the floor.

  An odd confluence of shadows had created that intangible aveng­er, who was still there. Luke could almost see his eyes. For a mo­ment he believed that if he could just make out the features of that creation of shadows, they would be the features of the one who had sent him the letter.

  Stand there, then, he thought, envying the shadow-man his
guiltlessness and passion.

  Perhaps Helen was the one "used up," the one he had "mur­dered." Perhaps he should go back into her past to look for the avenger. If he wanted to look at all. Maybe when he got home another letter would be there, containing more clues. He was cer­tain the avenger would not be pleased by the lack of real fear he'd aroused in his victim, anyway. And chances were the letter was a one-shot thing, itself its only reason for being. Whatever dis­turbed person had sent it would probably go on to other aberra­tions and other targets.

  He lay in the dusty light, the night sounds of the city calling only faintly up the walls of the old canyon. There were no nearer sounds; no one seemed to occupy any of the rooms along his cor­ridor.

  In the morning he didn't know if he'd slept or not, but thought he probably had. He watched the Today Show, musing upon its en­thusiasms until the call came at nine, then got up, noting that the world didn't seem that much better without a hangover.

  The only reason he was here was to see if he could handle some­thing that would be intensely unpleasant for him. He would be studying a matter that was too close to his own despairs and griefs. There was no residue of adventurous excitement left, no pride, no infatuation with a profession most people thought exciting, or even glamorous. But he was no longer going to sit crooked and drunk and stinking, his eyes looking back into his head. Self-pity, he had always thought, was not his style.

  2.

  A few short uptown blocks away on Madison Avenue were the editorial offices of Gentleman, which occupied three floors of a building completed in 1938 in what Luke thought of as "Chrysler Air-Flow" style after a car his father had once owned. Twenty sto­ries of yellow brick, the building had rounded corners decorated with wide, chrome-plated horizontal flashings, like bumpers.

  He stood for a moment on the sidewalk outside the building, the day growing hot with a yellow haze, himself a sudden snag avoided by the walking people. At breakfast he'd overheard a young man with a Southwest accent say to an older man, "That's right, but here's where the money is, right here, so you got to come here. No gettin' around it." And Luke had realized then that he hadn't come to New York on his own—that is, without his expenses paid—in over ten years.

  He had never been able to discover what Gentleman thought of itself. It was certainly an interesting magazine, though occasional­ly its yen for sophistication led it into positions beyond wit, such as a cover photograph showing George Washington before and after a transsexual operation. Its rather desperate contemporaneity could seem collegiate at one moment, academic the next; but there was no other magazine quite like Gentleman, and it did have no rigid ideological position. He had been saddened to hear that because of escalating postal rates it was having a hard time staying alive.

  At the fifth floor he emerged from the elevator into a plushly tasteful elongated cubicle presided over by a receptionist, a wom­an of about thirty whose hair was a natural brown and whose eyes were neither enlarged by mascara nor lidded with the reptile green he'd almost gotten used to in this city. She had the look of intelligence, that dangerous connection. Smiling as if she meant it, she called and found that Mr. Troup would see him, then guided him, saying, "It's around a lot of corners—I'll show you," to Mar­tin Troup's large office. Luke had visited here only a few times over the years, and new partitions and display boards were every­where, so he had needed a guide.

  Martin Troup rose from the piles of clippings, illustrations, manuscript pages and odd notebooks and folders that were heaped across his desk. He was a big man, a former athlete who hadn't allowed his paunch to do what it probably wanted to do to the belly of the crisp white shirt he wore. He was a type Luke thought of as redneck jock intellectual—Vanderbilt, or the Uni­versity of the South, the University of Virginia or Chapel Hill or some such place having turned him toward classical knowledge, though not away from brawls, pool hustling or too much bour­bon—at least not in his youth. Now he was in his late forties, a shrewd gentleman with the threat of violence, perhaps playful, perhaps not, just discernible behind his southern easiness.

  "Luke," he said, holding out his big hand, "how are you?"

  "Fine," Luke said.

  Martin turned to a small man with a blond beard, mod haircut and slinky, neo-hippie clothes. "I want you to meet the photogra­pher," Martin said. "Robin Flash, Luke Carr."

  "Hiya," Robin Flash said, and they shook hands. Robin Flash's flared plaid pants, of a glistening synthetic material, seemed molded to his wiry little thighs as if with sweat or use, as though, Luke thought irrationally, he had been ballroom dancing all night with several older women, none of whom he knew by name. There was something gleaming and unfresh and urgent about the little face and sharp blue eyes. All around his feet were the leather boxes and straps of his profession.

  "He's the best there is," Martin said. "I wanted the best writer and the best photographer for this job, and now I've got 'em both. Oh, hey, you met Annie before, right?"

