by Julius Fast
Chapter Nine
Steve and Rhoda arrived at Clifford's apartment at nine that evening. After awkward introductions, Steve settled down in the leather armchair with a grateful sigh, accepted the Scotch and soda that Clifford offered and kicking off her shoes stared around the room curiously. "This is quite a layout you have." She hissed sibilantly at Pushkin, who approached with disdain, then leaped to the coffee table and sat preening himself.
Restlessly Rhoda wandered over to the upright piano painted black and gold and ran her fingers over the keyboard. "It needs tuning badly," Clifford apologized. "I used to play—God, it must be at least ten years since I've touched it." He handed Rhoda a drink and sat down on a straight-backed chair, staring somberly at both of them.
"How do you find New York, after Montreal?"
Steve grimaced. "We found it right where it's always been. Look, let's dispense with the amenities. What about Jack? Is he coming?"
Clifford ran his hand over his bald head. "Do you like Chinese food? I've sent for some, and it ought to be here any minute. We'll talk about Jack then."
"Is he all right?" Rhoda asked.
"I don't know, just take my word for that." The doorbell rang and Clifford jumped to his feet gratefully, took the load of packages from the delivery boy, eased them onto the kitchen table and tipped him.
"Here, let me set the table." Rhoda put her drink down and began bustling between kitchen and dining area. "These dishes are lovely. Where did you ever get a cloth with such rich colors? And it doesn't clash with the rest of the room."
Steve snorted and put her feet up on the ottoman. "When you two are finished being domestic, maybe we can talk."
Clifford fingered one of the glasses. "A bachelor has a lot of time for collecting things—and not using them."
Rhoda, emptying the food into serving dishes, looked at him curiously. "Have you always been a bachelor?"
Clifford stared at her clean-featured face, shadowed by the overhead light, at her blond hair drawn back in a severe knot and her light grey eyes, so pale they had hardly any color at all. He remembered Jack's face when he had talked about her, and he felt a sudden, inexplicable sense of yearning. "You get into a habit easily. It's not so easy to break it."
Smiling, Rhoda asked, "Have you ever tried to break it?"
Smoothing the tablecloth, Clifford didn't answer for a moment, then he glanced up, with a wry smile. "No. I can't honestly say I have. Maybe I'm just afraid of the whole idea."
Heaving herself to her feet with a grunt, Steve came to the table. "If the analytic session is over, can we eat? I'm starved, and that drink on an empty stomach didn't help any."
"I'm sorry." Clifford began serving and they ate quietly, Steve watching him speculatively from time to time, Rhoda thoughtful, not withdrawn, but seeming to consider some inward problem. Afterwards Clifford brought out a bottle of brandy and some small glasses. "Let me tell you about Jack."
"That's what we've been waiting for," Steve said drily.
"We're very good friends. I'm probably the best friend Jack has, and yet—well, months can go by without our seeing each other. I'm telling you this," he said quickly, interrupting Steve's attempt to protest, "so you'll understand how isolated Jack is, how it could be that I, his best friend, never knew that he had cancer, that he only had a month or so to live."
Rhoda looked up. "You told Steve you didn't know where he is. What did you mean?"
"I hadn't heard from Jack for over a month, and then yesterday morning he called me." Carefully Clifford told them about the call from the park, and how he had picked Jack up, half naked. He told them Jack's story, his hallucination about running through the city like a wolf.
While he talked, Steve smoked furiously, lighting one cigarette from the stub of the last, her hands restlessly moving the empty dishes and the silverware on the table.
"The only thing is," Clifford finished slowly, "I don't know how much of an hallucination it was."
"What do you mean?" Steve's eyes narrowed.
"I went to see Anna that night. She told me the same story, that Jack had turned into a wolf. She wasn't lying, I'm sure of that. But how could she have had the same hallucination?"
"How do you know she didn't?" Steve said tightly. "If Jack could have an hallucination, why couldn't she?"
"The same one? It's not very likely."
