by Sol Stein
Well, thought Jordan, I can’t reciprocate by telling you about what Abigail and I did to while away the time while you were in the hospital. You’d have a fit.
“I appreciate that,” Jordan said.
“Moreover,” Merle continued, “I haven’t sworn you to secrecy the way some organizations would. I have relied on our friendship and your trustworthiness.”
“That you have,” Jordan said.
“I will work with you for the first few months. Closely.”
“Merle,” Jordan said, “before you give me any details, I’ve got my business to run.”
“I didn’t drop a stitch in my regular affairs during the time I organized Cliffhaven. You’re a smart executive, Jordan. You know how to drop unessentials to pick up the creative parts of organization that need doing. I want you to find a suitable location within a few hours’ driving time of Dallas and Houston. First priority should be given to difficulty of access, a piece of land that’s hard to get in or out of except by one controlled egress.”
“I know a lot of places in New Mexico and Arizona that lend themselves to that, but in my part of the country…”
“I don’t mean a place where there’s an existing resort. We’ll build that, recruit a staff. It’ll be easy. I know how to find like-minded individuals and test their sincerity, and I’ve had all the experience of Cliffhaven that should make any new location much easier to accomplish. In fact, I’d lend you some of the Cliffhaven staff to train your people.”
“Merle,” Jordan said, “we’re good friends.”
“Shall I leave the room?” Abigail asked. “Whenever I hear men start off that way, I think I may be a supernumerary.”
“Please stay,” Jordan said. With a possible disagreement brewing, he had long ago learned that a woman’s presence was a moderating factor. Turning to Merle, he continued, “I hope we stay friends. But your thing, Merle, is your thing and not my thing.”
“You don’t agree with the necessity of reversing a historical travesty that gave the Jews an edge they have no right to?”
Merle Clifford hoped his friend was swinging toward affirmation. “I’m waiting to hear what you have to say, Jordan.”
“If I wanted to help reverse any genetic imbalance, if I believed it was important to do something of that sort, I’d find me two or three really bright, good-looking, A-l Christian gentlemen—any age will do—and set up a sperm bank for Christian ladies who wanted intelligent, good-looking children because they couldn’t get them from their husbands, or didn’t have husbands, or whatever. That could be done with a lot less expense, certainly less danger, and it could influence a lot more genes in a shorter period of time. You could go national with a scheme like that in no time.”
Jordan waited for Merle’s reaction. He figured he had the son of a bitch in a corner. While you’re thinking about how simple my idea is compared to yours, Jordan thought, maybe Abigail and I could wander upstairs and find ourselves a firm mattress.
“Jordan,” Merle said, “your idea is not bad at all. It would be an excellent supplement to a series of Cliffhavens, and would probably speed up the achievement of my genetic goals.”
“I was thinking of sperm banks instead of compounds.”
“Never,” Merle said.
He should have realized Merle was too far gone. You couldn’t shut down a place like Cliffhaven or turn it into a summer resort and expect nothing to happen.
“I had counted on you, Jordan.”
“Old friend,” Jordan said, “first rule of business, friendship, and everything else—you can’t count on anything in this life till you check it out.”
“I had not expected you to welsh, Jordan. I was counting on our friendship.”
Jordan had spent an adult lifetime finding ways to control his anger because he believed it never helped accomplish one’s objectives.
“You calling a marker on our friendship, Merle?”
“In a way I did that by showing you Cliffhaven.”
“Maybe we should have talked first.”
“You wouldn’t have believed I could do it without actually seeing it.”
“True,” Jordan said.
“Would you believe then that this plan means so much to me that I would be willing to sacrifice a friendship to see it succeed? Please reconsider. We could be partners all the way. We did it in oil, we can do it again.”
“Now look here, Merle, I don’t like Jews any more than you do probably. I don’t spend much time looking for them or avoiding them, and I don’t see much of any of them, and that’s that. Life is too goddam short to go chasing after crazy ideas that don’t make sense. Please don’t get me wrong. If you thought you had a strike halfway between here and Hawaii and wanted a partner to help build a contraption that could raise oil from the middle of the ocean, I’d take a good hard look at it and probably come aboard. If it didn’t work, all that’d be lost is time and money. But you’re asking me to invest a helluva lot more in something that gives you kicks.”
“Kicks?” Merle felt as if he’d been slapped in the face. “I’m a scientist. I’m not just dealing in ideology, but in hard facts of genetic history.”
“Well now, Merle, a sperm bank, as I said, is one thing. But I think you enjoy keeping Jews captive. Wouldn’t you say he does, Abigail?”
Abigail looked at the two of them. Merle was smarter by far, and she prized intelligence not in general but in her man. California was a particularly dangerous climate for beliefs that turn into vehicles for death. Merle had kept Cliffhaven’s real purpose from her until it was operational. What could a wife do, go to the police? Particularly a wife who’d kept her own secrets for so long? Besides, she thought, Merle was on the right track.
“I know Merle has enjoyed the success of Cliffhaven,” she said.
“Bullshit,” Jordan said. “He likes caging them, and he probably gets a kick out of killing off some of them. I know that look. We have people like that in Texas. Merle likes being visiting king of that little world up there, with the power of death.”
