Closing Time

by Joseph Heller

  Customers frequently reported receiving as much as forty percent less of the tritium than they had paid for and forty percent less than had been packed and shipped, with no indications of theft, diversion, or leakage.

  The tritium simply was not there when delivered.

  Not long before, a test shipment from merely one building to another to comprehend this loss resulted in no new information and the disappearance of three quarters of the tritium packed for the test. It was inaccurate to say, said a sheepish spokesman, that it disappeared into thin air. They were monitoring the air. The air was not thin and the tritium wasn't in it.

  Despite the radiation and consequent potential as a galvanizer of cancer, tritium was still the material of choice for illuminated guides and dial faces, for gun sights for nighttime marksmanship, for icons like swastikas, crosses, Stars of David, and halos that glowed in the dark, and for the stupendous enhancement in the explosive yield of nuclear weapons.

  Melissa MacIntosh's ravishing roommate, Angela Moore, whom Yossarian could no longer resist thinking of by any other name than Angela Moorecock, had by now already put forth to her elderly, gentlemanly employers the idea of luminescent items highlighting the more protuberant organs of copulation phosphorescently and had tested on buyers at the toy fair, men and women, her notion for a bedroom clock with a radiating face of tritium in a compound of paint in which the hour and minute hands were circumcised male members and the numbers were not numbers but a succession of nude female figures unfolding sensually and progressively with the hours in systematic stages of erotic trance until satiation was attained at the terminal hour of twelve. Yossarian got hot hearing her discourse on this inspiration for a consumer product in the cocktail lounge a day or two before she sucked him off the first time and sent him home because he was older than the men she was accustomed to and she was not sure she cared to know him more intimately than that, and afterward, because of Melissa's growing affection for him, along with a growing apprehension of AIDS, declined to suck him off a second time or oblige him in any equivalent way; and listening observantly to her rave that first time, he'd found himself with almost half a semi-hard-on, and he took her hand as they sat beside each other on the red velvet banquette at the plush cocktail lounge and rubbed it over the fly of his pants to let her feel for herself.

  The great jump in explosive yield induced by the action of tritium in atomic warheads made possible an aesthetic reduction in the size and weight of the bombs, missiles, and shells devised, allowing a greater number to be carried by smaller implements of delivery like Milo's projected bombers, and Strangelove's too, with no notable sacrifice in nuclear destructive capability.

  The chaplain was up in value and completely safe.

  14

  Michael Yossarian

  "When can I see him?" Michael Yossarian heard his father demand. His father's hair was thicker than his own and curly white, a color for which his brother Adrian was assiduously seeking a chemical formula for tinting to a youthful, natural gray that would not be youthful on any man Yossarian's age and would not look natural.

  "As soon as he's safe," answered M2, in a clean white shirt that was not yet rumpled, wet, or in need of ironing.

  "Michael, didn't he just say the chaplain was safe?"

  "It's what I thought I heard."

  Michael smiled to himself. He pressed his brow against the pane of the glass window in order to gaze down intently at the ice rink below and its colorful kaleidoscope of leisurely skaters, wondering, with a downhearted presentiment of already having missed out on much, if there could possibly be abiding in that pastime rewards he might find diverting if ever he could bring himself to take the trouble to seek them. The reflecting oval of ice was ringed these days with drifting tides of panhandlers and vagrants, with working strollers on lunch and coffee breaks, with mounted policemen on daunting horses. Michael Yossarian would not dance; he could not get into the rhythm. He would not play golf, ski, or play tennis, and he knew already he would never ice-skate.

  "I mean safe for us." He heard M2 defend himself plaintively and turned to watch. M2 appeared triumphantly prepared for the question he'd been asked. "He is safe for M & M Enterprises and cannot be appropriated by even Mercedes-Benz or the N & N Division of Nippon & Nippon Enterprises. Even Strangelove is barred. We will patent the chaplain as soon as we find out how he works, and we are looking for a trademark. We are thinking of a halo. Because he is a chaplain, of course, a Day-Glo halo. Maybe one that lights up in the dark, all night long."

  "Why not tritium?"

  "Tritium is expensive and radioactive. Michael, can you draw a halo?"

  "It shouldn't be hard."

  "We would want something cheerful but serious."

  "I would try," said Michael, smiling again, "to make it serious, and it's hard to picture one that isn't cheerful."

  "Where have they got him?" Yossarian wanted to know.

  "In the same place, I would guess. I really don't know."

  "Does your father know?"

  "Do I know if he knows?"

  "If you did would you tell me?"

  "If he said that I could."

  "If he said that you couldn't?"

  "I would say I don't know."

  "As you're saying right now. At least you're truthful."

  "I try."

  "Even when you lie. There's a paradox here. We are talking in circles."

  "I went to divinity school."

  "And what," said Yossarian, "do I tell the chaplain's wife? I'll be seeing her soon. If there's anyone else I can advise her to complain to, I will certainly tell her."

  "Who could she find? The police are helpless."

  "Strangelove?"

