They perched together on the edge of the huge bed. The table was a vase, the food a bouquet: yellow rice, tiny green peas, scarlet pimentos, orange-pink lobster meat, blue-black mussels, white chicken, mother-of-pearl inside the just-burst, juicy clams.
“I’ll tell you a story,” said Rorie, around and between her food. “Maybe you’ve read it, maybe you know it, but let me tell you anyway, because I have a point to make.
“It’s in Victor Hugo’s big novel Les Miserables, and is one of the finest pieces of writing anywhere in this world. It deals with a sailing ship, a French naval vessel and a terrible storm. The ship had a weather deck, and right under it the gun deck where the cannons were kept. They were tied down behind the gun ports, ready to be run out and used in battle. Big brass cannons, you know, on wheels.
“Well, in the storm one of the cannons got loose, and I’m sorry I don’t have the book with me to read you that part; you’d never forget it; you’d think you’d been there. As the ship rolled and plunged in the storm, the cannon was like something alive and crazy, charging up and down across, smashing into the bulkheads, splitting the timbers of the ship’s sides, bearing down on crewmen trying to find some way to stop it. It began to look as if that berserk cannon was going to sink the ship and kill everybody.
“Then a young gunnery officer snatched up a long ramrod and ran out to the middle of the gun deck. He was like a dancer, a matador, a prizefighter all at once; and he dodged, and he spun, and he ducked this crazy cannon as it ran at him until he saw his chance, and then he dove under it and shoved the ramrod into the wheel spokes, stopping the thing in its tracks until the crew could get ropes on it and tie it down.
“Want some more lobster?”
Mr. Michaelmas, munching and agog at the thrum of her voice, shook his head.
She went on:
“Late the next day when the sea was calm, the captain called up the whole crew on the main deck. He and his officers were in full dress. He had the gunnery officer, front and center, and he came down with a metal on a chain, and he decorated the officer and kissed him on both cheeks, the way they do in the French military to this day.
“Then he went back up on the high poop deck and called down a question, ‘Now which man is responsible for that cannon getting loose?’
“And the hero with the shiny decoration on his chest, proud and honest, answered, ‘I was, sir.’
“Then the captain called up the sergeant of marines. ‘Sergeant,’ he said, ‘take that man, and a squad, up to the foredeck and shoot him.’
“And they did.”
Mr. Michaelmas took a while to realize he had stopped chewing. This lady really knew how to tell a story.
“That’s one part of what I have to tell you,” Aurora said. “Push it aside—” (she pushed his plate aside as she said this, and replaced it with a dessert, a whipped and shaped mound of something with real flower petals in it) “—and let me give you another part. They’ll all come together. You’ll see.”
He started to respond, then gave it up. He was beginning to learn (relearn?) that things could happen without his having to make them happen.
The tall girl lay down and rolled over on her stomach, and propped herself up on her elbows. “That Apricot,” she said finally, “she’s crazy, you know, but she’s also some kind of saint. And she—well, she just doesn’t think like other people. The veteran’s hospital bit was only the beginning. Want some more coffee?”
“I’ll get it,” said Mr. Michaelmas. “Go on.”
“She read an article in an old magazine one day. It was a very funny bit, written during one of America’s so-called ‘police actions’ against Communists. This writer had gotten hold of a newspaper story about how much money it cost to kill one of the enemy. He multiplied this by the total body count to date, and came out with a huge figure, which he said would be enough to buy a villa on the Riviera for every family of five in the entire enemy country. He said this would do two things: it would stop the killing, and would knock the hell out of communism.”
They laughed together. Aurora said, “That’s funny, and it’s sharp, but it set Apricot to thinking: Here was an alternative to war, ridiculous as it was. She’d never wondered before if there could be alternatives—who does?
“And that led her to wonder how it was, if there were alternatives, the final choice always seemed to be mass killing. What bothered her most was that in a war a country always screens out the strongest, the quickest, the smartest young men that can be found and sends them out to get their heads blown off.
