Seconds

by David Ely

  Wilson was uneasily struck by the doctor’s almost sarcastic manner of speech, and it occurred to him, too, that the man’s scarred face was not the most eloquent testimony to the skill of plastic surgery.

  The doctor seemed to divine his thought. “You’re wondering if you won’t turn out like this?” he asked, tapping one marked cheek. “Set your mind at rest, Wilson. It takes money to pay these flesh mechanics. You had the price. I didn’t and don’t quite yet. That’s the simple answer . . .” He frowned moodily at his fingernails. “They keep promising me next month, but it’s always next month, and somehow there’s always a backlog of clients to be worked up first. Which is true enough . . .”

  He sighed, then gave Wilson a sharp look. “You think you’re the only one today? Not on your life, Wilson. There were eight of you shuttling in and out of surgery all during the night. Eight. Don’t you believe me? Take a look at this . . .” He whipped open the newspaper again to the obituary page. “Fifteen gents are listed here, each one rich enough to warrant a few paragraphs, and eight of ’em are right here in this building now, alive and kicking under bandages, like yourself . . . One cheapskate bought suicide, and—let’s see—three others went out second-class, and the rest, you included, took cerebrals . . . Eight in one day. And that’s nothing. Sometimes we handle ten or twelve, especially in the dog-days in late summer, when everybody’s depressed and wanting a change. Can you imagine what that means, Wilson? Something like three thousand guys produced every year right on our tables. If I had a buck for every hunk of meat and skin chopped off there, I’d be a rich man . . . All I know is, I’d hate to be in the Cadaver Procurement Section in the busy season. If business expands any more, they’ll have to start making ’em out of plastic to fill their orders. We’ve got a research department working on some of these problems. For example, how long can you keep a stiff in cold storage and still fool the medical examiners? That kind of thing . . . Pigmentation, too. We can get plenty of bodies from Latin America, but most of ’em are on the short side, and then the skin tends to be darkish. You can mess around with features all you like, but you can’t just slap on a coat of white paint and expect the survivors to be happy, can you? Well, we’ll solve that one, too, in time. As it is, we’re using the Latins for a lot of our second-class jobs, where details aren’t so important . . . Even so, Wilson, there are some slip-ups now and then. We’re only human. Last week, for instance, there was a big stink. This client said he wanted a real professional piece of work, which was understandable because he was ugly as sin. Well, as it turned out, the mechanics had some trouble with his nose, or maybe his jaw. They got off pattern somehow, but they figured he looked pretty good anyway, and so they finished the job and packed him off to his beautiful new life—with him looking like the image of Franklin Roosevelt. Not bad, huh? Except this moneybags happened to have been honorary Republican state finance chairman somewhere at one time. Boy, did he raise hell when he saw a mirror! But there was nothing they could do about it, so this rich bastard is out in the world today, I guess, a walking reminder of the good old New Deal . . . There’s a kind of poetic justice in that, Wilson, don’t you think so? . . . Wilson? Well, I see you’re asleep again . . . Guess I shook you up a little, didn’t I? They handed you all that crap about love and rebirth, and now you find out it’s just a butcher shop, like everything else, so you don’t want to hear about it . . .”

  For the next several days Wilson remained in a state of lassitude, unvisited except by the nurse, who tended to his physical needs, and by the doctor, who occasionally appeared to poke the various bandaged areas, and to ask, “This hurt much?” Each time, the pain was less, and Wilson’s voice returned gradually, too, which he found convenient, since hitherto he had been unable to communicate his wants except by signs, inasmuch as his wrapped fingers were unable to hold a pencil for writing.

  On the fourth day, a little bushy-haired man entered, lugging what seemed to be a small square suitcase, which he opened on the floor, out of Wilson’s line of sight, and tinkered with for a few moments.

  “Excuse me, sir,” the little man said finally, straightening up and drawing a chair close to the bed. “My name is Davalo. I’m your guidance adviser.” He smiled in a self-deprecatory way at the use of the title. “I have reference to your future career.”

  “I’m afraid I haven’t thought much about that,” said Wilson, truthfully.

  “Pardon me, but you have, sir.”