  A thin dark girl with the mild, hardly unattractive wounds of an ancient acne, and the deep, luminous eyes that seem to go with that disease, had appeared in the doorway.

  "Yes, we've met," she said. "When you did the piece on Attica, Mr. Carr."

  "A long time ago," Luke said.

  "Hey, Luke," Martin said. "You want to do another piece on At­tica?"

  "You didn't like what I said about Oswald last time," Luke said. Martin had wanted to cast Russell Oswald, the Commissioner of the Department of Correction, as a sort of hero, a man in the mid­dle, but after Luke had spent a day in Albany with the man, his own reaction had been more complicated than that. In fact his study of prisons, prisoners and their keepers had led him to be­lieve the situation hadn't the slightest hope of amelioration from any quarter.

  Martin laughed and hit Luke on the shoulder with his fist, hard—something they had once instinctively done to each other. Now Martin dropped his arm and looked embarrassed, not know­ing what to say, as though he'd been importunate at a funeral. Luke tried to smile it away, but Martin was too embarrassed for that.

  Annie said, "I've got some more addresses for you, Mr. Carr," and handed him some Xeroxed sheets.

  "How come you call him 'Mr. Carr?' " Martin asked her. "He ain't more than fifteen years older'n you, Annie."

  "Because he's so sad and distant," she said.

  "And old?" Luke said.

  "Oh!" she said, turning dark, a rather beautiful flawed rose. "I forgot. I forgot about your tragedy, Mr. Carr."

  "Is there something I should know?" Robin Flash said.

  Luke explained as quickly and plainly as he could.

  "Wow. Heavy," Robin Flash said.

  They were silent for a long moment until Luke said, "Anything else I ought to know, Martin?"

  "Well . . ." Martin said, not looking Luke exactly in the eyes. "You handle it the way you want. Only one thing. You're going to find a lot of . . . defensiveness in some quarters. Depends on what you think you want to look for. I mean about the cause of it all. They haven't found out exactly why the floor gave way, at least as far as we can find out. Or at least they're not telling it straight."

  "I don't want to be a detective anyway," Luke said. A nerve had begun to jump somewhere alongside his sternum, and a breath came short. "I know how these things can happen. A mistake here, a bad coincidence there. . . ."

  "Yeah, right!" Martin said, apparently very much relieved. "You and Robin handle it the way you want. And, Luke ... I mean, if it gets to you, all the death . . . Maybe it's too soon after. You know. Well, no matter. . . ."

  "Do I look that bad?" Luke said.

  "I know you're a pro, Luke. You're the best. That's why you al­ways get so goddam involved. Anyway, you know what I mean."

  "Okay, Martin." Luke turned to Robin Flash, trying to assume a bravado he certainly didn't feel. It was dread he felt, and he could place it anatomically. It was in his diaphragm, slightly to the left of center, and it seemed to have a color—a mottled gray—
and a shape somewhat like a certain clinker of slag he had once re­moved from a coal-burning furnace. "Robin, shall we go and diag­nose the sickness of this town?"

  He must have dreamed last night, because fragments of dream queried him now, passing close, not letting him quite grasp them. He was on a snowy road, driving a bug-eyed Sprite, of all cars. He'd never owned one. No, he wasn't driving, someone else was. He was in an editorial meeting, and a girl—a woman—was crying. She had a wide face and long, horizontal dark eyes—a tigerish look—and she was crying out of sorrow. What was her tragedy? He meant to get up and ask her what the matter was, but he asked too soon, before he could get around the table to her, and he shouldn't have asked until he could touch her at the same time he asked. Then her face turned dead white, her eyes black as blots of tar. Something bad, wrong, inexcusable would happen. Her fault, though, not his. But then, he was the one who asked. Everyone else had noticed how her face grimaced and crawled, but they'd said nothing.

  Robin Flash had said something he hadn't heard, and now got up and began to drape the straps of his camera boxes over his thin, foxy shoulders.

  "Anybody question who you are, have them call here," Martin said. "And Luke, remember; if you want to drop this anytime it's okay with me. There'll be other projects."

  "We'll see," Luke said.

  In the elevator, and then across the lobby to the sultry clangor of Madison Avenue, Luke held himself steady against his low-grade dread. Robin Flash came along beside him, a part of the city and its constant movement; if any animal could have evolved to fit this environment, Robin Flash, with his metal sheen and glitter, seemed to be the one. He looked everywhere with quick, squirrel­like glances, yet this was not a squirrel's defensive alertness, it was more like avidity.

  They took a cab crosstown. Robin, still looking everywhere, told Luke that his name had originally been Fleisch, that he had been married for five years and had a kid four years old, a boy; that he was really into films, documentaries—that's what he was most into at the moment.