Being Invisible

by Thomas Berger

  “I’ll fucking sue ’em,” Zirko said, rubbing his nose, ignoring the extended napkin. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  Suddenly Wagner’s satisfaction turned flat. Not until now did it occur to him that Babe’s dinner would be ruined. True, she might be said to deserve it for going out with such a man, but Wagner found it difficult to bear her ill will. His basic approach to the matter of Babe was that she was confused. Her specialties were things of the spirit. What she lacked was good judgment when it came to humanity. While they were together Wagner had been able to help her in that regard. But now look at whom she was dating.

  “Gee,” Babe said regretfully, “I was really looking forward to the meal.”

  Though Zirko had only lately been shouting at the top of his voice, he leaned discreetly towards her and spoke in a malign murmur. “Fuck what you want. I been humiliated.”

  Her sympathetic expression vanished. “Do you have to speak like that to me? I’m not your enemy.”

  “Shit on you. I saw you smirkin’. You’re still doing it.”

  That was due to a peculiarity of Babe’s upper lip. Wagner had always found it attractive, but until you caught on, it did look as if she were in a sardonic state of mind when she might not be. For example, she probably was not amused by what happened to her escort.

  She certainly was not amused by his sudden verbal assault on her. She pushed her chair back and marched out of the restaurant.

  Wagner followed her invisibly. Near the door to the street, a small man left the bar and, stepping into him, bounced off, almost falling down, recovering to tell the bartender the drinks were having a weird effect tonight.

  Out on the pavement Wagner’s first intention was to shadow Babe until she caught a cab, but no taxis came along for a while, and he wanted her gone by the time Zirko left the restaurant. So he ran down to the end of the block, materialized, and came walking back.

  “Babe,” he said before she saw him.

  She was startled. “Oh, hi, Freddy.”

  “If you’re looking for a taxi, you’ll never catch one here. Come on, we’ll walk to the corner.”

  She hesitated.

  “Come on.”

  “You’re not going to—”

  He lifted his hands. “I swear.” She was referring to his practice, during the earliest weeks of their separation, of using any pretext to discuss why she had left him. “Not a word.”

  “Uh-huh.” She was walking more rapidly than she used to, but no doubt was still agitated by the incident with Zirko.

  “So what brings you to this part of town?” Wagner asked. Seeing her familiar profile so near had an effect on him. Babe was just about his own height.

  “Oh, business,” said she. “Do you really think there’ll be a cab at this corner?”

  “Business at this time of the day?”

  Babe frowned. “I might ask you the same.” With him she used her old voice, had abandoned the dulcet tones of the early part of her conversation with Zirko.

  “I’m supposed to meet a date at Jimmy’s.”

  She turned quickly. “Jimmy’s?”

  “What a coincidence,” said he. “Didn’t you just come out of there?”

  “All right, now that you mention it.”

  “I’ll be going back to my date as soon as we find you a cab,” said Wagner.

  They had reached the corner. Babe said, “Thanks, Freddy. You go back now. Don’t keep her waiting.” She put out her hand. “Listen, I couldn’t be more pleased. Is she anyone I know?”

  Wagner could not suppose she was jealous, so he disparaged his fictional companion. “A co-worker. Someone from the office. Listen, Babe—”

  “Don’t, Freddy, please.”

  “I just wanted to ask how things are going for you.”

  “They’re fine. They haven’t changed since your last call. Another thing that hasn’t changed is you are still using that name.”

  She meant “Babe.” Her claim was that she had never liked the name, had put up with it for four years simply to be nice.

  “I’m sorry,” Wagner pleaded. “I just can’t remember to think of you as Carla.”

  “Oh, there’s one.” She was about to wave at the taxi when Wagner caught her arm.

  “Fact is, I was at the bar when that altercation broke out at your table. What was that all about?”

  She sighingly gave up on the cab. “God.” She sighed again. “You would see that. I honestly don’t know what happened.”

  “Who was that guy you were with?” He cleared his throat. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it to sound like an interrogation.” He decided to lie again. “It’s just that he looked kinda familiar, somehow.”

