A Key to the Suite

by John D. MacDonald

  You would feel this way, he thought, if you killed some kind of innocent thing with your hands. If you conspired to kill it. If the two of you pursued it in its terror for a long way over rough country, enduring your own exhaustion in the dark joy of the chase, and then caught it at last, tortured it for a long time, then bled it and gutted it and buried it and stomped the ground flat. It would be like this. You would not want to look directly at each other. You would be filled with a listless shame, but in some curious way you would be joined in a conspiracy of guilt. The worst of it, perhaps, is the knowledge that you will want to run the wild chase again.

  Or, he thought, is it my own innocence I mourn? How could I have not known of this dimension in the world I’m in, where everything can be erased, leaving only the animal agony, the animal greed?

  He turned his head to look at her again, and as he did so she opened her eyes. The light glinted on the tiny gold buttons in the small gentle ear lobes. Her eyes were an unfocused blue, and he saw them change as they saw him, saw them close and open again.

  She pushed herself up, swung her legs off the bed to sit facing him. She gave an aching yawn, shuddered, scratched her head. “W’time is it?”

  “Nearly nine,” he said. “When did we go to sleep?”

  “Donno, dear. It was dark.” She stood up and swayed, then padded off into the bathroom. In a little while he heard the sound of the shower. He drowsed off and awakened when she touched his foot. She was sitting on the foot of his bed, looking at him. She looked at him with a mild, skeptical interest, the way a woman looks at something she might buy, if she can think of a use for it.

  “You don’t like me very much, do you?” she said.

  “Let’s just say I’m not delighted with myself, either.”

  She pulled her legs up, hugged them, her chin on her knees, looking at him with mockery. “Oh, you’ll be delighted with yourself soon enough, Hubbard. You’ll remember. You’ll strut. You’ll love telling your friends about it. You’re a strong man, you know.”

  “What are you trying to prove, Cory?”

  She tilted her head, and her eyes changed. For the first time he had the odd feeling that she was not entirely sane. “I’ve proved it, haven’t I? I’m the best you ever had. I’m the best you’ll ever have. I made you holler, and that was a brand new thing for you, wasn’t it? Not like the other times you’ve done a little cheating, was it? Tell me I’m the best!”

  “It’s the first time I’ve cheated.”

  Her laugh was derisive. “Oh, come now!”

  “It’s the truth, Cory. Why would I lie to you?”

  She looked uncertain, slightly troubled. “You’re unusual, then. Why not?”

  “Let’s put it this way. I haven’t really felt any need for anything I couldn’t get with Jan. I’ve been curious about a few other women, but not enough to make it worth while loading myself with a lot of middle-class guilt.”

  “Now you’ve got something to feel guilty about, lover.”

  “It’s going to take a while to sort out just how I’m going to feel about it.”

  Her smile was like a sneer. “I’ll tell you one way you’ll feel, darling. From now on, your darling, adorable, innocent Jan is going to be like so much oatmeal. Every time you have oatmeal, you’ll remember steak.”

  “I don’t think it will be that way, Cory. And I don’t know why you should want it to be that way. You act right now as if you hate me. I think it’s going to be fine with Jan and me, as it always has been.”

  “You’ll find out.”

  “I’m not going to be comparing. This was something else.”

  “It was just exactly the same thing, dear, but better, because I’m better.”

  “I’ll say you’re not the way I thought you’d be.”

  “All girly-girl?” she said contemptuously. “Shy and blushing and sighing?”

  “Something like that, yes.”

  “The film I was using. It says not to change film in bright sunlight, Floyd. That’s all.”

  “And there was no time out for tears?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Why the production, then?”

  “I wanted you, and I didn’t want to take the chance of scaring you off, darling. You like to pretend you’re a decent man. I think that’s very quaint and nice, really. And in the beginning, you were so cute and boyish, trying to be so manly, dear.”

  “I sort of lost the initiative pretty early in the game.”

  “You wouldn’t have done much with it if I’d let you keep it. I knew you were irritated about that. I could tell. You were resisting me in little ways for quite a long time. And then you got to the point where you could stop thinking and worrying, and then I could give us a lot of hours of it.”

