John D MacDonald - One More Sunday

by One More Sunday(Lit)

  Whether he thought the accusation was true or false, it would make no difference. He would ridicule the accusation in any case.

  She smiled disarmingly at him and said, "All I was going to say was that Jenny Albritton is the best friend I've ever had. I never had a woman as a close friend before. We live in our little house with absolutely no friction at all. If that's some form of deviation, then I plead guilty, Finn."

  She sensed both relief and skepticism, and plunged ahead, now confident of her role.

  "I guess that you would have to know her history to know how insane that accusation is. She had a husband and a little boy who was retarded. Her husband worked for a newspaper. They were going to visit his sister one Sunday. The little boy was in a kiddy chair strapped to the front seat. A drunk hit them head on, killing her husband and son. All she got were sprains and bruises. They had just begun to get interested in the Eternal Church of the Believer. After that, she got more interested and it seemed to help her with her loss, so she came down here and got a job doing public relations, the same sort of work she had done before she was married.

  "I was lonely too. I'd been engaged to a man who didn't want to get married until we had a certain amount in a joint savings account. After we got to that total, he drew it all out and packed and left town without a word. I'd told everybody we were going to be married. We'd set a date. We were living together. Everybody knew that. I couldn't face it. I tried to kill myself but they found me in time. An old man I had known for years made me go with him to his church when Matthew Meadows was the guest minister. And I went up to the rail, choking and sobbing, and was saved. I was born again. I needed it right then, at that time in my life. But now it is not as strong a need. I guess it's because I'm happy in my work and in having a good and loyal friend in Jenny Albritton. We became friendly and signed up for the house together. I'd been here over a year by then, nearer two. So neither of us had any social life. We told each other our life stories. We shop together, cook together, diet together, take a course in Spanish at the University together. We wash each other's hair, alter each other's clothes, and we buy presents for each other. So I guess it's easy to see how some strange little woman with a dirty little mind would get the wrong idea about us. If the right man should come along for either of us, it would change everything. We both know that and accept it."

  She stopped, realizing that to go on too long would be a form of overkill. She shrugged and smiled and said, "Now you know my dreadful secret."

  She realized he had tried to maneuver her, and it had come dangerously close to working. Efflander was an expert. And she knew that if he had tricked her into confession, their six-year relationship would suddenly have become a very different thing. He would pretend to understand, but in truth he would not. He would look at her in quite a different way.

  Maybe staying in the closet was a primitive reaction in San Francisco or Dallas, but it was certainly a necessity at Meadows Center.

  "I understand," he said.

  "I quite understand." From his smile she could tell that his relief was total, and the skepticism she had seen before had vanished.

  "I knew you would," she said.

  "That's why I thought I'd better explain how the way we live could give that woman the wrong impression."

  "As I said before, Jenny, in a large organization growing ever larger, as this is, it is dangerous and unpleasant when ambitious people begin to set up little fiefdoms, little empires, and try to grab for more power. Walter Macy is a better operator than I realized. He's been playing up to the ministers of the affiliated churches. He's strengthened that organization. He audits their share of the tithes. He preaches in their churches.

  He pats them on the back. Matthew Meadows' sickness has left a power vacuum. Walter Macy is doing exactly the same sort of job on the affiliates that Matthew used to do. John Tinker hasn't been interested in filling it. Old Matthew buttered up the affiliated preachers. There's a resolution on the books that if and when a new pastor for the Meadows Center Church is appointed, the appointment has to have the approval of a majority of the ministers of the affiliated churches. Also, like a footnote, any pastor of this Church can be deposed by a majority vote."

  "But I don't know anything about..."

  "I'm telling you things you don't know. Right? You are useful and valuable around here. I want you to understand where Walter and Alberta Macy are headed, how they are thinking. Whenever John Tinker gets in one of our jets and flies to Houston or Toronto, you can bet that Walter and Alberta are thinking that someday they will be the ones doing the flying, and staying in the presidential suites and ordering the very best wines. I am in their way. Joe Deets is in their way.

  John Tinker is in their way. They can cut me down to size by picking off my best people, like a sniper on a hill."

  "And that's the way they wanted to get rid of me? To make a false accusation and have you fire me? That's scary. What if you believed that? And never asked me about it."

  "Her remark about you was repeated to me by a person she feels she can trust implicitly. Either she was off guard when she said it or she said it to a person she knew would bring it to me.

  Or maybe she even asked that person to tell it to me. And it was reported to me as being a very positive statement."

  "I'm glad it happened exactly this way, Finn. I'm so grateful to you for... confronting me with it."

  "Confrontation is a management tool, Jenny. Direct contact can solve a lot of problems. I certainly wouldn't want to force you out of here, because you are one of the very few I can really depend on."

