by Pat Frank
“Gosh, no. I begged them to let me go to Tarrytown for a day or two, or to let her come down here. Mrs. Brundidge could take care of the baby all right. But Colonel Phelps-Smythe and Mr. Klutz said absolutely not.”
I wondered what was wrong with them, which shows how naive I was at the time. “Don’t worry, Homer, I’ll get it fixed up,” I promised. For the first time, he smiled. He positively grinned. “Let’s have another drink,” I suggested, “and then tackle that dinner over there, and then let’s go down to the Blue Room and look around.”
“Sure!” he said. “Sure!”
He attacked the lobster as if he were starving, which I am quite sure he was, and ate most of the shrimp, and wolfed three of the pastries. I didn’t do much talking. I kept trying to reconstruct the first ten years of his life in Hyannis, Nebraska. I saw a gangling kid, preyed upon by smaller but older boys, running to his mother for protection. I saw an overgrown high school sophomore teased by the girls, and not understanding that their teasing was as much invitation as anything else. I saw a lonesome youth escaping into archeology, and finally geology, who worked hard and earnestly so that in his mind there would be nothing else but his work. Finally I saw a grown man who had thrust human relationships into the well of his subconscious—a man whose marriage was probably the passionate seeking for a second mother to whom to run whenever he encountered the frightening facts of life.
This was the man chosen to re-populate the earth! I wasn’t at all sure that I should arrange for him to see Mary Ellen. Perhaps he should see her for a day or two, but certainly he should not be with her constantly. A different therapy was indicated. “You know, Homer,” I said, “what you told me about your personal life was very impressive. I suppose you know by now that you were mistaken. I should think you would be very attractive to women.”
“Oh, no!” he said emphatically.
“I would think so.”
“But why should I be?”
“Well, you’re young, and you’re tall. All the movie actors are tall. Look at Gary Cooper.”
“Yes. But they’re not so thin.”
“Well, look at Frank Sinatra. Anyway, you’ve got a good frame. All you have to do is put some flesh on it.”
Homer considered this. “I looked pretty good,” he admitted, “when I was in Australia. Lots of fresh air, and exercise. I felt good, too, and ate well. I haven’t had a bit of exercise since I’ve been in this darn prison.”
“We’ll fix that,” I promised. “Now go shave, and put on a fresh shirt, and I’ll take you out of this prison and show you how life is being lived, at the moment.”
Ten seconds after we entered the Blue Room I discovered that acting as shepherd to Homer Adam would have complications, for Homer was no ordinary white sheep who could fade into the flock. If you are some six and one-half feet tall, and your hair flames like a stop light, and you are constructed on the general lines of a flagpole, and if in addition you are the most talked of mortal on earth, and your features are familiar to everyone who has seen a newspaper, then it is very hard to be inconspicuous.
When we turned up at the Blue Room and asked for a table, Pierre, the headwaiter, recognized Adam and almost did nip-ups. He bobbed us to a ringside table, swept away a notice that it was reserved, and then fluttered over our order for a couple of drinks. Barnee, the bandmaster, craned his neck, missed a beat, the trumpet went astray, and the rhythm scattered like a covey of quail. Nobody seemed to notice.
The band pulled itself together, and the music again took form. People were staring. If Homer had been a pink Bengal tiger, he could not have caused more of a sensation. I noticed that the dancing couples were converging towards us. Strangely, the women were maneuvering the men.
The music stopped, and there was absolute silence. Ordinarily, when the music isn’t playing in a night spot it is still pretty noisy, what with the tinkle of glass and china, political and business arguments, the throaty sound of verbal lovemaking, and occasional laughter. But this time when the music stopped there was no sound at all. Then buzzing began, like a swarm of bees, but not exactly. It had a strange timbre to it. Finally I realized it was from three or four hundred women all whispering at once.
“What’s wrong with these people?” Homer asked.
“I dunno,” I evaded.
“This is worse than a dinner party. It makes me feel dizzy—all these people staring.”
“Relax and drink your drink.”
