by Alison Lurie
“That was a nice thought,” Katherine said. She turned her head and looked at the pail of flowers, which Paul had put on the bedside table.
“I’m a nice guy,” he replied, stroking her hair.
“My head hurts so, so much.”
“I know.”
Katherine sighed, and stretched out; Paul continued to smooth down her hair, across her neck and shoulders.
“Oh, that’s nice. So relaxing ... Mm ... I think I could go to sleep now,” she murmured presently. “I’m very tired. Paul; you know, Paul, I couldn’t sleep at all on the plane.”
Paul did not feel tired. “Let me put you to sleep,” he said meaningfully. He felt Katherine’s shoulders first stiffen, then go passive under his fingers. “You know I haven’t seen you for six months,” he added. “I mean, six weeks. I guess it feels like six months,” he explained.
“I know.” Katherine smiled a faintly acquiescent little smile from under her arm. Paul began rapidly taking off his clothes.
“I love you so much, Katherine,” he apologized.
“Yes.” Katherine reached up and touched his arm. He put his hand on hers; their eyes met for a second. Then, burning, with one sock still on, he flung himself on top of her.
“Thank you,” he said after a while, and rolled over. It was darker in the room now. Night falls quickly in Los Angeles, as in the desert which it once was.
“That’s all right,” Katherine replied in a small voice. “I mean, you’re welcome. Really.” She paused, and went on, “But I’m sick. You know.” There was a silence. Paul did not admit that he knew.
“It was the altitude,” Katherine continued. “When I decided to take the jet, I didn’t realize that the difference in altitude would be so much greater. I think that’s why I feel it so much, because of course jets fly so much higher than ordinary planes.”
“That doesn’t make any difference; the cabin is always pressurized,” Paul said.
“Pressurized?”
“Mm.” He yawned, sleepy himself now. “Well, see, the air in the cabin of a jet, or any big plane, is maintained at constant pressure after it leaves the ground. Has to be, or you couldn’t breathe at all. The atmosphere is too thin up there.” He yawned again.
Katherine gave Paul a look which, even in the dim room, he recognized. “You mean that I shouldn’t be having a sinus attack now at all,” she said. “It’s all imaginary.”
“I didn’t say that. I—” He sighed. Somehow whenever Katherine was sick she always managed to put him in the wrong, to make him feel guilty. It was Paul’s belief that one of the causes of his wife’s sinusitis was his wife’s imagination, but he knew from experience that all hell broke loose when he expressed this view. “I know it really hurts,” he said. “You always get sick when you go on a plane.”
“I suppose in a way it’s partly psychological,” Katherine said; she would sometimes admit this if she were not accused of it. “I mean, even though I do have the kind of bone structure that predisposes me to get sinus infections—” (she ran her long, delicate forefinger down the bridge of her long, delicate, turned-up nose)—“still and all, I don’t always have them. I mean, I do always have some postnasal drainage, but there usually isn’t much pain. It gets worse when I’m overtired or upset about something, because of course my resistance is lowered when I’m tired, or frightened.”
“Frightened of planes?” Paul asked sleepily, looking up at his wife as she bent towards him in the darkening room. He deeply disliked being reminded that from behind that calm, lovely face, down into the round, lovely white throat, damp mucus was continually dripping.
“Of course not. Well, I suppose there is some natural anxiety. Travelling always makes me nervous. I don’t like new places. Paul, you know, I don’t like Los Angeles. It’s going to be awful.” Katherine’s voice rose higher.
“Kathy,” Paul said, reaching up and putting his arms around her. He pulled her down on to his chest. “Don’t worry so. It’s only another city.”
“No, it’s not. It’s more peculiar. Look at all those weird freak people we saw at the airport, those dressed-up little girls, and that old woman with the orange hair, and that man who had practically nothing on but bathing-trunks. And the houses. Everything’s so exaggerated, so unnatural. I don’t like lilies or whatever they are growing at this time of year, or peaches. I’d be afraid to eat one, really.” She laughed.