  “I’m sorry . . . ?”

  “Permit me, please.” Mr. Davalo stooped toward the hidden suitcase. There was a sharp click, followed by a gentle whirring sound like that of a recording machine, which Wilson deduced it was when he heard his own voice issuing from its general direction:

  “I want a big ball, a big red ball,” Wilson’s voice chanted solemnly. “A big big ball, a red one . . .”

  Mr. Davalo plunged at the machine. “I’m sorry,” he muttered, grunting with the effort of bending. “I’m afraid we picked you up a bit too early.” He cleared his throat in an embarrassed way. “We recorded this while you were under gas, you see, and there’s always a touch of infantilism to begin with, but later”—he stood up, slightly flushed—“we develop a more mature expressional infrastructure . . . and if you’ll bear with me, sir, I believe I have located it now.”

  Once more Mr. Davalo turned on the recording machine. His own voice was the first to be heard. In a wheedling tone, it inquired:

  “What would you like to do most of all? Most of anything in the whole world? Hmmm?”

  “Most of anything?” responded Wilson’s voice.

  “Of anything.”

  “Well, um. I’d like to be a tennis king, like Bill Tilden. That’s what I’d like most.”

  “Yes, I see. Well, and what after that?”

  “That’s all.”

  “Ahem. Well, suppose you couldn’t be a tennis king, for some reason. You’d have to do something else, wouldn’t you? Of course. Well, you think about it, and you tell me what that something else would be.”

  There was a considerable pause following this question, during which Mr. Davalo waited with a small and confident smile. Then Wilson’s voice was heard again:

  “Oh, I guess . . . well, I guess I’d like to paint stuff. I mean, like mixing up colors and painting things, you know.”

  “Pictures?”

  “Pictures and things. Chairs and walls, too. And coloring in magazines. Not old magazines, but new ones, before anybody gets to read them. And especially walls. I don’t know just why, but I get this sort of urge to put things on walls, you know—”

  “Well,” interrupted Mr. Davalo briskly, turning off the machine. “No need to listen to any more, sir. I think the creative wish-pattern there is pretty self-evident, and without going into any of the technical assumptions underlying my analysis, I should think you’d agree that—to put it in plain, unvarnished English, Mr. Wilson—that your obsessive motivations strongly indicate artistic pursuits as being basically responsive to your particular development as an integrated human being.”

  “You mean I ought to be a painter?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you say all of this was recorded while I was under gas?”

  “During your adjustment, yes, sir. The particular portion I replayed for you was at psychological age fourteen, Mr. Wilson, which we find the most revealing, for there is sufficient articulation by then and at the same time little of the superimposition of adult goals which one encounters by, say, age sixteen.”

  “Well,” said Wilson, dubiously, “it sounded to me more like my real desire was to play tennis. This business about painting seemed pretty tenuous—”

  “Trust us, Mr. Wilson. We are trained to probe deeply, and to interpret. As a fourteen-year-old, you spoke haltingly, true enough, but to a specialist, your meaning was crystal clear.”

  “Are you a psychologist?”

  “No, sir. Education is my area.” Mr. Davalo colored with what Wilson assumed wa
s pride. “Well,” he went on, taking a set of papers from his pocket, “let’s take a look at the program we have worked out for you, shall we?”

  However, in the course of settling himself down in his chair, he inadvertently gave the machine a kick, and Wilson’s recorded voice continued, ruminatively:

  “—like once I was horsing around a barn up near Tarrytown with this girl Mary, see, and we got to throwing these cow-pies up against the walls with pitchforks, just as a gag. Don’t ask me why—”

  Mr. Davalo bent quickly to turn the machine off again, but his papers tumbled from his lap, and he chose to retrieve them first.

  “—but anyway we did it,” Wilson’s voice droned on, “and it was a hell of a lot of fun, if you’ll excuse the expression. Well, the funny thing was that it was sort of exciting, in a way. I mean—well, I can’t quite explain it, but pretty soon this girl Mary kind of ran inside the barn and I went after her and she let me catch her on this pile of hay or straw or whatever it was, and darned if she didn’t flop right down on her back, with her dress hiked up, and started—”

  To Wilson’s disappointment, Mr. Davalo cut off the narrative here, and in a rather flustered state began reordering his handful of documents. Wilson tried to remember what had happened in that barn near Tarrytown, but he could recall nothing, and so was left in frustration. If Mr. Davalo were not such an old maid, he thought, he would ask him to play the rest of the recording later on.

