Q Clearance

by Peter Benchley

  The second piece of intact paper seemed to be a prescription of some kind. Twenty or thirty chemical combinations were printed on the paper, of which a dozen had been checked by the doctor whose signature was on the bottom. Some were routine: B-12, B-1, B-6, ascorbic acid. Some were exotic: lecithin, pantothenic acid, dolomite. Some sounded as if they were used in the manufacture of automobiles: chromium, zinc sulphate, manganese 10. And a few Pym recalled seeing in articles about mental illness: lithium, Elavil, Tofranil.

  "You think he takes all these?" Pym asked aloud.

  "He must be one sick fellow," said Ivy.

  "Or the healthiest man in the world." Pym smiled. "I doubt that any disease could get through all that."

  "Well, he exercises, I know that."

  "What d'you mean?"

  "I saw him leaving the office today, and he had one of those little rackets they play . . . ah . . . squash with."

  "I wonder where he plays."

  "There's a Y on Seventeenth. I pass it every day. But I don't know if they have squash." Ivy remembered the appointment calendar. "He's playing tomorrow, too. It's the only appointment he has for tomorrow. His calendar says 'Twelve noon, squash with . . .' and then a question mark."

  "He plans to pick up a game, then. Wherever he plays has a pro who matches players up."

  Ivy laughed. "Dick Tracy!"

  Pym laughed, too. "I love puzzles like this." He got up to refill the sherry glasses and change the record.

  If "Clair de Lune" had been soothing, "La Mer" was almost anesthetic. Ivy felt that if Pym were to leave the room for five minutes, she would drift off into a lovely sleep.

  Pym returned to his chair. "Let's see if we can take all the evidence we've got and discover this Mr. Burnham's story." He began to sort through the strands of paper, tossing aside the blank ones and laying out those on which there was some writing in neat lines on the table beside him. Mostly, Pym was radiating enthusiasm for Ivy's benefit. But there was an off chance that two or three strands would fit together and disclose a bit of valuable information about Burnham's job.

  Ivy was delighted. Mr. Pym seemed genuinely pleased by what she had brought him. She had delivered. Even if he couldn't help her with Jerome's problem, things were back in balance, and she needn't feel embarrassed about calling him again.

  A key turned the lock in the front door of the apartment, and a woman walked in. She was young, in her late twenties, and beautiful in a careless, confident way, as if she knew that nature had created in her a splendid creature of perfect proportions, and she saw no reason to gussy herself up with hairdos or makeup, jewelry or chi-chi clothes. Her hair reminded Ivy of goldenrod, for its yellow was dusty rather than shiny, and it fell ungoverned to her shoulders. Her nose was straight and sharp and must have been made for her face, unlike those noses that seemed to have been placed at random on inappropriate faces. Her eyes were a light gray-blue: Any darker, they would have been nondescript and boring; any lighter, they would have been scary. Her skin was faintly, smoothly tan, as if she had once spent so much time in the sun that the melanin in her skin had moved permanently to the surface. She wore a blue cotton shirtwaist dress and brown leather sandals.

  "Hello," she said pleasantly and with an ease that told Ivy she was at home here.

  My, my. Ivy thought. Mr. Pym is full of surprises. He has himself one top-shelf girlfriend. "Hello," she said.

  Reluctantly, Pym abandoned the strands of paper. "Eva, this is Ivy Peniston. Ivy, this is my daughter, Eva."

  Daughter! Ivy stared. My God! They must've crossed Mr. Pym with that Cheryl Tiegs woman.

  Eva smiled and said, "Hello again."

  "Eva is a . . ." Pym glanced at her. "... nutritionist."

  "At the moment," Eva said.

  "Look, Eva." Pym pointed to the strands of paper on the table. "Ivy brought us a nifty puzzle."

  Pym sketched for Eva what little he and Ivy knew about Burnham. Then he gave her the prescription sheet and said, "Does this make any sense to you?"

  Eva read the paper carefully, noting each of the vitamins and chemicals that had been checked. "He's hyperhystemic," she said. "He's allergic to a lot of things, probably including foods. He may or may not be a kind of alcoholic. Sometimes he has broad mood swings. He has trouble remembering his dreams."