“You are distorting everything,” Merle said.
“I hope to Jesus Christ I am,” Jordan said. He turned to Abigail. “I appreciated seeing both of you again. Dinner was excellent.” Turning to Merle, he said, “I won’t say a word about what I saw to anyone. Now I’ll take my leave. I assume your man can drive me to the airport.”
“I thought you were staying the night,” Abigail said.
“Under the circumstances, I think I’d best shove off.”
Merle rang for the Japanese manservant. When he appeared Merle said, “Mr. Everett has decided he must get back to Texas.”
The Japanese nodded his head in Jordan’s direction as if to say he was sorry to hear the news.
“Would you be good enough,” Merle continued, “to see that Mr. Everett and his suitcase get to Los Angeles International?”
The Japanese nodded.
“You are making a mistake,” Merle said, extending his hand.
“I don’t think so,” Jordan said, shaking it.
As Merle went into the front hall, the Japanese following, Abigail and Jordan were alone for a moment.
“I got good memories of this house,” he said. “Don’t you worry.”
“Be careful.”
“I fly so often. I don’t think about it any more.”
That wasn’t what she meant, but now the Japanese had stepped back into the room as a signal for Jordan to follow him, and she could say no more.
*
When Merle returned from the door, she sat in front of the unlit fireplace, turning the brandy snifter in her hand.
“Another, dear?” Merle asked.
She nodded.
He poured just a touch more than he would have ordinarily.
“Aren’t you having any?” Abigail asked.
“I’ll join you in a few minutes, love. I have an important transaction to complete on the phone.”
She thought he hadn’t ca
lled her love for years. It felt ominous rather than comforting.
*
Seated in the comfort of the limousine, Jordan thought about Merle, a sound man, a hard-working, intelligent man, just a wee bit over the line and he’s in deeper than hell. He’d read about others, but this was the first time he’d seen someone he knew who had crossed the line.
Jordan was glad he knew the way to the airport. He didn’t want to be driven anywhere else. He felt a bit like a gunfighter who likes to sit, with his back against the wall, facing the door of the tavern. But the Japanese man drove straight to LAX, and Jordan was mighty glad to see the airport lights. He closed his eyes. If there’d been another twenty minutes, he’d treat himself to a catnap. He wasn’t worried about catching the next plane to Dallas. There was always room in first class. He’d better try phoning Mary again before getting aboard.
It was the slightly abrupt swing of the car that caused him to open his eyes. They were inside the airport, but instead of keeping on the main road to the departure gates, they’d swung off toward one of the hangars. Jordan tapped on the glass partition. The driver glanced around for a split second, nodded, and continued toward the hangar. Straight ahead a door large enough for a small plane was being swung open.
*
The limousine came to a stop inside. The door behind was being closed by a man in an airline mechanic’s uniform. The Japanese driver got out of the car in a hurry, pointing to the back seat. Nodding, the mechanic reached into his tunic, took out a European-made gun with a silencer, opened the rear door. Jordan heard the trunk being opened. Was his suitcase being removed by these jamockos? What the hell was going on here? Jordan moved toward the other door, managed to pull the lock up, and was just pulling back on the handle that opened the door when he felt the mechanic put something against his head, and then there was an overwhelming explosion and nothing else.
8
There is between sleep and wakefulness a moment when the regeneration of consciousness causes the awakened sleeper to note his location, almost always his own bed. If it is not, locating oneself in wakefulness takes a split-second longer. If one sees, as Henry now saw, a familiar person in the same bed, there is comforting reassurance that one’s own is in the bed even if the bed is not one’s own. Margaret’s face, whose life he usually credited to the animation with which she spoke, in repose seemed graced by the peace of heaven. If he had an artist’s skill, he would paint Sleeping Woman.
Men who are attracted to women’s bodies first, Henry thought, were shoppers, not lovers. His great initial surge of overwhelming affection for Margaret had been for her idiosyncratic mind, for whatever it was inside her head that enabled her to think and say the things that made him know that this woman would never be ordinary, would never, even after long acquaintance, bore him. Yes, her face was distinctive in a way that he found immediately attractive. Her shape, then, was a young woman’s, remarkably unremarkable to him. It was only in time that her body, because it was hers, became a sculpture by which he would judge perfect form. Rubens had his plumpnesses, Rodin his Amazons. He had Margaret for perfect form, knowing that it was a private perfection he could not with the greatest skill share with anyone else. She was to him in his one lifetime what woman was, and looking at her, still asleep, he was yet again in love.
As he turned toward the window, the bright California light streaming through the filigree curtains struck Henry’s eyes, and the reflex of closing them put him for a second in darkness. He sat upright instantly, his eyes wide open, suddenly, brutally awake, staring at the door of the room, remembering that it was locked from the outside.
Out of bed he pulled the thin curtains back. It couldn’t have been long after sunrise. The cloudpuffs floating just over the hills behind Cliffhaven created the illusion of a landscape emitting wisps of steam. Would it be a hot day?