  “Getting back to painting, Mr. Davalo,” he said, “I’m not sure that would be exactly right for me. I’ve been a Sunday painter of sorts, it’s true, but I’m not much good at it, and I’m afraid—”

  “Ah, but it’s all arranged, Mr. Wilson. Here.” Mr. Davalo began handing him the papers. “Your diploma in fine arts, sir, and your certificate of study abroad, including letters from the masters you worked under, plus notices of your first six one-man shows, and then here’s a little portfolio of color photographs of some of your work.” Wilson found himself fairly deluged with the papers, which with his bandaged fingers he could handle only with extreme difficulty. “You are an expert portraitist, Mr. Wilson,” Mr. Davalo added, “and I’m glad to see you’re in fine command of anatomy and detail, sir. If I may say so, your pictures have a haunting quality about them. Realism in treatment, sir, but poetic imagery in choice of subject. Not that I pretend to be a critic of painting . . .”

  Wilson glanced hastily at the documents, feeling that again questions of extreme personal importance had been settled far too speedily, without his approval.

  “But these diplomas are from reputable universities,” he exclaimed. “Surely such things could not safely be forged.”

  “That’s not my department, Mr. Wilson, but I can assure you that every item is bona fide and valid. We’ve never had a single spot of trouble from that quarter, sir.”

  “But these paintings. How could I pretend—”

  “You will be supplied with fresh paintings periodically, sir, while you perfect your own style at your leisure.”

  “But, good Lord, I could never approach a professional level, Mr. Davalo.”

  “Come, come, sir. Don’t be so sure. In any case, you are already established as a painter, and with the income provided for in your financial arrangement, your living expenses will be met regularly.” Mr. Davalo smiled patiently. “You are relieved of economic necessity, Mr. Wilson. You occupy a position of some dignity—nothing conspicuous, mind you, just the solid and mildly successful kind of thing. And you are free of any nagging considerations for others. See here, on the pamphlet that lists the works in one of your shows. You are a bachelor, according to this; the only son of deceased parents, and so forth. In short, you are alone in the world, Mr. Wilson, absolved of all responsibility except to your own interests and desires. Isn’t it marvelous, sir?”

  “I suppose so.” Wilson pawed anxiously through the documents. “Wait a minute. It gives my first name her. ‘Antiochus.’ That’s a terrible name to give a man, Mr. Davalo. Really, I must draw the line at that.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Wilson, but all of your records have been made up now.”

  “But it’s a preposterous name.”

  “You’ll get accustomed to it, sir. To my mind, it has a noble ring—Antiochus. Antiochus Wilson . . . a jewel of a name, if I may venture to say so. And besides, you are at liberty to use the diminutive ‘Tony’ if you like, in daily affairs. Take my own case. My name is Federico—a splendid name, but too elevated for ordinary purposes, and so I am known to my friends simply as Fred. In any event, sir, a man’s name is a minor matter, don’t you think? The man himself and his works—these are the important things.”

  “Somehow that sentiment seems inapplicable in my case, Mr. Davalo.”

  “Perhaps.” Mr. Davalo began to close up the recording machine. “If you like, I can ask a member of the Documents Division to come in and explain the necessity for the name, sir. They do have their reasons, I’m sure.”

  “No, thank you. That won’t be necessary. Um, could you tell me where Antiochus Wilson produces his paintings?”

  “Your studio, sir? I believe it’s in California somewhere. You’ll find it all in the documents, which I will leave so that you may examine them at your leisure.” Mr. Davalo lifted the recording case and inclined his head. “It’s been a pleasure, Mr. Wilson.”

  “No less for me, Mr. Davalo,” said Wilson, not without a touch of irony.