“Silly. You’ve only just come,” Paul protested. “You’ve hardly seen anything of Los Angeles. Really, you mustn’t be so prejudiced. You mustn’t be put off by its reputation back East. This is a city like any other city. Thousands of people live here and work here at ordinary jobs.”
“Well, I’m afraid of them too,” she said, half seriously now. “I think how I’ll have to meet them and they’ll all look at me and say, ‘Who’s she? What’s her excuse for existing?’ It’s all very well for you. You have a reason for being here; you have a job and an office and something to do. But I’m just nothing here. Nobody knows me or wants me around, and I’m really rather nervous.” Katherine laughed again, but not happily; it was too dark now for Paul to see her face.
“I want you.” As he said this, it occurred to Paul that he also did so in another sense.
“Yes. But that isn’t it. ... I don’t want to depend on somebody else’s emotions. I need—”
“Katherine,” Paul whispered. He rolled over on to his side, pulling her with him, pulling at her nightgown. “I’ve missed you so much, you know.”
“Mm.” Her arms lay slack around him; for some moments there was no further response. Then Katherine gave a faint moan, or croak, like something dying at the bottom of a well.
“Am I hurting you?” Paul said, pausing.
“A little. Never mind.”
At these words, and the tone in which they were said, Paul felt all desire leave him, to be replaced by something like despair. “You should have told me,” he said, falling back on the bed away from Katherine.
“I didn’t want to spoil your fun.”
“When you don’t like it, it spoils it for me anyway,” he said flatly.
“Oh, Paul. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry,” Paul said simultaneously. He reflected that this had happened before with Katherine, many, many times, and felt: Oh, the hell with it. He swung his feet over the side of the bed and sat up.
“I guess I’m just out of practice,” Katherine added.
No reply. Paul continued to sit on the edge of the bed, his back to her. “What time is it really?” she asked. “It feels dreadfully late.” She held up her wrist, squinting at the luminous dots of the little gold watch which she never removed except to wash. “My watch says—good heavens—ten-twenty.”
“Uh. That’s Boston time. It’s three hours earlier here.”
“That seems so strange. Seven-twenty, then.” In the dark, she adjusted the luminous dots.
“I’m hungry,” Paul said. “Are you hungry yet?”
“I don’t know. I suppose I should try to eat something.”
“Let’s get up.”
Paul put on the light. The tiny room appeared around them: bare walls, bare floor, Katherine’s outsize Victorian furniture. Here was the elaborate marble-topped chest of drawers and bedside stand her parents had used, and their massive mahogany bed, carved with wooden fruit. Beside the bed stood the mop pail, full of wilted leafage—leaves sagging, and scarlet and golden flowers wilting for lack of water; collapsed on their stems, or fallen on to the marble tabletop.
2
PAUL SAT IN THE Publications Department of the Nutting Research and Development Corporation, surrounded by frosted glass. Actually only three sides of his office were frosted, but the view through his window, of smog-blurred roofs and smog-filled sky, gave much the same effect. The Nutting offices were on a hill a few miles from Paul’s house, and his window looked east over the city. On very clear days they said you could see the mountains, but there had been no such day since
Paul’s arrival. It was half-past twelve, and he was hungry. He was waiting to go to lunch with his friend Fred Skinner, who occupied the adjoining office, but was now in conference with the head of the Publications Department, a man named Howard Leon.
For five weeks Paul had sat at his desk (of extreme modern design with an indestructible surface) in this office, with nothing to read except a few advertising brochures, personnel memos, and some more or less out-dated histories of California. His Secret clearance had not yet come through, and so hardly any Nutting publications had been available to Paul, nor had anyone been permitted to discuss Nutting matters with him. He read his books, and made notes on cards to the effect that the land on which the plant now stood was formerly part of a ranch owned by the Parducci family, or that forty-five per cent of the area of downtown Los Angeles was presently occupied by road surfaces. Sometimes he gazed out the window, or wrote letters. He described to his friends the speed and excitement of the city: the towers of apartments and oil-wells above swamps where the tyrannosaurus had leapt upon the brontosaurus in battles now petrified in rock for tourists; the tennis courts never muddied by rain; the pretty, tanned girls; the warm sea stroking the long, sandy beaches.
