Being Invisible: A Novel

by Thomas Berger

  It was time for him to start for the bank, if he hoped to get there before closing, which might be as early as 2:30. Being invisible had no effect on the speed at which one could move. He enclosed the letters in the manila envelopes used for interoffice mail, and because these were not equipped for sealing, had no closure but the string-and-spindle, he scotch-taped the flaps, which of course would disqualify the envelopes from further use once they were mutilated by the removal of the tape. This was why such employment of tape was forbidden under the rules for office economy newly imposed by Morton Wilton, the adulterous executive.

  But were Wagner not to apply some obstacle against the accidental examination of his letters by unauthorized parties, he would once again be responsible for bringing needless discomfort, perhaps even pain, to others. However, since Gordon the messenger had been directed to remain on the alert for the illicit use of scotch tape, dropping them off at his station would probably call Jackie’s unwelcome attention to the envelopes—unwelcome even in the case of the one addressed to her, for if he knew the woman, she would first react to the infraction of the rules and only read the enclosure as an afterthought. She might also even confiscate and read the message to Terry.

  Therefore Wagner now entered her office invisibly—she was still out, perhaps by now even finally eating lunch—and, after borrowing the desk-set pen to inscribe “Personal” on the flap, just above the tape, deposited her envelope in the In box. He then delivered Terry’s to the stockroom.

  Unless filling an order, the man was never in evidence at or near the counter. If you wanted him, you struck the button of the old-fashioned bellhop’s bell and proceeded to wait interminably. It occurred to Wagner to wonder why Terry did not invite “Artie” into the fastness of his lair, into which no one else, not even Jackie, ever penetrated and which was surely more private than the men’s washroom—unless of course it was the very violation of social modesty, with the concomitant risks, that attracted the stockroom clerk, whose habitual sullenness might well be the symptom of a profound grievance against the way things were. Such persons abounded in the city: their statements, made in the vocabulary of vandalism, could be seen anew each day, on buildings and public conveyances and in parks. No doubt it could be expressed sexually as well.

  Wagner rang the bell and placed the envelope upon the counter that obstructed the doorway at waist level. As soon as it touched wood it became visible.

  His time in which to reach the bank had somehow dwindled to but eleven minutes, he now saw on the clock mounted above the elevators. Perhaps his watch had been slow; he could not check it now, for, like the rest of him and his, it was invisible.

  All cars were on the ground floor. Therefore he took the now familiar staircase. Running down the steps was still a dangerous exercise, but he reached the bottom without tripping, crossed the lobby at so smart a pace he could not alter it or dodge when, at the doors to the street, he met the entering Wilton, of all people, who was two steps ahead of Jackie Grinzing. Wagner did have the advantage, though a captive of his own momentum, of being able to see Wilton, who of course was blind to him and therefore got the worst of the collision; indeed, was knocked out the door and, being palpably of slighter substance than he looked, finally lost his balance and when last seen was likely to fall to the pavement.

  As to what either Wilton or Jackie made of this surely puzzling event, Wagner did not have time to pause and observe, but he did reflect that had her escort been more gallant, it would have been she with whom he might have collided.

  En route to the bank, he only narrowly averted running into a series of other people, then was himself almost trampled by a husky youth who could have had no idea that a human being occupied what looked like a clear field of play.

  The bank’s clock was at 2:21½ when he arrived. Good luck now ruled the swinging door: three of its compartments were filled with persons on their way to the street, and no one but him awaited entrance. Inside, however, he had to linger overlong for someone to pass through the electric gate to the back-of-counter area, and when finally a plump young woman did so, she was detained by a man playing the role of the traditional banker, i.e., middle-aged, gray-suited and sideburned; and these people effectively blocked all access to the gate... until, after an eternity, another officer begged their pardon and dislodged them, but he went swiftly through the gate and, instead of letting it look after itself, paused to see the latch close—for all the world as if he knew Wagner stood invisibly by, waiting to pounce.

  But at last the young woman, uttering a series of OKs, turned from the man in gray and moved her plump person, dressed in bright green, through the barrier, the switch that controlled which was operated by an employee just inside and to the left. Paperwork was the latter’s main job, but she reserved the corner of an eye for whoever might appear on either side of the gate. Wagner followed quickly in the fat girl’s wake, but, studying the document in her hand, she moved at a deliberate pace, and the gate, in its automatic, prompt return, struck him before he could clear it. It had no significant force, and he was not hurt, but the gate was detained for an instant in its travel. Wagner noticed that and wondered whether anyone else did, but he was inside now and had work to do.

  He went swiftly to the station of the teller from whom he had taken the hundred-dollar bills. She was currently occupied with a man buying traveler’s checks. To get the blanks for this purpose she moved far enough from her cash drawer for Wagner to return the notes, though he could not manage to do the job as neatly as he would have liked. The bills had been crisply new when taken; by now, what with his counting them several times, they were not quite as they had been: even a nonprofessional could have seen that at a distance.

