by David Ely
“No, thank you. I’m not hungry.”
“Well, then, as you wish.” Mr. Ruby did not replace the silver dish, and a pleasing aroma of fried chicken rose from the plate. “That chicken looks delicious,” he remarked.
“I’m afraid I couldn’t touch it.”
“Of course. As I was saying, thirty thousand dollars. This may seem high, but you must remember that we have to provide a reasonably fresh cadaver, identifiable as being yourself, which naturally would require the most expert medical and dental adjustments. Are you quite certain you don’t want that chicken?”
“Absolutely sure.”
“Pity,” said Mr. Ruby, sniffing the air. “Well, to return to the first-class death. In addition to the sources of expense I have mentioned, there is the problem that the circumstances of death must be reasonable and natural and above all, simple. Simplicity is costly, Mr. Wilson. Suppose the body is discovered in a hotel bedroom, and that death is the result, say, of a cerebral hemorrhage. You might not think this would be difficult.” Mr. Ruby allowed himself an ironic chuckle. “Believe me, sir, it is fiendishly troublesome! The surgery bill for a cerebral hemorrhage alone would stagger you. I can assure you, Mr. Wilson, we make no profit on these cases! But at the same time, we can do it. We can guarantee a death of this kind. It will stand up to the most rigorous tests.”
“Are there . . . other kinds?”
“Others? Oh, yes, there are two others.” Mr. Ruby gazed again at the uncovered plate. “It’s a shame to let this go to waste, Mr. Wilson. Would you mind if I—?”
“Not at all. Please do.”
“Thank you.” Mr. Ruby delicately lifted a chicken leg from the plate and inspected it. “Well,” he went on, “a second-class death, for example. This would cost you about twenty thousand dollars. It is in the category of accidental death, you see.” He bit into the chicken and chewed the meat with relish. “The cadaver is struck by an automobile or falls from a window. Naturally, the effect of violence reduces the complexity of the surgery, although surgery still is required. Excuse me.” He paused to wipe his mouth with the napkin. “Delicious chicken, sir! . . . The chief disadvantage of the second-class death is that the violence is a source of distress to the family, although this is offset by the fact that the double indemnity feature of insurance is invoked.”
“I see.”
“Then we have death of the third class,” added Mr. Ruby, speaking between mouthfuls. “I refer, of course, to suicide, which is in the price range of fifteen thousand. Here, surgery is reduced to a minimum, because for the monetary convenience of the client, we arrange for the obliteration of all or parts of the body.” He paused to pick his teeth. “Ordinarily, this means that the head is blown apart by the blast of a shotgun inserted in the mouth. You can readily see that dental surgery would be an extravagance here.”
“Yes.”
“But then, of course, with suicide, you risk severe family distress, if only on religious grounds,” continued Mr. Ruby, buttering a piece of cornbread. “I don’t recommend it to you frankly.” He popped the cornbread into his mouth. When he had swallowed it, he glanced inquiringly at Wilson. “Do you want me to review disappearance for you, sir?”
“I think not.”
“Good. I was hoping you would choose death. For a man of your substance, cost ought not to be decisive. Shall we make it death of the first class, then, Mr. Wilson?”
“No—I mean, I can’t be sure—”
“Of course, sir. You can’t be expected to decide at once. Think it over,” said Mr. Ruby, pressing a button on the communications box. “There’s a good deal else to be done, Mr. Wilson, and you ought to give this matter some consideration in the meantime. If I do say so myself, sir, the question of death selection may be the most important decision of your life.”
Apparently in response to Mr. Ruby’s signal over the communications box, two other gentlemen entered the room at this point and were introduced to Wilson as trust officers. He did not catch their names, for he was in an understandable state of confusion, nor was he particularly aware of their appearance, except to notice that one was tall and the other one short.