  Ivy was amazed. "You got all that from that piece of paper?"

  Eva smiled. "One of the Greenpeacers I worked with was an orthomolecular shrink. We never ate right, and he used to pump us full of nutritional supplements. You spend six months with someone on a boat, you learn whatever he has to teach." She said to her father, "The man is like a Ferrari: He works like a dream when he's finely tuned, but one little thing goes out of whack, he'll fall apart. What is he to you?"

  Reflexively, Pym lowered his eyes and turned his head. "Nothing. It's just for fun."

  Eva looked at her father. A smile started on her lips, but she suppressed it.

  Pym tried not to look at Eva. He was a child caught in a clumsy lie, and he knew he was blushing. He busied himself with the decanter of sherry, finding a glass for Eva, filling it, spilling some, wiping up the spill, handing her the glass.

  Ivy sensed that her presence had suddenly become an intrusion. The last thing she wanted to do was annoy Pym, leave him with an unpleasant aftertaste. Time to go. "Well," she said, leaning forward and fitting her feet back into her shoes, "I should be going."

  Pym helped her up and fetched her shopping bag. "Why not leave all this with me?" he said, gesturing at the strands of paper scattered on the floor. "I'll play with it and see if I can make something of it."

  "Fine."

  "And keep your eye open for any other piece that might fit the puzzle." He winked and smiled and hoped he looked mischievously conspiratorial.

  Ivy nodded. "I'm on the early shift all week." She took a step, put her weight on the bad leg, and the unexpected pain stopped her short and made her gasp.

  "Ivy!" Pym felt her totter, and he grabbed her.

  "It's all right," Ivy said. "She stiffened up on me. I have to work 'er some."

  "Have some more sherry."

  "No thanks. 'F she complains about walkin', she sure don't want to crawl me all the way home."

  "I'll get you some more pills." Pym looked at Eva, who came and held Ivy's arm while he fetched the pills.

  In the bathroom, Pym knelt and reached under the sink. He used a nailfile to pry loose a square tile behind the sink's drain pipe. He had been hiding his pharmacopoeia behind the sink for years. Granted, the chances were greater that he would be struck by lightning or bitten by a puff adder than that he would be raided by the police for having a stash of deviously acquired prescription drugs, but just as he had been trained to arrange elaborate blind drops for passing information, to speak in absurdly circumlocutory language when dealing with his contacts, to bum all his typewriter ribbons, so too he concealed anything that might raise an eyebrow if it were discovered in a random accident, like a fire or a flood from a broken pipe in the apartment upstairs.

  There were a dozen bottles of pills in the hole in the wall—Valium, Dexedrine, Demerol, Seconal, Antabuse (capital for causing spectacular, mysterious illness at a cocktail party, should such an occasion ever arise) and four bottles of Percodan, the morphine-based painkiller on which, Pym was certain, he now had Ivy hooked like a striped bass.

  He poured twenty Percodan pills into an empty plastic vial, replaced the bottle in the hole and the tile in the wall, and returned to the living room. Ivy was sitting down again, holding another glass of sherry and a five-dollar bill. Eva stood before her, looking like a concerned and caring nurse, the sherry bottle in her hand.

  "I thought we should have a taxi take Ivy home," Eva said to Pym.

  "Of course. Good for you. Is he on his way?"

  Eva nodded. "Be here in a minute."

  Pym handed the pills to Ivy, and she smiled at him. Her eyes were glassy, and it took her a moment to say, "Thank you."


  "Let's help her downstairs," Pym said. "I don't want her waiting alone on the sidewalk."

  "About Jerome . . ."Ivy said, as she struggled to stand.

  "Ah yes . . . " Pym's mind charged ahead, searching all avenues for access to a high-school diploma. "Can you borrow a diploma from someone who graduated last year? From the same school."

  "I 'spect Jerome can get one."

  "Good. As soon as you get it, you can consider it done."

