The Tower

by Richard Martin Stern

  Except maybe in the old-fashioned virtues that used to be considered so important? How about those, darling?

  Strike the question; Zib had answered it to her own satisfaction years ago, which was one of the reasons she was where she was.

  And yet, paradoxically, it was right here at the magazine, that monument to upper-middle-class sophistication, that on occasion she found reason to wonder about the solidity of those chosen beliefs. There was, for example, that Meacham story a few months back that had caught her fancy and for which she had argued without success with Jim Henderson.

  “Elizabeth, luv,” Jim had said, “our readers are bright above average or they wouldn’t be reading at all, they’d be sitting glued to the tube. But they are also wives and mothers worried about budgets and mortgages and the PTA, mundane matters like those. And most of them wouldn’t know an identity crisis if it bit them. I’m not sure I would. They are the special salt of this earth, and I mean that as a compliment. Now take this navel-contemplating piece—”

  “As you make abundantly plain,” Zib said, “you are the boss. But this happens to be a beautifully written, sensitive, probing—”

  “Piece of crap,” Henderson said. He got up from his chair, walked around his desk, and sat down again. He was in shirt-sleeves, long and bony and pitiless. “Sometimes I don’t dig you, girl. You are a hell of a good fiction editor. Most times. Then some agent, probably Soames, who knows your weaknesses sends in something like this and you flip over it when you know perfectly well it isn’t our kind of thing.”

  “Maybe it ought to be.”

  “And that is crap too, and you know it. You’re being schizo. Now send this back.” He held the manuscript between thumb and forefinger, something unclean.

  Zib, furious, marched back to her office and called John Soames. “I’m sorry, John. I liked the Meacham piece—”

  “Let me guess, darling. Lord Henderson did not like it, and that is that. But whatever else did we expect? There was no way.”

  “Then,” Zib said, “why did you send it to me in the first place?”

  He was smiling. Zib could almost see it. And in the tanned face, beneath the graying hair and the glasses, crinkling the corners of his eyes, the smile looked very avuncular and English-professorish, very much the literary man at confident ease. “Just to show you the quality of fiction your magazine might run, if it chose. What else, darling?”

  The day was already slightly out of focus, and seeing behind sham seemed easy. Strange. “You wouldn’t waste your time,” Zib said. “Or mine.”

  There was a short silence. Did the smile fade or perhaps let slip a little of its confidence? “I will level with you, darling,” Soames said in a different voice. “I sent you the piece on the millionth chance that you might buy it at your splendidly exorbitant rates, one-tenth of which would have gone into my coffers as commission. Instead I will try to peddle it elsewhere, and maybe end by giving it away if anyone will take it. If my commission exceeds ten dollars instead of the hundred and fifty I would have had from you, I shall be mightily surprised.”

  “At least you’re being honest,” Zib said, although of course she ought to have known from the beginning how things were. “Tell me one more thing. In Jim Henderson’s place, would you buy the piece?”

  “Dear God, no! Certainly not. It is offensive, pretentious, flatulent. But as we agree, it does have a certain charm, and the literary establishment would make noises over it.”

  And why should she have remembered that so vividly now after all this time? Because, she thought, you never really forget the putdowns, you just tuck them off in a corner and hope they get decently covered with dust. Aloud, whispering, “What in the world am I doing here anyway? Answer me that, Elizabeth.”

  “Zib, darling.” Cathy Hearn, associate editor, standing in the doorway. “How can you be so calm? The building that neat husband of yours designed is coming apart at the seams. It’s on the radio and on Jim’s desktop TV, and you sit here actually working! Honestly. Have you flaked out?”

  Cathy, Zib thought, was a small town cornfed Midwest girl loving every moment of the big city. She was plump and perpetually worried about it; brighter than bright and forever trying to conceal it; as intimate with sex as a doe rabbit and yet forever exuding an aura of fresh virginity. “Maybe I have at that,” Zib said.

  Cathy perched an ample haunch on the corner of Zib’s desk. “Trouble, hon?” She paused. “Man trouble, of course. It always is.” She shook her head. “There are rules,” she said. “If your man walks in and finds you balling somebody else, he is supposed to say, ‘Ah, pardon! Continue!’ And if you can continue, that is savoir-faire.”