  Her eyebrow arched. “Since when have you been interested in art?”

  “He’s a collector?”

  “He’s a sculptor,” said Babe. “Siv Zirko. He’s very well known. He’s getting raves for his new show, which was sold out before it opened. We’ve got it. That’s what I mean by business, having dinner with him. I don’t have to explain it to you, but I’m doing it anyway. He wasn’t a date. Cleve could have eaten with him instead of me.”

  “But he’s not Cleve’s type, I gather, or Cleve would not only have eaten with him: he would have eaten him.” Wagner realized his bitterness had got out of hand.

  Babe glared at him under the streetlight, but said nothing: that was her way when she was really angry.

  “I’m sorry,” said he. “It’s not my business. I shouldn’t have said that. Uh, Siv Zirko. What kind of sculpture does he do?”

  “It’s good enough for museums all over this country and Europe, but you wouldn’t like it.” Ironically enough, Babe was now showing the same expression that Zirko had called a smirk: maybe he had been right, after all.

  “I just wondered.”

  “You wouldn’t like it.”

  Which probably meant it was more piles of dog shit.

  “What did he do to make you walk out? Get fresh?”

  “I’m taking this cab, Fred. We were supposed to live separate lives, remember?” She shook his hand again, while waving at the taxi with the other. “Thanks for walking with me.” The vehicle pulled up to the curb. She opened the door and climbed in.

  Wagner considered making some desperate statement before the cab pulled away, but could think of none. He had conflicting emotions with regard to Babe. He thought he admired what could be called either her independence or her courage, but it was a kind of ritualistic admiration. He assumed he loved her to some degree, and he knew he hated her for leaving him.

  Another thing he knew was that artists whose work sold as well as Zirko’s were rich as movie stars or big businessmen. There really ought to be money in invisibility, perhaps working as a magician. But how did one get started?

  “You need an agent,” Pascal said at lunch next day. “You need eight-by-ten glossies. You need a personal manager. You need a publicist. Finally, I’m told you need a business manager, the complicated world of finance being what it is. Now, all these people cost money, but I am led to understand that they’ll bring in and/or save you more than they cost. Or so I’ve heard.”

  Wagner had as if idly pretended he knew someone gifted at parlor sleight of hand who was wondering whether to go professional. It was one way to get some use out of Pascal, who kept au courant with show biz through the gossip columns and chatter programs. He had trailed Wagner to a luncheonette, where the latter had hoped to be alone.

  “Why?” said Pascal. “Who is this person? Do I know them?”

  “Friend of the family,” Wagner said, trying to masticate thoroughly the cold roast beef he had found to be a thin but resistant layer between the lettuce and the tomatoes. It was his first food of the day. Breakfast was always just black coffee. And when he had got home from the experience with Babe and Zirko, he had thrown up his dinner.

  Denied access to the identity of the amateur magician, Pascal turned his notice on Wagner’s lunch.

  �
��That going to hold you till dinnertime? You’ve been losing weight lately, haven’t you? How long’s it been since your last checkup? Might look into it.” He was shaking his head. “Wouldn’t hurt.” In between sections of his commentary he had managed himself to stow away a big plate of, wouldn’t you know, spaghetti, and he was impatient now with Wagner for taking so long to consume about half the sandwich: he wanted his dessert.

  “Go ahead and get your pie or whatever,” said Wagner. “This is all I’m eating today.” He was sorry he hadn’t asked that the white bread be toasted; as it was, it acted like a sponge and exuded previously concealed mayonnaise when bitten into.

  “Should get some meat on your bones. It’s that zany, action-packed lovelife of yours.”

  If he mentions Babe by name, I really will hit him, Wagner swore, but whether or not that was likely Pascal failed to pursue the subject. Instead he spoke of the “widely known linkage between sudden weight loss and, well, do I have to say?”

  “It has not been sudden,” said Wagner. “And I don’t have cancer. Fact is, despite what you think, I needed to lose a few pounds, because my clothes were getting too tight. Now as for this magician friend of mine—”

  “He’s a close friend?” Pascal asked jealously. “I see. I thought you were speaking of just somebody who was a friend of someone else in the family.”