  But the bank teller was back in place before he could smooth down even the topmost bills. He sprang away, but then, in an effort to reach the drawer from a position just behind her, leaning at too extreme an angle, he was obliged suddenly to alter his center of gravity. He moved one foot and clutched out instinctively with his left, free hand: the latter found itself just below the seat of the teller’s skirt, performing a grasp that partook of both jokey “goose” and grim indecency.

  The young woman emitted a steam-whistle shriek, more hurled away than dropped her burden of documents, whirled around, her features gargoyled with indignation... and of course saw no one near enough to have made free with her and got away clean. She clasped her face.

  She was being stared at or towards by every human being in the bank, as was he who had brought this mess about, though naturally no one could see him. And now the guard arrived at the window, his revolver trained on the poor devil who had ordered the traveler’s checks.

  “Freeze! ...Put the case on the floor, back up two paces, lean forward, placing hands on counter, and spread ’em.” The guard, a seamy-faced man with a head that was probably bald under his cap, gingerly toed the black attaché case away from where the customer had placed it. He shouted in at the teller, “Jane! He say he got a bomb?”

  The young woman, still breathing heavily, turned. “Oh, God, no.”

  “A pistol, huh?” cried the guard, and then deafeningly addressed the man who was bridging his spread-eagled body, at an extreme angle, between the counter and the patch of floor, four feet out, where his feet were. “Awright, you sack of filth, I’m going to take your piece. If you go for it meantime, say goodbye to your head.” He put the muzzle of the pistol into his captive’s nape. His jargon might be TV-synthetic, but he was surely a genuine menace.

  Jane finally rose above her own distress to say, “Joe, he didn’t do anything!”

  The prisoner himself found the strength to second her. “I didn’t do anything!”

  But Joe kept the gun where it was, telling Jane, “They’ll say anything. Call the boys in blue.”

  “Please, Joe,” said Jane. “I had a muscular spasm, is all. It had nothing to do with this man. He’s all right. Please let him go.”

  Joe did not relish hearing this pl
ea, and it took much more persuasion to induce him to holster the weapon and permit his victim to stand erect. The latter in a voice of fury assured everyone in the bank that he would not only never again do business with this institution but furthermore intended to hold it legally responsible for his public shaming.

  Fortunately for Joe, the distraction of closing time was at hand, and he hastened to go lock the front door against newcomers. No less self-righteous, he stayed there to let people out.

  Having made full restitution, Wagner was certainly eager to leave. This episode had been no more successful than his encounter with the so-called artwork that had been modeled on Zirko’s private part. He simply didn’t think these projects through before embarking on them. They were products of his nerves and not his faculty of reason—perhaps because there was nothing reasonable in being invisible.

  The electrically operated gate was stuck tight, he learned as he approached the little group of persons on his side of it. A like party stood on the other side.

  The woman whose job it was to press the switch was saying, “Didn’t close all the way, so I pushed it shut, and that did it.”

  A scowling officer looked through the plate-glass panel that formed the upper half of the gate. “You forced it, Sherry: that tells the mechanism to freeze. It also sounds the silent alarm, for God’s sake. The police will be on their way.”

  By striking Wagner, the gate had got itself warped.

  “Shit,” said a female voice. “That’s all we need to end a crazy day. Everything’s going wrong all of a sudden.”

  Wagner silently agreed. He wished he could, without compromising himself, explain to these decent human beings why such phenomena were taking place. They looked to be much the same kind of people with whom he worked: though culturally superior to them, he was in the same moral boat, like them at the mercy of a city that was heedless of the individual.

  A maintenance man was sent for, but, before he arrived, the police appeared as predicted. Fortunately, they were not in an overreactive mood but rather brusque and blasé, a relief after the performance of Joe the guard. They soon left. But when the technician came, it was ever so long before he disengaged the gate so as to permit Wagner’s exit into the lobby, and then there was the matter of the front door, to pass promptly through which one would have had to apply, visibly of course, to Joe.

  It was almost 4:30 when Wagner reappeared at his desk. He thought it politic not to make typing noises but rather to edit, by pen, some rough copy he had written that morning, and furthermore to pretend, if need be, he had been doing so all afternoon.

  But hardly was he seated when Gordon came along and asked, “Where have you been, Fred? Jackie’s really burned.”

  Obviously the plan to maintain that he had been in place for hours could not stand up. “I haven’t been feeling well,” he said instead.

  “Well, you weren’t in the men’s room,” said Gordon. “If you mean you went to the doctor, you should have told somebody.”

  Wagner rose. “I was over in the accounting-department washroom. It’s more private.”

  “It is? I never knew they had toilets of their own.”

  Wagner said, “I’ll go explain to Jackie. Then I’ll be right back and type this up for you. I’m still not behind schedule.” He regretted sounding as if he had to justify himself to Gordon, who was technically his only inferior in the department.

  “She’s left,” Gordon said. “There’s some meeting of the department heads, and then the day’s over.” He had a very slight edge of girlishness to him. However, it had not been he whom Wagner had seen with “Artie,” but rather Terry, whose manner might be called virilely disaffected. And the guy from accounting, apparently another of Artie’s habitués, was as far from swishy as could be. Undoubtedly there was a dimension of sexual inversion that Wagner could not as yet, with his fragmentary information, delineate.

