Bugs

by John Sladek

  He jumped awake. In the laundry room next door, someone had loaded the washing machine with shale and started it up. Like a political prisoner under long-term torture, Fred had been allowed to sleep five whole minutes.

  He had already found American bars supremely satisfying. Of all institutions in this country, bars alone seemed to be trying to live up to their reputation in movies, as dark scenes of passion, violence and despair. The movies had set the formula: a mahogany slab, a brass rail, a mirror, Joe the bartender polishing glasses, a garrulous drunk, a weepy tart, and one solemn suicidal drinker. Often there was a peach-coloured mirror behind the bar, designed to tone up the pallor of that lone drinker who might at any moment utter a cry of self-loathing and hurl his glass into the peachness. Or one could easily imagine a B-girl sliding on to an adjacent stool and asking if the gentleman had a light. Or a sudden savage fight around the pool-table.

  There was always an electric charge in the air, a synthetic feeling of excitement that could not be the alcohol alone, but had something to do with expectations. Maybe American bars were still coasting on the illicit excitement of Prohibition, nightclubs, blind tigers, neon and jazz. It was hard to picture an American bar where an old man might fall asleep by the fire, while his arthritic dog laps up a dish of bitter. That would be an anachronism, like Japanese Scotch.

  This bar had an empty band-platform in the corner, illuminated with coloured lights. The walls were covered with blown-up photos of out-of-date antiheroes: Belmondo in a hat, William Hurt as a murderous lawyer, Bogart as Mad Dog Earle … Why did so many actual murderers have the name Earl …?’

  Ms Mauve Toaster was waiting in a booth, a black drink before her.

  ‘Hiya, Mansour.’

  ‘Just call me Fred.’

  ‘Neat!’ She looked around as he sat beside her. ‘I got some friends I want you to meet.’

  A waitress floated over and placed a beer-mat in front of him.

  ‘Scotch,’ he said.

  ‘Straight up?’

  ‘Yeah, really.’ The waitress looked at him strangely before she departed. He didn’t seem to be receiving and passing cues very well.

  ‘Who are these Condoms?’ he asked Mauve.

  ‘They’re neat,’ she said. ‘They’ve all got AIDS, you know? None of them is going to live to thirty.’

  As that seemed to dispose of the Condoms, Fred studied his beer-mat. He was surprised to learn that the name ‘Ed Gein’ was not that of the owner. It was instead the name of a particularly loathsome mass-murderer of the 1950s. In search of an antihero, Minneapolis youth had rediscovered Gein, an unsavoury insane farmer who (according to the beer-mat) hung his victims on hooks and feasted on their corpses. The bar served ribs.

  The waitress interrupted his reading by delicately removing the beer-mat from his hands, replacing it firmly on the table, and anchoring it with his drink.

  He did not taste the drink until she had glided away with the best part of five dollars. The stuff seemed to be Japanese Scotch, though possibly the Koreans were now producing a twelve-month-old variety of their own; Glen Pusan or Wee Bonny Seoul.

  ‘Three-pound drinks,’ he muttered.

  Mauve said: ‘If you’re worried about your weight, why don’t you drink a light Scotch?’

  ‘Weight? No, I was just noticing how expensive these drinks are. In pounds sterling.’

  She continued to look blank.

  ‘British money.’

  ‘British money?’

  ‘The money they use in England. Here, wait a minute.’ He fished in his wallet and found a crumpled five-pound note. ‘Like this.’

  She took it and looked it over, frowning. ‘But this isn’t real, is it?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You mean, in England, they got different money?’ she said, disbelieving.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘They don’t have dollars?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Well … what do they use?’

  ‘These. Pounds sterling.’

  ‘Pounds sterling,’ she repeated. ‘Well, I’ll be fucked.’

  He said he sincerely hoped so, which made her laugh again. Yet almost immediately it was necessary for her to stop laughing and arrange her face in a snarl, because the band had taken the stage.

  The Condoms turned out to be ten or a dozen young men with bleached hair, all wearing black raincoats. They played keyboards and sang in unison, describing elements of the world that appealed to the audience:

  ‘If I see a building burning

  I try to find a baby

  I can throw in through the window.