  “What difference does that make? I was wondering where an agent could be found. The yellow pages?”

  Pascal maneuvered a red strand of spaghetti around his plate with a fork. Presumably he had preserved it just for this function, to give him an activity while Wagner finished the main portion of his own lunch. He refused to order dessert until the time Wagner himself would have done so, had Wagner intended to order dessert, even though the latter had told Pascal he had no intention of so doing. Funny, whenever Babe had asked him why he considered Pascal such a creep, he could never think of this good an example. Even if he had, however, he suspected she would have said, Look, the man’s just trying to be friendly. What’s wrong with that? But did a divine law enjoin one from rejecting unwanted friendship?

  Pascal raised one eyebrow. “You’ve really got to know somebody in the business. I just can’t see an unknown come waltzing in off the street and getting some top agent to represent him.”

  “But what about not quite top but good enough? You have to start somewhere.”

  Pascal made a tough-guy grin. “You haven’t a prayer unless he is top. Beware of these fakes who want a fee. The genuine article takes a percentage of the money he gets you, and nothing beyond.”

  This supposedly inside dope was known to everybody. Wagner hadn’t really expected to learn anything from Pascal. He pushed the remains of his sandwich away from him: a vulgar but necessary gesture in this place if one wanted the counterman to appear. He then waited until Pascal had ordered, and been delivered, dessert—the man actually ate rice pudding at a lunch counter—and then, treacherously, got off the stool saying, “I’ve got some errands,” left a tip in change for the service, and departed from his astonished and discomfited colleague.

  The move succeeded perfectly, but he soon knew his own dismay, for a grope of the inside breast pocket reminded him that his wallet had been left behind in the middle drawer of his office desk, the one that could be, and was, locked. He wasn’t known in this place. He would have had not only to return to Pascal but also, by asking for a loan, to affiliate himself with a man who would exploit any association, however slight.

  He would have had to do just that, had he not, while pretending to fumble within an overloaded coatrack, disappeared.

  He left without paying the check. This was his first piece of dishonesty as an invisible personage. However, he intended the delinquency to be only temporary. He would drop by with the money after work, or at the latest, next noontime. Invisibility was still, except perhaps for the incident with Zirko, a device to avoid inconvenience or embarrassment, not a means for the shirking of responsibility.

  He reached the lobby of the building at which he worked (still invisible, for he believed it not impossible that Pascal might bolt the rice pudding and launch a hot pursuit) and was heading for the door to the stairs, back of which he could materialize, when who should come in from the street but Mary Alice Phillips. More hastily than he would have moved could he have been seen, he followed her into an empty car. He believed it unfortunate that two other persons boarded before the door slid shut, yet the car was of generous proportions, and so long as Mary Alice moved no farther towards the corner, where he was as it were espaliered, his purpose was not defeated.

  Mary Alice was a good deal more attractive than he had formerly believed and profited by a close-quarters assessment. What might seem like sallowness at a polite distance was, in tight focus, a delicate tint. Her nose was all but poreless. That part of her right ear that could be seen beneath her hair was exquisite, tightly whorled and the color of the inside of a baby’s nostril. Again it occurred to him that her hair would profit by a rearrangement of some sort, or perhaps merely a fluffing: at the moment it was lank to a fault. And the preponderance of breast (which the likes of Pascal might find exhilarating, but Wagner saw as slightly disproportionate according to the classic rules of female architectonics) might be corrected by better posture, a stiffer spine, a lifted chin. Mary Alice when in repose tended to droop—rather like Wagner himself on that occasion, which had now proved historic, when he inspected himself in the bedroom mirror just prior to becoming invisible for the first time. A girl so young and so comely should have a heartier morale. He was tempted to whisper something encouraging into the ear that was so close to him, but the chances that she would believe not that the voice was that of a divine adviser but rather a symptom of madness were too great. Mary Alice did not suggest self-possession. She might well panic at an unexpected occurrence. She was hardly cut from Babe’s fabric. (Once while Wagner searched ineptly for a weapon, Babe got out of bed and boldly went unarmed to investigate the odd sounds coming from the living room. An unscreened window had been left open on that balmy night, and a starling had got in.)