Homer obediently drank his drink. Across the floor I spotted Oscar Finney, who stepped out of a reporter’s cocoon to become a Hollywood butterfly, officially titled Public Relations Counsellor, at a thousand a week. With him was a golden-skinned creature partially clad in gold lamé. I’m always forgetting names, but I never forget a shape like that. Once it belonged to Kitty Ruppe, who danced in the chorus line at an uptown club. Now its name had been changed to Kathy Riddell, and Oscar Finney had made it fairly famous as “The Frame.” I say fairly famous, because Kathy Riddell was one of those Hollywood stars who never seems to appear in a movie, but you see her picture everywhere. She wasn’t enough of an actress to make a USO troupe, but every young man would recognize her instantly, even from the rear, which is more than you can say for Cornell or Hayes.
Finney waved to me. I waved back. “These women,” Homer said suddenly, “are giving me the creeps.” I noticed that while the interest of many of the men had turned elsewhere than towards our table, every woman had her eyes fixed on Homer. Furthermore, they were being very womanly.
“What’s wrong with them?” Homer asked.
“I think they want to have babies.”
Homer’s long neck stretched across the table, and his eyes grew round like a boy who has requested the facts of life from an elder brother. “Don’t they—” he began. “I mean, are all the men—you know, isn’t it possible—?” He stopped, thought for a moment, and went on: “What I mean to say is this, to be blunt. When you—we’ll say you—when you go to bed—” He faltered again. “When you go to bed with your wife, what—I mean—”
“Oh, I see. Here’s the way it is, Homer,” I told him. “Everything is just as usual, except one thing. Afterwards, nothing happens. Nothing at all. No babies.”
“Well, then why are these women—”
“It is a matter of instinct,” I explained. “The instincts of man are purely physical, and of the moment. With women, it is different. Most women. I don’t know about nymphomaniacs. But most women, essentially, want babies. Sure, babies are only part of it to women. But it is an essential part, where to the man it is no part at all. Get it?”
“Yes, I get it,” said Homer, and sighed.
I looked up, and there was Oscar Finney, with The Frame. Her breasts looked round as radar globes, and she was tuning them on Homer. You can’t chase old friends away from your table, and I did the introductions, but I told myself I wasn’t having any more rye, because now was the time for all good men to be alert.
Kitty Ruppe, or Kathy Riddell, or The Frame—whatever you want to call her—was either a very smart girl (which at the time seemed doubtful) or she had been carefully coached. Anyway, apparently those radar globes told her something, because she began talking archeology. She had read in the papers how Homer intended being an archeologist, when he was young, and so there was a bond between them.
“Oh,” said Homer, “are you interested in archeology?”
Indeed she was, The Frame replied. Had Homer ever heard of Professor Ruppe, at the University of Chicago? Well, that was her father.
Homer hesitated, and then he said he thought the name sounded familiar, and wasn’t he connected in some way with the Aztec excavations? Absolutely, said The Frame, and she herself was particularly interested in archeology in Mexico, and she was simply fascinated by the finds in the Temple of Huitzilopochtli. Homer said he was too.
It was quite the queerest supper club conversation I remember, but it only made me more suspicious. This plant smelled all the way
to the top of the Washington Monument. No dope, he, my friend Oscar Finney. To hook the name of any actress to Homer Adam was worth how many columns? How many papers are there in the United States?
Presently I saw it was coming. It approached in the shape of one of those “house” photographers you will find in night clubs and places like the Blue Room. She wore a blue evening gown that matched the decor, and the camera she held in her hand, flash bulb attached, seemed incongruous as a debutante toting a forty-five. She asked us to move a little closer together. When she raised her camera I let my right arm slide around the back of The Frame’s chair. Nobody noticed, except Finney. The flash came, the girl drifted away, and Finney said:
“Steve, you’ve got an evil and suspicious mind.”
“Just careful,” I said.