  God rot you-ou!

  God rot a-you-ou!

  Booga, booga, booga, booga!

  God rot a-you-ou!

  I’m only flesh and blood

  I’m only splashin’ blood

  I need the darkness ’cause it matches my mood.

  God rot you-ou!’

  In the interval, Mauve left the table. While he waited, Fred became conscious of a conversation in the next booth. People named LeRoi, Poker and Marlene were discussing what sounded a lot like The Time Machine. He looked round cautiously and saw three well-dressed blacks.

  ‘… a long time in the future, dig? There’s two races left on earth, the Eloi and the Morlocks.’ LeRoi Washington was telling one of his stories again. Marlene nodded her head, but she wasn’t really listening. LeRoi’s stories never had any point.

  ‘And the Morlocks live in underground ghettos, dig? The Eloi live on top; they got the best of everything, they never need to work.’

  ‘Awright,’ said Poker.

  ‘They got nice clothes, great food if you dig vegetarian; they jus’ bop around all day, dancing and that jive.’

  ‘Awright,’ said Poker.

  LeRoi continued. ‘Only when it gets dark, the Morlocks come up, dig? They come up and they grab one of these Eloi turkeys and take him downstairs to the ghetto and they eat him.’

  Now Marlene was listening, and Poker laughed.

  ‘Naw, I mean they really cut him up and eat him. That’s their food. They just keep the Elois around for meat. Like beef cattle.’

  Marlene stopped listening again, and Poker looked puzzled.

  ‘You dig? It’s us. We’re the Morlocks, and them white fuckers are the Elois.’

  ‘Shit is that?’ said Poker. ‘It gotta be the other way around. We don’t got no work; we just jive around all day, waitin’ to be eat up. Just like the LeRois.’

  ‘The Elois. Naw, you –’

  ‘Yeah, and they come and tear us up, just like the Moorcocks.’

  ‘The Morlocks. Naw, you got it bass-ackwards, Poker. They’re the Elois, and we’re the Morlocks. They get all the high living, but we own the fuckin’ night. We live off what we can get from them, bite their asses, drink their fuckin’ blood.’

  ‘Right on,’ said Marlene, suppressing a yawn.

  Mauve returned with two friends, whom she introduced as Honesty Shoot and Bill Fold. Honesty’s hair was dyed in a pink and green chessboard, while Bill wore a more conventional green Mohawk, and they both dressed in black. Fred felt old, remembering the era in which London kids had gone in for these elaborations, not long after Bill and Honesty were born.

  ‘You starin’ at my hair?’ Bill said.

  Fred tried a disarming smile. ‘Not at all. I was just thinking about the history of the Mohawk. How the original tribal head-dress became an emblem of wildness that has stayed with us, coming to the surface periodically. There was a spell of Mohawks in the 1950s. Then there was Taxi Driver, then some skinheads in Britain revived the craze, then some punks. Now it’s come full circle, almost, back to its native land …’

  Mauve said: ‘Don’t you just love the way he talks? That cool accent? Like on TV.’

  Honesty was not fooled. ‘That’s just an English accent. Hey, my mom would like that; she’s nuts about anything English.’

  Fred raised his eyebrows but refrained from saying
really.

  ‘Yeah, she like watches “Masturbates Theater” alla time. Anything English.’

  At that moment, a man brushed past the booth and gave them a peculiar look. He was a short pie-faced man of advanced middle age, far too old for this place, just as his clean looks, large spectacles and flamboyant Hawaiian shirt were out of place among the general dirt and mourning.

  ‘There goes Hook,’ said Mauve. ‘I think he’s English, too, ain’t he?’

  Honesty shrugged. ‘English or queer or something.’ She tapped Fred on the hand. ‘You wanna dance?’

  ‘There’s no music.’

  Everyone laughed. Honesty led him outside to the parking-lot. ‘Where’s your car?’

  ‘I, um, haven’t got one,’ he said.

  ‘Christ. Come on, then.’ She pulled him into an alley and shoved him against a wall. After a moment of fumbling with the buckles of her black raincoat, she opened it.

  She was as naked beneath it as any Mickey Spillane dream.

  ‘OK?’