  Picture Nat in that role. No way. Face it, Zib told herself, you are married to a square, a real, honest-to-God, Herbert Hoover collar, McKinley morality, home-and-motherhood square. For a moment anger rose, flickered, and then died.

  “Are you stoned?” There was concern in Cathy’s voice.

  Zib shook her head. The long hair covered her face. She brushed it back angrily. “I don’t even have that excuse.”

  “Then,” Cathy said judiciously, “I’d suggest a witch-doctor, either the pill man or the shrink.” She paused. Then, incredulously, “You aren’t pregnant or any ridiculous thing like that?”

  Again the headshake. Again the angry brushing motion. Why did she wear her hair long like this anyway? Why did anyone? Because it was the in thing to do? Because current fashion so decreed? How ridiculous. “I’m not pregnant. Stop worrying, Cathy.”

  “My problem,” Cathy said, “is that I’m a mother at heart. I was a Four-H’er when I was a kid. Fact. I had chicks and lambs and calves coming out of my ears. And I worried about them. I canned vegetables and baked cakes and I just knew that one day HE would ride by on his white horse and scoop me up—if he could lift me—and we would ride off into the sunset to breed a family, and that would give me real scope for worrying. Instead, here I am, giving free analysis—”

  “Cathy, go away.”

  It was Cathy’s turn to shake her head. She brushed her own long hair back from her face with both hands. “And leave you here to meditate? No way. You stare inward long enough and you find you don’t like anything you see, not anything at all. Your whole life is a living sham, a real mess. You’ve spent all these years trying to find out who you are, as they do in novels, snuffling around in the damnedest places, and what you finally do find is a little shriveled-up id that couldn’t screw its way out of a loose nightie, that’s what you find, and what’s worse, what’s far worse, the damn little thing is laughing at you.” She paused for breath.

  Zib said slowly, solemnly, “Yes, you’re right. It is laughing at me.”

  Cathy was silent for a few moments. “You’ve got it bad, hon. You patrician types aren’t supposed even to take a look at yourselves, let alone feel accountable for any troubles you may find. You—”

  “Is that how you see it, Cathy?” It was her own voice, but it sounded like a stranger’s, and it asked a question Zib had never even thought of before. “Is it?”

  “It isn’t that bad.” Cathy was smiling, mocking herself, her exaggeration.

  “But there is something to it?” Was that what Nat saw too?

  “Look,” Cathy said, “girlish discussions—” She smiled again. “We fought those out after Taps at Camp Kickapoo back when ‘When are you going to start wearing a brassiere?’ was the big question.”

  “I’m asking, Cathy,” Zib said. “Tell me how it looks from where you stand.”

  Cathy hesitated. “You’re backing me right up to it, aren’t you?” She paused. “All right. It goes like this. I went to a country grade school and the local high with a student body of one hundred bused in—dirty word, but it wasn’t dirty to us: it was the only way to get there—bused in from a hundred square miles of countryside. You went where? Miss This’s or Miss That’s? I went to a college you’ve never heard of. You went where? Vassar? Smith? Wellesley? Radcliffe? M
y father got partway through that same high school, only there was a depression then, and he had to quit to go to work at whatever he could find, which wasn’t much, because Grandfather had been laid off by the railroad. Your father was Harvard? Or was it Yale? And maybe the Depression hurt you too, took you right down to your last yacht, I shouldn’t be surprised, but your people knew that it was only a temporary embarrassment, and mine thought the end of the world, not the prosperity some people were talking about, was just around the corner. The basic difference between you and me is that you know whatever you do is right, because how could it be otherwise? And I have to wonder and worry every step of the way, because as far back as anybody knows the Hearns have been born losers, and maybe I’ve broken the mold, but maybe the genes are still there too, just waiting to pounce.” Cathy paused. “That’s the difference between background and cultural emptiness.”

  “I didn’t know, Cathy. I never even thought.”

  “And the last thing I want to hear you say,” Cathy said, “is that you’re sorry.”