  "I don't know how . . ." Ivy felt herself beginning to weep. Tears were backing up behind her eyes and wanting to squeeze out. For God's sake! she thought. What's going on? I'm grateful, but it's not worth falling apart over. She swallowed, cleared her throat.

  "Now, now. ..." Pym patted her on the shoulder and led her toward the door.

  The taxi was waiting. Pym and Eva helped Ivy into the back seat. Pym took the five-dollar bill from Ivy's fist and gave it to the Sikh driver, told him Ivy's address and told him to keep the change—a two-dollar tip at least, Pym guessed.

  "I don't know what the chemistry is," Pym said as the taxi rolled away, "but blacks have a terrible weakness for alcohol. Goes right to their heads."

  Eva didn't reply. She was recording the taxi's license number.

  "Sikhs don't rob people," Pym said.

  "How do you know he's a Sikh? Maybe he's a Mexican with a turban."

  "What kind of talk is that from a socialist?" He hoped his voice sounded light and jocular.

  "I don't turn my back on anybody," Eva said. "Not any more."

  In the taxi. Ivy leaned her head against the back of the seat. Her stomach was rolling, and her brain felt like dough. What happened? One minute she was fine, the next she was pissed as a goat. That last glass of sherry must've done it. Foul brew, served like wine but with a kick like booze. No wonder the British Empire rotted away.

  And probably the pills didn't help.

  She rolled down the window.

  Remember, girl, if you're going to spew, spew to leeward.

  ''Who was she?" Eva asked as she and Pym reentered the apartment.

  "Nobody." He couldn't look at her. He sensed that he was at a crossroads. He could take the safe path, say nothing, or ... He busied himself collecting the sherry glasses and putting them on the tray.

  Eva grinned. "Don't bullshit me, Pop. You can tell me. You having a little fling?"

  "A what?!" A series of muscle groups tightened in shock, snapping him upright and clenching a hand that held a sherry glass so hard that the stem of the glass snapped.

  Surprise had twisted the grin on her face into a grimace. She said, "Sorry. I didn't—"

  "No," he said. "I'm sure you didn't."

  Pym looked at Eva and saw that her face was radiating uncertainty, bewilderment and (maybe he was seeing too much, but he didn't think so) the first few wrinkles of fear.

  He stepped through the crossroads.

  The time had come.

  "Get a jacket," he told her. "We'll go for a walk."

  SEVEN

  BuRNHAM left the YMCA at 7:30. He had played well, had split games with a quick and hairy ferret who worked for the Treasury Department. The man was younger than Burnham, had sharper reflexes and was more aggressive, bumping Burnham off the "T" and wielding his racket more like an ax than an epee. Burnham had won his points with wrist finesse and ball control, and by the end of the fourth game he had perfected a maddening tactic of dinking the ball low into the far comer, just above the tin, which had brought his opponent to his knees, cursing and flustered. Burnham won the fourth game 15-6, and he left the court feeling deft, clever and— intellectually if not statistically—the clear winner. The match mirrored his day, which had begun rough and uncertain and had ended on an unexpected high.

  The match had been arranged by Hal, the unofficial pro at the 17th Street Y, which was known informally and unpleasantly as the Walter Jenkins Memorial Y, after the unfortunate aide to Lyndon Johnson, whose career had screeched to a seamy halt when he was apprehended in an unspeakable act with an unidentified stranger in one of the men's room stalls.

  Hal (whose last name was known only to himself and to God) could never have been formally employed by the YMCA or any other organization that pretended to conform to conventional morality, for he was, by his own admission, an accident of nature. It was, he told Burnham one evening after drinking half a quart of Scope mouthwash, as if his manufacturer had gathered components for disparate devices and forcibly assembled them into a bastard machine that could perform no socially acceptable function. Once, Hal had probably been pretty—back in the days when he lived in California and made a living, he said, as "catamite to the stars." He would have been slight and delicate and fair. But now his skin was the color of old bone, his gums had receded so far that his teeth looked as if a fair breeze would cause them to fall like apples from a tree, and his remaining hair—meticulously molded around an insane yellow toupee that would have passed for a decent blond merkin—had been peroxided so often that it was the color of water.

