Being Invisible: A Novel

by Thomas Berger

  Wagner felt himself blush. To get away from the moment he made the banal observation, “You stayed in today.”

  “I do most of the time. You don’t notice because you go out.”

  “You like to read?”

  She nodded at the book. “This is an assignment.”

  “You’re taking a course?” Asking these wooden questions had not, however, yet relieved his embarrassment.

  “Intermediate Spanish.” She wiped her hand on a paper napkin and picked up the book. “La Pata de Zorro, by Hugo Wast, if that means anything to you.”

  “Funny name for a Hispanic personage,” he said, intentionally being parody-pompous.

  “I believe it’s supposed to be a pseudonym.”

  “You must be good: you don’t even have a dictionary.”

  “Not really. I just forgot it today. But this is a textbook edition, with a vocabulary in back.” She smiled at him. This could be called the only conversation they had had in five and a half years of working in neighboring stalls. “I went to Mexico a couple of years ago.” He had not even been aware of that. “I swore I wouldn’t go again till I learned some of the language. Why not? I’ve certainly got the time.”

  Wagner shrugged. “I made the same resolution as far back as when my high-school senior class went on a trip to Quebec. I took a lot of French in college, but by now I’d be lucky to be able to ask the time of day.” He saw a smear of egg salad on his shoe and said hastily, “Let me get you a wet Kleenex.”

  “Let me,” said Delphine, pulling out the bottom drawer of her desk, exposing a box of tissues. “Gee, that sandwich flew everyplace.” She pointed at his shoe. Luckily she was not so careful an observer as to ask how the top of the shoe had been befouled by walking to her cubicle after the accident.

  Wagner cleaned the smear from his upper and again was claimed by an access of guilt as he watched Delphine squat and swab the floor. But this feeling was soon canceled by her returning to the chair and, without even looking for the one he had confiscated, lighting up another cigarette. He had however been impressed with her ambitious and commendable effort to learn another language. She was not simply a hard-smoking old maid who wrote mail-order-catalogue copy. Ever striving, she would be more tomorrow than she was today.

  Nowadays he had plenty of time at his disposal in which to study French, not to mention work on his novel. Babe’s departure could be seen, in the long run, as precisely what brought about his personal renaissance. He admitted there were great gaps in his culture, and there they had remained year after year. He had always told himself that writing catalogue copy was beneath him, but was it? Perhaps he had found his place. The incident with Delphine had had this unfortunate effect on his morale. Even judged by its positive results, snatching away her cigarette had been an utter failure if she only lighted another in the next moment. If invisibility was to be used for policing other people, it was obvious he’d have to become much more deft in its employment, else it would resemble those efforts which with the best will in the world exacerbate the very problems they were created to solve.

  That morning he had finally finished the copy for the flashlight-pen. The text was much like the one it replaced, though he did invent a few more uses for the device: following and making notes on a musical score in a darkened concert hall; recording the figures from a utilities meter in a dark corner of a basement; scribbling reminders in a parked car at night. While he was away at lunch the copy had vanished from his Out box, presumably the work of the office boy, who in this firm was called officially a messenger, and that was more reasonable a name, for the young man who held the job was at least twenty-five years of age, and he gave the position even more substance by always wearing a full suit, sometimes even three-piece. In between his rounds he was permitted rather than encouraged to try his own hand at writing copy, and was much better at it than Mary Alice Phillips. In time he would probably be promoted, if he persisted and if someone left or died.

  This fellow, whose name was Gordon, appeared now, just as Wagner was about to start on the copy for salt and pepper shakers with magnetic strips on their backs, enabling them to be stuck to the front of the doors of refrigerators and stoves and cabinets made of metal. Once again, like the flashlight-pen combo, these could be said to be somewhere between utility and novelty. They would certainly not be appropriate to the catalogues of highbrow batterie de cuisine. On the other hand, the condiment shakers were in a different category from the outsized towel, made of inferior-grade terrycloth, imprinted: I DON’T SWIM IN YOUR TOILET / PLEASE DON’T PEE IN MY POOL.