  A sudden anger tightened his throat. “I think you’re an evil little bitch, Cory.”

  She laughed at him. “I’m a choosy evil bitch and a delicious evil bitch and a very competent evil bitch. And all this competence is all yours, dear, for the whole convention.”

  “No thanks.”

  She laughed again. “Try to say that tomorrow, when you start wondering if the things you think happened really happened. You’ll want to find out all over again. You’ll have to find out, Floyd. You’re hooked, darling. Don’t fight it. Why spoil the fun? My God, the way you look at me! Your little puritan soul is outraged. You hate me right now because I destroyed all your manly dignity and turned you into a rather untidy animal, and it hurts your pride to think how much there was that I had to teach you. By tomorrow, lover, you’ll realize that I wasn’t using you, and laughing at you. You’ll remember that I was far too busy being my own kind of animal, and you’ll remember how you learned to drive me practically out of my mind, and you’ll feel so terribly masculine and eager, you won’t be able to wait to get us in here with the door locked. Right now, lover, you’re ruined. You’d get as much kick out of looking at a mailbox as you get out of staring at me. If I hugged you, you’d probably gag. It astonishes you that I ever looked good to you. But you just wait, brother. Just wait and see.”

  She got off the bed and began to get dressed, humming to herself. He could see movement out of the corner of his eye, but he did not watch her directly.

  She came over and stood by the bed and said, “I’m off, darling.”

  “Cory?”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “Why does it have to be so … antagonistic? Okay, you’re not what you seemed to be. And you’re something I never ran into before. And I’ll admit I was overmatched. But why does it have to be like … some kind of revenge? I haven’t tried to hurt you.”

  “You’ve hurt Jan, haven’t you?”

  “Possibly. What’s that to you?”

  “Absolutely nothing.”

  “Who are you getting even with?”

  “Who’s asking you to try to understand me, dear? Just enjoy me.”

  “You’re uneasy. Why should my asking you that make you uncomfortable?”

  “I’m terribly comfortable. I can think of a dozen lovely reasons why I’m at peace with the world, dear.” She bent and kissed him lightly on the mouth. “Do get a good sleep. You’ll need it.”

  He heard the door open and shut quietly behind her. In a little while he got up and took a long shower, soaping himself many times. After he had dressed, he looked at the convention program to see what he had missed. Though the dinner speakers had not talked about any of his particular areas of interest, he vowed to miss no more of the scheduled events. He had also missed an official cocktail party prior to the banquet.

  Hubbard felt curiously furtive as he rode down in the elevator. Noisy delegates got on at nearly every floor. He had the feeling that if anyone stared closely at him they could not fail to see the stains of strenuous debauch.

  He ate alone at a small table in a small dining room of the hotel specializing in broiled meat. The flames under a large open broiler made a flickering light. He felt as if all reality had been dist
orted in some small prismatic way, just enough to make him feel wary and dubious. His hands did not look or feel like his own. The morsels of steak were alternately tasteless and delicious. He had the compulsion of all rational men to analyze, to reason, to reach conclusions—but his mind rebelled at all formal patterns. It veered, swooped, tilted—shying away from all structured devisings. He was tired and hungry and he did not want to think about Cory Barlund.

  As he ate he became aware of another time in his life, long ago, when he had felt this same way, when he had experienced this same dull complexity of guilt, deceit and confusion. It took him many minutes to remember the exact incident, because he had buried it deeply, had camouflaged the place where it lay with all the devices of self-esteem.

  He had been twelve years old, a tough and resolute kid, hardened in urban ways, familiar with all the survival devices a large family must use when an industrial accident has permanently maimed the father, and the compensation is a little less than adequate. He knew the protocol of the gangs and the schoolyards, the uses of valor and guile. But a duality had come into his life at that time, a troublesome thing. He had been unable to completely conceal from his teachers his quickness of mind, and the quality of his imagination. No matter how carefully he cultivated the moronic expression, the monosyllabic answer, his grades were better than he wanted them to be. And he found himself saddled with a lust for reading. Reading was particularly reprehensible in his circles, outside the family, and he had to fill his need in complete secrecy. A slightly older boy named Mark learned of Floyd’s secret vice. Mark was unacceptable. He was tall and plump. He could not run or fight or play games. He used big words, had a talent for sarcasm and responded to persecution by winding his arms around his head and squalling.

