The Blindfold Test

by Barry Schechter

  “To allow us to maintain the pretense that we were still scientists, we were told to keep records of our ‘experiments’ and to generate scholarly papers on the findings. We kept that up for about a year; once a month a courier picked up the latest ‘research.’ I don’t know where it went—maybe into the garbage, who knows? But in those early days we did everything under a veneer of professionalism. We’d discuss the work in terms of stress, anomie, reaction-formation. Of course we didn’t get much in the way of findings, since your reaction to everything was momentary puzzlement or astonishment followed by no reaction whatsover. What were you thinking, for example, the day you woke up to find yourself standing fully dressed standing in front of your class?”

  “I—” Parker rubbed his palms on the arms of his chair while the rest of his sentence failed to arrive.

  “Look out there, it might help you remember.” Krell swept a hand over the violet-blue buildings, lit windows deepening as the night confected. “They used to think cities were incompatible with a rich inner life, but look at those colors! Are you remembering anything?”

  “I somehow know it happened, but it’s not like remembering.”

  “So you keep a covert record of events separate from the sequence you think of as your memory—like two sets of books. See if this rings a bell: work work work work work work work work work.”

  Parker fought back the sensation that lights from the Outer Drive were swarming up at his head. “Yes!”

  “As I said, everyone here was trying to stake out a respectable-sounding area of research. One industrial psychologist thought it might be interesting to get the words ‘work work work’ running through your head. We used miniature pillow speakers, videotape subliminals, a nightclub hypnotist. The point, as I recall, was to see if it increased your productivity. No detectable result.

  “Then there was the graduate student who tried to structure the gags into what she called ‘interactive fables.’ She was hoping to turn your suffering into some kind of learning experience—hoped you’d distill a few Aesop-like morals out of it. Well, how about it? Do you recall learning anything from your experience?”

  “Nope!”

  “I thought not. Okay, remember this? There’s a bad smell in your car. It gets worse as the weeks go by, till you can barely make short trips with all the windows down. You look under the seats, between the seats, in the glove compartment, under the hood, in the trunk, under the chassis. You take it to the garage, they can never find anything, they sell you a can of ‘new car aerosol.’ You know how we did the smell?”

  “How.”

  Krell slapped the desk. “Flank steaks in the hubcaps! As you can see, we were degenerating from scientists into a bunch of frat kids playing pranks. You might think it was all a lark for us, sitting around our offices thinking up jokes. But there was the loss of professional identity and self-esteem, the immorality and overwhelming pointlessness of the work. There were nervous breakdowns, a lot of drugs and alcohol. I’m not claiming that the torturer deserves as much sympathy as his victim, but how about a tenth as much? Can you spare that? Okay—forget it! Anyway, some days morale was so low we’d play just one prank and go home. For instance, the day you walked out of the shoe store wearing a new pair of Florsheims, guy bumps into you, scuffs your shoes? That was a day’s work.

  “Things turned really ugly four years ago. Till then we hadn’t heard much from our friend Monroe except for the few occasions when we slacked off completely—then there’d be death threats. But one day four years ago he sent us a note. It said ‘Poison his dog.’ We decided immediately not to do it, but we were scared. We sent our families out of town, and for the next two days we holed up in the conference room bouncing rimshots off the wastebasket. Finally our observer phoned—in those days he lived in the apartment across from yours—he told us that Monroe, Junior had poisoned the dog himself.” A yacht like a miniature pastry gleamed on the dim lake.

  “So after that, a division of labor was established. A few times a year a note would arrive, saying, for example, ‘Arrange a little accident for his mom—flight of steps, broken bones.’ We’d sweat it out till he pushed her down the steps himself. Hey, we’d have loved to warn you, but we have families, too.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Just before the first ‘accident,’ we’d been thinking of dividing up the money and leaving the country, but now we were too scared. What next! we kept asking, and shortly after your mother’s fall we found out. He sent us Ziploc. According to the note that came with him, Ziploc was to function as a sort of consultant or oracle. By structuring our work on his random associations, we’d insure that none of it has the taint of human intention. We’d assure—what?—the continued appearance of randomness. Something like that—who knows? Incidentally, you were wondering the other day whether Ziploc can grant wishes. Yes. Ziploc is empowered to grant your wish. I hope you’ll choose wisely.

  “Where was I? Oh. As our sense of entrapment grew, so did the number of theories of what was really going on. Inevitably the theory arose that we were the real test subjects, and you were in league with the experimenters. I’m sure you’ve heard of the experiment in which the ‘researcher’ is asked to deliver a series of increasingly painful electric shocks to a test subject. The ‘subject,’ though, is really an actor, and what’s really being tested are the moral bearings of the ‘researcher.’

  “Paranoid sophistry, of course. My own theory—theory number two—finally jelled shortly after Ziploc arrived. Why, I asked myself, were the government, the intelligence community, and the psychiatric establishment all so interested in you? Why was there so much money available? The answer, I thought, was in the kind of experience we were constructing for you—fragmentary, discontinuous, frightening, absurd, random. What is it but a condensed version of the twentieth century? What you’ve discovered, apparently, is nothing less than the antidote to the twentieth century.”

