Nowhere City

by Alison Lurie

  It was stupidly ironic that he should be arrested for taking dope, something he had never done, but always wanted to try—at least he would have liked to try smoking marijuana. He knew that Ceci’s friends had often done so, but they, and she, always grew silent whenever he mentioned it.

  He wanted to be out of this windowless room, badly. But what could he do? The head cop, or sergeant (desk sergeant maybe: he was sitting at a desk out there) had said he could make one telephone call. But he couldn’t think whom to call: Ceci knew already, and God forbid that Katherine should ever hear of this. (They wouldn’t call her anyway, would they? They had the address.) In movies people always called their lawyer, but he didn’t know any lawyer in Los Angeles. He might call Fred Skinner, but that would involve telling him what had happened and showing him Paul in the Venice jail dressed up in beatnik clothes, goddamn these clothes. At the very best he would laugh to himself, and anyhow it would be better if nobody from Nutting ever heard of this; and they needn’t, because as soon as the cops discovered, etc. This was a false arrest; he was completely innocent, but the security people at Nutting didn’t like it if you even got near to anything irregular. Even adultery made you a security risk, because you might be blackmailed. Unless you were screwing a girl with clearance, Fred said once, referring to a rumor about the secretaries in Personnel and Security. Booked on suspicion of possessing drugs, how would that look? He could even be fired.

  An eye appeared in the window of the door; then the door was opened.

  “Your wife’s here,” the policeman informed Paul.

  “Here?”

  “Out front.” He gave a jerk of his head to indicate the direction.

  “Oh, God.”

  An expression of sympathy came over the section of large red face which was visible through the door. “You don’t have to see her if you don’t wanna,” the cop said.

  “In a little while. I’ll see her in a little while,” Paul promised. The cop nodded, and shut the door. Paul slumped back in his chair. What in Christ’s name would he tell Katherine, who believed that he had gone to a late movie in the opposite direction, over in Hollywood. If he didn’t appear soon she would probably conclude that he was drunk, he realized. She must be in a complete state anyhow, got out of bed after midnight by a telephone call from the police. Well, he would have to say that he went to the movie, and that he met some people there, and they suggested, etc. All right, let’s get it over with. He stood up.

  But the policeman had gone, and Paul was locked in; he looked out through the square of glass at an empty corridor. He knocked on the inside of the door. No one came. He knocked again, louder. Waiting, he walked back and forth, pacing the room; as prisoners are supposed to do, he thought. He sat down again, in the other chair this time. Goddamn the cops, and the coffee house, and Venice, and everyone in it! Had he really been thinking of coming to live here just a couple of hours ago? Goddamn it all.

  He got up again, and knocked on the door, and called out “Hey!” as loud as he could: “Hey, hey! Let me out!” He heard an edge of panic in his own voice.

  “Whassa trouble?” the cop said, unfriendly now. He did not open Paul’s door, but looked in through the window.

  “You can let me out now,” Paul called. “I’ll see my wife.”

  “Let yourself out,” the cop said, grinning. “The door’s not locked.”

  Paul turned the handle. It was quite true. Feeling foolish on top of everything else, he followed the policeman up the corridor, a broad back covered in serge. And what he was wearing himself—how would he explain that? Well, he would just have to say—

  “Paul!” Ceci cried, jumping up from a bench as he walked into the room. “Are you okay?”

  Paul looked nervously around him. Four cops, a clock reading 2:15, but Katherine was not there. Understanding what had happened, he let Ceci put her arms about him, and even reciprocated, though with a sense of policemen watching. “Sure, I’m okay. Are they going to let me out?”

  Ceci shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  Holding on to Ceci by one arm, Paul advanced towards the nearest cop and asked the same question. Nah, the cop said. They couldn’t let him go, see, until they found out what the stuff was he had on him. There wasn’t anybody around now to analyze it, and there wouldn’t be until nine next morning. So he would have to spend the night, wasn’t much left of that anyway. “But I can’t do that!” Paul protested. The cop shrugged, indifferent. It was likely, he implied, that Paul would turn out to be a drug addict, but he would not be very interested either way.

