“Uhhhh …” Weller grunted, half as a reply, and half a visceral reaction. “Gotta go …”
He dashed through the door bent at the waist, staggered into the bathroom falling to his knees, and just managed to get his head over the toilet bowl as horrid sour puke exploded from his throat. Again and again he heaved his guts out, until he felt totally empty, until dry spasms made him clutch his stomach in pain, until nausea subsided into an overwhelming fatigue, an irresistible slide toward black nothingness.
He staggered into the living room half out on his feet, moaned as he felt his legs going out from under him, and just managed to flop facedown across the couch before his consciousness slid into sweet oblivion.
Annie looked narrowly across the breakfast coffee at him and for the third time said, “But what happened, Jack?”
Weller had choked down a big glass of eptifier as soon as she had awakened him in the morning from his stupor on the couch, so his pounding headache had just about subsided and the awful feeling in his gut had more or less faded away—not, however, to the point where he could face the thought of food with any equanimity. But the black, confused mood in which his mind had awakened would not go away.
“I told you twice, we got utterly shit-faced, and I don’t remember what the fuck happened!” he snarled.
“Well, you don’t have to snap at me about it!” Annie said. “I’m not the one that got drunk, puked, and passed out on the couch.”
“But you’re the one who’s interrogating me about it!” Weller said. “That’s your goddamn directive, isn’t it, my little commissar?”
Annie’s face went stony cold. “It has nothing to do with that,” she said with exaggerated evenness. “It’s strictly personal.”
“I find it hard to believe that anything’s strictly personal anymore.”
“You don’t trust me at all anymore, do you?” Annie said more softly.
Weller sighed. He didn’t even know what he was arguing with her about. He half suspected that he was really arguing with Steinhardt, or perhaps even another side of his own head. Fact was, he did remember most of what had been said during his drinking bout with Steinhardt. Everything but the very end of it which was a vague green cloud of nausea, puking, and something which had happened between them. Somehow he had woken up with the feeling that he had won, that he had finally convinced Steinhardt of his sincerity. Or that Steinhardt had really won him over in his drunken state, at least to Steinhardt’s own drunken satisfaction. He knew that something had happened, that the situation had been altered, but what and how were lost in the memory of a drunken blur.
And when Annie kept asking him about it, he had automatically taken it as a directive from Steinhardt; as if, through her, Steinhardt was trying to find out what he remembered, or maybe even trying to fill in a blank spot in his own memory track. But that was pure paranoia, wasn’t it? Annie couldn’t have spoken to Steinhardt yet this morning, now could she?
“I’m sorry, Annie,” he said. “It’s certainly true that you’ve been up front with me. At least I know where I stand with you.”
Annie lifted her coffee cup to her mouth, stared speculatively over the lip. “And where do you imagine that to be?” she asked.
“Second place,” Weller said, “to Transformationalism.”
Annie looked down into the depths of her coffee.
“Am I wrong?” Weller asked.
Annie remained silent.
“If I’m wrong, I wish to hell you’d tell me so,” Weller said. “If I told you I simply couldn’t take this shit any more, that I was taking off, that you had to choose between Transformationalism and me right now, what would you do? Tell me you would come with me!” Fuck it! he thought. I’ve finally said it. We’ve finally come to the bottom fine.
Annie slowly looked up at him. Her lower lip trembled. Her eyes filled with tears. “Is that what you’re saying, Jack?” she whispered. “Are you finally issuing your ultimatum?”
“That’s not answering my question,” Weller said with awful coldness.
“And you really want an answer?” Annie said plaintively. A muffled mourning bell was already peeling in her voice.
I’ve got my answer, Weller thought. Haven’t I known it all along?
But why the hell am I doing this? Paused on the brink of the final, irrevocable parting, the end of their marriage, the end of everything he had fought for and sacrificed for and suffered for all these months, Weller drew back again. What am I doing? he thought. I think I’ve finally won at least this round. I think I’ve sold myself to Steinhardt, somehow. I’ve bought time to work on her head, all the time I could ask for. Why the hell did I almost throw it all away?