  Lacking the courage, the intelligence and the resources of Quentin Crisp, Hal had not dared flaunt himself in polite society and so had gone underground. If he could not secure a proper job by normal means, he would fashion one for himself. Passing through Washington a few years earlier, he had spent a few nights at the Y and had noticed that the athletic facilities were tacky and unsupervised. Men and women (financial exigencies had long since forced the YM and YWCAs to share the same building) had to provide their own locks, their own towels and their own soap, and had to wear shoes everywhere for fear of contracting some exotic parasite. They could not play squash on short notice, for court time was allocated on a first-come, first-served basis, so an individual had to call an opponent whose schedule matched his own, then show up and wait and hope that his entire lunch hour wouldn't be spent waiting for a court.

  Quietly, Hal began to spend his days in the cellar of the Y, dressed in white-duck trousers, white tennis shoes and a polo shirt from the Malibu Beach Club. He bought two dozen cheap towels and rented them for fifty cents apiece to people who had forgotten their own. Then he provided padlocks for rent, and sold soap. Finally, as he saw the frustration of players whose opponents failed to appear or who couldn't get court time, he began to book games. Knowing that people tended to obey any sign that looked official, he bought a snappy placard that said reserved and pasted it on one of the four squash courts. Regular pairs could call Hal and book the court and know that they would get to play. His tips for providing this convenience ranged from a couple of dollars to as much as twenty. Before long, all four courts were under Hal's control, and as he came to know the skill levels of the various players, he was able to match partners. Nowadays, all one had to do was call Hal and say he would like to play at such-and-such a time, and he would be sure of having a court and an opponent who would give him what Hal liked to call "a rum go."

  Burnham sometimes wondered idly about Hal's private life, but he never asked, and Hal was too smart and too circumspect ever to let slip anything personal. (Even his one indiscretion, in the grip of Scope, was not so much a complaint as a matter-of-fact observation.) Hal would tell anyone who would listen about the sordid tragedy of Walter Jenkins, but Burnham had the sense that telling the tale was a kind of therapy for Hal—as if cautioning himself that a stupid slip could destroy the life he had so carefully built for himself.

  Burnham's opponent today was a conversational fewmet, which was too bad because half the enjoyment of a vigorous workout came from pleasant, vacuous, locker-room banter. He shed his clothes quickly, scurried into the shower, and by the time Burnham arrived had soaped himself so thoroughly that he resembled an overtaxed Brillo pad. He left the locker room before Burnham.

  As Burnham emerged, he saw Hal gazing contemptuously at the man's departing back and holding between his fingertips, as if it was a wet and dirty sock, a single dollar bill. By now, it was an accepted routine that each player in an arranged match would give Hal five do
llars, and Burnham had dutifully folded a five-dollar bill in his palm. As unobtrusively as possible, he exchanged it for a ten-spot from his wallet. He smiled as he gave it to Hal, and Hal's return smile said that he appreciated the gesture.

  "He was a referral," Hal said.

  Burnham shrugged. "It happens."

  "Not twice." He pocketed the bill. "Tomorrow?"

  "How about noon?"

  "I'll find you somebody jollier."

  Outside, the evening was fine. The infernal sun that had baked the city all day had finally moved behind the Virginia hills, and the air had cooled to a point where Burnham's pores soon closed and did not pour forth defensive sweat. He decided to walk home.

  He climbed Pennsylvania Avenue and crossed the M Street bridge, and not till then was the peace of his promenade smashed by the painful shriek of Pratt & Whitney jet engines. A south wind was the curse of Georgetown, for it mandated that the glide path of all aircraft destined for National Airport was directly over the gilded ghetto.

  Burnham had long felt that no one should be allowed to fly over Georgetown, not because of the noise (he rather liked the idea of Katharine Graham being forced to observe a moment of silence in deference to People Express), but because flying over Georgetown was destructive of fantasies. It was like watching a sci-fi movie being shot (the actors acting to a blank wall which the special-effects wizards would later transform into an invading armada) or learning how the magician makes you believe he's cutting the woman in two.