“And she thought, who makes these decisions? Almost always, old men. ‘Old’ didn’t have to mean years; ‘old’ means with all the juices dried up. ‘Old’ means (whether or not they know themselves) that they hate the young just for being young; they are jealous, envious and angry. It’s nothing new, you know. The old bulls are always afraid of the young ones coming up. This kind of thing was around before humanity was out of the trees.
“Now here is crazy Apricot deciding to do something about it. If the old ones are sitting safe in front of their acres of polished mahogany, sending the young ones to die with a stroke of their ballpoint pen, then, says Apricot, let’s find a way to put the juice back into them. Because she believes that a good little man is as good as a good big man, and a good old man is as good as a good young one. Sometimes better,” she added, smiling and reaching to stroke Mr. Michaelmas’s thigh.
“Now,” she said “you. Some men collect companies to make conglomerates. You’ve been collecting conglomerates. I don’t know why—you certainly don’t need the money, and you’ve proved yourself over and over; I don’t understand it, and I won’t try. But I won’t fault you for it. It’s your thing, and it’s what you have to do.
“But in doing it you became a gold-plated bastard. You got so you didn’t care how many faces you walked on with your climbing cleats on, and then you got so you enjoyed it. You especially enjoyed crunching young people, young enterprise, young ideas.”
“Now, just a damn minute—”
Aurora raised a finger, overriding him. “I’m reading from the record, Mr. Michaelmas. We’ve planned this for you for a long time. And I’m not saying what you are,” she added. “I’m saying what you’ve been.” She rose up on the bed and came to him, pressing him back with one hand while the other sought his groin. “Your juices are running again. You’ve been fed and rested and tuned up, and you’ve been balled to the point where you had all the pleasure you can handle and have started to give it back. You know what you did for the four of us. Stiff or limp, fingers, mouth or whatever, you looked out for us all; you wouldn’t quit until you were sure.
“And that’s what the Country of Afterward is all about, Mr. Michaelmas. You take off your clothes to have sex, right? Well, good sex takes off your gender—do you see what I’m saying? It’s the one time when human beings have the chance to meet each other without the old chase, without game-playing and manipulating and tit-grabbing. And it’s the one time when a lot of people—I’m sorry to say mostly men—roll over and go to sleep, leaving the other—usually the women—depressed, even crying and not knowing why.”
Mr. Michaelmas felt very strange. Aurora’s lovely face and brilliant eyes seemed to be coming into sharper and sharper focus, while the rest of the room seemed to be fuzzing out. What’s the matter with me?
To his astonishment, Aurora put two fingers in her mouth and produced a short, piercing whistle. Somewhere behind her the drapes billowed, and they all came in—Rietta, Pam, Apricot. He could not move … and the hand moving in his groin was exquisite. “Must’ve been something I ate,” he mumbled.
“Sure it was,” said Aurora. Her face, her eyes, moved closer; her voice soft and strong, drove into him. “When anybody, young or old, starts showing the signs of being the kind of bastard you were before you came here, you remember that you’re the captain. You’re going to find a phone number in your side jacket pocket (when you have a side jacket po
cket). You’re the captain,” she said again, “and you will call that number, but you won’t say ‘take that man out and shoot him.’ You will say ‘take that man out and fuck him.’ And if, when he comes back, he still acts like a bastard, you will call again and say ‘take him out and fuck him again’—which, you will agree, is better than having to shoot him again. Mr. Michaelmas, we are going after bastard captains in government and industry, and we won’t stop until the juices are flowing again all through the summit.”
Apricot vaulted lithely to the bed behind him; lifted his head and put it in her lap. Rietta fitted her strong body to his; Pam flung her dark silk over his torso and smoothed his chest with her cheek. No one hurried. Gently, sensation rose without pausing at any plateau, rose and peaked and gently overflowed, and he fell asleep in the Country of Afterward.
Midmorning. Autumn. Warm. A laughing wind. Traffic. Voices. Mr. Michaelmas opened his eyes; whatever it was that had blacked him out left him with a click. He felt fine, and more alert than he had been in years. He looked across a small park at the front of his own office building.
“Jesus Christ! Mr. Michaelmas!”
“Wrong on the first, right on the second. Hello, Joe.”