  “I can’t stay here,” Paul said. “I’ve got to get out before eight tomorrow morning; I’ve got to be at work.”

  “Yeah? Where?” The cop looked at him: dirty clothes, sandals, beard now almost two days old.

  Paul hesitated; then he decided to plunge. “Nutting Research and Development,” he said. “And listen, I’ve already been investigated and cleared by their security department. You know Nutting wouldn’t have cleared me if I took dope. They would have found that out. Now why don’t you let me go on home? I can come back here tomorrow in my lunch hour if you want.”

  “You work for Nutting?” Paul nodded. “Lessee your badge.”

  For Reasons of Security this Badge Should Be Carried upon the Person AT ALL TIMES was printed upon the back of Paul’s badge. It had been pinned to his jacket, but his jacket was at Ceci’s. Had he remembered to take it off? Paul searched through his pockets. No, no, no. The policeman and Ceci were watching. Wait a moment. Hadn’t he pinned it to his shirt? Yes! There it was, underneath Ceci’s dirty sweater. He fumbled to unfasten it and get it out.

  “Huh.” The cop looked at Paul’s badge as it lay in his hand, Secret Paul Cattleman staring solemnly at the ceiling of the police station, in his real clothes. Then he handed it to the cop nearest him. Both then went to the far end of the room and entered into consultation with the head cop. Paul’s image was passed from hand to hand.

  Paul and Ceci stood waiting. They exchanged a glance, and she squeezed his arm, but he did not feel that any message or information actually passed.

  Finally the policemen turned towards him.

  “Okay,” the one at the desk called out. “You can go.” He held out Paul’s badge. “Lemme give you some advice, mister,” he added as Paul went over to take it. “Don’t come down here again. Stay out of joints like that one, and you’ll stay out of trouble.”

  “Thank you,” Paul replied mechanically. He put the badge into his pocket.

  The heavy golden-oak door, barred with iron, swung shut behind them, and Paul took a big breath of air. “Jesus!” he said, balancing on the step. “I feel like I’d been in there for years.”

  “Come on,” Ceci urged him. “Around the corner.” She pulled him along the street and into an alley. In the shadow there a car was parked, or more accurately, a hearse—complete with black curtains at the windows. Paul had a moment of absolute panic, as if he had fallen from one bad dream into another. “Hi!” Ceci called.

  “Wow, you made it,” Steve Tyler said, opening the door of the hearse. “What happened?”

  “It was way out,” Ceci said, climbing in beside him. “C’mon. He pulled it on them how he worked for the government, like he was investigated by the F.B.I. already. He really laid it on.” She laughed.

  “Cool.” Steve turned the car out of the alley and drove south, while the events in the police station were described to him. Soon they drew up in front of the coffee house.

  “Say,” Paul asked. “Could you drive me over to Ceci’s place? I left my car there.”

  “Aw, make the scene for a minute,” Steve said. “All the cats want to see you.”

  “Okay,” Paul said, not very enthusiastically, thinking that it must be almost three A.M.

  The coffee house did not look like a place that had recently been raided. It was just as before: candles burning softly, dim figures sitting before them. But this time, as they
entered, a wave of recognition, and then almost a cheer, ran round the room. Before the door had shut behind him Paul was surrounded. People were slapping him on the back, congratulating and thanking him, while Steve and Ceci told the story, now expanding into a saga of cunning and heroism, of his release. Dinny, the waitress, clung to his hand, smiling silently like a delighted child.

  “Sit down, have some coffee on the house,” her husband urged. “Have something to eat. Hey, Dinny! Bring him something good.” Paul allowed himself to be propelled into a chair.

  “You practically saved my life,” John told him. “Man, was I happy when they busted you! I was shaking, waiting for them to make me open up the guitar case.”

  “You were shaking?” said someone else. “Listen, man, I had my shirt pocket full of gage. Like you could smell it a mile off.”

  More expresso and another, double-sized slice of cake were placed on the table. To Paul they signified insomnia and indigestion. But he knew he had to make a gesture of ritual consumption. Without trying, he had become a hero. And after all, why not enjoy it?

