by Thomas Page
Bickel must have primed everybody for this one. They all ignored the intruder.
Jeez, he really looks like me! He even had a freckle on the lower edge of the jaw just like Forrester’s.
The stranger’s mouth moved. He was speaking to him, his voice muffled by the plexiglass.
“Hey. What?”
The stranger said, “Get out of there.”
Forrester tried to sit up. This was no joke. This man was a carbon copy of him, an exact duplicate, a veritable clone. He was actually standing in the ward.
Then the intruder was gone. The doctors’ faces kept talking, the jaws kept moving, the throats kept swallowing. The stranger did not fade away or puff off in a flash of light like a stripper, he did not even go. He was simply not there anymore.
Forrester couldn’t help thinking it looked like a ghost. His ghost. He felt like an idiot but he could not help himself. Undoubtedly it was some refraction trick with the plexiglass. Being a scientist, Bickel could explain it.
It was Jones who noticed the expression on Forrester’s face. After a sharp word, the jaws and throats became startled faces looking down at him. The plexiglass canopy parted, the scanners slid into their holes, and Daniel Forrester all but sprang from the LS to freedom like a man pursued by demons.
Dutton ran to a linen closet and got Forrester a towel. He wrapped himself in it and sat in the swivel chair before the console. His hair and the back of his body were sticky from the fluid. Under his tan a distinct pallor was spreading. Bickel bit his lip, fearing that Forrester would say something detrimental about the capsule.
“What happened?” asked Jameson, standing by the capsule, as far away from Forrester as he could get.
“Nothing,” replied Forrester. His expansive smile was a shade less dazzling. “At least not with the machine. I think a little something went wrong inside my poor old addled head.”
“You saw something,” Jones said. He did not ask it, he stated it.
“I did?” answered Forrester looking at him.
“Well, you looked like you saw something.”
“Reflection,” Forrester muttered, wiping a hand across his face. “It wasn’t anything. A simple panic reaction. Boys, the older I get the more claustrophobic I get. It happened once when I was skin diving.”
Evan Branch wheezed to his feet with the aid of his cane and tapped toward the door. “It’s a delightful machine, gentlemen, and we shall put it to good use in the time allotted us. Mr. Forrester, you are feeling well?”
“Sound as a Krugerrand, thank you, Doctor.”
“Good. Jones, show him to the shower. He’s dripping on the floor.”
On the way to the bathroom, Forrester’s spirits returned. He threatened to flash one of the nurses with his towel. Inside, he showered and brushed his hair and dressed with his usual care. He thought about the girl at the airport.
Twenty minutes later, he joined Bickel outside the front entrance to the clinic. Bickel was shivering and stamping his feet in the chill, damp air. Bickel asked, “Dan, how long do you figure on staying up here?”
“Just through the weekend. I figured it might be nice to have a company man close by for a few days.”
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine, for Christ’s sake, can’t a guy panic once in a while? Keeps the blood toned up.”
Bickel lowered his voice. “If you ask me, this place is run by psychos. The chief of the clinic is practically extinct. And that Jones character . . .”
“It’s Jameson I’m wondering about,” said Forrester, leading the way to the rented car. “I’ve seen him somewhere before and he wishes I hadn’t.”
CHAPTER 2
Katherine Burnham had embarked upon this vacation with a conscious determination to let things happen. Don’t make things happen, let things happen. Kate knew that was a contradiction in terms, like organized confusion or hurry up and stand still, but she was a great believer in the leavening results of paradox.
The ski lodge looked okay to her. It was large, sprawling, and homey, a nice mix of warm polished pine and rough stone. The front view of huge scoured white mountains blazing virginally in the sunlight was appropriately spectacular. The sundeck was a curved platform especially designed to catch the rays of both the rising and the setting sun. She unloaded her ski equipment and portable typewriter in a room with thick throw rugs, a gaily painted print with a Navaho pattern, and a large bathroom with a sunlamp built into the ceiling. The sun was so bright coming off the snow through the window that her eyes watered. Scarcely had she begun dabbing at them with a handkerchief when the telephone rang.
“Hi, Kate, it’s your husband. Steve? Remember Steve?”
“Hi, Steve. I arrived.”
“Great. Are you pregnant yet?”
“That won’t happen till I get my skis on. Where’s Diane?”
“She’s rehearsing for a tape session. She thinks her voice is rusty. I think she feels guilty about tearing me away from hearth and home.”
“Tell her I wish the two of you the best.”
“How’s the article going?”
“Pretty slow considering I haven’t even unpacked the typewriter. However, from a first glance, it looks like this place is full of palpitating singles. One of them followed me all the way from Los Angeles.”
“Huh? Ah.” Steve tried so hard to be worldly about his open marriage. He’d only been unfaithful to Kate in the past three months, but he never was sure how he’d react when the tables were turned. “True love.”
“He sells dentist’s drills or something medical.”
“Is he good-looking?”
“Does it matter?”
“Oh, thanks a lot. I used to think I was Tyrone Power.”
“He was watching me in the airport, he sat about six rows behind me on the plane, he cornered me in a coffee shop. I must say I was embarrassed. It’s been a long time.”