"Oh, hell! Is it any more likely than that he turned into a wolf? Maybe they were both in it together, making up some story to put you on."
"Maybe, but it would have to be a pretty elaborate put-on, and why play a joke like that on me? Don't you see, Jack's just not that kind of friend." There was an uncomfortable silence and then Clifford asked, "What kind of drug did you give Jack in Montreal?"
Steve bit her lip. For a moment she kept staring at Clifford, then abruptly her mouth tightened. "He told you. I gave him something that might have helped arrest his cancer."
Rhoda shook her head. "Tell him the truth."
Steve looked at her angrily, started to speak and then was silent. For at least a minute they sat like that, the two women staring at each other as if their very glances were a means of communication. Finally Steve cried out, "I can't!"
"Steve, it's gotten out of hand."
"What has?" Clifford asked sharply.
With her eyes still on Rhoda, Steve said, "I'll go along with that, but it's to Jack we owe an explanation."
"Then I was right." Clifford looked from one to the other while a cold edge of fear touched his spine. Something was wrong here, so wrong he could almost taste it. "What was in the drug you gave him?"
Steve pushed her chair back and stood up, her arms folded across her chest. "It was DNA. Jack knew that. Stiener was using it on rat tumors. Maybe we took a big chance using it on Jack, but he had nothing to lose, he knew it was a chance..." Her voice trailed away. "That's all it was."
"That's not all!" Rhoda stood up and faced Steve, her eyes glowing. Again there was that long, uncomfortable silence, and then to Clifford's bewilderment Steve suddenly put up her hands as if pushing something invisible from her.
"All right, all right!" She turned and grasped the edge of the table, then lifted her eyes to Clifford and smiled suddenly, wanly. "I want to play a parlor game with you and Rhoda."
Frowning, Clifford asked, "What are you talking about? What the hell's going on?"
"Games, fun and games. Rhoda, go into the bathroom and shut the door."
Rhoda turned, entered the bathroom and shut the door behind her. After a moment they heard the water running. Steve, still smiling said, "She can't hear us now, not with the water running and especially if you speak softly. Tell me something, whisper it or write it out, something intimate that only you would know."
"Have you both lost your minds?"
"That's a funny choice of words. Actually we've gained them." Steve seemed suddenly excited. "No, we have a little trick, and we want you to guess how it's done, because there's only one way it could be done and we want you to find that out. Tell me something, anything at all, anything neither Rhoda nor I could possibly know."
Clifford stared at her for a moment, then said, "All right. I'll play too. I'm working on a layout for Suddler and Hennesy, a medical advertising agency. It's for a new monthly newspaper on gastrointestinal disorders. Only one man knows I'm handling it."
Steve grinned and lifted one hand in a mock salute. "I'm going out in the hall, out of the apartment. When I close the door behind me, call Rhoda out."
She slipped on her shoes, opened the hall door and stepped into the corridor outside the apartment, closing the door behind her. Clifford tested the latch, then turned to the bathroom, but before he could touch it, the door had opened and Rhoda stepped out.
"You're working on a layout for Suddler and Hennesy, a medical advertising agency. It's for a monthly newspaper on gastrointestinal disorders," she said quietly.
He shook his head admiringly. "It's a great trick. How do you do it?"
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"I read Steve's mind." Rhoda stepped to the apartment door and opened it. Steve came in and shivered. "It's cold out there. Did our little demonstration convince you of anything?"
"It convinced me that parlor tricks aren't dead. What am I thinking now?"
"I can't read your mind." There was a subtle edge of contempt in Steve's voice.
"What did you want to make me believe?"
Steve kicked off her shoes again and walked into the living room, taking the bottle of brandy with her. "We did that to try to make you a bit more receptive to what I want to tell you, to try and make you believe something that sounds—well, I don't know what it sounds like. I've never been in a position to know."
Clifford came into the room slowly, frowning. Taking the brandy bottle, he poured himself a stiff drink and sat down. "All right. If we're finished with games, get on with what you have to say. Do you mind if I smoke?"