  “Hey, you know you were great,” Steve told him. The crowd around them had dispersed; most people had gone home. Ceci had vanished too, probably to the washroom. “It was so cool, the way you made like you didn’t know me. That was really thinking fast. I guess you saved me a night in slam.” He looked down, rotating his coffee mug on the table. “I was all wrong about you before,” he apologized. “I’m sorry I tried to put you down all the time and all like that.”

  “That’s okay,” Paul said.

  “Josie was right,” Steve went on. “She always thought you were a good cat from the start.”

  “That’s all right.” Paul felt acutely that he was in a false position with Steve, who had taken his instinctive revulsion for loyal strategy. He opened his mouth to explain, but could not manage it. “I mean, no reason you should have liked me,” he said instead. “After all, I’m mixed up with your best friend’s wife.”

  “Aw shit, no,” Steve protested. “That wouldn’t make any difference. I mean, that’s between them. No, it was just the way you came on looking so square. And you were working for Nutting, and that really bugged me. I mean most of these cats don’t dig what a place like that is about, but I used to have a gig with one of them. Yeah,” he answered Paul’s look of inquiry. “I was a physicist.” He turned round in his chair to face Paul. “I know how it is; it took me a while to catch on too. Sure, you’re just in the P.R. department, maybe you’re telling yourself the lies they’re putting out are harmless, or anyway what you’re doing is harmless. Yeah, only it’s not.”

  “Well,” Paul said. He definitely didn’t want to defend Nutting or public relations on principle. “All right.” On the other hand, it was Steve and his friends that had got him into the Venice jail, and Nutting that had got him out.

  “So, you got to quit.”

  “Oh, come on,” Paul tried to assume a buoyant tone. “Somebody has to work for them.”

  “Why? There’s plenty of gigs.”

  The argument was back to where it had started earlier in the evening; but Paul was spared having to continue it by the return of Ceci, with Dinny and Dinny’s husband. Almost everyone else had left now; again the tables were empty. The candles burned low, and a few chessmen stood on each board in final attitudes of victory and defeat.

  “Hey!” Ceci announced. “Larry’s got some pot. Enough for everybody.”

  “Cool,” Steve said.

  “I’ll throw in a stick,” John offered. “That’s all I’ve got, but it’s the best. Real green.”

  Paul looked from face to face. Were they crazy? John was searching in the lining of his guitar case; Larry began laying out cigarette papers on the table, opening a little box of what looked like chopped grass. Dinny sat smiling beside him, a red-striped dish-towel thrown over her shoulder.

  “You’re going to smoke marijuana here now?” he asked. “Are you crazy?”

  “This is the best time,” Steve said. “They won’t hit this place again for weeks.”

  “For Christ’s sake,” Paul said. “At least let’s go to somebody’s pad.”

  “Aw, come on,” Ceci said. “Don’t be chicken.”

  “No thanks,” Paul replied. “It’s too late for me anyhow. I’ve got to get on back.”

  PART THREE

  Westwood

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  —Los Angeles Mirror News

  12

  KATHERINE WAS SITTING IN a temporary office building at U.C.L.A., in the small, stuffy office which belonged to the Project on Perception and Delinquency, waiting for the bi-weekly conference to take place. It was not quite two o’clock. In the office with Katherine were some chairs, a table, a filing cabinet, and a desk. There was one odd piece of furniture: a long varnished wooden box set up on end, about the size and shape of a penny weighing-machine. Seen from the front, it was simply a narrow panel in which were two push-buttons, with a red light above each one, and the mouth of a chute at the right-hand side. If you got up and looked around the back, you could see a mass of colored wires and relays inside, all feeding into a seismograph-type of recording device.

  This object was the Fraudulent Response Perceptor, or Cheating Machine, which Dr. Einsam and two graduate students had built for the project. By the use of electrical tape, the two red lights could be illuminated in any desired planned or random series and at any desired speed. The task of the subject (or S) being tested was to guess which one of the red lights would come on next, and to register his guess by pressing the button under the light he chose. If he were right, as soon as the light came on a marble would drop out of the chute.