  After his guest had departed, he raised the documents in his clumsy hands and stared at them for a moment. Then, with a sigh, he let them drop and lay solemnly against his bedchair, gazing for a long time at the blankness of the white wall opposite.

  Chapter 3

  THE PLANE rushed forward. Wilson braced himself against the motion, and grasped the arms of his seat. Outside, the dunes of snow along the runway fled backward, then dropped down and tilted out of sight as the plane began its climbing turn and headed toward the sun.

  The aisle seat beside him was empty. He was thankful for that. “You’ll be self-conscious at first,” they had told him. “Don’t worry. It’s natural. It’ll wear off in a day or two.” They had been right this far. In the airport, he had felt that every pair of eyes had been turned on him, so that finally he had gone into the bar for a drink to steady his nerves. Now at least he would have a certain privacy for a few hours. Somewhat stealthily, he drew a pocket mirror from his coat and, for the hundredth time that day, examined his face.

  The surgeons had done an extraordinary job. They had taken a face that tended to be rounded, florid, and a bit jowly, and had somehow made it lean and long and hard, with prominent cheekbones and chin; and the weeks and weeks of dieting and exercise that had accompanied the surgical process had produced a physique to match.

  Only the eyes were the same. That morning when he had awakened in the airport motel and had gone cautiously over to the mirror, they had stared out of the strange new face like two old friends, bewildered and reproachful. It had been his first opportunity to examine himself, for although the last bandages had been removed two weeks before, he had not been permitted the use of a mirror.

  “Would you like coffee, sir?”

  “Oh. Yes, thank you, I believe I would.”

  Even the impersonal attention of the stewardess unnerved him. He wondered if she had caught him studying his mirror; tucking it away again, he picked up the newspaper he had purchased in the terminal, and sought to concentrate on the political columns of the editorial page. But his eyes strayed over to where the obituaries were carried, and he found himself reading each one suspiciously.

  “Here you are, sir.”

  “Eh? Oh, thank you.”

  “Luncheon will be served in about an hour, sir. I hope you have an enjoyable trip.”

  “Thank you very much . . .”

  The coffee tasted strong and rich. He sipped it gratefully, for it seemed to burn off the lingering fogginess in his head that was, he assumed, the legacy of the drug administrated t
he night before. They had handled him with their usual efficiency, for he had not the slightest recollection of what had happened. He had gone to bed, feeling remarkably drowsy, and then had awakened in the airport motel. What had occurred in between—how they had managed to transport him from their building all the way through the city and out to the airport—was a mystery. He had found himself attired in grey silk pajamas; on the luggage stand was a suitcase full of clothes, neatly packed; in the closet was the suit he now wore, and a topcoat and hat, and on the dresser, in front of the mirror where he would be certain to see it, was an envelope containing his airplane ticket and a typewritten note instructing him not to miss his flight, and, almost as an afterthought, providing him with his home address.

  He was alone. Free. Different.

  The pocket mirror was in his hand again; staring insolently out of it was Antiochus Wilson, a wolfish stranger who had gobbled up that plump banker and stolen his eyes.

  He could not bear to look at it for long. To occupy his hands, he unwrapped a cigar and busied himself with the process of trimming and lighting it. It wasn’t a bad face, he consoled himself. Far better than his old one, actually. It was just—well, it was just not his, that was all.

  To his alarm, he saw that the stewardess was approaching with a fixed smile.

  “I’m sorry, sir.” She bent over him, her teeth gleaming. “Cigarette smoking only, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh, of course. I’m sorry.” He stubbed out the cigar.

  Possibly to soften the effect of her official reproof, she remained hovering beside him. “Haven’t you been a passenger of mine before, on this flight?”

  “Oh, no.”

  The abruptness of his answer seemed at odds with the routine requirements of the situation, however, and so he added, hastily: “I mean, maybe I have, but I’m not sure. I fly a good deal coast to coast, you see,” he went on, feeling that he was struggling clumsily into contradictions, like a child spinning its first fib. “I’m a painter.” Another idiotic remark. He hastened to explain it. “Well, not that a painter does a lot of flying, ordinarily, but I’ve got shows in galleries in the East, you see . . .”