  A strange thing happened now. The other passengers deboarded on a lower floor, and Wagner and Mary Alice rode alone for a while, yet the girl did not avail herself of the space newly at her disposal. She remained just before his corner, keeping him a cozy prisoner. Perhaps the explanation was to be found in her natural stolidity. Despite his ability to make himself invisible, Wagner placed little credence in things like extrasensory perception, auras, psychic emanations, and other related intangibles.

  On reaching their floor, he let Mary Alice go to her cubicle without escort. He decided to proceed directly to his own before materializing, rather than go by way of the men’s room. Seated at his desk he had sufficient privacy in which to resume visibility, which along with the dematerialization, recent experiences had proved, had been getting nearer to the instantaneous. In this as in life’s more humdrum exercises, practice did make a difference.

  He had assumed Delphine Root would still be absent from her desk, she being the kind who took 110 percent of a lunch hour—as it was typical of Mary Alice to take as little as 85—but even before he was opposite her niche he saw the smoke rising, like that signal which announced, on the horizon of a western movie, imminent Indian troubles. On closer approach she proved to be not only smoking: simultaneously she was eating at a sandwich of which the bread was exceedingly limp and the filling of some substance the self-cohesion of which was not reliable, like egg-, chicken-, or ham-salad, concoctions scrupulously avoided by Wagner, who had a horror of finding small hard dark foreign objects within. A dollop of this stuff separated itself from the edge of the mass and fell as he watched, just clipping the rim of the desktop, so that a cluster of yellow (it was egg) adhered there, though most of the nasty little bomb plopped on the floor and would have exploded had it not been stickily restricted by the constituent mayonnaise.

  Delphine herself was ignorant of this even
t, for she was not only eating; she was reading as well and, for God’s sake, smoking.

  Wagner was suddenly furious, and when she anchored the open volume with an elbow, so as to bring the burning cigarette to her mouth from the nearby ashtray, her other hand occupied with the collapsing sandwich, he leaned in and snatched the butt from her.

  In her reaction she dropped the entire sandwich on the floor; indeed, half of it fell onto his foot and thereby was invisible until he jiggled it free. The cigarette too was invisible but still burning. He stepped to the water cooler and extinguished it. Delphine might have heard this but owing to her immediate catastrophe was distracted.

  She shouted, “Kee-ryst!”

  Wagner went into his cubicle and discarded the wet cigarette butt in his wastecan. He was regretting his impulsive act. He hadn’t expected to ruin Delphine’s lunch.

  She cried, “Oh, shit.”

  Wagner guiltily materialized and went around to her. She was stooping to her fallen sandwich.

  “Drop something?”

  “I must be going nuts,” said she, grunting in the cleanup effort. She brought her face up. It was of a higher color than usual. Wagner hoped he hadn’t brought on a heart attack. “For no reason at all, I dropped my lunch,” she said, grinning in a vulnerable way that was, at least with him, unprecedented. “I’m losing my grip.”

  But she made no mention whatever of her cigarette, so he asked, looking around, “Anything else?”

  “Naw.” She pointed. “Tea’s OK.” A light-gray mug, tagged string hanging over one side, stood just beyond her book, which of course had sprung shut as soon as she had taken her weight off it. He had never before seen Delphine with any reading material. This was no doubt a romance. Surprising as it might seem, he had read that confirmed spinsters were among the habitual readers of such.

  “Sorry about your sandwich,” Wagner said. “There’s time: I’ll run out and get you a replacement.”

  Delphine peered at him in what seemed to be astonishment. “It’s hardly your fault,” said she. “No thanks, but aren’t you nice.” The strong lines of her face softened. “Thanks, Fred. You really are awfully nice.” Of all things, she now winked. “Unless you’re just after my money.”