  ‘Shit,’ she said, a few moments later. ‘Oh, well, maybe next time.’

  ‘You’re a cheerful good-hearted girl, Honesty.’

  ‘Woman,’ she corrected.

  When they went back inside, Honesty was good enough not to let anyone know nothing had happened. To cover embarrassment, Fred spoke of his ambition to pass a driving test and buy a car. ‘I tried to get a provisional licence in New York, but it was impossible. When I finally found the bureau, they told me I would need my passport. I went to get it, but by the time I returned it was just past noon.’

  ‘Lunch hour?’

  ‘No, end of the day. In New York in summer the government offices open at ten A.M. and close at noon. So I don’t have even a provisional licence.’

  ‘You don’t?’ Mauve asked. ‘Don’t they have licences in England or something?’

  ‘Why, yes, I have one. Only here I don’t have a Minnesota one. Haven’t had time to take the usual course of lessons, make an appointment – I imagine, with everyone driving, there must be quite a waiting-list.’

  They all looked at him. Finally Honesty said: ‘If you can drive, you don’t need no course of lessons. And there ain’t no list; you just show up. You poor dummy, I better pick you up in the morning and take you there.’

  He felt better immediately. Soon he was describing Brides in the Bath, the Neasden Poisoner, and other English mass murders, as lighthearted as though he had not a care in the world. All the same, Honesty drifted away, and Mauve went home with Bill.

  Fred dreamed that night of a monster robot encased in ice. The dream began at the New York licence place again, only now the place was open. No one was in charge, but he filed along with everyone else past the counters and into some sort of ice-cavern.

  ‘I only came to get my licence,’ he said, but everyone was putting on their Eskimo parkas, so he followed suit. A crowd of people bundled up like Eskimos were breaking away great crystals with ice-picks, gradually revealing the placid iron face, the pulsing lights that were its eyes. It was somewhat like the reviving of a Frankenstein’s monster in some ice-cave, or the thawing of the Thing in Alaska, but he could not make out whether the features were those of Boris Karloff or James Arness.

  Then one of the ice-picks broke through and plunged into the monster. Bright red blood welled up. The monster opened its eyes and tried to scream, but no sound came.

  This was no metal monster but a foil-wrapped human being. This was his own body being stabbed. The Eskimo people were now insects. ‘It’s not summer any more,’ one of them said. ‘We can come out and work.’ Indeed, they were all working away with a chittering insect delight, as they stabbed and stabbed, plunging in their ice-picks, splurf, splurf, decision rechecking …

  Chapter Five

  A car horn woke him. He went to his basement window and peeped out at the morning. Honesty, dressed in dark urchin clothes, slouched against an apricot Mercedes.

  Fred threw on some clothes and groped his way outdoors, blinking at the brightness. She handed him the keys. ‘You drive all the way there. That’s your course of lessons.’

  ‘Where’d you get this car?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s got automatic everything; you can’t hardly fail,’ she said, not really answering. ‘I’ll tell you how to get there.’

  The testing-site was far enough from the city to give him some practice. Honesty had one more piece of advice. ‘Remember, they want you to pass.’

  ‘That doesn’t seem possible.’

  But so they did. The test was conducted by a fat policewoman of monumental calm. He drove the car around a tiny artificial cityscape laid out with stop signs, one-way streets, and traffic signals. He turned, backed up, parked.

  ‘Congratulations,’ said the policewoman, writing. ‘Try to practise your parallel parking a little more.’ She looked as though she hated getting out of the very comfortable seat, but she did so, after handing him a slip of paper. ‘You can drive on this until your licence arrives.’

  Honesty was waiting for him with a newspaper. ‘I figured you for a hundred-dollar car,’ she said. ‘So I circled a few ads for you.’ Seeing his hesitation, she added: ‘If you haven’t got it, I’ll loan you.’

  ‘Thanks. When my first cheque comes –’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Now, pick an ad.’

  As he drove the suburban freeways, the bright sky seemed to expand, opening out in all directions to the distant horizons of shopping-malls, health clubs, car-washes, golf-courses, dental offices. He felt he was borne aloft by this capable woman who would bathe him and button him into his jammies, and read him a story.