  He now gestured towards his typewriter. “I’ll type this up, then.”

  “The Robot Carver copy had to be rewritten,” said Gordon. “Maybe you remember? That’s the electric knife, with the cut-out that automatically stops it when reaching bone.”

  “Of course I remember. I did that the day before yesterday.”

  “Jackie gave it to me to rewrite,” Gordon said. “I thought you should know that, Fred. ... So you wouldn’t think I was going behind your back.”

  Wagner was annoyed with the young man’s sanctimoniousness. “Why should I possibly think that, Gordon? You only do what you’re told.”

  Gordon shrugged. “I guess that could be said of us all.”

  Wagner couldn’t let him get away with the implication that they were professional equals. “When you’ve been around as long as I,” said he, with a wry twitch of the mouth, “you’ll find it possible to rise above office rivalry. We’re all just earning a living. None of us, except maybe Jackie, would otherwise be working here, that’s certain.”

  Gordon blinked his very pale blue eyes. “Oh, I don’t think it’s so bad. The people are a lot brighter than I arrogantly assumed at first, and better educated. Just about everybody has a BA, anyway, and Judy Rumbaugh taught social studies at the college level for a while. And look at you, the budding novelist.”

  Wagner made a polite sneer. “I hadn’t realized I let the cat out of the bag. Can you call someone ‘budding’ after five or six years?” He honestly could not recall having ever mentioned his literary aspirations, but obviously he had: first Jackie, now Gordon had made an easy reference to what he thought he considered intimate information, yet he had apparently imparted it to at least two office acquaintances. On the other hand, he could go too far in self-deprecation, especially with someone as young as Gordon, who furthermore had been assigned to rewrite copy of his that had been perfectly all right as it stood.

  “My trouble is that, unlike a lot of my contemporaries, I am as severe with myself as I am when reading others. I discard at least one word for every half-dozen I write. Wish that could be said for hacks like Wulsin and Musgrave, not to mention the tedious Miss R. Kelsinger.”

  “Well, they’re all pretty much out of fashion by now anyway,” Gordon said, a little smile twitching at each side of his mouth. “Lesbian satire is pathetic.”

  Wagner was taken by surprise. “I didn’t know she was a lesbian,” he foolishly observed.

  “She’s not,” Gordon said, clucking twice. “Her last book was a vicious attack on them.”

  Wagner groaned,” Of course, That was—”

  “Girl’s Girls,” Gordon said impatiently. “Trash.”

  “You keep up with things,” said Wagner, with the slightest edge of derision: after the day he had had, he did not intend to sustain a defeat at the hands of this junior. “I admit I don’t. Call me self-concerned, but—”

  “Vous avez bien ici autre chose à faire?” Gordon was tightening the screws. “I do some reviewing,” he went on to say. “The Critical Edge—?” He shrugged. “Poetry.” He bent and spoke sotto voce. “In fact, just between you and me, OK?, I’ve been offered a job there. Doesn’t pay what this one does, naturally, and if their grants stop at any time, they’ll have to close shop, but it would be a good place to be, don’t you think?”

  To maintain any pride at all, Wagner promptly agreed. The publication in reference was a literary monthly, unread-ably pretentious, financed by either some cultural foundation or a university: he had seen only one copy, brought home by Babe, and had not read more than a few pompous lines of the text, certainly none of the poetry reviews. Nevertheless he told Gordon, “I must have seen some of your criticism there, just didn’t realize you were the same person.”

  At last he had said the right thing. Gordon looked pleased. “Yes, I am G. S. Calhoun. ‘Gordon’ just doesn’t sound like a poet to me.”

  “You’re a poet as well?” This was a mistake.

  “The collection’s not out yet,” Gordon said. “But most of the poems have been published in periodicals, so I think I can use
the name.”

  “You’ve got a book coming out?”

  “Next spring,” said Gordon. “Burbage.”

  “You couldn’t do better than that.”

  “They’re never going to make me rich,” Gordon said, “but they really do have a fine tradition of publishing verse. Almost nobody else does nowadays.”

  Wagner said dolefully, “They can afford it, with what they make from Wulsin’s novels. By the way, I apologize for taking a crack at him before.”

  Gordon smilingly raised his hands. “I’m not to be held responsible for all the other books published by Burbage. As it happens, I agree with you about Teddy’s work. But he’s an awfully nice old guy.”

  Wagner was under the impression that Theodore Wulsin was only a year or so older than himself. He clasped his hands together. “On another subject, Gordon: you haven’t, have you, noticed anything odd in the men’s room lately?”

  Gordon had a steep and smooth brow. Faint furrows were rippling its surface now.

  “What kind of odd things?”

  Wagner saw the chance to make a minor point. “Well, if they’re ‘odd,’ then I guess they don’t belong to a kind.”

  A tremor of eye indicated that Gordon had been anyway grazed, though you’d never know it from his speech.

  “Uh, no, I can’t say I spend any more time there than necessary. Why?”

  Already suspecting that it was quite possible he would regret having brought up the subject, Wagner nevertheless said, “There have been complaints.”

  “About what?”

  Wagner lowered his voice. “Deviate activity.”