by Tito Perdue
“No, sir, that’s a retort actually,” she retorted. “Full of gas!”
“Oh, God.”
The mail turned out to be the expectable sort of stuff — advertisements, the newest issue of The Journal of Cosmology, invitation to a meeting of Evola followers, an offer of Anglo-Saxon coins at reduced prices, and a splendidly bound volume holding essays by Johnson, Kurtagic, Spencer, Sunic, and two or three other members of the last good people in the dying West. Taking up his eminent domain on the sofa, he sat back to watch the activities of this extraordinary couple who seemed actually to love each other. (He didn’t know whether it were good fortune or just plain old-fashioned determination that had let them come to grips with each other before it had become so complicated for members of the same racial affiliation to contract legal marriages.) Suddenly, young Martin emerged from the kitchen with an open textbook in one hand. “Hi!,” he quoted, offering to shake with the upstairs man. “We’re working on fluorine tonight!”
Philip came awake at just a few minutes past 7:48 and spent a moment trying to recollect where he was and why. The material in the flask, glowing brightly now, was taking on various shapes, a development that motivated the linguist to repair speedily to his own apartment upstairs. From this position, he could hear a medley of noises from far and near — a baby crying, a toilet reloading, a truck or airplane toiling either along the street outside or through the clouds above. Substituting the eyes of a future historian for his own, he tried to imagine that man’s likely comments bearing upon this particular place in history. No pity, he foresaw no pity on the part of historians when came the time to talk about New York City.
Philip possessed seventeen shirts altogether, but not even one of these had recently been washed and pressed. Too late to run downstairs and buy a new one, he did as well as he could and then put on one of his better ties and knotted it in his own ingenious way. With just four hours of sleep, his face had a somewhat puffy and world-weary appearance which, along with cigarette smoke, was about as romantic-looking as such things can ever be.
He strolled the three, or rather three and a half blocks (no rain) to the slender grey building that contained his private office. There was a bit of work that had been left for him, including a personal letter so expertly opened and resealed that he was almost ready to believe that either young Martin or his wife had lately been here. At this time in the morning, the sun was highly clarified, and looked to him like something he had seen once on the cover of a science fiction book. His coffee, on the other hand, was cold and had congealed to a depth within the cup. (The science fiction book, reverting to that, had pictured a lopsided sort of sun with creatures inside.)
He had rather be fishing; instead, that was the moment the human resources person (who until recently had been the personnel manager) came into his office accompanied by a black woman of about 250 pounds, his first real experience with affirmative action. Philip right away came halfway to his feet and greeted the both of them. He had always been courteous, and nothing could stop him now.
“Phil,” the resources person said, “this is Merle. She’s going to be helping out here.”
Phil looked at her and smiled.
“Administration and so forth. I know you’ve been asking for help, and here she is!”
In point of fact, Philip had never asked for help. The woman, more supercilious even than Philip, had a vacant face and her fingers were much too thick for keyboard use.
“Excellent!” the linguist offered. “But actually, I’m not in need of help at just this time. Charlie now, he’s way behind schedule and I know he’d appreciate…”
“Merle just got her certificate. She’s going to be real useful, Philip.”
“Well of course. But she might be even more useful with Charlie. He’s under a lot of pressure as you know, and...”
“Philip.”
“Yes.”
“Merle’s a professional. Has her certificate, now.” And then in low voice: “Surely you aren’t going to give us any trouble about this.”
The woman had meantime collapsed into the upholstered chair and had allowed her knees to fall apart apathetically in the way familiar to him from the South. She was, however, extraordinarily well-dressed.
“I don’t really have any typing just now,” Philip said. “Or anything else as a matter of fact.”
“That’s all right, she won’t be doing any typing anyway. Like I said, she’s a professional, Philip. High-level. And she knows how to deal with foreign people just as well as you.”
“I see.”
“And as for this office of yours... Hell, Philip, it’s big enough for five people!”
“Five.”
“Well, all right, then. So she’ll start tomorrow, right? I’ve explained all the rules and everything.”
He watched them go, a white male, now lapsed, moving off energetically while trailed by a woman who seemed rather to be skiing than actually picking up her feet in any sort of tandem.
“And how much will she be paid?” he yearned to ask.
He spent the remainder of the morning on simple duties and then drew off to his nearby apartment where he went immediately to his couch. His headache was only slightly worse than on typical days and in spite of everything he was able to pilfer some forty minutes of hypnogogic “sleep,” if that’s what it was. Meantime, down in the city below, people were moving back and forth. He saw ambulances, cars and trucks, ravens on window sills, and was highly conscious of births and deaths taking place at six per minute in city hospitals, et cetera. That was when he drew off into his dressing room. How strange, that the overmastering majority of human activities were directed to the body and its needs, and just a percent or two to the important things. As if one must walk a mile for a drink of water, or shovel snow to get to one’s front door. As if a person must labor for twenty years at an import business solely to go on living, or cross-examine a thousand girls before finding an acceptable one — these were the concerns that woke him up after only forty minutes on the sofa.