  And that too, she thought, as she sat there smiling, is another management tool developing loyalty through flattery and a hint of exclusivity.

  "I'll try to be worthy of your trust," she said.

  He smiled.

  "We are in Rome and it is full of Romans. You may have noticed."

  "I'm sorry I got angry," she said.

  "I suppose I'd better tell all this to Jenny."

  "I expect you to."

  "She's going to be really upset. We've made jokes about people wondering if we were more than good friends. But I really didn't think anybody actually thought so."

  "Run along now. And don't worry about it. I'll do all the worrying. You just keep on doing your job and keeping your head down."

  As she started toward the door he called her back and, grinning at her, said, "Have you figured out how to beat the system yet?"

  The system?"

  "The incoming money, the deposits, the records. What else?"

  "Mr. Efflander. Finn, I would never under any circumstances..."

  "Stop kidding yourself, Jenny. And stop kidding me. Every intelligent person who works around a lot of raw cash tries to figure out ways to beat the system. What makes a good supervisor is an active imagination. You plan how to beat it, and plug that particular hole and try again. What's the best way to beat it right now?"

  "I can't think of one. I've thought of about six since I took charge there, and I plugged up every hole. Right now I can't think of exactly how it could be done. But I'm beginning to get the ghost of an idea. It involves a conspiracy between my roller-skating Angel and one of the security guards."

  "Keep thinking. It can be done. Count on it. Two of your people will get together and find a way."

  She started to turn toward the door just as she realized that it would not be characteristic were she not to try to use this new relationship to her own advantage. She turned back toward him, biting her lip.

  "Finn, I do have one suggestion."

  "Let's hear it."

  "We do get little foul-ups from time to time because Mrs. Diskant, who is in charge of Outgoing Mail, is on exactly the same level of authority and responsibility as I am. I think she is a fine woman and she does a fine job. But if I were to be in charge of my own operation and of O.M. as well, the coordination would be better. And I would certainly not interfere in any way with how she handles that depart
ment. You could explain to her why this change of status was necessary and I'm sure she would understand."

  "I will... give it serious consideration."

  She beamed at him and said, "God is love."

  Looking only mildly surprised, he said, "Bless His holy name."

  Between five and nine-thirty on that Tuesday evening, Glinda Lopez had completed twenty-one more long-distance phone calls to Church members delinquent in their tithes. With the help of the keyboard, her good memory, the Japanese voice synthesis modules and her quickness of wit and improvisation, she had spoken to them with the rich ripe personal tone and cadence and intimacy of the Reverend Doctor Matthew Meadows in his prime.

  After he had turned off the special equipment, she and Mickey Oshiro had wandered out of Communications and over to sit in darkness on the raised circular edge of the Fountain of Memory in the Garden of Mercy. A faint blue light shone on the spray of water, reflecting on their faces. There was a tickle on the side of her throat and she whacked a mosquito, rolled it into a tiny moist ball between finger and thumb and dropped it into the fountain. The sweat of long nervous concentration had soaked through her blouse and dampened her sweater and the waistband of her skirt.

  "Mick," she said in a dead voice, "I am really whipped. This makes me tireder than anything else ever did. I don't know if I can keep it up without getting ulcers or a heart attack or something. And he wants me to train somebody else. My God, how can I train somebody to do something I can just barely handle myself?"

  "It'll get easier. Once you get used to controlling the phonemes for stress and inflection and pitch, it'll turn into fun."

  "You keep saying that, pal. I don't think it is going to get any easier because somehow I really hate it."

  "Come on, Glin. What's to hate?"

  "He's a loony, that old man is. You know. You and Mr. Efflander had me over there in the Manse to meet him.

  Sometimes his voice would be okay, and then it would go all wavery and thin again. I remember, he was asking me if I was from the store. What store? Then I was supposed to be Chris."

  "Chris? Chris who?" he asked.

  "She was John Tinker's wife. She died years ago."

  "I didn't know he'd ever been married."

  "Oh sure. But it was a long time ago. She drowned. They were guests on a yacht in the Bahamas and it was at anchor.

  She got up in the night and fell overboard somehow and drowned. It was a very big news story at the time. I was in high school when it happened. Anyway, what I was trying to say is how I hate it that people really think I'm the old man. It makes me feel weird."

  "How do you mean?"

  "I am inside the old man's voice and I am driving it like a car with no brakes. I say things he never said and never will say."

  "So it's an illusion, Glin. We both know it is. Efflander brought me here and he's paying me well to create and develop this illusion. To me it's just a technical problem. Match the old recordings of the voice. Match the speech curves. Devise a new keyboard language, with half-tone drops at the end of a sentence, half-tone raises at the end of a question. But I know why it bothers you. The person who operates the system has to have a lot of quick responses. And that means a lot of imagination. And what is getting in your way is all that imagination."