"But it wasn't a game," Rhoda cried out tensely. Then she bit her lip. "All right. I'm sorry, Steve. You tell it your way."
Clifford sat back and lit a cigar, staring at the two of them curiously. They seemed so different, so physically opposite, and yet there was something curiously similar about them, or was it just a subtle understanding? If Rhoda itched, Steve would scratch automatically, he thought.
"I will tell it my way," Steve said, "except that it's hard to know where to start. I never knew what was wrong with me till I was ten and my father died. All I knew as a child was that something was different about me, I mean physically different." She lifted her hand, palm up, and clenched the fingers. "Different not in the way I looked, but in the way I felt."
"You said physically," Clifford interrupted. He was still suspicious, afraid that some trick was being played, but Steve's face, tight and earnest, began to convince him.
"I meant physically. The difference was in a physical feeling, in an awareness of things. Look, I know this sounds as if it has nothing at all to do with Jack, but believe me, it has." She sipped at the brandy. "This is good. When I was a child I could hear things other kids couldn't, adults couldn't either. I was aware of things, almost like seeing around corners, knowing what people would say before they said it, knowing how people felt when they tried to hide it, but it was all formless, fuzzy.
"At times, falling asleep at night, I'd almost understand it, but never quite. It never was more than an uncomfortable impression until—until my father died."
She sat quietly for a long time, staring at her glass of brandy, her pale eyes wide and yet unseeing, reflecting the amber of the brandy. When she went on, her voice was very soft.
"My father was a big man, not only physically big, but lusty, healthy, bursting with life. Next to him my mother seemed completely colorless, but even as a kid I knew that she was the stronger of the two. For all his blustering, Dad backed down when any pressure was put on him, while my mother, for all her quiet, self-effacing ways, had a will of iron.
"Now how did I get off on my mother? It was Dad I was talking about. I wanted to point out how strong and healthy he was. Then one summer afternoon he came home from work looking white and all wrung out. It was one of those ominous, threatening summer afternoons, and I had been all keyed up before he came. I put it down to the weather, but now I know better. Mom took one look at Dad and ran to him. I remember him climbing the porch steps, his shirt wet with sweat, his collar open and his jacket in one hand.
"He caught Mom's hand and shook his head the way a cornered bull shakes it. 'I'm sick, Helen. I've felt lousy all day.' I remember him saying that, then he looked at me, puzzled and frightened.
"The feeling of uneasiness in me seemed to coalesce into one icy core of dread, and then my father screamed and fell to his knees and then forward on his face. Mom screamed too, and suddenly it was as if a door in my head burst open. I could hear my father, not his voice, but in my head. I could hear him crying, Oh, God, what's happening! It's all dark. I can't see. Helen, help me. No, no ... please, no. I can't stand the pain!"
Steve was silent, chewing her lip, and Clifford, watching her, shivered. Then she shook her head. "I knew the pain he was feeling. It almost ripped me apart, for I shared every second of it, and then it was over and his voice was gone. But he hadn't said a word from the moment he fell, not a spoken word. Do you understand? I felt what he said in my brain. I heard his thoughts.
"He died of a dissecting aneurism, and I know now that's one of the most intense pains a man can feel, and I, just ten, felt it with him.
"After that it was as if some curtain had been ripped from my mind. I could tell that it was open, ready for reception, but there was no one there, no one to talk to me on the level of the mind—no one to think at me.
"I think I could have been made to hear thoughts all along if someone had ever tried to reach me. How my father broke through at that last moment I don't know, except that he was my father and there was a link between us, so strong..."
Steve shook her head, wondering even now, after all the years. "I went for years after that listening, always listening and never hearing. It was a kind of hell."
"If you didn't hear," Clifford cut in, "how could you know? I mean, how could you know you could hear?"