  It was possible to cheat at this game, because if you did not make your guess at once, but delayed until the light had just come on before you pressed the button, the marble would still drop out of the chute. Meanwhile, however, the unseen recording device would make note of your willful delay.

  This was the general principle of the Cheating Machine; but many variations of the procedure were possible. For instance, the preliminary instructions could be altered; an element of competition against other S’s might be introduced; or of praise and blame (the experimenter, or E, coming in during the rest period to remark, as if casually, “Say, you’re catching on pretty well!” or “I don’t think you’re really trying today, are you?”). Or the marbles might be exchanged at the end of the session for pennies, nickels, or dimes.

  At this time, a final experimental form had still to be worked out. But test runs on the machine with a varied group of S’s had revealed that, as Dr. Smith put it, “Almost everyone will cheat like crazy if they think they can get away with it, though some will cheat more than others.” This finding did not surprise Katherine, who had a pessimistic view of human nature in general and of southern Californians in particular. Neither was she surprised at the deception practiced by the experimenters. She had worked for social scientists before; she knew that almost all psychological tests were rigged somehow, and thought anyone who volunteered to take them, even for money, a fool. Whenever her eye fell upon the Cheating Machine, she made a mental note to be on her guard. At any moment her employers might try to turn her into an S or worse. As when, a few weeks ago, Dr. Einsam (of course it would be him) said, “So let’s see, we’ve already tried two kinds of reinforcement, money and approval. What else should we cover; let’s think. Definitely we ought to work in physical gratification. Maybe we could plug in Mrs. Cattleman somehow; say we have her sit next to the subject during the experiment, in a tight sweater, to encourage him: what do you think? Or maybe we should just give a bottle of gin to the ones who make the highest score.” Everyone laughed, but Katherine sat stiffly. It especially infuriated her to be equated with a bottle of gin.r />
  The door opened, and Dr. Haraki came in, just on time for the conference. He was always on time, as Dr. Einsam was always late. For about two months Dr. Smith had also been on time, but finally he had got tired of having to wait for Dr. Einsam, and now he too was always late.

  “Hi. Nobody else here?” Dr. Haraki said, smiling cheerfully. “I wonder if I could dictate a couple more letters then, while we wait?”

  Katherine got out her book. Her salary was paid by the National Institute of Mental Health, but in practice only part of her time was spent on the project. This morning she had been working for Dr. Haraki, writing letters to field interviewers; but now she recorded a letter recommending a student for graduate school and one gently complaining to the Pacific Telephone Company of an overcharge, before Dr. Smith arrived.

  “Iz not here yet?” Dr. Smith asked, looking round as if Dr. Einsam might be hidden behind the Cheating Machine. “How are you today?” He made his voice especially cordial to cover the lack of a name.

  Dr. Smith knew her name, of course; but at the conference last week Dr. Einsam had suggested that henceforth the three investigators should address Mrs. Cattleman as “Katherine,” while she should call them “Bert,” “Charlie,” and “Iz.”

  The idea did not please her. It was simply another sign of Dr. Einsam’s insolence and of the meaningless, vulgar informality of Los Angeles. These people were not her friends, and they would never become her friends. Katherine suspected that Dr. Smith, who had some sense (he was not a native Californian, but came from Chicago), was as much embarrassed by the idea as she was. But he refrained from calling her “Mrs.” now, and sometimes managed “Katherine,” which came more easily to Dr. Haraki. The truth was they were both afraid of Dr. Einsam. Probably because he was a psychiatrist: everybody seemed to be terrified of psychiatrists, especially out here. It was particularly spineless of Dr. Haraki to let Dr. Einsam push him around like that, because after all he was the Principal Investigator for the project and older than Dr. Einsam and an associate professor. He was too good-natured; that was the trouble. But what could Katherine do about it? She could hardly object; she retaliated, though, by addressing Dr. Smith and Dr. Haraki sometimes by their first names; and Dr. Einsam, invariably, as “Dr. Einsam,” or “You.”