  “Fred,” Gordon said, for first names were the approved idiom in this office, even de bas en haute, “Jackie wants to see you.”

  “Oh sure,” said Wagner, happy to be relieved from coming to immediate terms with the magnetic shakers, for which he had no examples but rather a sheet of specifications and two colored photographs, one of which would be chosen, by the art department, to accompany the printed text. “How’s it going, Gordon?”

  “You mean personally?” Gordon was a clean-featured young man, perhaps even handsome, with his fine thin nose, and therefore looked as if he might breeze through life, but apparently he was more careful, for the question was typical. He added, “Or professionally?”

  “Neither,” said Wagner. “Under the aspect of eternity.”

  Gordon was not humorless. He made a smile, in which expression his features were not as regular, for some reason, as when his face was in repose. Wagner recorded such phenomena from time to time for use in his novel.

  “I’m trying not to offend the Holy Ghost,” said Gordon.

  “What does that mean?”

  “To despair,” Gordon explained. “In the Augustinian sense.”

  “I didn’t realize you were that religious,” said Wagner.

  “I’m not.”

  Gordon was getting pretentious. Wagner still didn’t really understand the comment, but if Gordon said it, it could scarcely be too abstruse. This place attracted would-be writers and intellectuals. He would not have believed that Delphine was one of them, but there she was, studying Spanish. It occurred to him that perhaps Gordon was a seminary dropout.

  Jackie Grinzing never displayed intellectual pretensions. No doubt that was why she was head of the department, with an office that had real walls that went all the way to the ceiling.

  She was wearing her outsized eyeglasses as he entered. When he had first seen the spectacles he had assumed they were a joke item from one of the catalogues, but apparently the lenses were prescription. Jackie wore them when reading, but now she was staring at the building across the street: either they were bifocals or she wasn’t actually looking at anything.

  Wagner said hi to her back.

  Jackie turned ever so slowly. She wore more costume jewelry than usual with the familiar gray suit. “Fred,” she said simply, and went to sit down back of her desk. She gestured at him. “Fred, we’ve known each other a long time. ... Is that some kind of moral pressure you’re applying, standing there like that?”

  “I wasn’t asked to sit.”

  “After all this time we’re being ceremonious?” Jackie asked incredulously. He took one of the straight chairs and brought it before the desk. Jackie resumed. “You know me. This isn’t a finishing school, and I certainly don’t care about anybody’s private life. But there’s a point where some things extend from the private sphere.”

  She plucked an unsharpened pencil from a leather cup of writing implements that sat next to one of those decommissioned blue-glass high-tension-line insulators that are sold as paperweights. She put the eraser end near her mouth but had not yet bitten it.

  “Jesus,” she said. “This is a hell of a thing to have to deal with but I don’t see how I can dodge it and keep my self-respect and maybe yours too. Morton wanted to do it, but I said, No sir, he’s not only under me, he’s my friend since I joined the firm.”

  “Morton?”

  “Morton Wilton,”
Jackie said with special feeling. “He’s been here for months. You know that.”

  “I’m not sure exactly what he does,” said Wagner. Aside from being indecently fondled by her, of course.

  She laughed at the bright blue blotter on her desk. “Well, you don’t keep up with things, I must say. He’s executive vice-president. He’s our boss. Well, there’s technically still the president, Mr. Grayling, but as you know he’s not very active any more.”

  “I’m just one of the troops, Jackie,” said Wagner. “I just write my copy and go home.”

  She lowered her chin. “Are you still working on that novel?”

  He was startled. “You know about that?”

  “You told me. How else would I know?”

  Obviously she was telling the truth. “I’m sorry. I forgot. I always intended to keep it a secret until I had finished it at least, but it’s taking so long I guess I ran out of patience.”

  “My lips are sealed,” Jackie said. She seemed to be taking pains to be considerate, which care was not characteristic, irrespective of their old office “friendship,” which was scarcely that: they had simply found themselves in the same place for some years.

  Suddenly Jackie colored. “Damn! It’s being even tougher than I anticipated.” She took off her glasses. She cleared her throat. “Your, uh, lunchtime, uh, visits...”