Homer and The Frame looked at us, not understanding, and then their conversation went back to Mexico. Oscar and I talked shop, and I fed Homer drinks. It was a necessary adjunct to my program of relaxation. You could almost see the layers of repression scale off his shoulders as the drinks took hold, and his interest mounted in The Frame—or her archeology. Two tables away I saw Senator Fay Sumner Knott. She had been sitting there all the time, but I did not notice her until she began to move, in the same way that a snake seems part of the ground until it bunches itself to strike.
Of course you know Senator Knott. When she was nineteen she was the most beautiful debutante in New York, when she was twenty-five she was the loveliest young matron in London, and at thirty she was the smartest divorcée in Rhode Island, both in brains and looks. When she was thirty-five she married the President of Executive Trust, thereby becoming the most beautiful, the brainiest, and almost the richest woman in the world. At least, that was her opinion. When Executive Trust died she dipped a dainty toe into the mud puddle of politics, and lo, there she was in the Senate.
Fay kept looking at Homer, but Homer kept his eyes on The Frame. Presently Fay rose and walked past our table, slim and magic as a wand, but holding her chin tip-tilted to erase the lines in her neck. She ignored The Frame as if her chair were vacant, smiled at Homer, nodded at me, and just at the proper distance—close enough so that we could hear but it would not be heard at other tables—said: “That stupid little bitch!”
The Frame started out of her chair like a leopardess, but Oscar grabbed her, and anyway Fay had already reached the door. I knew she was trouble—big trouble. Homer was white, and his bony hands were shaking. Oscar said: “What a pleasant job you’ve got, Steve! What a nice, uncomplicated, pleasant job!”
Wasn’t it, I agreed. I signed the check, herded Homer to an elevator, and led him to his bedroom in the distinguished guest suite. I helped him undress, fed him a couple of aspirins, made him drink two glasses of carbonated water, and rolled him into bed. His feet stuck a half-foot over the end, but there was nothing I could do about it.
CHAPTER 6
Before I opened my eyes, the next morning, I could smell coffee, and for some time there seemed no doubt that I was in Smith Field, and that Marge had wakened me first. I didn’t hear coffee bubbling, however, nor did I hear the radio, nor did Marge tickle me behind the ears, the way she usually did when it was time to get up. I just smelled coffee. I opened my eyes and discovered that I was in the Adam suite, but that something new had been added.
I won’t describe her the way she first appeared to me, because that would be unfair. I will describe her the way she was, and is. Jane Zitter, in her way, is a wonderful girl. Wonderful. It is true that she is not beautiful, in the sense that The Frame is beautiful, or Fay Sumner Knott is beautiful, or Marge is beautiful. She has something beyond regular features, a perfect complexion, or streamlined legs. Jane Zitter is part of the workaday world. She is as much a part as a freighter that carries its seven thousand tons of grain at a steady eight knots. No glamour, just service.
She is a little person all around. She isn’t very tall, and she isn’t filled out in the right places. About the best you can say for her clothes is that they are neat, and her thick glasses make her eyes larger and rounder than they actually are, so that she appears perpetually startled.
She’ll never get to be a secretary to a Secretary to the President. She is simply a lubricant for the wheels of government. When the oil becomes gritty with age it is changed, and nobody knows what happens to the old and cracked and tired oil. All that matters is that the wheels still turn.
I opened my eyes and Jane shoved a cup of coffee at me, black. “I suppose you wonder who I am,” she began.
“Oh, no! Not at all! I expect to wake up with strange females in my bedroom.”
“Mr. Smith, I hope I didn’t make a mistake. I’m your secretary. My name is Jane Zitter and I’m your secretary and everything was piling up so that I thought it best that if Mr. Smith wouldn’t go to the office then the office had better go to Mr. Smith.”
I told her I thought this was very nice of the office, and it was an arrangement of which I approved, particularly if the office appeared with black coffee. “But I really don’t see why I have to have an office at all,” I added. “You see, I’m not a real executive of N.R.P. I’m just a sort of glorified nurse-maid.”
Jane turned her startled eyes on my red pajamas. “But if you didn’t have an office, how would you answer your mail, and your telegrams, and dictate your memoranda?”
“I’m not going to dictate any memoranda,” I said firmly. “Not a one.”