“No,” he said. “You don’t have to answer me. I was just running a life scenario on you.”
Relief, anger, and then puzzlement chased each other across Annie’s face. “Why did you run a number like that on me?” she demanded.
“Because I think that John and I decided that I was going to work with him last night,” Weller said. “And before I committed myself to that, I wanted to be able to feel that whither I goest, you goest too. So I could be sure I knew exactly why I was going to stay. ”
“Do you want me to lie to you?” Annie said quietly.
“No. You couldn’t if you tried. I know where we stand.”
“Well then,” Annie said, suddenly brightening artificially, “then let’s forget about it. Why torture ourselves with unreal negative life scenarios? Especially when the real news is so good!”
“You’re so sure you know what’s real,” Weller said. “Maybe you’d like to tell me.”
“We’ve got a life together here,” she said. “You’re going to work with John. There are no horrible choices to be made. Everything’s coming out all right, isn’t it? Isn’t that what’s real?”
Weller sighed. For the time being anyway, maybe that was reality. Certainly, at this moment, he lacked the courage to make it anything else. “Yeah,” he said, squeezing her hand and forcing a smile. “I think I’m still hung over is all. Everything is coming up roses.”
“Sure it is,” she said, leaning over the table and kissing him on the lips. But deep inside him that mourning bell kept peeling, as if the essence of what he was still fighting to keep had already been lost.
Nervously alert, his mind racing with yet another dose of eptifier, Weller ascended the spiral staircase to John B. Steinhardt’s domed lair. The summons had not come till noon, and he had had enough time to clear his head and think things through clearly. Steinhardt had displayed his dirty linen to him as if it were a badge of honor. Whether the intimacy it had established between them were real or not, it was obviously what Steinhardt had intended, and Weller had certainly told Steinhardt a thing or two himself. So if Steinhardt had really convinced himself that they had had a meeting of minds, why disabuse him of the notion? All I have to do, Weller decided, is keep my mouth as shut as possible and agree with everything he says. All I’ve got to do is let him con himself.
Steinhardt was lying in the big hammock in the center of the circular room, wearing only a kind of blue terry-cloth kilt. He unslung himself from the hammock like some ungainly walrus as Weller entered and stood there with his belly hanging out. “How’s your head today, kiddo?” he asked brightly. “You were really fried last night.”
Steinhardt walked over to the big oak desk at the north side of the room and perched on the edge. Weller dropped himself into a director’s chair near the desk. “I’m more or less okay,” he said. “That green goo sure works as a hangover cure. ”
Steinhardt took a cigar from the humidor on the desk, lighted it, and sent a nauseating puff of smoke in Weller’s direction. “No blackouts?” he asked. “You remember everything that happened last night?”
“Clear as a bell,” Weller lied forthrightly.
Steinhardt reached out his hand. “Well then, we have a deal, don’t we?” he said. “You’re going to be my personal director.” Weller
shook his hand and was able to beam back at him. For this was it, he had won, Steinhardt really trusted him now.
Steinhardt loped heavily toward the bar. “Care to drink to it?” he said.
“Thanks but no thanks,” Weller grunted.
Steinhardt laughed. “Well, then I guess 111 just have to drink your toast too,” he said, pouring about four inches of bourbon into a water glass and swilling down half of it with a smack of his lips.
He put down his glass, leaned against the bar, took a puff of his cigar, and became almost professional in tone, changing gears entirely. “Okay, Jack, well begin work next Monday. By then I want you to be ready to give me an idea of where you want to shoot your outside footage, how you think the testament should be organized, and I’ll be ready to discuss when I do my raving for your cameras. Okay?”
“Okay,” Weller said. “Except we really can’t talk about when we’re going to start shooting until we have a crew lined up.”