At 1:47 he changed into another shirt and tie, opened a fresh package of cigarettes, smoked one, consumed half a pint of milk, dropped down the stairs, hurried past Christopher’s place, waved off the balloon man, and began the brief trip back to where he worked.
He passed a man hiding behind a newspaper, a frankfurter vendor, a Jewess or Khazarian, she might have been, dressed in bracelets and pileated hair. Encountered a man carrying a plate of glass, a furious-looking woman exiting a beauty salon, a businessperson of some sort with a galvanized expression, a street cleaner in a white jacket, and in short a representative cross section of what humanity had come to. With no toilet and/or sink in which to vomit, he then proceeded on in his habitual direction. Approaching his destination, he caught momentary glimpse of an older person frozen in midstride who appeared to be reckoning up all those things — and they were many — that the future no longer held in store for him.
Almost fainted when he came to his office and found that a new desk had been put in place just three feet from his own. Already his libido was showing signs of wear, and now he was to be treated to the daily sight of a Negress in a too-short skirt. Meantime the secretaries, some of them quite mean-spirited, were tittering just outside his door.
He gave it a minute or two, and then left his cell in reasonable dignity and climbed the two flights to where the company’s officers passed their days in luxury and delight. The treasurer had left his door open, and the two men were able to grin in each other’s direction for the space of perhaps half a second. Of course, there was all sorts of modern art along the wall, including especially an artistic array of broken bottles hanging upside down. He halted momentarily under the portrait of the CEO himself, a much-admired person who had made his wealth in pharmaceuticals and then had had the creativity to invest in currency futures. The man bore an indisputable resemblance to one of the country’s most unsuccessful nineteenth-century presidents. En
couraged by that, Philip proceeded to the man’s actual office, knocked, and then stepped to the desk of the company’s dreaded receptionist, famous for her severity, who, however, smiled back at Philip in almost a maternal way. Tossing the hair out of his eyes, he asked to see the chief, specifying him by his newly anglicized appellation.
“You’re in luck,” she said happily. (She, too, somewhat resembled one of the early presidents.) “Let me tell him you’re here.”
She did that, doing it by way of a little microphone that produced an echo in the man’s office. These people, they had been speaking with each other for so long, their voices had become almost indistinguishable by now. (Philip, of course, had no real familiarity with nineteenth-century voices, much less the social behavior typical of the times.) And then, too, they seemed to have a code of their own.
“Another one,” she said.
It was an attractive office certainly, though not as intimidating as Philip had allowed himself to expect.
“Philip!” the man said. “Yes, indeed. Come in, come in.”
There was a bust — Philip would have loved to bust it — of the craggy Lincoln himself. Also a photograph of the chief on a putting green and next to that a vase of flowers made of silk.
“Sir,” Philip started out, (he was standing), “I’m grateful for all the extra help. But of all the people here, I’m probably the one least in need of said help. For example, my vacation is coming up, and I don’t even need anyone to stand in for me!”
“Really? Well maybe we’re paying you too much.”
Both men laughed extensively.
“But if I did need some help, maybe I could help pick her out.”
“Not a chance. No, I don’t think you’d pick the right person, Philip. It’s not the best person we need, but the most… appropriate. I’m sure you understand me. And besides, we’re under a good deal of pressure from Albany.”
“But…”
“Equality, Philip. We need more equality in this country. Especially where you come from.”
“No such thing as equality. Sir.”
“Oh?”
“No, sir. But quality is possible. Sometimes. Or used to be.”
“I was afraid of this. How many others feel that way, I wonder? Now, Philip, sometimes we just have to do things. Good for the country.”
“But bad for the company.”
“You care about the company, do you? Somehow I doubt that. No, no, I’m not saying you don’t do a good job. Excellent, in fact.”
“Civilization, that’s what I care about. If that doesn’t sound too pretentious.”
“But it does.”
“But I do. This woman, sir, she’ll merely get in the way of things. Let Charlie have her.”
“Tried that. No, we’re going to need you, Philip. To get her up to snuff. Show her the ropes. Educate her about how we do things here.”
“You mean to say she wouldn’t be able to function without me?”
“Why yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”
He resigned upon the spot.
By 11:04 his time, and 11:02 by the clock, he had collected his few pieces of cultural equipment — the two novels, slide rule, telescope, mirror, framed painting of John Wilkes Booth — and had put these in the large shopping bag provided by Glenda.
“It’s for the best,” he said in a useless effort to stop her crying. He had to squeeze her, too, along with six others standing in line.
“And now we’ll never really get to know each other!” said a brown-headed girl in leather pants.
His possessions were not terribly heavy and he was able, at that time of day, to climb on board an elevator that had just one other person in it, an emaciated sort of man holding a package of his own. Was he (Philip) terrified of being without a salary? Not in the least. But wasn’t he just a little bit nervous after all? Bet your ass he was. Perhaps he ought to go to The New York Times and report on what had been done to him, but then changed his mind and drew aside to use the outdoor mailbox as a substitute desk in order to make a few notes that ought to be useful to anyone who later on might wish to write a story about it.