  “I won’t say it.” Zib paused thoughtfully. “You know Nat. You say he’s neat. He—”

  “He finally spit in your eye?” What was in Cathy’s tone said far more than the words.

  Zib looked up. “You’ve been waiting for it? Watching it?” But how could it be that she felt no resentment?

  “We haven’t been making book in the office,” Cathy said, “but we’ve followed the score as best we could.” She stood up from the desk. “What confuses me is that with what’s happening downtown you’re sitting here reading slush-pile gleanings.”

  So here at last was what it came to, the basic truth uncovered. “I’ve been thinking about myself,” Zib said, and found no pain in the saying. “I haven’t even been thinking about what is happening downtown.” She paused. “I guess thinking about myself is a habit I have.”

  “Could be,” Cathy said, and walked out.

  18

  It was a neat little house in Garden City; green lawn, white petunias in bloom, a basketball backboard and hoop mounted on the garage door, an enormous television mast aimed at the city, clinging to the brick chimney and dominating the roof.

  Mrs. Pat Harris answered the door in tight peach-colored jeans, matching sneakers, and a striped tank top. Her hair was in blue plastic curlers. She was young, attractive, and thoroughly conscious of it. “Well,” she said, “this is a surprise, Mr. Simmons. You want to see Pat?”

  “If I may.” Paul wore his actor’s smile and his easy manner.

  “He’s downstairs watching TV.” The girl paused. “We thought you would be at the World Tower opening, Mr. Simmons. I haven’t seen it, but I know it’s going on. I have, you know, things to do around the house even when Pat’s home. You go on down. He’ll be awful glad to see you.”

  I doubt it, Paul thought, but the smile remained unchanged as he walked down the stairs into the paneled game room. On the massive color television console screen the fire trucks crowding around the Tower Plaza looked the color of blood. The volume was turned low, and the announcer’s voice was almost inaudible: “We have a report, ladies and gentlemen, that the fire is spreading inside the building. This entire disaster—because it is beginning to look like almost certain disaster—is incredible. Every safety factor known to architects—”

  The set went black and the sound stopped all at once. From his chair Pat Harris said, “Welcome, Boss. I figured you’d be along.” He laid the remote control on the coffee table and jumped up out of the chair. “Drink?” There was faint hostility behind the words.

  “I think a drink would be a good idea,” Paul said. He sat down and looked around.

  There was a bar and a full-size pool table, a large Naugahyde-covered sofa and matching chair, a card table with cards and poker chips set out, a dart board on one wall, three darts in the bull’s-eye.

  “Nice place you have here,” Paul said. He accepted his drink, nodded his thanks, tasted the mellow Scotch—Chivas Regal, at a guess, he thought. “Very nice,” he said.

  “Yeah.” Pat Harris was a small quick man. His restless eyes watched Paul’s face carefully. “Man works hard, he likes to live it up a little.” Harris paused. “Just a working stiff,” he said. “I do what I’m told.”

  Paul ignored the dark and silent television set, and concentrated on the man. “Do you intend to keep on the same way?” he said. He paused. “Doing what you’re told?”

  Harris lighted a cigarette and blew out a cloud of smoke. With the cigarette still hanging from his lip, he tore the match into small pieces; his movements were sudden and jerky. “I been thinking about that.” He smiled quickly, without meaning. “Funny, I was just thinking about it when you come down the stairs.”

  Paul said slowly, carefully, “And what conclusion had you come to?”

  Another huge cloud of smoke. Harris leaned forward to tap ashes into the coffee-table ashtray. He leaned back again. “Like this, you know what I mean, let’s say you, you know, work for a guy. He’s a good Joe, treats you right, so you owe him, you know, something better than a kick in the teeth, don’t you?”

  “I think that is a reasonable viewpoint,” Paul said. “A friendly view,” he added.

  “On the other hand,” Harris said, “you know what I mean? a guy has to, you know, look out for himself. This is a dog-eat-dog world. You get yours or you get nothing.” He paused, waiting.

  “I think there is some cogency in that view too,” Paul said.

  “Big word.”

  And big words are a mistake, Paul told himself, because they seem to talk down. But it was too late to do anything but ignore the slip. “Go on,” he said.