Joe Flagg dropped down on the bench next to him. “I got your message that you were out here. Someone phoned. Where were you? I began to think you were never coming back. Even thought you’d been kidnapped, but nobody ever—”
“Been minding the store?”
“I’ve done the best I could, Mr. Michaelmas. Well what I did, I tried to do everything the way you would.”
“Did you, now.”
Flagg began excitedly to recite what he’d done. It went on while they crossed the park, crossed the street, crossed the lobby: foreclose, acquire, outbid, outplay. Freeze, force, pull the rug. Variously, men squealed, ran, turned pale, you should’ve seen his face when I … By the time they entered the elevator, Flagg had almost run down. Mr. Michaelmas interrupted the last punch line of corporate triumph with “You’ve turned into a gold-plated bastard, Flagg.”
“Thanks. Thanks a lot.”
Well, thought Mr. Michaelmas, he’s had a good teacher. They entered his private office from the back corridor; a gamut of astonished staff was a thing he was not prepared to run. Mr. Michaelmas dropped into his familiar old chair. The convolutions of the old leather seat did not exactly fit his buttocks as they had. Well of course: Flagg had been using it. He looked up at his Number Two Man, who was (a little nervously) picking up things from the desk: a picture, a file of papers, a little clock. “Get this stuff out of your way … you want me now?”
“Not now.”
Flagg backed out. Backed out. Was he in the presence of royalty, or did he expect to be shot if he turned around?
Mr. Michaelmas stretched. He felt just fine. He put his hands in his pockets, found his wallet, keys. A card with a phone number. He dialed.
Two rings. “Afterward.” An answering machine.
He said, “This is Michaelmas. Tell Apricot the gunnery officer is Joseph Flagg.”
Clopclick, and a voice: this was no machine saying excitedly, “Mike! Oh, Mike, I hoped it was you! This is Apricot.”
He felt, suddenly, like a blushing high-school kid. “Apricot … Apricot, am I ever going to see you again?”
“You just name it. You really are wonderful, you know.”
“Really?”
“Honest to really, Mike.”
So he made the date. Then he buzzed Flagg.
“Get in here.”
Flagg appeared, his face carefully composed, but his hands holding his hands very hard.
Mr. Michaelmas detached his gold key from the bunch and slid it across the desk. “Have one of these made for yourself. And call me Mike.”
He thought Joe Flagg was going to cry. “Yes, sir, Mr. Michaelmas. Thank you, Mr. Michaelmas.” He backed out.
Mike, Mr. Michaelmas told himself, feeling the juices run within him, you really are wonderful, you know. Honest to really. He leaned back and stretched, feeling the old leather molding again to fit his body, and fell to thinking about his date, and afterward.
Like Yesterday
“Privilege,” murmured Perk. “Truly, an honor and a privilege.” He didn’t know what to do with his hands, so he laid them against his side-seams. This brought him to parade attention, and the old Chief hadn’t ordered it, so he set his shine-to-wincing boots slightly apart. The old Chief hadn’t said “At ease!” either, so he didn’t put the hands behind him. He didn’t know what a stance like this was. He didn’t altogether know what he was, or why he was here. “Having the opportunity,” he said after a while, because the old man was so still, staring, apparently, at his crotch. He thought a hysterical thought about zippers and controlled the impulse to check it out with an effort somewhat greater than four hours on the obstacle track might cost him. “All by myself,” he added insanely. “I mean, with you, sir, privilege.”
The old Chief looked up at last, giving a whole new meaning to the words “eye strain.” The cold and deepset eyeballs seemed totally involved in lifting the enormous wattles which hung beneath them, while the uplifted face, the whole head, was equally involved with the weight of chins, which dragged the lower lip away from the lower teeth in the corners of the mouth wetly, pinkly down. This was the famous and terrifying scowl so beloved of hating political cartoonists, two generations of them. There was time for Perk to realize that his crotch, and probably a great deal more about him, had had no part in that apparently fixed stare. The old men had merely been mustering the strength to look up. Yet, because he was the old Chief, nothing was “merely.” He could conquer, he could devastate by lifting his face. “Shuddup,” he said. “Siddown!” The twitch of two mottled fingers showed where. Perk was standing, Perk was sitting; it was like matter-transmission, like changing the angle in a film cut, without so much as a click between, and he never could recall the move.