Eleven
He has wended his way back home again and hath lain upon the couch. Would night never come? On the other hand, it was generally at night when C. James Martin carried out his experiments. For lack of other duties, he switched on the television and then quickly turned it off again and proceeded to disconnect the whole apparatus from the two-eyed socket with the tiny mouth. Where was he now — 31 years old? Or 32?
He snoozed, showered, eliminated and shaved, and when it grew dark gathered his checkbook and two savings accounts unto his breast. He had just four thousand dollars in one such account, $117,302 in another, and in still another some 28,000 French francs. He judged his Confederate currency to have about $2,000 worth of antiquarian value, but would prefer to starve than to be separated from that. He had a television set that might be sold or traded. And he had a smattering of old and current female acquaintances ready to “loan” him money, as the expression goes. A nastier person than Philip could have made himself rich that way.
On his first night he managed to inveigle a ticket for a performance of Berg’s Wozzeck, an experience that did nothing to anneal his mood. Nor indeed his second night, spent by him in his stark and dusty apartment. It is true that he could place himself in dreams with King Alfred, or Epaminondas, or other models of his, Lee Harvey Oswald for example, or E. A. Poe. Truth was, his mind and imagination, already larger than the world, were forever flitting back and forth among such persons as had been equal to, or maybe even better than, himself.
He had looked forward to his Thursday interview, even going so far as to prepare a fine meatloaf with beans and potatoes for his woman. Delighted with his efforts, she sat across from him at the little round table that also held a fruit jar with half a dozen flowers in it. Her appetite was good and soon they had advanced to the cherry pie and vanilla ice cream purchased especially for her benefit.
“Oh, Philip,” she said. “You’re my very favorite person!”
(Not “only person,” note.)
“More pie?”
No. Tonight, her schedule was particularly tight.
Friday, he stayed at home, and then on Saturday night he strolled to the “Village,” to watch the suburbanites and businesspersons hoping to participate in the world of art and immorality. He passed a painter at his easel, a genius with a beard, and then next an adorable little bakery vending new-made bread. He slowed to watch a busload of excited old ladies pouring out onto the sidewalk, almost colliding at the same time into a haggard poet made up to look like Verlaine. Already fifteen minutes had gone past and he had not yet been befriended by a single queer.
He hated to be out of doors past nine o’clock; even so he now turned into a down-at-the-heels restaurant that held just four or five people, all of them depressed. He had wanted waffles with syrup and bacon, but when at last the waitress came to him, he could find nothing of that kind anywhere on the menu. Accordingly, he asked for a pricy coffee of some kind and cherry pie. He hadn’t paid much attention to the waitress herself, but when at last he did so, he saw right away that she was far too naive, too raw and ordinary for this part of the city. What, had she been fetched in from the countryside to work for low wages?
“Good coffee!” he maintained. In fact, the stuff tasted like soil. The woman, however, beamed. He was allowed to see that her mouth had no full number of teeth in it, and that in this neighborhood she was the only person, or only woman that is to say, wearing a brassiere.
“Want me to warm it up for you?”
“Absolutely I do.”
(By this time, she had assimilated a good long look at him and seemed loath to leave his side.)
“We don’t have any cherry pie.”
“Oh? All right, how about huckleberry?”
“Sir?”
“Or persimmon cake?”
“
I don’t think so.”
“What! All right, how about…?”
This was the moment she realized she was being teased.
“I thought you were serious!” And then, in a half-audible voice: “Not nice, making fun of people.” (She had a southern accent! He teetered, Philip, on the edge of love.)
“You’re right. And by the way, what time do you get off work?”
He thought that she might faint. Her hand trembled. She backed off two paces.
“I get off… later. Maybe about ten o’clock?”
“Couldn’t you get off now? So we can go get some real coffee?”
They walked two blocks without speaking. She had forgotten to take off her apron and Philip elected not to mention it. He was taking his first close-up view of her, which was even more dispiriting than he had allowed himself to believe. And then, too, she must have weighed a good 30% more than she should.
“That’s a good place,” she said, stopping and pointing to an imitation Parisian café with sidewalk tables. The clients here were a burnt-out lot, some with beards, some with books, some sipping at cups filled with soil.
“No,” said Philip, “I think we should go to my place. I make the best coffee in the world.”
Her face trembled; she took two steps in different directions.
“I can’t.”
“Certainly you can! It’s early. I have cream and sugar, too.”
(Seldom had he viewed so unattractive a girl. She had done a good deal of work on her hair, though it made her appear as if she had been treating herself for mange. Also she had no nose, properly speaking, but just two wee little holes much too close together. As for the rest of her, there was nothing to be said.)
“But I can’t stay very long, OK?”
They passed through a crowd gathered in front of a bar and then moved on for another twenty yards or so before the first of the homosexuals sidled up to the linguist and, in spite of the girl, whispered in his ear. Other advanced people were loitering here and there, a man who looked like Gauguin, a woman dressed like Joan of Arc. And someday great balls of fire would roll down from Canada and carry it away. He slowed, a concession to his girlfriend, who was having trouble staying up with him.