She nodded. "I knew, that's all. The fuzziness was gone, and there was another sense in my mind. I don't know where the receptor for it was, perhaps in my pineal gland, that archaic third eye we all have. I've thought a lot about it, and I once had an arteriogram of my skull taken. It hurt like hell, but I wanted to see if there was anything structurally wrong. That was when I was at the Palo Alto research center. All it showed was an abnormally large pineal gland. Maybe that's it. I don't know. All I know was that I had some new sense and I couldn't use it. Like having a radio when there's no transmitter around. I was blind in one area, and lonely, lonely in a vague and formless way— perhaps yearning is a better word than lonely.
"My mother died when I was in my teens, and I had enough insurance money for college, and then with scholarships and teaching assignments I drifted into the academic life."
She filled her glass with brandy and looked up at Clifford. In the artificial light her eyes seemed drained of all color, but calm, immeasurably calm.
"I wanted something with all my heart and soul, but I never knew what I wanted—until I met Livia. She was in one of my classes. I was at UCLA then. She was a tiny thing, a Mexican girl, dark-skinned and black-haired and with large eyes. They should have been black to fit the rest of her stereotype, because she was a perfect stereotype of the beautiful Mexican, but they weren't. Her eyes were like mine, this colorless grey, and like Rhoda's." She nodded across the room, and Rhoda, sitting tranquilly on the couch, looked up briefly, smiling in a secret communion that left Clifford uneasily excluded.
"I was curious about Livia, but I never realized that she was like me. I only knew I was drawn to her, and I was a little afraid of myself, of my own emotions. I didn't know if the attraction was physical or not. I was a little afraid that it might be. I didn't know myself."
"Was it?" Clifford asked. "I mean, was it physical?"
She shook her head. "It was mental. Very mental. Livia still wore the veil over her mind, the veil my father's death had torn away from my mind. I might never have guessed except that once, in the lab, her apparatus caught fire and exploded. It wasn't serious, but it was frightening and she screamed, screamed with her mouth and also with her mind—and the veil was brushed aside.
"I put out the fire, but even while I was using the extinguisher our minds were touching, exclaiming, crying out in wonder, exploring towards each other. How can I explain that to you? How can I explain the absolute, open wonder of touching someone else's mind, of knowing someone else so completely, so utterly ... there's no reality greater than that, none!"
Clifford shook his head. "The thought of it scares me. I don't think I could stand another person being that—intimate."
"It's intimacy, yes, but it's more. It's an end to loneliness, an absolu
te and wonderful end to loneliness."
Rhoda spoke softly. "Do you know what loneliness is, what real loneliness is?"
"It's a state of humanity," Steve said heavily. "We write books about it, plays and poems. It permeates our civilization and everyone accepts it as a necessary condition of being human. Animals don't feel it, except in a dim, instinctive way. We understand because we can reason ... and we must live with it."
Clifford looked around the living room, so safe and mellow now, the lamps placed properly to throw warm pools of yellow light, the carpet colors balanced against the furniture and walls, the pictures and drapes, all calculated to create a safe haven. But a haven from what? From loneliness? From emptiness? His lips curled. "I've been alone all my life, alone and lonely too I suppose. What man isn't?"
"But you don't know the extent of that loneliness unless you can experience what we feel," Rhoda said. "You never know how alone you've been unless you meet someone on this level, on the level of the mind."
"Or until you lose someone on the same level," Steve added.
"Livia and I lived together. Oh, we weren't lesbians. Neither of us were. Truthfully, I don't suppose we were properly heterosexual either. The thought of physical closeness with a man without this mental closeness—well, it just wasn't possible."
"What happened?" Clifford, caught completely by the story, still felt an uncomfortable urge to change the subject.
Steve lifted her empty glass and turned it upside down. "Livia died. Pneumonia. There never was much strength in her." She grimaced. "That's when I almost cracked up. Christ, I knew what it was to be alone, completely, absolutely alone."
She looked down at her hands. "I stuck it out at UCLA for a month after her death, and then I took off. I had sense enough to leave most of my savings in the bank and carry traveler's checks, but beyond that—I began to drink too much and generally go to pieces. It was being alone, so absolutely, utterly alone. Especially after having known what it was to be a part of someone else.