The Blindfold Test

by Barry Schechter

  They’d reached the outer ring of parking lots and sports bars surrounding the arena. The crowd was immense now, spilling onto the street, flashing and rumbling like a strolling storm. Parker thought of putting on his disguise and walking the remaining blocks, but there was still the matter of the gun. He hoped Dobbs had a sufficiently devious mind to figure out how to get it past security.

  “But then three days ago,” she continued, “I found a coupon in the paper. Baked Chicken Dinner at the Country Crock, half price.” There was a careful exhalation of suppressed groans. “So I have dinner there and then when the check comes…”

  “You’re not insane.” Dobbs glanced at Mrs. Slansky, then turned back to the road. Somewhere nearby glass broke and a cheer went up.

  “I’m not?”

  “Steve…” Parker warned.

  “It’s all right,” Dobbs said. “That blabneeto business is a classic bit of retail psychology. Tolerance Management thought it up. You overcharge maybe every third old person. It’s especially effective if there’s a long line. The elderly are terrified of being humiliated in public, so if the customer complains you start speaking in a very low voice. Every time the mark asks for an explanation, you say, ‘blabneeto.’ After a minute you tell the mark to either pay or step aside. They usually pay.”

  “I knew it!” she shouted. “There’s a Jewish saying. Do any of you boys know Yiddish? Well, in English it means, ‘They’ll make you eat a peck of dirt.’ ”

  Deciding there wasn’t time to wait till Jack and Mrs. Slansky were out of the car, Parker said, “Steve, about the item.”

  “There’s no way you’ll get it past security.”

  In what seemed like one second Mrs. Slansky pressed the button on the glove compartment, the lid flopped down, and she scooped up the gun. She turned in her seat, holding the gun in a two-hand grip, the barrel not quite pointing at Parker. “ ‘The item!’ ” she mimicked contemptuously. “You must think I’m stupid.” He thought of making a grab for it, but—remembering her cop shows, apparently—she released the safety.

  Dobbs kept his foot on the brake as traffic opened ahead and horns bore down behind; Parker decided that jumping out might provoke her into shooting; and then they were moving.

  “I suppose I should have locked it up,” Dobbs said. No one thought this worth a reply. “I was pretty woozy that night,” he added.

  Jack said, “Adele, what are your intentions?”

  “I’m not going to shoot anyone, if that’s what you’re worried about. I just don’t want to be tricked.”

  Jack leaned close but this time avoided touching her. “Remember what the doctor said? Do your breathing.”

  “Fuck breathing!” she screamed, looking shocked and pleased at her obscenity. The window was still open; a voice in the crowd roared, “Fuck breathing!”

  “You’ll never get it past security,” Jack warned her.

  “Security?” She chortled. “You think they’re going to take me that seriously? ‘You go right on in, Grandma!’ ”

  “Have you ever in your life—”

  “Fired a gun? No, why? Do you think I should practice?” She giggled. “It’s getting chilly in here, don’t you think? Jeffrey, could you put up your window? That is, if you don’t mind.”

  Traffic had slowed again, and a bald fat guy was walking alongside the car—trenchcoat unbuttoned over a black T-shirt, shiny black beard tied in a braid, mirror lenses filled with Mrs. Slansky and her gun. He cocked his head and gave her a two-finger salute. “Stylin’, Moms! Don’t take no shit, hear?”

  Parker raised the window. “If you don’t keep the gun down, we’ll all get arrested.”

  She lowered it behind her seat.

  “I’m going to get out of the car now.” He gripped the door handle; he thought it best to do this slowly so she wouldn’t feel tricked.

  She glanced down at the gun as if to remind him it was still there.

  “This isn’t a trick. A friend of mine is in trouble and I think I can get to her faster if I walk the rest of the way.”

  “Jeffrey has to get there first,” she summarized, “because he’s very very important.”

  “I have to say something to Jack and Steve before I go. Do you mind?”

  She said nothing, keeping her options open.

  “Jack, you remember Fran, don’t you?”

  “Indeed.” Even at this tense moment, Jack couldn’t resist raising an eyebrow over a bulging eye—his “Oo-la-la!” expression.

  “Yeah, well, I have to get to her before my enemy does. Steve will fill you in. Could you guys search the crowd? If she’s with someone, don’t get brave, page me. I’ll page you if I need you. Let’s think of a code name for the public address.”

  Mrs. Slansky’s snort was reminiscent of Fran’s in these matters.

  “How about Victor Bravo?” Dobbs yelled as stalled traffic began honking in unison.

  “Victor Bravo it is.” Parker tore open the plastic bubble on the disguise package, took out the sunglasses first, and rested the frames on top of his head. It might be politic, he thought, to let Mrs. Slansky feel included. “Adele, I’d be grateful if you’d help out, too.”

  “That’s right. Let’s make Adele feel useful.”

  The beard was wiry and irritated his skin; he got a foul taste of adhesive before positioning the beard-and-mustache combo around his mouth. Looking away from Mrs. Slansky—he didn’t want her to take it as a challenge—he pulled the door handle, and, careful not to hit men walking in the gutter, set down one foot, then the other, and eased the door shut.