  Parker laughed. “You’re making this up as you go along, aren’t you?”

  “Granted: I’m improvising. What else can we do, given the vaporousness of our circumstances? Anyway, that’s pretty much all I know. Before I suggest a way out of our mutual predicament, are there any questions? No? Then—”

  “Mrs. Slansky—why did you involve her in this? What was she doing in my apartment?”

  “The idea was that, being your mom’s friend, she could help us compile a psychological profile. An occasional innocuous question at a mah-jongg game, and we’d have all sorts of invaluable data: Was he bottle-fed or breast-fed? Afraid of the dark? What about toilet training? We recruited her at one of the anger clinics we run—she was sent there after the strawberry incident and unfortunately we had to increase her paranoia. The story we told her was basically yours, except in this version you’re doing to her what we’re doing to you. Things got out of control. We didn’t send her to your apartment, you know; she stole your mom’s spare keys. I feel terrible about what’s happened to her. But she’s not much crazier now than when she came to us, and our lawyers are about to offer a handsome settlement. Any other questions?”

  What about Fletcher? “Is anyone else I know working for you?”

  “You mean like Fran?”

  Parker managed a laugh. “You’ve been associating with paranoids and liars for so long, you’ve forgotten how to lie convincingly.” He thought of his own suspicions, but he’d never suspected this. No, it was out of the question. No need to think about it.

  “That’s right. I’m making it all up. Not a grain of truth in it, nosiree! Fabrication out of whole cloth. Imagine me thinking I could put one over on you!”

  “This is dumber than the chairs,” Parker said.

  “I sincerely apologize. It’s that irony problem I mentioned. It’s become a sort of tic; I just can’t resist getting in one more dig.” He removed his glasses and looked Parker in the eye. “She’s a good woman, Jeff, and
I swear she has nothing to do with this.”

  “You won’t make your lie more convincing by sounding unctuous and smarmy when you take it back.”

  Krell spread his upturned palms. “You’re right, of course. Please accept my apology.”

  Lunging, Parker slid over the desktop debris. He held onto Krell’s shirt as the swivel chair toppled beneath them and the force of Krell’s head rattled the plate glass wall. Sitting up he found Krell sprawled on his back. He was kneeling for a closer look when someone wrenched his arm behind his back and pressed a huge forearm against his windpipe.

  Hauled to his feet, wriggling against the unseen man’s grip, Parker recognized his assailant by the jumpsuit sleeve and the size of his forearm.

  “Whoa! Relax, champ!” Parker recognized the voice as the big despairman’s. “I’m stopping the fight and declaring you the winner.” He led Parker around the desk and squashed him back into his chair. “You okay, Mr. Krell?”

  Seated, his glasses replaced, Krell was rubbing the back of his head. “I’ll live. You interrupted me, Jeff, before I got to the part about solving our mutual problems. But first, what can I do to make you a little less quarrelsome? I know.” He opened a desk drawer. “This should help pacify your miserable temper.”

  The despairman pressed down on Parker’s shoulders as he struggled to rise from his chair.

  “Woolcurt! Get the hell in here!”

  Parker heard a knock and the door opening. Craning his neck he saw Joyce in the doorway.

  “Are you looking for your friend? I went to the Xerox room a while ago and when I got back he wasn’t here. There. Hi, Bob!”

  “Joyce.” The despairman turned to face her, exerting enough pressure with one hand to keep Parker in his chair.

  “I’m being held here against my will,” Parker said. In the ensuing pause he failed to think up a less quaint, stilted way to put it. Was it kidnapping if they didn’t take you anywhere? “I’m being kidnapped. Call the police.”

  She glanced from face to face, then laughed politely.

  “Be sure the handouts are ready for the staff meeting,” Krell said.

  “I swear this is no joke!”

  “Hey, love the suit,” said the despairman as she disappeared behind the door.

  The despairman applied his two-handed grip as Krell came around the desk and Parker thrashed in his chair.

  Krell held what looked like a hundred-dollar bill in Parker’s face and snapped it by the edges.

  It was a hundred-dollar bill.

  Krell folded the bill in half, opened Parker’s corduroy jacket, and slid it into the inside pocket. “He still looks pissed off. What do you think, Bob?”

  Bob’s meaty face looming upside down eclipsed Parker’s view. “Still pissed, Mr. Krell.”

  Parker struggled experimentally.

  “You might as well sit still,” Krell said, “I’m out of petty cash. But I hope you’re beginning to entertain the idea that our working together could be advantageous.” He walked back behind the desk and sat down. “Our mutual interest should be obvious. We’d prefer not to make you miserable. You’d prefer not to be miserable. We can’t just close down operations, though, we’re too scared, and we’re afraid to go to the police. The FBI’s involved in this, don’t forget, or at least they started the whole thing.

  “My idea’s this. We retain the old setup, the structure, to placate Hank Monroe, Junior and whoever else is watching us. But what if we used that structure for a new purpose? In other words, we’d still be controlling your life, but suddenly it’d be good things happening to you seemingly at random. If these fortuitous effects were subtle enough, I’ll bet the people observing us wouldn’t know the difference.”