  But Mark read books, and he steered Floyd toward some wonderful ones, and they would argue about what they had read. Mark also brought Floyd into a little group headed by Mr. Ellinder, an instructor in the high school, a man with a small mustache, a collection of pipes, and many shocking opinions about a lot of things Floyd had always taken for granted. They called the little group The Book League, and they had their meetings in the room over the garage where Mr. Ellinder lived with his mother and an aunt.

  In that way the duality was partially resolved. Floyd could run with the pack, pretend dullness and indifference in school, and still have an outlet for expressions of the growing agility of his mind. He knew Mr. Ellinder was a great man who would be recognized by the world after his book was published. He had been working on it for a long time.

  One rainy Saturday afternoon Floyd finished a book sooner than he had expected. Mr. Ellinder had loaned it to him. He wanted another book by the same man from Mr. Ellinder’s library in the room over the garage. Mr. Ellinder had promised to lend it to him next. So he walked a dozen blocks with the book tucked carefully under his raincoat. He knocked at the garage door and there was no answer. He tried the door and it was unlocked. He went in furtively and moved silently up the narrow stairs, telling himself there would be no harm in leaving the book and taking the other one, because it had already been promised to him.

  He had tiptoed halfway across the upstairs room toward the bookshelves when he heard a sound to his right. He snapped his head around and stared toward the dormer alcove where stood the old couch with the Navajo blanket on it, saw Mark there, looking soft and blurred and blind without his glasses, and saw, glaring at him over Mark’s bare chubby shoulder, the fierce, indignant face of Mr. Ellinder.

  “Get out!” Mr. Ellinder whispered. “Get out of here!”

  Floyd had run all the way home through the rain. He lay on his bed and listened to the rain on the roof and tried not to think about anything. Mark arrived over an hour later. The rain had stopped. His mother called to him to tell him. Floyd did not ask Mark in. He went out into the small back yard.

  “Paul wants to talk to you,” Mark said with a nervous defiance.

  “Paul?”

  “Mr. Ellinder. He’s scared you’ll tell. He wants to talk to you.”

  Floyd had sobbed once, and hit Mark in the mouth as hard as he could, without warning. Mark sat down hard in the mud and began to cry like a girl. Floyd ran into the house and looked out the window and saw Mark get up and fumble around and find his glasses, wipe them on his shirt, put them on and walk away.

  When he was back in his room, the room he shared with an older brother, Floyd felt very much the same way he now felt, as he finished the expensive meal in the resort hotel. Drained, dulled, guilty, mourning the loss of something which had never existed, yet half convinced he had been the agent of its destruction.

  Seven

  ON THE MORNING OF the second full day of the convention, Hubbard was up early. When he awakened, the pumpkiny orange glow in his room made him feel a sick, breathless excitement which he forced out of his mind as quickly as possible. He told himself he would be brisk, purposeful, cold and observant. As he ate breakfast, he studied the supplementary program of workshops and clinics and selected, as being potentially most useful to him, a discussion of foreign distribution methods and problems.

  He was through breakfast twenty minutes before the discussion was scheduled to start, and so he checked the desk and found an unexpectedly thick airmail letter from Jan. He thumbed it open to see if there was any enclosure, but found only the sheets she had typed on her old portable.

  “Darling, The kids are in bed and the idiot box is blessedly silent and all the emergencies of the day have been coped with, I think …”

  He put it back in the envelope and put the envelope in his inside jacket pocket. He had a sudden feeling of disloyalty, so strong that he felt his face grow hot. The slight bulk of the letter in his pocket was an accusatory weight.