“Well, have a good time.”
“This is a working vacation. I have to learn lots of things all over again.”
“Me too. You know what I think? I think honesty in love is a crock. I think the old virtues are best. Mistresses and gigolos should be kept secret, not trotted out in front of your spouse. I think feelings should be preserved.”
“That sounds like a good opening line for the article. How about ‘Surviving Honest Lovers’ for a title?”
After she hung up, Kate thought about her husband. Legally this was only a separation. Now it sounded like Steve was angling to get back together with her. The thrill must be wearing off with Diane.
If Daniel Forrester were any indication, she might be in for an enjoyable week. Forrester was large and hearty like a side of good beef or a big boat that leaves a wake at the slightest movement. He might be kind of big but he was well proportioned and had a bit of substance to him. In the past few years, all the men she had known, husband included, were healthy in a pale, dry, preserved way, full of cereals and vegetation. Forrester was a salesman’s salesman. He was big and loud and smily and he gobbled down coffee and Danish so quickly, sugar fell over his expensive clothes. When he grinned, his eyes crinkled up and his teeth flared like a row of shiny white refrigerators.
Kate thought about meeting him this evening. Maybe she would, maybe she wouldn’t, although with each passing minute she suspected she would. She ought to do some typing while her impressions of this place were fresh. She unpacked the typewriter, laid some paper neatly by its side, and stared at the keys with great distaste. The sun was high and the slopes were beautiful. She closed the machine again, changed into her ski pants, and headed out for the hills.
A group of tables converted a corner of the disco bar into a fairly peaceful alcove. Kate had to push her way past girls in tight jeans, around waitresses in tight jeans carrying trays of multicolored drinks to and
from a bar clumped three deep with men and women in tight jeans who held grimly onto their places at the counter like a gang of survivors clinging to a lifeboat. Everybody was busy trying to look busy and Kate figured she skirted three proposals and about six propositions before finding her way to the relative quiet of the alcove.
Daniel Forrester sat alone at a table. He toasted Kate with a mug of beer as she approached. “Hello.”
“Fancy meeting you here,” she said.
Forrester pushed out a chair for her. Her legs were ski-weakened so she sat down gratefully and ordered a beer from one of the waitresses.
“Do you dance?” asked Forrester.
“Sometimes.”
“I don’t. Go ahead. Put a rose in your teeth and run off with a Brazilian gunrunner. Break my heart.”
Katie sipped her beer. “Did you save any lives today?”
He looked down at his beer foam. “Oh yeah. I told you what I do, didn’t I?”
“Yes, you did. And I was absolutely smitten.”
“Can I ask a personal question?”
“Try.”
“What is your name?”
“Oh. It’s Kate Burnham. Did I tell you I was married?”
“No.”
“Well, I’m married.”
“Well, I hope the two of you are very happy.”
Something must have happened during the day, Kate thought. His smile did not sparkle, his expansiveness had shrunk.
“Is your old man anywhere in shotgun range?”
“No, he’s living with a singer at the moment. Mr. Forrester, you have the look of somebody who’s put in a hard day.”
Forrester set down his beer and tapped his temple. “I’ve had a hard day up here. Do you have three minutes to hear the woes of a salesman?”
“Promise you won’t depress me and I’ll listen.”
“I don’t depress people, Kate, I psych them out. I am a salesman. Did you know successful salesmen as a group have a very high ESP rating?”
Kate had to admit that was a pretty good opener. She was hooked for at least three minutes. “Go on, Mr. Forrester.”
“Call me Daniel. We brilliant high-powered salesmen who work in gigantic shadowy multinational corporations do all kinds of marketing profiles, economic projections on state-of-the-art technology, to peddle our crap. Most of the stuff fulfills a need; if not a need, at least a want. But do you realize that when it comes down to summing up a sale, staking out a piece of territory, you ride on gut instinct and throw away ninety percent of the staff work? I look at a customer, I put myself inside his head. I figure what he wants, what he likes, what he’ll pay, will he close a deal, and when. All the marketing work in the world can’t compare to that instinct. I’ve got it.”
“You’re a good salesman because you’ve got ESP.”
“It’s not like stuff you read about. I can’t predict plane crashes or anything. But I get hunches.”
Had she not been self-conscious, Kate would have dropped her beer. “I believe in premonitions, Daniel.”
“I’ve had a few beauties today. One, I had a hunch about a man I met at the Clayton clinic. His name is Jameson. So I’ve put in a few inquiries on my own, strictly unofficial. If they pay off, hunch number one works.”
“What’s hunch number two?”
Daniel Forrester’s expression indicated he chose and rejected two or three ways to answer that question. Until now, Kate had never put salesmanship very high in her pantheon of virtues, preferring the more rarefied gifts of analytical intelligence and high seriousness. Salesmen were people who sold vacuum cleaners to Indian tribes and pocketed their money. He said, “I’m thinking it’s time to get out of medical equipment. Sell something else maybe, shoes, cardboard boxes, fishing worms.”
In her estimation, Forrester sank a few notches. That was precisely what she did not like about salesmen. They’d deal in anything.