He also wrote to his parents in Columbus, Ohio. Los Angeles was amazing; you could almost imagine the city growing around you. Wherever you looked you could see the red and orange iron skeletons of tall buildings rising above the palms. The dust of excavation hung in the air, and the noises: the bang, bang, of construction and demolition, the groans of trucks hauling dirt up and down the hills. Even the faint shudders of earthquake or landslide, and the sonic boom as some aircraft broke the sound barrier, seemed to be part of it. The local and state political situation favored this growth because—and Paul went on to explain why. His father was a real estate agent who also owned and managed business properties. He had done well, and was active in civic affairs, but he also found time to read current non-fiction and took an interest in the world situation. In a way you could say—that is, Paul’s father could, and frequently did, say—that his hobby had become his son’s profession. All the same, he was not a bad guy.
Paul’s mother painted, and made pottery; she was in several local art groups, and an expert bridge player. For her he described the wonderful climate, the dry light, the white-walled houses with their orange and lemon trees, the Santa Monica mountains rising smoky green and brown against the north edge of the sky. Katherine’s sinuses were bothering her, he wrote, but he had never felt better. His mother was interested in people’s health. She had trouble with her own (indigestion, insomnia), which sometimes made her a little difficult. Still, she meant well.
Today, however, Paul’s desk was covered with papers relating to Nutting and its works, and so was his bookcase. Last Friday his clearance had come through, and materials had been pouring in ever since. Piles of dusty, bulky manila folders; typed and mimeographed and printed drafts of proposals in binders; statistical reports, financial reports, departmental and individual reports; carbon copies of letters, tables, graphs, estimates, diagrams, and memoranda. Apparently it was intended that he should read every piece of paper at Nutting.
Paul preferred this glut to the previous famine; he had the historian’s love of primary source material, however untidy. He would mine the significant facts out of the mountain of processed wood pulp and erect them into an elegant and accurate record of the spectacular growth of a southern California corporation. He had in mind something which would both satisfy Nutting and (through a judicious use of irony and comparison) interest and entertain other historians. He had no instructions or outline to go by; the company had shown its confidence in Paul by giving him a remarkably free hand.
In front of him now was a large pile of memoranda marked Confidential, mostly dealing with office regulations. He leafed through them rapidly. Confidential was the lowest security classification; until recently Paul himself had been classified as Confidential. There was no lesser rank: just as the smallest bottle of soda one can buy now is the Large, so everyone admitted through the plant gate, and every memorandum, was designated at least as Confidential. Most people and documents were Secret, and some were Top Secret. Like the documents, every employee wore his classification in full view, in the form of a large round plastic badge bearing his name and photograph and the name of the company. Paul had worn this badge every working day for six weeks, and he still felt it to be embarrassing and ridiculous. The wearing of such a label, he thought, implies that one is continually among strangers or fools, like an exhibit in a museum.
Whenever he raised his eyes from his desk, Paul’s attention was drawn to a large notice hanging opposite:
SECURITY MEANS YOU
Making Security Work Requires the Full Cooperation of Every Employee of This Corporation. REMEMBER: Any Danger to Our Security Is Potential Danger to Our Country and Way of Life.
He heard Fred Skinner come back into his office next door, so he shoved the memos aside and went in.
“Ready to eat?”
Skinner did not answer, but continued to sit on the edge of his desk in an attitude of angry dejection. He was a small, spare, muscular man of about thirty-five, partially bald. The photograph on his badge showed him with his habitual monkey-like grin, in strong contrast to his present expression. The badge of Paul, who was now smiling, displayed the opposite contrast. When he had stood before the camera in the Personnel Office he had tried to look serious, and so his photograph had a solemn expression—like that of a depressed twin brother, whose portrait he had chosen to wear over his heart.
“How, Chief,” Paul said. During the last month Skinner had been promoted from Assistant Chief Technical Writer to Chief Technical Writer; this had resulted in some joking with American Indian references.