  She would not advise him about a car, however. ‘Look, a hundred-dollar clunker is not going to be perfect,’ she said. ‘You have to take your own chances. I don’t want to get the blame if there’s anything wrong with it.’

  It didn’t take him long to choose a big yellow Yank car. Though it had a few slight defects – the lower parts of it had rusted through as though dipped in acid, the floor was missing in spots, the pedals wobbled and threatened to fall off into the street (which he could see rushing past beneath his feet), and the door would sometimes fly open when he turned a corner – nevertheless, it was here, it was his: a dream chariot, a bride of the freeways, an icon of American mythology! Fred was in control of it! He would christen it ‘The Dream of Surf’.

  Honesty wrote a cheque for $100 and said goodbye. ‘Gotta get my mom’s car back before she wakes up.’

  As she drove away, he shouted: ‘I’ll pay you back. How do I get in touch with you?’ But with the tinted windows up and the air-conditioning running she missed his half-hearted offer.

  When Fred got the car home, he began to notice a few more flaws. The clutch sang. The right front wheel was damaged, so that it leaned at a funny angle when it stopped, and wobbled wildly at any speed. The brakes were spongy. One window was stuck, the other was missing its crank. Unless used carefully, internal door-handles tended to come off in the hand. The radio emitted a crackling hum but no other sound. He was not sure whether or not this was caused by the coathanger being used for an aerial. One of the tail lights had been smashed in and crudely repaired; a red plastic toy (half a ray gun) had been taped over the bulb. Maybe he would christen the car ‘Decline and Fall’.

  On Monday he drove it all the way to work, leaving a trail of blue smoke. Newer cars seemed to give him a wide berth along the road as though shunning a leper. Their drivers were probably afraid the wobbly wheel would detach itself and smash about randomly, a loose cannon roaming the gun-deck. However, Fred chose to imagine that the cars themselves were afraid of catching rust and decay.

  Pratt had put a DO NOT DISTURB sign on his office door and was keeping it closed, presumably all day.

  Fred asked Carl Honks for some work.

  ‘Didn’t Mel get you squared away? Christ. I think that dumb bastard is burning out.’

  ‘“Burning out”?’

  ‘Yeah, the dumb b
astard.’

  Honks took tobacco from a lacquered box and packed his pipe, but did not light up.

  ‘I’ve seen a lot of dumb bastards burn out. They all start out like Mel.’ He squinted through nonexistent pipesmoke.

  ‘You take a guy that gets too serious about a project, can’t leave it alone, you know? At the end of every day he has just one more little bug to chase, one more little thing to do, so he stays a few minutes. Then it’s an hour or so, and before long he’s working through the night. Then it’s every night, and weekends. He can’t do anything but work on it. Don’t get me wrong. Everybody does this once in a while. But some dumb bastards make it a lifestyle.’

  Honks puffed thoughtfully at the unlit pipe. It was a meerschaum, carved with a dragon.

  ‘Next sign is, he can’t delegate. Has to do everything himself. Nobody else can do it; he has to do it. Locks himself in his office all day. Pretty soon he’s way the hell out in left field on his own, only he thinks he’s still in the game. You notice that when he starts talking about a big breakthrough. Soon as I hear the words “big breakthrough”, I know the guy is gonna end up wrapped in wet sheets.’

  ‘But Sturge talks about a big breakthrough all the time.’

  ‘With Sturge it’s different. See, Sturge is a twenty-four-carat asshole. He don’t mean anything by anything; he’s just hand-waving. Sturge has no idea what’s going on here; he just signs the cheque and beats his gums.’

  Honks looked at his pipe, then emptied the tobacco back in the lacquered box. His long-nailed fingers toyed with the cloth-covered buttons of his tunic. ‘You probably think we’re all nuts around here. But just watch Mel. Wait till you hear him talking about his big breakthrough, the Robot M.’

  ‘I meant to ask you. This robot project –’

  ‘Is going in circles. That’s what happens when you get a lunatic in charge; he leads the group in circles. You’ll see.’

  ‘But it’s a real project, right?’

  ‘Right. Money makes it real. There’s a big fat wad of DoD money about to fall on us – that makes it real. The Army wants metal men real bad.’