Fletcher settled back on the couch, the only one in the room willing to look at Parker.
“Hi.” Dobbs was standing in front of the door, hands in his pockets.
Fran dabbed the back of her wrist at the mess gathering under her eyes. “I have Band-Aids and mercurochrome in the bathroom,” she said, her voice as drained and small as its reproduction in the speaker.
“Why don’t you go first, Jeff?” said Dobbs, running a finger over the dried blood beneath his nose. “I’d like to try my call again.”
When Parker returned from the bathroom, holding a box of cotton-balls and a bottle of mercurochrome, Dobbs was in the kitchen making his call; Fletcher was lining up his pipe and accessories on the coffee table; and Fran stood hugging herself, her back to the room.
Stepping in from the hallway, Dobbs said, “We’re in the clear—at least for tonight.” He shook his head at the mercurochrome and cotton-balls.
Parker walked to Fran’s side and gave her a quick squeeze of the shoulders. “Anything you’d like to say to me before we go?”
She shrugged in her straitjacket of folded arms and hunched shoulders; he kissed the top of her head.
“Can we have a word in private?” he asked Fletcher.
“I don’t want you guys fighting,” Fran said wearily.
“Am I going to need first aid?” Fletcher was looking at the cotton-balls in Parker’s hand.
“Oh. Look after these for me.” Parker handed Fran the Mercurochrome and the box of cotton-balls, which she enfolded in her arms and grimly hugged.
* * *
—
Parker sat down on the bed—relieved, pointlessly, to find it made; Fletcher seated himself on the yellow armchair a few feet away and began patting himself down for the pipe he’d left on the coffee table. “So Jeff!” he began with the same eerie breeziness he’d affected since Parker arrived. “What would you like to talk about?”
Once more Fletcher seemed pasted into the foreground. Against the yellow armchair, Fran’s white-painted childhood dresser, and the handmade quilted bedspread with its ranks of black and brown cows, he seemed like a badly done special effect.
“Does Fran know what you’re up to?” Parker asked.
“Of course not.”
“That was a bit too easy. Let’s be sure we’re talking about—”
“Does she know I’m trying to ruin your life? No.” This blithely callous persona seemed to exist only while Fletcher was speaking. Between sentences the hapless awkward man Parker had known peeped out to gauge the effect. “Oddly enough, she thought she was deceiving me. She didn’t tell me about you till after you phoned a few nights ago and I happened to be in the room. You might as well know that tonight I’m going to ask her to marry me. Fran hasn’t quite resolved her feelings toward you, but we’re working that out.”
Like a bicyclist on a tightrope, whose survival depends on constant motion, Parker kept talking. “You got involved in this through Tolerance Management?”
“That’s right. They were funding my work in anomic stress—”
“I suppose they’ve threatened your family?”
Fletcher’s tightly wound smile came undone. “How did you know?”
“They threaten everyone. Except me, of course. Me they like.”
“There’s no ‘they,’ ” said Fletcher. “It’s Hank Monroe, Junior. The rest of us are terrified of him. Want to hear something funny?”
“Oh, why not!”
“Those ads you ran—at first I thought they were a hint from Monroe, Junior to speed up the courtship.”
Glancing at the door, Parker said, “Aren’t you afraid she might be listening?”
“With your friend watching? And be caught looking bad? Did you know she’s never smoked pot because she’s afraid she might look like a chipmunk holding in the smoke?”
Parker knew but wasn’t about to exchange knowing smiles with Fletcher at her expense. “You’re head over heels, aren’t you? It won’t take her long to figure out you don’t love her.”
“Eventually I’ll tell her everything we’ve done to you, and I’ll give her a divorce. You’ll forgive her, she’ll never want to look at you again. Tolerance Management has it all worked out. I’m truly sorry.”
“Have you given any thought to what you’re doing to her?”