  He walked along the exhibit ramp and noticed that the AGM twins were not yet on duty. A few people, moving slowly, were tidying their displays, putting out fresh stacks of brochures. They were turning on the prism lights, the floodlights and the hooded fluorescents.

  Hubbard found the far corner of the Convention Hall where the discussion would take place. Chairs were arranged in a semicircle facing the table where the panel would sit. Three men sat at the end of one aisle, talking quietly and intently. He took Jan’s letter out and began to read it where he had left off.

  “I am trying to think clearly, darling, and I want to put down exactly what I mean, so there will be no chance for you to misunderstand me. We seem to have a lot of trouble with misunderstanding lately. I guess I am taking the chance of trying to clear the air. Somebody has to. We have to talk to each other when you get back here and both make an effort to really communicate. What I am trying to do is give us a start on it. I am trying to give you something you can read and re-read and think about, in terms of us. I have been bitchy lately, and maybe my reasons aren’t good, but at least I should be able to put them down calmly.

  “I guess the simplest way to say it, darling, is to tell you that this isn’t the cruise I signed up for. I can adjust myself to this kind of cruise, but first I have to be sure there’s no way back to what I thought it would be.

  “I hope it doesn’t sound too corny to tell you that I know I married a dedicated man. I knew that you were concerned about the advancement of human knowledge in one small area where you are an expert. I knew you were willing to teach so you’d have the opportunity to do research. I was always joyous at your enthusiasms, darling. I did not expect we would ever have very much money. I expected you to work terrible hours and forget to eat and be so distracted by your work I would have to get used to wondering whether you remembered my name.

  “It was like that, dear, exactly like that, and when it was like that we were both happier than we are now. We have a lot more money now. But things are not right, the way they used to be right. The last time I tried to tell you how I feel, it turned into the kind of argument we couldn’t have had before our lives changed. You accused me of being discontented because you have to take so many trips. I
do not like having you away at any time, but that is a secondary thing. Floyd, you made what you are doing sound very plausible, so plausible that I wonder if you believe it yourself. You made it a lot more intricate than this, but you told me, in effect, that if a man has a talent for administration, then he is not pulling his share of the load if he turns his back on it and restricts himself to technical things. You said that there are thousands of technicians and very few administrators, and without the ability of the administrators, the technicians would never get constructive things done. You said I was trying to hold you back, which was really a nasty and unfair thing for you to say.

  “Darling, I don’t want to try to argue about the validity of how a man should spend his life. You can argue that nothing can be proved valid, or argue that everything has its own validity. I am talking about you, about Floyd Hubbard. I cannot help it, darling, but this business of exalting the administrative stuff seems to me to be awfully tricky.

  “Remember when you and Tony were running that long experiment on the conductivity of special alloys at absolute zero? I said to you, joking, ‘When you do come up with something special, they’ll use it to make better pots and pans.’ Can you remember how legitimately angry you got with me? Can you remember the arguments you used? You were a man doing a man’s work, and you were not afraid of idealism.

  “Forgive me, but this administration thing you are in and have been in for at least two years seems to me to be the manipulation of human beings. Granted that you rearrange groups of people so they are more effective, and possibly happier, but it is nothing you can be particularly idealistic about.

  “You have a thirst for knowledge, darling, and you seem to satisfy it best with tangible things. Now that you are dealing with these intangibles, you are changing. I do not know how to say it without hurting you or angering you, so all I can say is that you are losing a kind of innocence which was always dear to me. I think you take the wrong kind of pride in what you are doing. You are learning how to push the little buttons which make people jump, and you are becoming cynical and skeptical about people. It is a kind of ‘watchfulness’ which I see in you. Your smile is the same and you seem to talk in the same way, and people like you as readily as ever, but you are on guard, even with me. I think you are becoming a political man, and once again I must sound childish to you as I say that I do not like the by-products—the compromise, subterfuge and, so help me, the ‘use’ of human beings. Darling, I am not accusing you of some enormous wickedness. But I think the kind of work you are doing now will change the essential texture of you, will harden you in ways I cannot clearly understand.