  * * *

  —

  The foot traffic was as static as the cars. He was hemmed in next to Mrs. Slansky’s window, his face averted, his back rigid in anticipation of her decision, getting elbowed each time he tried to push up onto the sidewalk. He stifled a cry as someone bumped him from behind, then the crowd lurched forward, moving at an avid clip that he dreaded might become a trampling run. As they approached the bright lights ahead, the mirror-lightning off all the sunglasses grew disorienting—light and shadows smashed to bits and blowing about like confetti. He set the mirror lenses on his nose and tried to keep his footing in the mobbed strobe-lit darkness. Dobbs’s car was out of view, but he remained tensed for the bullet.

  Three blocks ahead, floodlights ignited the white walls and turrets of the Anton J. Cermak Arena—not too shabby for a structure that began its life as a notorious Virginia Civil War prison. To hold back the images his panic was disgorging, he recalled that in the 1890s a consortium of Chicago millionaires had it disassembled and shipped north, where it was rebuilt as a Civil War museum. It wasn’t till the thing was put back together, apparently, that they realized how depressing it was and surrounded it with a facade in the style of a medieval castle. The venture failed anyway; for the next few years the building took in livestock shows and the orgiastic “fundraisers” of certain ward bosses till it was remodeled for the 1904 Republican convention. In its heyday it brought in another Republican convention, women’s suffrage rallies, a Democratic convention, the first public demonstration of television, War Bond rallies, hockey, the Ringling Brothers Circus, and Billy Graham. It was at the Arena that the great aerialist Gilbert Brazzo, despondent over a lovers’ quarrel, attempted a suicide leap from his trapeze, did what some call recorded history’s only quintuple-flip on the way down, lived (though paralyzed below the neck), and spawned decades of litigation against the record books, Brazzo arguing that it was a successful quintuple-flip because he was trying to hit the ground. Deteriorating in the late fifties, the Arena was demoted to roller derbies and pro wrestling. McCormick Place was under construction, and no one thought it profitable to refurbish a competing venue. In the late sixties and early seventies promoters booked a few rock acts, but engineers worried about the building’s structural integrity, and it had been closed
for two years by the time the night watchman fell through a rotting balcony in 1975. A few years ago a new group of investors fixed it up, and now the gleaming faux fairy-tale castle, grand with pretension, floated on the darkness as if entitled.

  A block from the arena he began to feel it in his groin, soles, and spine—a rumble deeper than the mere noise of thousands. It was the Arena’s famous Roar, an acoustical oddity that trapped the noise of the crowd till it swelled and burst and came crashing down. At sports events the opposing team must have been terrified as the ordinary hoots of morons became something immense, God in the whirlwind. Parker had seen the Doors perform there, the music carried off on all that noise like smithereens on a flood. At last Jim Morrison gave up trying to sing and with Faustian audacity began to conduct the Roar. The higher he raised his arms the louder it got. When he lifted his arms above his head, Parker’s ears seemed to close up entirely and fill with the rush of blood. Morrison stood there like that for a good five minutes, powerful as Jaweh, helpless as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, the Roar cresting above him.

  If Fran thought she was there to meet him, she’d make herself easier to find by wearing her hair down. But finding anyone out here was impossible; the flashing lenses and near-identical disguises were making him dizzy. He tried to look for her without provoking any staring contests, but he’d already set off one spiky-haired citizen who went on muttering and balling his fists as the crowd bore them off now on separate currents.

  He hadn’t quite ruled out the possibility that the crowd was there to kill him, and he tried to get a sense of who they were. He couldn’t follow more than fragments of conversations. The phrase “the little guy” kept cropping up, but so did plans for late suppers, news of old acquaintances, and Legion business: the Cedar Rapids Bi-Metalists, he learned, were sending a delegation. Variations of the standard costume included a sprinkling of Cubs and Bears caps and the occasional spy-movie slouch hat. The few women he saw were beardless. Glass kept breaking; bullhorn-amplified commands broke up under their own echoes. A boy in a Cubs cap rode his father’s shoulders, but it seemed less like a baseball crowd by the minute; Parker thought it likely that the festive atmosphere was the joy of vengeful people about to get their due.

  As they approached the castle gateway—stadium gates took the place of a drawbridge—mounted cops with bullhorns warned them to stay on the sidewalk. Parker couldn’t help looking up, searching the facade’s fake tower for signs of life. An area in front of the castle wall was enclosed by police and blue barricades. Inside the barricades, a photographer held up a light meter, a crew positioned light poles and a wind machine, and on cue three male models in faceless-man gear crowded behind a woman, raised their sunglasses, and leered. She was wearing a fedora, mirror sunglasses, and a form-fitting black vinyl raincoat; she took off the hat and shook out her long black hair. Thinking of Fran, Parker groaned with dread and longing. Now she lifted the sunglasses to expose her eyes. Her face was clown-white except for her mascaraed silver-gray eyes and a red-lipsticked bow. Rubbery shadows on the wall mimed the poses. The crew stepped back against the barricades; the wind machine came on, growling like a wounded Harley; her hair exploded around her face, erupting behind her up the phosphorescent wall.