“I promise I’ll treat her kindly. That’s about the only choice I have in the matter. I tried to back out once and Monroe, Junior sent me a present—night-vision photographs, taken in my ex-wife’s house, of my kids sleeping. As for Fran, he let me know that if I backed out he’d ‘handle the matter himself.’ I don’t even want to think about what that means.” Fletcher tugged the knot in his tie and unbuttoned his collar. “I keep hoping I’ll fall in love with her. I think that would be best for all of us. And why shouldn’t I fall in love with her? She’s beautiful, smart, compassionate—it’s just that she can be a pain in the neck.”
She could, but Parker stared down Fletcher’s appeal for commiseration.
“Okay,” Parker said. “You marry her, probably divorce her, she never wants to see me again. What then?”
“I think everyone involved in this business is sick of it—even Monroe, Junior. I think he’d be willing to call it off if you’d just fully experience your own suffering.”
“Huh?”
“You’re suffering, of course, but you don’t seem to notice that you’re suffering. I think he keeps it up because without your full awareness his work is aesthetically incomplete. It’s like a tragedy—”
“Without a recognition scene?”
“That’s it. Believe me, Jeff, you’ll be better off. The only thing more wretched than despair is despairing and not knowing it.”
“Okay, I’ll despair.”
“I hope that glibness is a sign that you’re down to your last defenses. For all our sakes, I hope you crack soon.”
“I guess the New Order’s out,” Parker said.
“Pardon?”
“Harry Krell told me he was going to use the same covert system to make nice things happen.”
Fletcher tilted his head and chuckled appreciatively. “It would be like Harry to do something like that behind the rest of our backs. He’s probably lying, of course, but with Harry you can never be sure. Listen to me—you’ll only suffer more if you keep hoping.”
“I’m getting the same advice from my friends and my enemies.”
“I’m not your enemy,” Fletcher said.
“What about the job interview?”
“Pardon?”
Parker described the melee at Circle Campus.
“I’d say you seriously jeopardized a job prospect,” Fletcher said. “But don’t waste your energy on ordinary disappointment.”
“This idea that the whole business will end if I just face life squarely and despair—did someone tell you that or is it wishful thinking?”
“He doesn’t seem to be trying to kill you. What else could he want?” Fletcher massaged his forehead. “I don’t know. Maybe it is wishful thinking. Let’s put it this way—you might as well despair. Either I’m right and it’s hopeless, or I’m wrong—he won’t stop even if you crack—and it’s even more hopeless than I thought.”
Parker stood up. “I suppose if I punched you out it would just suit your purposes?”
“It would confirm her notion that I’m the sensitive one.”
“And if I start ranting about your part in a conspiracy, it would confirm Fran’s disbelief in everything I say.”
Fletcher shrugged sympathetically.
“Stand up,” Parker said.
Fletcher rose from his chair and thrust out his chin. “As long as it’s hopeless, you might as well hit me. Maybe we’ll both feel better.”
Parker had once seen a man do what he was about to try—a ba
r bet, the man so drunk he might not have felt it. He and Fletcher stood a few feet apart, wincing.
Parker made a fist and bringing up his arm in a drink-hoisting motion punched himself in the nose. His vision swarming, he found himself tilting backward with the dresser; it crashed into the wall. On his back now, he licked the blood running over his mouth and flashed a gory grin up at Fletcher.
Fletcher’s habit of knitting his brow when puzzled was as genuine, apparently, as all the other traits Parker had thought fraudulent. The creases abruptly vanished, the skin between the eyes tightening as Fletcher looked up.
Stepping into Parker’s view, Fran shoved the other man back. “You hit him?” she yelled, banging the heels of her hands against his chest. “You hit him?”
Having no doubt reviewed his options, Fletcher said, “I’ll go make an ice pack.”
“You do that.”
She grabbed a handful of Kleenex and began cleaning up Parker’s face. “Maybe we should get you to a hospital.”
“No, nothing’s broken.”
“Tilt your head back—here,” she said handing him the Kleenex. She turned away and left him facing her profile—lips compressed, chin trembling, the long throat swallowing.
While Fletcher banged and cracked an ice tray in the kitchen, they sat mutely posed on the blood-spotted floorboards—Parker with his head tilted back, holding the ball of Kleenex to his nose; Fran still in profile, staring concentratedly at nothing as if her thoughts crawled by on a TelePrompTer.