“These are the trust instruments, Mr. Wilson,” said the tall one, as his partner handed Wilson a set of documents impressively festooned with ribbons, seals, and stamps. “And your revised will, drawn in accordance with the requirements of the trust, naturally, and all predated, of course, and, moreover, since these instruments are, in a literal sense, forged, we have taken the liberty, sir, of forging your signature on them as well, to save you the trouble. Your real name is used, I should add!” The trust officer tittered modestly at his joke. “We show them to you sir,” he added, “so that you may approve them, as a matter of information, sir.”
Wilson stared wonderingly at the documents.
“It’s the standard mechanism, sir,” the officer went on. “The trust provides for liberal settlements on your wife and child, effective at the time of your death, deriving from funds resultant from your conveyance and assignment to us, as your trustees, of your holdings and properties . . .”
Wilson found himself no longer able to hear the trust officer’s words because of a curious buzzing in his ears. He tried to ignore it, but it became louder, and the more he strained his attention toward the opening and closing of the officer’s mouth, hoping to guess at the words in that way, the more difficult it was to maintain his sense of equilibrium, for as the buzzing increased, so did certain extraordinary perception, which he ascribed to the fact that he had eaten virtually nothing all day, and had been subjected to a continuous series of shocks and frustrations. For example, the documents slipped from his fingers, but instead of flopping to the rug, they appeared to float in the air and to glitter there with unnatural brilliance, and then he heard, above the buzzing, what was evidently his own voice shouting: “I’m not a client! I don’t want to buy death!” and he was dimly aware that the trust officers had gathered up their papers, and that Mr. Ruby, the lawyer, had begun punching the communications box. Finally, after what seemed a considerable interval in which someone assisted him to drink a cup of hot soup, he found himself, strangely enough, witnessing a moving picture projected on a portable screen which had been placed at the far end of the room.
The subject of the film, it developed, was himself. He was seen first strolling rather pompously along a street, obviously unaware of the hidden camera that was recording his movements. When had they done it, Wilson wondered. That very day? His portly figure was clothed in the grey suit, true enough, but that was not conclusive, and the street scene itself was slightly out of focus—but as he watched the screen further and saw his unsuspecting self proceeding blithely through an unidentifiable crowd, his apprehensions mounted sharply. Why had this film been taken . . . and why was it being shown to him now? Intuitively, he grasped the reason. Of course, there was but one possible answer—a splendidly logical one, and when the scene abruptly shifted, he was fully prepared for what then flashed before his eyes: the episode in the boudoir, where he clearly committed the most savage assault upon the defenseless woman.
The projection machine stopped. The lights of the office were switched on, and two men in clerk’s jackets proceeded to pack up the equipment and to rearrange certain pieces of furniture which had been moved aside to make room for the screen. Wilson observed them silently. He was almost relieved that the purpose of his entanglement with the woman had been explained; otherwise, he seemed free of all emotion, as if the accumulation of distressing circumstances had finally plunged away into a void of their own weight, bearing with them his entire stock of feelings.
As the projection men departed, Wilson noted that neither Mr. Ruby nor the trust officers had remained in the room, and that he was now alone there with an elderly, rather feeble-looking man in a black suit, who was sitting on the couch a few feet away.
“So now it’s blackmail,” Wilson declared calmly.
The old man smiled. There was nothin
g sinister about the smile. He was, in fact, a very meek-looking old man, the kind who might well sit on a park bench every afternoon, telling stories to children and feeding crumbs to the birds. He had, moreover, none of the polish and efficiency of Joliffe and Ruby; his white hair was unkempt in a certain way, as if he had attempted in vain to manage it, and on his coat front were tobacco ash, lint, and shiny spots probably traceable to food stains.
“Do you want to talk to me?” the old man inquired, cautiously, but then before Wilson had had an opportunity to reply, he added, confidentially: “By the way, I have a message for you, from that friend of yours you mentioned to Mr. Joliffe.”
“From Charley?”