  “Would I?”

  “To pull this off we’ll need your cooperation. For starters, don’t flash that money around. And don’t act cocky. And for Chrissake don’t ever look too damn happy. That’s it, go on looking confused and suspicious, perfect! By the way, you do want to be happy? There’s a faction here who think we’ve given you exactly what you want, but I find that kind of blame-the-victim psychology despicable. How about it: happy or unhappy?”

  “You’re taking my order?”

  “That’s what I’m doing.”

  “I prefer to be left alone.”

  Krell repeated his palms-up gesture. “Sorry.”

  Parker felt compelled to answer. “All right, happy.”

  “Done! But there’s more at stake than your happiness. I hate to be theatrical, but our lives might be in danger. We’ve been nervous here ever since our friend started visiting you. That’s against the rules, and the rules, vague as they are, are the only thing that reins him in. I propose an exchange of intelligence. If you learn anything about what he’s up to, share it with us; we’ll do the same. If he’s completely out of control, we’ll all have to protect ourselves.

  “Well, I guess that covers it. You don’t have to do a thing. Just go home, sit back, and await the new order. Will you shake my hand now?

  “Still pissed?” Krell withdrew his hand. “Oh, that’s right, we ruined your life. We aborted your promising academic career. Never mind the tight job market, never mind that you had one slightly original idea in your life back when you wrote your dissertation. Isn’t it a tiny bit conceited to assume you’d have been a success without us? Sorry—our studies prove you’d have failed anyway. I think we did you a favor—we created the one environment where you could thrive. In fact, what really has you upset lately isn’t the stuff we’ve been doing to you all these years—it’s the break in your routine! You don’t cope very well when you’re forced to pop out of your hole, do you? Look at how you’ve behaved this past week: the test of your life, and all you can do is fly into a useless rage or sit passively listening to bullshit. Look at you now…Jeff? Oh Je-eff! Jeff!”

  Parker stood up, casting a sidelong glance at Bob. “I think I’ll go home and await the new order.”

  “Hey, sorry I flew off the handle.” Krell started to extend his hand and, catching himself, fingered his shirt where he’d lost the top button. “You hurt my feelings, that’s all. I didn’t mean any of that about your character. You’ve prevailed where a lesser man—or a more observant one—would’ve packed it in. I wish you luck. Wish? I’ll do better than that! Bob, drive him home. Take the limo. Oh, Jeff? I’m truly sorry for that crack about Fran.”

  * * *

  —

  Three more secretaries had gathered near Joyce’s desk to await a glimpse of Parker. None of these fans, if that’s what they were, would admit to having seen Todd Woolcurt.

  “We iced ’im, right, girls?” The despairman perched on the desk and lit a cigarette while Joyce phoned Security in the lobby. No one had seen Woolcurt leave the building. Parker used the phone to call John Standell, who hadn’t heard from the “bodyguard,” and who, more puzzled than alarmed, quipped that Todd was too proud of “existing” to stop doing it voluntarily.

  Parker said that if there were no objections he’d have a look around, and with an after-you-Alphonse flourish of his cigarette, Bob followed him into the corridor. Parker walked down the hallway opening doors, the offices darkened, webbed by lighted windows. Passing another row of his stunned images, he imagined that if he walked fast enough his clueless face might be animated into wisdom.

  SIX

  The next morning he knocked at Fletcher’s office door and waited, relieved that no one was answering, his relief already waning at the thought that he’d have to come back. A chair creaked; it might have been the office next door. He stood listening, hearing only distant noises, heels reverberating, a door shutting.

  He’d been up all night, shuffling the same few thoughts. 1) Judging by the evidence, his suspicions of Fletcher were almost certainly true. 2) There was still room for doubt, and he couldn’t bear the thought of tormenting an innocen
t man. 3) His instincts told him that Fletcher was a nice guy. 4) His instincts had proved worthless lately, except when he’d suspected the worst. By morning he’d decided to tell Fletcher everything. He’d reminded himself that if his suspicions were correct, Fletcher already knew. Still, confessing would be handing him a new weapon. And what if Fletcher called the police?

  As two students walked by, he pretended to study Fletcher’s office hours, feeling more and more like a criminal. There was a sharp metallic click inside the office; he knocked again.

  Behind the door Fletcher cleared his throat. “It isn’t locked.”

  Parker opened the door, then froze in the doorway.

  “Parker! Come on in!” Fletcher was blotchy and red-eyed, his smile a mismatch. Alerted by Parker’s stare that the gun he held in both hands was pointed at Parker, he set it on the desk.

  “So Parker! What’s new!” Except for the drawn face and the gun, he’d managed to keep up appearances—combed and clean-shaved, the axiomatic tweeds fresh-pressed. “You don’t think I was aiming at you” he protested without discernible irony. He folded his hands near the gun. The desk was otherwise bare, the blinds drawn. “Oh. I wasn’t about to turn it the other way either, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m simply getting used to holding the damn thing.