  This absolutely could have nothing to do with invisibility: he was sure of that. But still...

  “Yes. I do go out to eat lunch. Delphine however stays in the office and studies Spanish. Did you know that?”

  “It’s not like you to use levity,” Jackie said. “I’ll admit there’s something ridiculous about it, but it just can’t be tolerated, Fred, and you know it. Aren’t there more discreet places than the men’s room? Can’t you wait until after work?”

  “Jackie,” Wagner began soberly, “I won’t joke if you stop being mysterious. I don’t begin to get your allusions. They may be well intentioned but they’re simply not intelligible.”

  He received what was a level look if there ever was one: the several furrows of her brow were firm and parallel.

  “All right, then. OK. I understand the stalls in the men’s room are being used at lunchtime for homosexual activities. I have been informed that you have been recognized as one of the participants. Speaking for myself, I never condemn anybody for any sexual tastes, barring those for children, animals, and the feebleminded.” Which meant that her condemned list was actually extensive. Wagner was seeking distracting thoughts at this moment. Jackie went on: “But some things are out of order in an office, and I don’t think we’re being unreasonable in saying this one very much is.”

  Wagner at last asked, “And just who said I was doing this?”

  She shook her head. Jackie’s hair today was that kind of brown that looks red around the edges when the light comes from behind. “Let’s not get into names. Someone told Morton, Mr. Wilton, and Mr. Wilton told me.”

  “It isn’t true, you know,” Wagner said.

  “Oh, it isn’t?”

  He cried, “Of course it isn’t, for God’s sake.”

  “Don’t shout at me!”

  “I’ll throw this chair through your window,” Wagner said, “unless you stop nodding in that smug way.” He was surprised by his own fury.

  Jackie was not frightened. “Any more of that talk and I call the police. You want to get tough, mister, you got the wrong lady.”

  “I’m just trying to get your attention,” Wagner said, imposing control on himself. “It’s not personal. Somebody is slandering me, and I just wonder who and why.”

  “No,” Jackie said firmly. “I don’t think it’s that at all.” She raised a hand to stifle his protest. “I’m not saying I believe them, Fred, but I don’t think it’s malicious.”

  “Them? Then there are more than Wilton?”

  “I told you someone informed Mr. Wilton. It isn’t Mr. Wilton’s accusation. Obviously he has his own private washroom.” She swiveled rapidly from side to side in the chair. “Look at the problem I’m facing. It’s hard to believe the whole story is a total invention. If what you say is true”—he bristled, and she was quick to say again that she was not necessarily indicting him—“still someone must be doing something in there. Why else would it have been reported?”

  “Who’s out to get me, Jackie?”

  “No,” said she. “That’s the wrong tack to take, Fred. The question that interests me is: If not you, then who?”

  He glared at her. “I submit my resignation.”

  She sniffed disdainfully. “Don’t be asinine. No, the problem remains. What’s going on in there? Obviously I can’t investigate personally.”

  “I’ll tell you this,” said Wagner, seething. “I have never, in all my years here, seen the least suspicious thing in the men’s room. True, I don’t linger there when my own business is done, nor do I squat down and count the number of legs in any one booth at any one time.”

  Jackie widened her eyes. “One of them sits with crossed legs on the toilet seat.”

  “You seem to be an authority on the subject.”

  “I am anyway in authority in this department.” Her respect for him was not increasing.

  “Look,” Wagner said. “If the report came by way of your friend Wilton—”

  “What do you mean by saying ‘friend’?”

  He paused for a moment and then resumed. “Wilton should investigate for himself, stay in some lunchtime and catch the culprits redhanded, if that’s the appropriate figure of speech in this case.”

  Jackie said, “You’re going to answer my question.”

  “Aren’t all bosses friends?” It was not brave, but it wasn’t bad.

  “I don’t know how far you can get on sarcasm, Fred,” Jackie said. “I really don’t.”

  “All right then,” said he. “I’ll be straightforward. I neither give nor receive homosexual favors in the men’s room, and if I find out who says I do, I’ll kick him in the teeth and then sue him. But I won’t serve as your spy in the toilets.”