“That’s the name. Well, Charley wanted me to tell you,” the old man continued, his face wrinkling up in the effort of recalling the exact words, “that when you jump into a volcano, it’s bound to hurt a little at first.” He gazed uncertainly at Wilson. “Does that mean something to you?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“I hoped it would. Well,” the old man said, fumbling a pipe from his pocket, “you said something about blackmail, Mr. Wilson.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“No, it’s quite all right. I don’t blame you. But it isn’t blackmail, you know. It’s just a kind of insurance, that’s all. It’s easier to go forward, isn’t it, when you know that you can’t go back?”
“Can’t go back?”
“No, sir,” the old man remarked sympathetically, “you can’t go back. You realized that, didn’t you? I mean, from the moment you hung up after Charley’s first call? Of course you did. That’s why you were so disturbed, because you knew you’d be facing a lot of unusual experiences, some of them unpleasant, and you knew you would need every ounce of courage in your system—”
“You’re saying that I can never go back.”
“Not to the bank, not to your family, not to anything you left.”
“I see.”
“Of course you see. And you see because, in your heart of hearts, you don’t really want to go back. You want to go forward. Don’t you? You want to be reborn. You are being reborn, my friend. Those hurts you feel, those are the pains of being reborn.” The old man leaned forward as he spoke these words, inadvertently spilling tobacco from his pipe bowl over his trouser legs. Wilson was touched by his obvious sincerity, by his indifference to his appearance, and even more by the kindliness of his weathered old face.
“But you owe it to yourself, this rebirth,” the old man said earnestly. “The pain will leave you soon, and life will begin again—a new life, a beautiful life. Another chance. And tell me honestly, my boy, will you be missed by those who are left behind? And will you miss them yourself?”
“I . . . don’t know.”
“Your good wife, my boy, is she still the heart and center of creation for you? And are you that for her?”
“We . . . get along.”
“And your child, your daughter. What about her, son?”
“Well, we don’t see too much of her, actually. She’s recently gotten married and lives out West with her husband. He’s a doctor.”
The old man nodded with every phrase, and from time to time actually reached out and patted Wilson’s knee, an action which so increased Wilson’s feeling of rapport that he discovered that there were tears in his eyes. He did not brush them away.
“Excuse an old fool’s prying, son,” the old man said, “but what about the usual way of your life? I mean, did you look forward to your game of golf, for instance, or your staff meetings down at the bank?”
“You mean, do I like anything about the way I lived? Well, sir, I find that hard to answer. I was comfortable, I guess. I didn’t think too much about things. I left my wife pretty much alone, and she did the same for me. We never quarreled, and in recent years we hardly ever—well, expressed much affection . . . and I did have my boat in the summer, and you’re right, I did like to play a little weekend golf, and daub away with my watercolors sometimes in the garage . . .”
Wilson’s voice trailed off. He clenched his fists, resisting an impulse to fling himself at the old man’s knees and weep bitterly.
“So, this is what became of the dreams of youth,” the old man remarked softly, as if he were simply musing aloud to himself. “Well, son, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. You’ve done no worse than most men. You’re a good boy at heart, and you’ve lived an honest life. It’s just time to change, that’s all.” He gazed with affection at Wilson, who slowly bowed his head into his hands. “Now, son, I know what you’re thinking. There’s a tiny little thought still in your head, and that thought is summed up in one word: ‘Desertion.’ Well, don’t you worry about that. You’ve taken care of the financial part of it, and as for the rest, well, you don’t need them any more and they don’t need you. They’ve got their problems, it’s true, but you can’t help them, just as they can’t help you.”
“I can see that now, sir,” mumbled Wilson from between his fingers.
“What you need, son, is a good night’s sleep. Then you’ll be fresh in the morning, just like a baby. There’ll be a few more details to clear up, but my boys will be working on them, don’t you worry.”
“Your boys?”
“That’s right, son.”
“Then you’re the head of the company?”