“Yeah, Cattleman?”
It was company policy for employees to call each other by their first names. Fred Skinner, as if in deliberate contravention of this policy, called his friends by their last names; they called him “Skinner.”
“I’m hungry. Say.” He gestured at a disreputable object on Skinner’s immaculate desk—a dirty, creased, half-charred piece of paper. “Where’d you get that?”
“A guy in Systems found it on the road, outside the north fence.”
Paul looked closer. Most of the paper was burned black or scorched brown, but he could make out:
learning period in which practice sig
adjustment of the outputs is accomplis
improves in efficiency, that is, in fr
Hence varies with each particular real
Another legible area farther down the page was covered with equations. He frowned, puzzled.
“Outside the fence,” Skinner repeated, “‘constituting evidence of an unauthorized conveyance and/or removal of classified documents from the premises of N.R.D.C.’” Paul still looked puzzled. “Not to tax your brain, it probably blew out of the incinerator.”
“Ah.” The security system for pieces of paper at Nutting extended from birth to death. Paul was allowed to use the wastebasket in his office only for envelopes, cigarette packages, newspapers, and so on. When he wished to dispose of any classified piece of paper he had to get up from his desk, walk down the hall, and place it in the special Classified Trash Container, located in full view of Howard Leon’s office. Ordinary trash from the wastebaskets was collected by a city garbage truck; classified trash was ceremonially burned once a week. It was Fred Skinner’s job to supervise this process, which meant that he had to stand out by the incinerator every Friday afternoon and watch while two classified janitors reduced the documents to ash. “So that’s why it’s burned,” Paul said, and smiled.
“Wipe off that grin. This could mean the end of a damned important career. Mine.” Skinner did not grin himself; he grimaced. “I think Leon’s planning to get me for this.”
“To get you? But hell, he just promoted you.”
“Yeah, but he has to pin the blame somewhere. When there’s
a breach of security, you have to turn in your pals if you want to save your own skin. You’ll find out.”
As usual, Paul could not be sure how serious Skinner was, or whether (behind his tough-ironic tone) he was serious at all. “So what’s going to happen now?” he asked.
“Whadayou think? Skinner is going to prepare-an-extensive-report-on-the-problem and make detailed recommendations. What’s going to happen after that is the question.”
“Maybe nothing,” suggested Paul; even his brief experience at Nutting had led him to expect this outcome. “If you make the report good and long.”
“Got any ideas?”
“Yeah; I think we should go to lunch.”
“Good idea. Let’s eat civilian.” This meant, not in the plant cafeteria.
Skinner took down his old Marine raincoat from the hook behind the door, though it was not raining. It had not rained in Mar Vista for one year and three months, as a matter of fact; but this stained and worn coat, which did not match the Esquire polish of Skinner’s other clothes, was one of his props.
Skinner and Paul passed the two obvious eating-places outside the N.R.D.C. gate, both much patronized by other employees, turned a corner, and entered the Aloha Coffee Shop, a small building set between two giant feather dusters on thirty-five-foot stems: fan palms.
Over sandwiches, they discussed what Skinner might say in his report on the burned piece of paper. “It has to be long. And we’ve got to dream up some completely new approach to the problem. Something that’ll knock them flat.” Skinner pounded the flat of his hand on the table in demonstration.
“What the hell, I’ll think of something,” he concluded in a worried tone.
“It’s all crap anyhow,” he announced a little later. “But hell, there’s crap everywhere—everywhere you go you got to eat crap—only at Nutting we really get paid for it. In the academy you make the poor bastards eat crap for nothing.”
An early bond between Paul and Fred Skinner had been that Skinner was also a former (or as he put it, renegade) college professor. He had taught English for seven years at a local university without attaining tenure, and when he left abruptly he had been followed into industry by three of his graduate students, causing some consternation (or, as he put it, a fucking big blow-up) among his former colleagues. Skinner’s resentment of “the academy” was still considerable, and he liked to express it. Paul didn’t mind that, but it irritated him when his friend insisted on personifying the enemy as “you.”