  “The way I see it,” Harris said, “you, you know, balance one against the other and try to see what’s—right.”

  Paul nodded and sipped his Scotch. All at once it tasted foul and there was a burning sensation in his chest. Pure and simple tension, he told himself. “And,” he said calmly enough, “how did you decide?”

  Harris took the cigarette from the ashtray, inhaled deeply, and blew four large smoke rings in rapid succession before he spoke. “I hear Bert McGraw’s in the hospital. Heart attack. I hear he may not make it.” The restless eyes searched Paul’s face.

  “I can’t say,” Paul said. “He had a heart attack, yes.” He waved one hand. “We were talking about your thought. Bert doesn’t matter at the moment.”

  “That,” Harris said, “is crap. If I thought I’d have that old man looking for me with blood in his eye—” He shook his head.

  “Bert,” Paul said, “showed me some change orders.” His voice was wholly calm. “He asked me if we made the changes. I said yes, of course we made them, why should we not?”

  Harris wiped his mouth. “Jesus! Now I know you’ve flipped.”

  Paul shook his head. Never mind the burning sensation. Never mind anything but this. “The change orders had surfaced,” he said. “I don’t know how, but Will Giddings found them. No matter what I said to Bert, they were going to tear into the walls to see for themselves. So the only thing I could say was, yes, of course we made the changes. Look at the signature: Nat Wilson, Caldwell’s bright-haired boy. Should we question word from on high?” His voice underscored the last four words.

  Harris stubbed out his cigarette carefully. Then he looked up again. “I don’t know,” he said. “You use big words and you make it sound okay, but I don’t know.” He stood up and walked across the room, turned and walked back to his chair. He dropped into it with an almost audible thud. “I’ll level with you,” he said. “You been a good Joe. I’ve worked for some crummy bastards, I’d just like the chance to kick their teeth in, but you’re okay.”

  “Thank you,” Paul said, and meant it.

  “I’ll tell you how it is,” Harris said. “I got two things I can, you know, do. Two ways I can go. First”—he held up one finger—“I can go down to City Hall when this is over.” He gestured toward the television set. “I can say, ‘Jesus, if
I’d of even guessed, I’d of told him to shove it’ You, I mean. ‘But,’ I can say, ‘what the hell, he’s the boss, and he’s an engineer and he says the changes are okay and the change orders are signed by the architect and who the hell am I to argue any more than I did?’”

  There was silence. Paul said without expression, “Your only argument, Pat, was about how much it was worth not to argue.”

  “That’s what you say,” Harris said. “But that isn’t, you know, what I say. I say I did argue, and I can come up with three, four guys who’ll say sure I did, but you told me everything was okay, so I went ahead. And Harry, the inspector, signed the work off, so why should I even wonder about it?”

  Easy, Paul told himself, easy. “And what is the—other way you can go?”

  Harris was unable to sit still. He jumped up, crossed the room again, and then turned but did not come back to his chair. “You told McGraw we made the changes because we had the orders with Wilson’s signature on them. Okay. I can say the same. I can say you and I talked about them, wondered about them, but, goddammit, when Caldwell’s office says you do something, that’s fucking well what you do. That Caldwell, he don’t mess around, the cold little bastard.” Harris paused. “That’s the other way.”

  “A very good way,” Paul said.

  Harris walked slowly back to his chair. He lowered himself into it carefully. “A couple things,” he said. “Harry the inspector for one.”

  “Harry won’t cause any trouble,” Simmons said. “Or if he does, it will only be for himself.” He paused. “You said a couple of things. What else?”

  Harris’s face was expressionless, the face of a poker player studying his opponent. “You remember a kid named Jimmy?”

  “No.”

  Harris smiled faintly, scornfully. “No, I guess you wouldn’t. He was just a kid, worked in one of my crews, went to engineering school at night.” He paused and lighted a fresh cigarette. “He didn’t like the changes that were coming through. Especially, he didn’t like the change order taking out that primary-power safety-ground circuit. He said it was dangerous and he was going to talk to Nat Wilson about it.” He paused again. “He wouldn’t listen to me or Harry.”