Forrester watched her. “Now this is interesting. You don’t like that, do you?”
“You’ve got good antennae, Daniel. You sounded so high this morning about saving lives. Selling shoes isn’t very elevated.”
“People need shoes just as much as they need oxygen tanks. More, probably.”
But he really was not speaking about what was on his mind. His attentiveness was on the surface. In actuality, he was lost in thought. She said, “Are you upset?”
“Yup.” He seemed to come to his senses, to give up as if he had been found out. He placed his hands flat on the table and leaned back in the chair. She noticed his hands. They were large and square with thick strong fingers. Kate knew the popular conception of artist’s hands was wrong. Artists did not have slender, tapering, graceful hands, they had heavy, used hands much like Forrester’s. Hands interested Kate Burnham.
“How come?”
“Damned if I know. I’ve been in a funk all afternoon. This little birdy keeps telling me to get out of the medical equipment business. It’s one of those hunches I was telling you about.”
Kate tried to think up a comforting platitude—midlife crisis, the tenth annual retrenchment of life, where one is going and where one has been—but somehow none of them seemed to fit Forrester. Whatever else was wrong with him, he was not a neurotic. She said, “Tell me about yourself.”
He lived in Marina del Rey, bachelor Valhalla. He had never been married, he said with an embarrassed shrug. Pragmatism had guided his business life but idealism had determined his love life to such an extent that his perfectionism would have driven any wife to the laughing academy. His parents were dead, he was an only child. He was from a little coastal town called Santa Eulalia where his father had been an electrician and TV repairman, he had gone to Cal Tech and scored in the upper first percentile of the country in mechanical and theoretical aptitude. After boring himself for five years in research at Stendhal Holmes, he made the major switch of his life into sales to get out among people more. His parents’ marriage had not been a good one. “I spent the ages of six to eighteen in my own corner room in the house reading science fiction books. I have never been so happy in my life.”
And what about Katherine Burnham? She was a prep-school brat, went to UCLA, married Steven Rothman who used to work for a political statistical firm. She supposed she was a journalist; in the early days of the marriage she’d written articles for women’s magazines on everything from fashion to science. Steve had prospered enough to support the two of them and others if there had been any children—thank God there weren’t—and she had spent ten years exploring the strange world of being supported. Now she was back on her own.
Forrester interrupted her once. “I’m very glad I met you. That’s not a proposition or anything.”
She graciously acknowledged the compliment by gagging on beer foam, causing him to pound her back.
“To follow a compliment with an insult, I don’t know why, Kate. You make me feel good.”
The disco music stopped with a blast of silence that nearly toppled the dancers like tenpins. A stentorian, irritated voice said, “Mr. Daniel Forrester: Daniel Forrester, please answer the phone at the desk. Daniel Forrester.” The silence was shattered by the music again.
Forrester climbed to his feet. “Take five, Kate. I shall return.”
As he walked through the crowd, Kate noted how people instinctively got out of his way. She could barely maneuver through such a mob without a snowplow round her neck.
She was not alone for long. Too quickly for her to protest, a stranger slipped into the chair vacated by Forrester. He was not wearing jeans. And he had a thick black beard and balding scalp.
“Hello,” he said cheerily. “I’m a doctor.”
“Hello,” she answered back. “I’m waiting for somebody.”
“The name’s Larry Dutton. It’s more than just a physical attraction. I saw you from the bar and wo
ndered if you needed medical attention.”
“Hi, Larry. Really, I am waiting for somebody.”
“You mean Forrester? I figured I’d get over here and give you a quick physical and get all your clothes off in my office and probe you with cold steel instruments before he came back.”
“You know him?”
“Met him this afternoon at the clinic. He delivered a big machine to us. Me, mainly, because I’m so rich and important. Are you sure you don’t need a shot of some kind?”
Kate roared with laughter, nearly toppling off the chair. “I’m fine.”
“You look a little peaked. I think you’ve got a super layer of subcutaneous fat.”
“Get lost.”
“Christ, you’d think I was coming on to you or something. Do you have a name?”
“Kate Burnham.”
“Look here, Kate, just because I grab your guy’s chair and try to get your union suit off doesn’t mean I’m making a pass at you. Is that what you think? Man, do you think I’d get mixed up in this ratrace?”
A seizure of giggles captured Kate. Everytime she wanted to toss some crack back at the doctor, one look at his earnest, grinning face set her off again.
“It’s really your health that worries me. Who needs your puny body? I’m sleeping with a married lady later tonight anyway.”
If Kate did not stop giggling, she would spill her beer all over her joggers.
“There’s a lot to be said for adultery,” continued the doctor, lighting a cigarette. “It’s safer.”
Kate forced herself to stop smiling. “I really should be going back to my room. I’ve got work to do.”
“No sweat, I can examine you in your room, just happened to have brought my needles with me . . .”
Daniel Forrester had returned from his phone call. He stood behind Kate and he was not smiling.
“Hey. How you doing?” asked Forrester.
“Tell this lady I’m a doctor, will you?”
“He’s a doctor, Kate. His name is Dutton.”