  "Oh, no," said M2, turning whiter than customary. "I will have to find out. What you can tell Karen Tappman now--"

  "Karen?"

  "It's what it says on my prompt sheet. What you can tell Karen Tappman truthfully--"

  "I don't think I would lie to her."

  "We never choose to be anything but truthful. It's right there in our manual, under Lies. What you must tell Karen Tappman," M2 recited dutifully, "is that he is well and misses her. He looks forward to rejoining her as soon as he is not a danger to himself or the community and his presence in the family and the conjugal bed would not be injurious to her health."

  "That's a new fucking wrinkle, isn't it?"

  "Please." M2 flinched. "This one happens to be true."

  "You would say that even if it weren't?"

  "That is perfectly true," admitted M2. "But if tritium starts showing up inside him from that heavy water, he could be radioactive, and we'd all have to keep clear of him anyway."

  "M2," said Yossarian harshly, "I'm going to want to talk to the chaplain soon. Has your father seen him? I know what you'll say. You have to find out."

  "First, I'll have to find out if I can find out."

  "Find out if you can find out if he can arrange it. Strangelove could."

  M2 paled again. "You'd go to Strangelove?"

  "Strangelove will come to me. And the chaplain won't produce if I tell him not to."

  "I must tell my father."

  "I've already told him, but he doesn't always hear."

  M2 was shaken. "I just thought of something else. Should we be talking about all this in front of Michael? The chaplain is secret now, and I'm not sure I'm authorized to let anyone else hear about him."

  "About who?" asked Michael mischievously.

  "The chaplain," responded M2.

  "What chaplain?"

  "Chaplain Albert T. Tappman," said M2. "That friend of your father's from the army who's producing heavy water inside himself without a license and is now secretly in custody while they investigate and examine him while we try to patent him and register a trademark. Do you know about him?"

  Michael spoke with a grin. "You mean that friend of my father's from the army who began producing heavy water inside himself illegally and is now--"

&
nbsp; "That's the one!" M2 cried, and gaped as though confronted by a specter. "How'd you find out?"

  "You just told me," laughed Michael.

  "I did it again, didn't I?" blubbered M2, and collapsed with a thump into the chair at his desk in a grieving paroxysm of repentant lamentation. Now his shiny white shirt, which was of synthetic fabric, was rumpled, wet, and in need of ironing, and sopping adumbrations of a fidgety, sweltering anxiety were already darkening the fabric below the armholes of a sleeveless white undershirt he never failed to wear as well. "I just can't keep a secret, can I? My father is still angry with me for telling you about the bomber. He says he could kill me. So is my mother. So are my sisters. But it's your fault too, you know. It's his job to restrain me from telling him secrets like that."

  "Like what?" asked Michael.

  "Like that one about the bomber."

  "What bomber?"

  "Our M & M E & A Sub-Supersonic Invisible and Noiseless Defensive Second-Strike Offensive Attack Bomber. I hope you don't know about it."

  "I know about it now."

  "How'd you find out?"

  "I have my ways," said Michael, and turned to his father with a glower. "Are we in munitions now too?"

  Yossarian answered testily. "Somebody is going to have to be in munitions whether we like it or not, they tell me, so it might as well be them, and somebody is going to work with them on this, whether I say yes or no, so it might as well be you and me, and that's the perfect truth."

  "Even though it's a lie?"

  "They told me it was a cruise ship."

  "It does cruise," M2 explained to Michael.

  "With two people?" Yossarian contradicted him. "And here's another way out, to put your conscience at rest," Yossarian added to Michael. "It won't work. Right, M2?"

  "We guarantee it."

  "And besides," said Yossarian, with resentment surfacing, "you're only being asked to draw a picture of the plane, not to fly the fucking thing or launch an attack. This plane is for the new century. These things take forever, and we both may be dead before they get one into the air, even if they do get the contract. They don't care now if it works or not. All they want is the money. Right, M2?"

  "And we'll pay you, of course," offered M2, coming back to his feet and fidgeting. He was slender, spare, with formless shoulders and prominent collarbones.

  "How much will you pay?" asked Michael awkwardly.

  "As much as you want," answered M2.

  "He means it," said Yossarian, when Michael looked clownishly at him for interpretation.

  Michael tittered. "How about," he ventured extravagantly, watching his father for the reaction, "enough for another year in law school?"

  "If that's what you want," M2 immediately agreed.

  "And my living expenses too?"

  "Sure."

  "He means that also," said Yossarian reassuringly to his incredulous son. "Michael, you won't believe this--I don't really believe it either--but sometimes there is more money in this world than anybody ever thought the planet could hold without sinking away into somewhere else."

  "Where does it all come from?"

  "Nobody knows," said Yossarian.

  "Where does it go when it isn't here?"

  "That's another scientific mystery. It just disappears. Like those particles of tritium. Right now there's a lot."

  "Are you trying to corrupt me?"

  "I think I'm trying to save you."

  "Okay, I'll believe you. What do you want me to do?"