“Don’t worry about that, we’ll just pick a date and I’ll fly in whatever you say you need.”
“Er … I don’t know if Changes Production has good enough people for a project on this level,” Weller said speculatively.
Steinhardt shrugged. “You be the judge of that,” he said.
He laughed and took another gulp of whiskey. “For my immortality, I want nothing but the best, and I’m not going to limit my director to whatever Harry Lazio has thrown together. You want pros, I will hire you pros. Consider your budget unlimited.”
“Great!” Weller said. This might really turn into something after all.
“Well, I’ve got other fish to fry now,” Steinhardt said, walking toward the stairs and ushering Weller along in tow. “You just relax and think until then, Jack, and hang loose.” He held Weller back by the elbow at the top of the stairway. “Just one thing,” he said looking straight at Weller. “You do know what you’re getting into? I mean, you already know a lot of things that aren’t exactly for the masses, kiddo, and working with me on this thing, you figure to learn a lot more. Also, I don’t want anyone in the movement who doesn’t have to know about this project to get wind of it. The official story will be consistent with what got you here—we’re just making commercials. Got it?”
“Sure, John,” Weller said a little nervously. “If that’s the way you want it.”
“Good,” Steinhardt said. “So you understand the need for reasonable security procedures.”
“Security procedures?” Weller said uneasily.
“Oh, just standard stuff,” Steinhardt said breezily. “Nothing to get excited about. You’ll have to remain at the Institute throughout the whole project. No contact with outside parties. And a few other minor details.”
He gave Weller a wink and propelled him on his way with a slap of the back. “We want to keep our little project under our hats, don’t we, bucko?” he said conspiratorially.
I should be feeling that I’ve got it made, Weller thought, as he slowly descended to ground level. I have got it made. But something somehow told him that everything had gone too easily, that it was he and not Steinhardt who had just been had. It didn’t add up logically, but he couldn’t get rid of the feeling.
Twenty
Walking back to the cabin in the warm sunlight, Weller began to wonder whether his war with Transformationalism wasn’t in the process of coming to a negotiated peace.
What if I just relax into the part I’ve been playing? he mused. Annie and I will be together, and maybe if we stop fencing over Transformationalism, we can be human to each other again. I’ll have an interesting piece of work to look forward to, with an unlimited budget and a character like Steinhardt to play around with, and I should be able to come up with something that will turn him on without making me puke. And if I become John’s fair-haired boy, maybe I can talk him into producing a feature. They’ve certainly got the money for it.
I haven’t been able to change Annie’s head anyway. Changes. That’s my real life situation, and it could be a lot worse, so maybe I should just try to keep my consciousness eptified behind it and ride with what’s happening for the best I can get out of it.
By the time he got back to the cabin, Weller was feeling almost at peace with himself. What the hell, he thought, what’s so terrible about learning to love Big Brother when he’s setting himself up as your benefactor, when he could even end up being your friend? What’s not to like about that? What have I really been torturing myself over? Why not just relax and enjoy it?
He made himself a cheese and salami sandwich, ate it slowly with a glass of white wine, had another glass afterward on the couch, just sitting there, sipping, and mellowing out as he slowly digested the fact that the life decision had already been made. Looking at it at last from the other side, with the tension of suspense gone, it began to look not so bad after all.
About four o’clock, unexpectedly early, Annie burst into the cabin, dashed across the room, flung herself into his arms as he rose, hugged him tightly, and gave him a short hard kiss. “It’s wonderful!” she cried. “Oh, I’m so happy!”
“Huh? Wha—?”