  "It just feels wrong."

  After thinking for a few moments he said, "How about this.

  They send out thousands and thousands of letters that look like originals, with a signature nobody can tell from real. Lots of people must think old Matthew actually signed their letter.

  Or John Tinker. I bet there are thousands of letters going out that John Tinker has never even read. So what's the difference?"

  "Maybe no difference. Maybe all the difference in the world.

  Take that woman in Lubbock the other night. God! The one that told me her dead husband comes back almost every night and sits on the side of her bed and talks to her. So she asks, what about that? I can't answer. So I got confused and hit one of the responses I'd already used and so she asked if I was a recording. Somehow, Mick, you've got to give me more time to think. These people come up with weird things. I need to stall.

  Maybe... Hey, maybe a little bit of coughing?"

  "Nice!" Mickey Oshiro said, after a few moments of thought.

  "Very nice. Some coughing and I can stretch it a little by having him apologize at the end."

  "By then I can have my answer on the screen, ready to punch it through. Have we got room on the board?"

  "Oceans of room. And I can add another circuit board if we have to."

  "Then give me some more small talk, please. The way people talk to each other over the phone. Like "That's very interesting" and "I'm glad you brought that up" and something like "Maybe you'd like to tell me a little more about what happened." Just give me a new row on the bottom of the pad, all time killers. When the delay gets to be too long, I can hear them breathing and that gets me so upset I mess up what I'm trying to keyboard onto the screen."

  "I can get that done by tomorrow afternoon."

  "Good. But I want some time to practice with it."

  A sudden flashlight beam dazzled them, making them squint and turn their eyes away from the light. A guard said, "Pardon me, Mrs. Lopez. You too, sir. I thought some of the kids had snuck in here from the school again somehow. It's like a game with them."

  She said there was no harm done, and wasn't it a lovely night, and the guard agreed and walked away. She yawned and stood up and said, Thanks for listening, Mick. I'm kind of unwinding, maybe down to the point where I can get some sleep. I wake up a lot lately."

  As he stood up, she stretched and yawned again. She was a thin woman, almost scrawny, given to graceless poses, bad posture, nervous mannerisms tugging at her hair, pinching her nose, pulling her earlobes, biting the edges of her fingernails.

  They walked slowly to the pedestrian exit beside the main gate, where the guard said good night and let them out. For the first fifty feet beyond the gate, they were in the bright glare of the security floodlights, and as they neared the darkness she said, "Hey, don't walk me home or we could become an item."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "An item. Didn't they used to say that in California? This place, honest to God, is the world's worst rumor factory. If people work together, talk together and then walk home together, they think something has to be going on."

  "I see. And you wouldn't like that to happen?" He suddenly realized how that sounded and said, "I mean, you wouldn't like to have people talking like that."

  "I really don't care. I was just making conversation, I guess.

  Anyway, they would probably decide it's not exactly earthshaking even if we were all buddy-buddy. The spic lady and the Jap genius. There's enough going on around here, we'd be one very small item. Page twenty-seven, half a column inch. Besides that, I think I can spend the rest of my life without becoming anybody's item."

  They walked on. He coughed and said, "We haven't talked about anything personal. But I do know you are Mrs. Lopez."

  "Would you like to know about Lopez? Okay. Lopez is six three and about as broad as that gate we went through back there. But I'm never going to see him again."

  "I don't understand."

  "Oh, I could go see him, but there's no point in it." She stopped in the darkness, the lights behind her.

  "Mick, you're absolutely right. We've never talked about anything but this crazy voice synthesis, not until tonight. Okay, it's a dull story.

  He was a very proud man. He didn't take anything from anybody. He worked in a foundry and got in a brawl. It wasn't his fault. A foreman worked him over with a piece of pipe while some other people held him. Then they left him on the floor until somebody finally realized something might be really wrong. It happened up in Rochester. Lots of brain damage.

  He's three years old for the rest of his life, and the company insurance takes care of the bills from the state institution. He doesn't know me and n
ever will and so I will probably never see him again alive."

  "I'm very, very sorry, Glinda."

  "Don't be. I seldom ever think about him. Those guys killed him. It's that simple. And that might be one of the things that make this synthesis program so hard for me to do."

  He stood, looking at her, the distant light aslant across his face, a square, broad-bodied man with a round cheerful face, and black bangs that came down almost to his eyebrows.

  "I

  think I see what you mean, what the connection is. Your husband can't talk anymore. Doctor Meadows can't talk anymore."

  Thanks for the psychiatric analysis, Oshiro."