“I’m afraid so, son. They usually call me in when there’s what they call a difficult case. What they really mean, I think, is that there’s a soul worth the saving. There never was a struggle in the soul of a good man that wasn’t hard. Believe me, son, I know.”
“I believe you.”
“So you feel all right now, my boy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s fine. Then we’ll just pack off to bed, won’t we?”
“Yes, sir.”
Chapter 2
WILSON AWOKE in the morning to the familiar sound of an alarm clock, but even as he reached out to turn it off, he realized by the variation in pitch that it was not his own, and he sat up quickly, staring all around the strange room he was in, as if an analysis of his physical surroundings might lend some coherence to his disorganized recollections of the events of the previous day.
He seemed to be in a hotel bedroom. The top of the dresser was covered, in hotel fashion, by a sheet of glass, and his suit, hanging alone in the closet, had a forlorn and transient air. The pajamas he wore were new; he only dimly recalled having put them on, so exhausted had he been the night before when they had helped him to the room.
They. Yes, of course—they. He went to the adjoining bathroom, fully aware as he did so that he was not in a hotel at all, but still on the premises of the company whose client, it seemed, he had become, and as he inspected the sink and the cabinet, he was again reminded of the completeness of the services provided, for there was a full set of toilet articles awaiting his use, and furthermore, when he returned to the bedroom, he found that breakfast had been left for him on a tray, during his absence. There were two pills on a separate dish, with a note which bore the words, “For Mr. Wilson,” but he did not take them.
As he ate, he wondered idly about his wife and about Mr. Franks, the senior vice president at the bank. Were they frantically telephoning one another by now? Were they in touch with the police? Or could it be that they had not missed him yet? This idea struck him ironically as being the most likely of all. Perhaps no one had particularly noticed his absence. Would he ever really be missed? Days might go by, even weeks, he mused, and then, quite by chance, his wife might decide to organize a dinner party for eight, say, and in the course of reviewing seating arrangements, would discover, to her annoyance, that he was simply nowhere to be found. He wrinkled his face, silently mouthing what he imagined would be her complaint: “ . . . how troublesome it will be. He knows how hard it is to find an extra man to make up a party!”
As for the bank, well, that would be a different story, because the bank was more efficient. His absence would be readily not
ed, but he would not be missed as a person. No, the officers would stride around fretfully, asking whether anyone had seen the vice president in charge of industrial credit operations, who had unaccountably been mislaid.
In the midst of these reflections, which he indulged while recognizing them as a form of self-pity perhaps intended to conceal a real sense of worry and guilt, the door to his room swung open and a woman entered.
“Good morning, Mr. Wilson,” she said briskly, as she advanced. “I hope you enjoyed your breakfast. You’ll need it. You’ve got a busy schedule today.” She seemed to be about his own age, but because she was smartly groomed and dressed, she looked no more than forty. “Oh,” she remarked, eyeing his tray, “I see you forgot to take your pills. Well, you’ve still got your coffee left. You can swallow them down well enough with that, I should think . . .”
Wilson, meanwhile, had mumbled a confused and hasty response, and sat fidgeting in his chair, feeling at a great disadvantage for the want of a bathrobe, and not knowing whether to stand up and risk the parting of his unfamiliar pajamas, or to remain seated, which would border on a discourtesy. Was the woman a nurse or what? He could not be sure, but the genial note of authority in her voice, coupled with his own inferiority in attire, led him obediently to gulp down the pills.
“What are they for?” he asked meekly.
“For your nerves.”
“I’m—not nervous, really.”
“Well, in any case, it’s standard procedure.”
“But look here,” he added suddenly, “I really ought to get some word to my wife—”
“Why?”
“Well . . .” He hesitated.
“Now, Mr. Wilson,” his visitor declared, with a reproving smile, “you’re supposed to put all of that sort of thing out of your mind. That’s why you’re here. You’re paying us to take care of those details. Don’t you fret about them. We’ve got them well in hand.”