  He rose and marched out. This was the first time he could ever remember having finally held his own with Jackie Grinzing. It was ironic that this kind of success would have come in response to a defamatory accusation.

  4

  WAGNER’S FACE STAYED WARM from anger for so long that it began to itch. He did little work for the next hour, so distracted was he by the outrageous charge against him. Could it be a case of mistaken identity or did he have a secret enemy somewhere in the office?

  As if more wretchedness were needed, he soon was sitting in discomfort: he needed to take a pee but had a horror now of being seen, by secret eyes, crossing the threshold of what had formerly been one kind of sanctuary. However, at last he was sufficiently uncomfortable to resort to invisibility. He did not like to do it, being altogether in the right as he was, and he was also concerned as to whether vanishing so often might take its toll on his system—perhaps one had a quota that could be exceeded—but he had no other option at this moment.

  But before he could dematerialize Mary Alice Phillips appeared in her usual importunate condition. She handed him a piece of copy.

  “Do you mind? I know there’s something wrong, but I just can’t put my finger on it.”

  He suppressed a sigh and quickly read what she had written about a self-draining soap dish. There was an accompanying photograph of a little vessel of acrylic, slightly higher at one end than at the other, where a tiny downspout-shaped place of egress had been provided for accumulated water. To the brief description of this device Mary Alice had added: “No more snotty soap!”

  Wagner winced. He explained. “This is vivid, but not in good taste.”

  “Yet it’s what I always think of when I want to use a bar that’s been sitting in the wetness,” said she.

  “That may be true,” said Wagner, his distended bladder throbbing, “but terms like that give the product an unpleasant connotation to some peop
le, and they wouldn’t buy it. Our copy is supposed to sell the goods, after all, not claim attention for the pungency of its style.”

  Mary Alice grinned. Owing to the faint freckles that appeared at such a moment, this was her most advantageous expression. Had she grinned more often, she might have been thought of as cute. “Then ‘toejams’ and ‘boogers’ are ruled out?”

  “I should hope so,” said Wagner, suggesting by his attitude that he wished to rise and therefore she would be kind to step back from the entrance to the cubicle.

  But Mary Alice either did not get his message or callously defied it, staying in place. “But the rest of it’s OK if I killed the snot?”

  Wagner peered closely at her, hoping she spoke in conscious irony, but unhappily decided she did not. “I guess so.”

  “How about ‘slimy’?”

  He shook his head. “You don’t need any elaboration. Everybody knows how a soap dish gets when a bar of wet soap sits in it.”

  “Of course you’re right,” said Mary Alice. “You always get straight to the heart of the matter. That’s what good writing is, isn’t it?”

  He shrugged. “I guess so, but we’re not talking about Flaubert. This is only commercial-catalogue copy. There are only two considerations: not much space and it should help sell the product.”

  “You could say that about serious literature too,” Mary Alice offered brightly.

  “No doubt. Gus Flaubert would probably do a great job on the soap dish, only it would take him all month.”

  While Mary Alice was temporarily off balance with his cheekiness towards the great master, Wagner managed to get to his feet in the available space and step out of the cubicle. For a moment, then, he was out and she was yet inside.

  “Of course,” she now said, still stuck on “literature,” “there are those who were pretty wordy. Take James Joyce.”

  So he was to be saved by a mot juste. “A case in point,” he said. “‘The snot-green sea.’” He feinted towards the water cooler and got past Delphine’s lair and around the corner without losing a step. He could be seen from the cubicles he passed as well as, at one point, through the glass door of Jackie Grinzing’s office. There was no suitable way in which he could become invisible at any point along the route to the men’s room. However, his wits were fertile, and the answer was soon forthcoming: there was another men’s room, away over beyond the reception area, at the other end of the floor, convenient to the accounting department to which he had gone some years earlier, at Babe’s instigation, to question the amount of deductions from his paycheck, and on emerging from this undignified and fruitless pursuit, he had paused to use the paymasters’ toilet.