  * * *

  —

  At the top of the ramp people halted, staggered, turned their faces, grabbed posts and the backs of seats. No one had reckoned on the solar flare of television lights off thousands of mirrors, and at first nothing was visible beyond white-hot blobs of dazzle, intervals of blackness, and a blizzard of after-images. No one was shouting or applauding—the first speaker wasn’t up yet—but already the Roar hummed through the crowd; feeling its juice, he thought of that toy football game whose vibrations sent plastic men reeling jerkily over a tin field. As the phantom discs faded, he took his bearings. He was standing at the back of the second balcony, the highest point in the house; convulsive blasts of white light shot up from the main floor as if a meteorite had just crash-landed there.

  Across the bowl-shaped arena the empty podium rose from the box seats. The floor space had been filled in with folding chairs. The permanent seating—padded blue chairs on concrete risers—was interrupted by the platform and the ten-foot-high podium draped with bunting. Ten minutes remained before the scheduled Opening Address, and already the place was nearly full. The member delegations occupied the third of the floor closest to the podium, their placards and banners unreadable from here except for one huge banner unfurled across an entire row: THE DREADFUL HAS ALREADY HAPPENED!

  Parker was picking up one of the house phones when, bland as an airline pilot announcing the loss of all engines, the P.A. announcer read, “Frances Girard, please come to the information desk. Will Frances Girard please come to the information desk.”

  He pressed “Operator,” hoping to put up his own message and warn her away, but the line was busy. The solid crowd coming up the ramp would be impassable; he decided to make his way to the exit at the front of the balcony, and as he shoved and pleaded and elbowed down the stepped aisle, the tightly packed, tightly wound crowd shoved and elbowed back. He bumped the pony-tailed man in front of him and apologized as the guy turned and swore, pink lips writhing in their nest of hair, and for one instant Parker was ready to forget everything else and smash him. Instead he squeezed by and caught a punch to the ear; it set off a feedback screech in his skull that made him want to close his eyes, but he pressed forward.

  Ushers—they wore sunglasses along with the standard Andy Frain uniform—pleaded with the schmoozers blocking the aisle, but more and more people were getting out of their seats, too jazzed to sit still. Cries, calls, bursts of energy spread through these clumps and networks and swirled round the arena; the crowd, newly born, was exploring itself, trying to determine what it was. As he pressed ahead, all space filled with bellies, necks, backs, pores, tops of heads; waves of body heat, breath, and aftershave. He fought to control his breathing among thickets of damp fake whiskers and swarms of his own crazed reflection. Shutting out the howl in his battered ear, he listened for the P.A.; when he heard himself paged he’d be too late.

  * * *

  —

  The crowd on the exit ramp was sparse enough for Parker to run, his running shoes skidding on the turns. The momentum of a turn flung him out to his left, and as he sidestepped a man walking up with two large Cokes, he caught sight of Fran rounding the turn ahead. Even in heels she was a fast runner, already rounding the next turn, the telegraphy of her progress fading. He yelled her name, so winded he could hardly draw the breath back. The heels slowed down, then grew louder.

  “Jeff?” she called up, still out of view.

  “Yeah!” He gripped the handrail, catching his breath, and as the heels approached he asked himself how he’d known it was her. He’d glimpsed the back of a trim woman in a raincoat…long dark hair…Fran’s height, but he’d seen a dozen others. He didn’t recall anything unique about the way Frances ran, but maybe he’d recognized it even if he couldn’t name it. Was there something irreducibly Fran-like in everything she did? Some little idiosyncrasy, some tic? Was that what we fall in love with?

  She came up the last turn and, seeing that he wasn’t hurt, slowed to a walk. She must have been having an anxiety attack—he could imagine the sort of message that had brought her here—so she was putting on a massive display of poise: hips turning, a flick of the head spilling hair off her shoulder. Mirror sunglasses only enhanced the effect. For a moment they both enjoyed the show—she didn’t take it the wrong way when he burst out laughing—then they closed in a fierce hug, kissing through his badly aligned whiskers.

  She drew back her head and grabbed him by the lapels. “Parker, you had me so worried! I thought…”

  “I’ll tell you all about it when we’re out of here. Right now we have to stay alert.”

  She let out a nervous hoot of a laugh. “I’m sorry. Well, you were laughin
g at me.”

  “My darling, I’m much too happy to be offended.” The man with the boy riding piggyback walked past. The kid was still wearing his Cubs cap and had added a pair of child-size mirror sunglasses; the sight was unnerving enough to focus Parker’s mind on the danger at hand. Better not run, he thought. He put his arm round her waist and they started down the ramp. “Let’s just get out of here. Blend in.”

  “I’m still not clear on who these people are.”

  He lowered his voice. “For the most part these are reasonably well-off white guys who look at the poor, the persecuted, oh, starving people in Africa, and think: ‘Why do they get to be the victims?’ ”