She bounced away from him, but still held both his hands tightly. “I’ve just been with John,” she said. “He’s told me all about it. Oh God, I’m so glad all this conflict is over! Ooh, I love you, Jack, and it’s been so awful having to report on you and fighting with you. But that’s all over now, isn’t it?” Weller paused. He took a breath. He looked at her, beaming at him from the balls of her feet. “Sure it is,” he said, feeling a great gasp of tension soaring out of him, an enormous weight lifted off his shoulders and out of his heart. “You and me, babe!” He kissed her. He felt like giggling. He felt like a silly asshole. Goddamn it, Weller, isn’t this what you really want? Isn’t it what you’ve wanted all along?
Annie abruptly sat down on the couch, pulling him down beside her. “There’s just one little detail to take care of,” she said, pulling a sheet of paper out of her handbag and handing it to Weller. “I worked this list out with John, but we’d better go over it first to see if I missed anyone.”
Suddenly uneasy, Weller looked over a long list of names of people that he knew—friends like the Shumways, business acquaintances like Johnny Blaisdell, his agent, his lawyer, his accountant, a long train of out-of-town relatives. “What the hell is this thing?” he said. “It looks like our Christmas-card list.”
Annie nodded. “That’s more or less what it is,” she said. “Can you think of anyone I’ve forgotten?”
Weller felt all the dread and tension that he had thought he had just unloaded come back like a sock in the gut. What the hell is this? “Isn’t it a little early to be worrying about Christmas cards?”
Annie giggled. “We’re not going to send out Christmas cards, silly,” she said gaily. “You’re going to send out letters or postcards to the people on the list. ”
“I am?”
“Oh, I know it’s going to be a drag writing the same thing a couple of dozen times, but they don’t have to be very long, and I’ll help you write them. You just have to sign them.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Weller shouted. “What letters? What is this shit?”
Annie looked up at him with innocent perplexity. “Didn’t John tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
Annie shrugged. “I guess he didn’t,” she said. “This is just a security procedure for you to follow. We’ve worked out a good cover story, so you don’t even have to bother yourself about that. What you’ll do is tell everyone that you’ve landed an assignment to set up a state film company in … uh … Malawi and we’ll be spending the next two years or more in Africa.”
“WHAT?”
Annie continued to speak in a maddeningly robotic tone of absolute sweet reason. “You’re going to be staying at the Institute for an indefinite time, so you don’t want people to think you’ve disappeared mysteriously and nose around trying to find you.”
“I don�
�t?” Weller said numbly.
“Of course not, Jack,” Annie said, as if she were stating something that they both knew was obvious. “And since you’re going to be in such a high security level that you won’t be able to contact even movement people on the outside, people would start getting suspicious and worrying about you if you just dropped out of sight without a word. With this African cover story, though, everything will seem natural. ”
Weller stared at her, utterly dumbfounded. He couldn’t believe that his own wife was telling him a thing like this, and yet when he thought about it, the logic suddenly seemed inevitable. Electrified fences, guard dogs, security patrols, blackout of contact with the outside world. All the security measures of a concentration camp, so why not the old postcard-home schtick? What an idiot I’ve been today I The son of a bitch really knows how to rub your nose in it!
“I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” Weller finally managed to say. “Do you know that the Nazis used to run this same damned number with concentration-camp victims? They’d make them write predated postcards just before they shoved them in the ovens. Six weeks later the folks back home would get a card that said, ‘Greetings from Scenic Auschwitz, wish you were here.’ ”
“Oh Jack,” Annie laughed, “don’t be silly. This is serious.”
“SERIOUS? Fuckin’-A, it’s serious!” Weller shouted. “Jesus Christ, Annie, don’t you realize that the Nazis had those postcards sent home so that people could disappear without a warm trail? So they could gas them in ovens and no one would know.”
Annie finally lost her infuriating good humor. “You’re being infantile, Jack,” she said. “Do you really think the movement is planning to kill you?”
“How the hell do I know? If 1 write those letters, I disappear and pull the hole in after me. They could snuff me or lock me in a cell for the rest of my life, or do anything else they pleased. How can I trust the good intentions of anyone who asks me to trust them that far?”
The Mind Game Page 39