She faced him. “If I call you tomorrow, will you speak to me?”
“Of course. Fran, I—”
Her look alerted him that Fletcher was standing in the doorway behind him. Fletcher stepped between them and reached down to hand Parker some ice cubes knotted in a dish towel.
“I’m sorry, Jeff. I know you can understand how I felt because you love her, too.” Clearly Fletcher had used his time in the kitchen to regroup. He held out his hand, and Parker—not to be outdone—set down the compress and grasped it in both his own.
“It never happened,” Parker said.
Fran stood up. “You guys make me sick.” Claiming the moral high ground seemed to energize her. She threw back her shoulders and glared spectacularly. “When you leave I’ll be standing on the balcony and I’ll expect to see you walking in opposite directions.” She glowered at Parker, daring him, he thought, to ask what if they weren’t parked in opposite directions?
They walked back to the living room, and Parker settled himself on the couch with his ice pack, grateful that the necessity to tilt back his head let him contemplate the white expanse of ceiling and ignore the tense silence in the room. Soon Fran went off to bang dishes in the kitchen, leaving the burden of sociability to Dobbs and Fletcher. Fragments of their dialogue washed through Parker’s blankness (Fletcher: “No offense, but I find your argument fantastic.” Dobbs: “That’s my point!” Fletcher: “You’re contradicting yourself. It has to be one or the other.” Dobbs: “Exactly!”) till Fran, her face washed, stood over him asking how he felt. Better, actually, the ice pack having stemmed the bleeding and numbed the pain.
“Well, guys,” she said, “it’s been a long day.”
Fletcher stood up and touched her elbow. “Can we speak in private?”
“No!” she yelled and for the sake of impartiality shook her head at Parker.
“I’ll go clean up,” he said.
In the bathroom he locked the door, ran the tap, stuck some toilet paper to the blood under his nose, and removed the tape recorder from his inside suit pocket. He pressed REWIND and while the reels spun behind their cracked window opened the medicine cabinet. He didn’t want to leave the recorder in plain sight, just in case Fletcher tried to outstay him by asking to use the john as they were leaving. Parker couldn’t help feeling a surge of jealousy at how thoroughly and atypically she’d scrubbed the bathroom.
He stopped the tape, pressed PLAY, held the speaker to his ear, and heard Dobbs saying “We’re in the clear.” He fast-forwarded: Fletcher was saying “So Jeff!” He pressed Stop.
He looked at the shelves: Band-Aids, Advil, sunscreen, a pink disc-shaped birth control pill dispenser. He set the dispenser on the rim of the sink, the recorder on the shelf, and closed the cabinet. In theory she’d open it to replace the pills, find the recorder and play it. But he couldn’t just step out and press PLAY. She wouldn’t listen. First because she’d be furious that he’d recorded Fletcher. Second because if she listened at all, she wasn’t going to be bullied into doing it in front of everyone else. Or on Parker’s schedule. She was the most stubborn woman he knew, he thought exasperatedly and a bit admiringly. He could leave a note: “Urgent! Please play at once.” But if she felt pressured, she might keep it at the bottom of a drawer for months before she got around to it, as she’d done with letters. The shirt-pocket recorder with its tinny speaker wasn’t powerful enough to force its contents through sheer volume into her well-defended brain. And if he started playing the tape, the inevitable screaming match, cathartic as it might be, would drown out everything else. The outcome would likely be himself and Dobbs on the street, and Fletcher still up here.
He washed his face and returned to the living room, where everyone else stood waiting.
“Good night, guys.” Fran walked behind them to the door, keeping her distance, and stayed out of reach as they let themselves out.
“I feel like I’m back in high school,” Parker said on the steps; Fletcher nodded in agreement, but they stopped in front of her building to wait for each other to walk away. Traffic was sparse on Hyde Park Boulevard, the court apartments and brownstones quiet. A cold mist blurred the streetlights. Nobody budged but Dobbs, pacing the mashed leaves: “C’mon, Jeff,” he said compassionately. “Let’s go.”