The old Chief turned to face him, not so much his function as that of his swivel chair. Now that their eyes were on a level, the old Chief’s had no work to do but to pour out hatred. They did not—at least, Perk hoped not—but it was there to do, and they were aimed right at him.
At last: “What did you want to be a cop for?”
“Who, me?” Perk answered stupidly, startled. He broke his gaze away; stupidity seemed able to ignite the hatred. “Well, I, it’s what I’ve always wanted to be, ever since I.” A quick glance at those old eyes stopped him short. He hit his knuckles together in chagrin, and was afraid he was blushing. He was. He said, “To help people. To make it a better place, the city. To teach folks it’s right to live by the law, right and easy, and it’s wrong to break the law, long and hard. And then, to keep teaching people, showing people, all the time every day what the law is.”
“Why don’t you tell the truth?”
“Oh, I, but, I—”
“Never mind that now,” the old man cut him off. “You probably don’t even know the truth.” He paused, then said with immense weight, “But you will.… What do you do on your duty tour every day? Oh God,” he blurted, interrupting before Perk could speak, “I don’t mean you control traffic when the game breaks up, so the dumbheads don’t kill each other driving manual between the gates and the radarway. I don’t mean you find a little girl’s kitten or bring in a case of clap the medics have traced and nailed for you, or call for a freeze because you think a street fight could start.”
“Well, that’s police work,” said Perk, a little defensively; then, “Sir—Chief! What’s the matter? Are you all, shall I—”
“I’m trying to keep from throwing up. You know, you really make me sick. Don’t take it personal. You don’t know no better, not yet, but what I hear talk like that my stomach wrenches and I gag.” He made some heavy, whistling breaths, while Perk debated whether or not to apologize. Don’t take it personal. Well all right. He waited.
“Put it this way. A citizen has a go-round with his ch
ick, splits her face clear down to the tits with a cleaver. What’s the procedure?”
“Her ID signals the precinct, condition yellow, peak violence, and if the computer shows vital signs failing, we get condition red. We know who she is and where she is. We cordon, Stage One, five hundred meters. We close the cordon. Anything unusual, any resistance, we freeze the area.”
“Everyone lies down sleepy.”
“Yes, sir. Then we move to the scene and enter.”
“No warrant.”
“Hightower vs. Dayton, Ohio, 2019, Supreme Court. ID notification of the precinct constitutes a warrant for search.”
“Did your homework, huh. What next?”
“On entering, and discovering evidence of assault, which we always do, we use the police key on the mobe.”
“You know why it’s called the mobe?”
“Yes, sir. From Möbius, 19th-century German mathematician, who devised the moebius strip. The mobe is a scanner which is installed, as many as necessary, to cover all enclosures, public and private, and most thoroughfares. It records and retains audio and video for twelve hours before it recycles. The police key stops and opens it for the record of events leading up to the crime, for use in court.”
“What about the Fifth Amendment—self-incrimination? Right of privacy, all that?”
“Completely protected, sir, Arkwright vs. Thorndale, Miss., 2022. Surveillance after the fact, even of events before the fact, takes on the nature of detective investigation.”
“All right, all right. So what about your murderer?”
“With his picture and voice-prints, we have identification. If we’ve frozen the area, he’ll be in it somewhere. If not we’ll pick him up the minute he uses his ID to make a purchase, or says a single word in a public or private place. As a fugitive he has no civil rights, and the warrant to search for him is valid wherever the computer locates him.”
“All right, no more, I’m going to throw up for sure. So. Radar keeps the cars apart, the freeze and the mobe gets your murderers, molesters, vandals, and thieves, and you—when you’re not directing traffic in the parking lot at the ballpark, or finding the little lost dogs—you trot down trails the goddam computer marks out for you. And that’s police work. Why did you want to be a cop?” He shouted it.
Case and the Dreamer Page 20