  "A few loose drawings," said M2. "Can you read engineering blueprints?"

  "Let's have a try."

  The five blueprints required for an artist's rendering of the external appearance of the plane had already been selected and laid out on a conference table in an adjoining outer inner conference room just outside the rear false front of the second fireproof stand-up vault of thick steel and concrete, with alarm buttons and radioactive dials of tritium.

  It took a minute for Michael to assemble coherence in the mechanical drawings of white lines on royal blue, which looked at first like an occult shambles ornamented with scribbled cryptic notations in alphabets that were indecipherable.

  "It's kind of ugly, I think." Michael felt stimulated to be at work on something different that was well within his capabilities. "It's starting to look like a flying wing."

  "Are there wings that don't fly?" teased Yossarian.

  "The wings of a wing collar," Michael answered, without lifting his analytical gaze. "The wings of a theater stage, the wings of a political party."

  "You do read, don't you?"

  "Sometimes."

  "What does a flying wing look like?" M2 was a moist man, and his brow and chin were beaded with shiny droplets.

  "Like a plane without a fuselage, Milo. I've got a feeling I've seen this before."

  "I hope you haven't. Our plane is new."

  "What's this?" Yossarian pointed. In the lower left corner of all five sheets the identifying legends had been masked before copying by a patch of black tape on which was printed a white letter S without loops. "I've seen that letter."

  "And so has everyone else," Michael answered lightly. "It's the standard stencil. You've seen it on old bomb shelters. But what the hell are these?"

  "I meant those too."

  To the right of the letter S was a trail of minuscule characters that looked like flattened squiggles, and while Yossarian was donning his glasses, Michael peered through a magnifying glass there and found the small letter h repeated in script, with an exclamation point too.

  "So that," he remarked, still in very good humor, "is what you're going to call your plane, eh? The M & M Shhhhh!"

  "You know what we call it." M2 was offended. "It's the M & M E & A Sub-Supersonic Invisible and Noiseless Defensive Second-Strike Offensive Attack Bomber."

  "We'd save time calling it Shhhhh! Tell me again what you want."

  M2 talked diffidently. What was wanted were nice-looking pictures of the plane in flight from above, below, and the side, and at least one of the plane on the ground. "They don't have to be accurate. But make them realistic, like the planes in a comic strip or science movie. Leave out details. My father doesn't want them to see any until we get the contract. He doesn't really trust our government anymore. They'd also like a picture of what the plane will really look like in case they ever have to build it."

  "Why don't you ask your engineers?" mused Michael.

  "We don't really trust our engineers."

  "When Ivan the Terrible," reflected Yossarian, "finished building the Kremlin, he had all the architects executed, so that no one alive would ever duplicate it."

  "What was so terrible about him?" M2 wondered. "I must tell my father that."

  "Leave me alone now," said Michael, rubbing his chin and concentrating. He was slipping off his corduroy jacket, whistling a Mozart melody to himself. "If you close the door, remember I'm locked in and don't forget to get me out one day." To himself, he observed aloud, "It's looking cute."

  At the turn into the next century, he was cynically sure, there would be months of senseless ceremonies, tied in with political campaigns too, and the M & M warplane could be an exalted highlight. And no doubt, the first baby born in the new century would be born in the east, but much farther east this time than Eden.

  He looked down again at the plans of this weapon for the close of the century and saw a design that seemed to him aesthetically incomplete. Much was lacking in anticipated form, much was missing. And when he looked at the blueprints and into the future in which that plane would fly, he could spy no place staked out anywhere into which he, in the stale words of his father, could fit, in which he could flourish with any more security and satisfaction than he presently enjoyed. He had room for improvement but saw not much chance of any. He remembered Marlene and her astrological charts and tarot cards, and he felt himself missing her again, even though uncertain he had ever cared for her more than any of the others in his sequence of
monogamous romances. It was beginning to scare him that he might have no future, that he was already in it; like his father, about whom he'd always harbored mixed feelings, he was already there. He must risk a call to Marlene.

  Even his brother Julian was having trouble these days making as much money as he had insolently projected he was destined to make. And his sister too would have to delay her divorce while testing the waters discreetly for a job in private practice with one of the law firms with whose partners she occasionally had contact.

  His father would be dead. Papa John had made clear more than once that he did not expect to go deeply into that twenty-first century. For much of his life Michael had confidently presumed his father would always be alive. He felt that way still, although he knew it was untrue. That never happened with real human beings.

  And who else would be there for him? There was no one to esteem, no figure to look up to whose merit persisted without blemish for more than fifteen minutes. There were people with power to confer great benefits upon others, like movie directors and the President, but that was all.

  The half-million dollars his father had hopes to bequeath him no longer seemed an everlasting fortune. He would not be able to live on the income, though nine tenths of the country lived on less. In time he would have nothing, and no one, have no one, his father had underlined, to aid him. His father always had struck him as somewhat peculiar, rationally irrational and illogically logical, and did not always make consistent sense.