“But you have to dictate memoranda,” Jane said. “People write you memoranda, and you have to write them back. Why, already you’ve received a whole envelope full, and I’ve got them with me, in case you care to work here. You see, you’re quite an important man, Mr. Smith, being Special Assistant to the Director, and so you get copies of all the really important memoranda that originate in National Re-fertilization, plus the important inter-office and inter-departmental memos, even those classified secret and top secret.”
I could see she was genuinely serious, and so I decided to be serious too because I didn’t want my secretary to have any delusions that I was a Klutz, or even a half-Klutz. “Look, Miss Zitter,” I said, pushing myself up in bed, “under no circumstances—not ever—will I write a memorandum to anyone about anything. That is a pledge. May God strike me dead if I do!”
“Oh, Mr. Smith—”
“Never, so help me Christ!”
“But you don’t understand, Mr. Smith. If you don’t answer the memoranda, or at least initial them, the files would never get cleared! You see, here’s the way it works. Suppose Mr. Klutz sent you a memo.”
“God forbid!”
Jane went on persistently and patiently. “Well, suppose Mr. Klutz sent a memo to Mr. Gableman, for action, with copies to you and the other members of the Planning Board for information. Well, until everybody has done something about that memo, it hasn’t been cleared up or settled, and the file clerks cannot put it in the files.”
“It floats around in a kind of limbo?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“Unless I initial a memo it can never die?”
“It can never die, Mr. Smith. It just keeps coming back to you and coming back to you from the communications section, and they write covering memos to you calling your attention to the first memo, and so on, and this complicates things. Please, Mr. Smith, I hope you will do something about this, because if you don’t people will think I’m inefficient, and I’ll get some kind of bad report on my 201 file, and I’ll never be able to get my classification changed.”
She appeared solemn, and a bit pitiful, and she was obviously such a nice girl. “I’ll make a deal,” I said. “You learn to make my initials, and you initial every memo that comes to the office. That’s all you have to do.”
“Won’t you ever read any of them?”
“Never!”
“Well, certainly you’ll read some of the directives. Everybody reads the directives, because they’re classified secret.”
“Never!”
>
Jane Zitter shook her head. “Oh, dear, Mr. Smith, the N.R.P. is such a strange organization, and you are such a strange man! Sometimes I think I should never have left Interior. I get six hundred more with N.R.P. than I did with Interior, and I thought working with N.R.P. would be more progressive, and advanced, and even exciting. But I never thought it would be anything like this.” She looked again at my red pajamas. “I suppose you’re crazy,” she reflected, “and I’ll probably get into trouble, but I won’t let you down.”
I remembered Homer, in his bedroom down the hall, and wondered whether I’d fed him enough drinks to afflict him with a hangover. Jane seemed to anticipate my question. “Mr. Adam,” she said, “went out.”
“Went out?”
“Oh, yes. He went out an hour ago. I told him I didn’t know whether he should or not, but he said you had said he could do anything he pleased. And out he went.”
“Did he say where?”
“He said somebody had called and he had made an engagement to discuss archeology. He didn’t say where or with whom. He just said, ‘I’m going to see a person about archeology.’ He appeared very happy about it, and chipper. He even tried to comb his hair.”
“Oh, my,” I said. “He’s been kidnaped by The Frame!”
“The Frame!”
I scrambled out of bed. “Either turn your head or go into the next room,” I told Jane. “We’ve got to find out what this is all about.” She apparently didn’t think I was especially dangerous, because she simply turned her head.
I dressed in a hurry, although I wasn’t actually worried. As a matter of fact, the thought of Homer being interested in The Frame was in some ways encouraging. At least one inhibition was breaking down, and for a man in Homer’s position, such an inhibition was not good for the soul. Further, it seemed a good sign that his lethargy and despondency could be cured. He could go out with The Frame if he wanted—so long as complications didn’t develop. However, I wasn’t going to allow any Hollywood press agent to use Homer for creating headlines. If Homer found relaxation and a measure of escape with The Frame, it was one thing. But as a publicity stunt, it was out.