Parker stood with his hands in his pockets, teeth set against the chill. Watching him, Fletcher patted himself down, brought out his pipe, clamped it in his teeth, patted himself down…
The annoying prospect of watching him complete the ritual strengthened Parker’s resolve. He took a step closer and whispered, “They’ve threatened your family, for Chrissake. Shouldn’t we be on the same side?”
Casting a quick glance upward, Fletcher said, “Are you threatening me?”
“Hey, are you threatening him?” Fran was leaning over her balcony, tucking her dangling hair behind her ears. “Let’s go, guys. Opposite directions—hup two three!” She hugged herself, rubbing her hands over her sleeves. As the wind rose, her face seemed to gather light from her rush of black hair.
Gazing up at her on the balcony, Parker spread his arms in an actorly pose. It was supposed to be a joke, but she gleamed in soft focus as his eyes brimmed.
SEVEN
“My man! Hey!”
He usually gave money to panhandlers, but this one, too proud to beg, was trying to earn it through salesmanship and borderline extortion. Parker told himself that tact might not be a virtue for the homeless, but the brow-beating tone made him quicken his pace and avert his eyes. He hurried north, his stalker keeping pace, past the Evanston Kroch’s and Bretano’s, past Rose Records, eyes on the convergence of bare trees up Sherman Avenue. As he stepped off the curb at Emerson the stone clock tower and the streetlights lit up all at once.
“What’s wrong with you, man?”
Parker still hadn’t looked at the guy, whose disembodied words (Parker was barely listening) hovered over traffic and faces like voice-over narration.
“Hey, motherfucker! I’m talkin’ to you!”
Here we go, Parker thought, his escape impeded by the rush hour crowd and by the three-foot-long white teddy bear under his right arm. He’d bought the bear at Marshall Field’s a block south—where his unwanted companion had fallen in step as Parker duck-walked out the revolving doors with his burden—and was on his way to Evanston Hospital to deliver it to John and Peg Standell an
d their new baby.
Past Emerson the street turned residential; they were alone on a block of wood frame houses and apartment courts. Parker heard mouth-breathing and the crackling of leaves.
“Hey, mother! Look at me!”
It violated his ban on unnecessary eye contact, but if someone asked to be looked at, Parker owed him that much as a human being. He stopped, tightened his grip on the bear, and looked.
He walked several yards up Sherman before he stopped and looked again. The man was heading back toward Emerson. Parker had seen a short, skinny, crewcut black man in a tan trenchcoat, an ostentatiously fake red beard, and mirror sunglasses that displayed the latest version of Parker’s dumbfounded stare.
Parker ran after him, nearly fumbling the bear, as the man crossed Emerson and blurred into a knot of shoppers. And here was the guy coming back. No, this one, similarly disguised, was taller, white, and adorned with a beard of pastel pink. Parker nearly walked into his own reflection in the mirror lenses of a third man.
Parker blocked his way. “What’s going on?”
This one had a chestnut beard that contrasted handsomely with his white hair. “You been on Mars, bud? It’s the convention!” He handed Parker a leaflet:
JOIN US IN SOLIDARITY!
ANNOUNCING THE CONVENTION OF THE LEGION OF FACELESS MEN AND WOMEN (Formerly the Legion of Faceless Men)
FACE US—IF YOU DARE!
ANTON J. CERMAK ARENA
FRIDAY-SUNDAY, 6:00-10:00
Two days away. Glancing at the reflection of his own black eyes, Parker decided not to grab the man by the lapels. “Solidarity in what?”
“The Legion started out as a group of Vietnam vets who couldn’t get the V.A. to pay for all their plastic surgery.” (Parker found himself staring at the last vestiges of personality in the disguised face—a beery nose and a row of small beige teeth.) “But we’ve moved on to the bigger picture.”
“Championing the faceless everywhere?”
The row of teeth widened. “You wouldn’t be making fun of us, would you, bud?”
The Blindfold Test Page 19