He looked down. Guests were drifting toward the dining room in one and twos, unhurried. Or were they played out, exhausted from attempting what he had yet to really try—escape? Most people accepted life as it came to them; they would adjust to Cliffhaven as to any circumstance, good or bad, into which they wandered. Henry had never respected the drones of the world. As a young man his high energy drove him to perfect his skills, to mold his growing business to design. Planning his months and years, he assumed that everyone else must feel as he did: life was there to take. Only with maturity did he accept what his senses had told him earlier, there were differences in metabolism among people, there were differences in horsepower and will.
He remembered what Margaret had said about his college friend William Perlmutter; the man was totally without ambition, a survivor scuttling along the ocean floor. As a young man just out of college, William seemed to look around and decide to let his engine idle for the balance of his life. They stayed friends, two men from different planets who looked at everything from opposite ends of a telescope. When Margaret’s group of sharp wits gathered for an evening’s discussion, William was always invited, and always came, as a listener. On rare occasions when he had had a bit more to drink than was his custom, William might suddenly interject a question—never an opinion—though it was clear to those who knew him that his question was an expression of opposition couched in the politest form. Whether or not his question was answered to his satisfaction, the energy consumed in getting himself to ask it so alarmed his placid core that he would sit back afterward as if exhausted, sliding back into his role in life, observing other people live. Henry sighed for his friend, a nice man everyone agreed, a thoroughly agreeable nonparticipant. How many of those people he was now watching through the window, trudging to the dining hall, were Williams, accepting their imprisonment the way they would an unjust traffic ticket—pay and forget it—the way William would?
It made him think of the time when he and Margaret had gone into the city to celebrate their anniversary and, after a posttheater dinner, had stayed the night at a hotel. On their way back the following morning, they found a ticket for illegal parking on their car at the station. He phoned the police and learned that long ago an ordinance had been passed forbidding overnight parking at the station between October 30th and April 30th to facilitate snow removal. No warnings were posted anywhere, Henry complained. Ah, the police told him, the ordinance was published in the local paper. When? They couldn’t tell him, so he took the trouble to find out. The Saturday morning he spent in the library was worth it. He allowed himself to be distracted by news, as he went back year by year, and not just by the local ordinances. How marvelous to learn what had been going on in that town before he arrived, the political strivings, the fires that commanded attention, car crashes, emotional editorials about issues long dead. And then he found the ordinance prohibiting overnight parking at the railroad station—passed in 1927, the year of Henry’s birth.
Though the ticket was only two dollars, while still sitting in the library Henry decided to appear in court and plead not guilty.
The judge told him that ignorance of the law was no excuse. Yes, Henry had agreed, but it was unreasonable to expect knowledge of this particular law. Did his Honor assume citizens moving into the community would read all the back issues of the newspapers? If so, how far back—1927, 1917, 1902?
The judge ordered the town to put up notice boards in three locations in the station parking lot. Henry did not pay the two dollars. The town’s cost for the notice boards was one hundred and seventy-five dollars, and every time Henry passed them thereafter, he took pride in having caused government to be reasonable. When he told the story to William, William had said Henry was an innocent fool, wasting precious hours of life over two dollars. And Henry had said to William that William’s attitude—don’t do anything about city hall, pay and forget—led, perhaps one small step at a time, to the gas chambers.
He woke Margaret by gently kissing her cheek. As she stirred and started to speak, Henry, leaning over her, held a finger to his lips, then pointed over his shoulder. For a moment Margaret didn
’t remember, then realized that he was pointing at the camera up on the far wall. Henry saw dismay flicker like a delta of crow’s feet from the corners of Margaret’s eyes. He gestured toward the bathroom.
After they’d had a chance to use it privately, he turned the shower on so they could talk and not be overheard from the bug he had not yet detected but was sure was in place.
“Wear walking shoes and slacks to dinner,” he whispered. “And something over your top that can take the underbrush. As soon as it’s dark tonight, we go.”
“What about Clete?”
“I’ll figure out a way to duck him.”
She was the diagnostician, he was the fixer. She trusted him to find a solution.
The moment they were both dressed and ready, the phone rang. It was a new voice, not the young woman he had spoken to yesterday.
“Clete will be around in a minute,” she said.
Henry looked up. They were being watched on closed-circuit television, of course. Right up against the wall underneath the camera would surely be out of its range. He motioned Margaret over to him. “Courage,” he said, giving it the French pronunciation.
In a moment, as promised, they could hear the locks being opened. The door swung ajar, but Clete did not step across the threshold.
“Good morning,” he said.
“Good morning,” Margaret replied, a reflex she immediately regretted.
Henry’d be damned if he’d say good morning to the man.
“Sleep well?” Clete asked.
This time neither replied.
“No rule around here that you’ve got to talk,” Clete said. “I’m heading for breakfast. You can follow me if you want to.”
And off he went, nonchalantly, leaving them staring through the open doorway.
“Of course, we’ll eat. We’re not out to punish ourselves,” Henry said lightly.
They followed Clete by perhaps twenty feet, enjoying the illusion of freedom.
Henry decided that he would look more closely at the faces of the other guests, peer for some clue of strength, determination, willingness to communicate with the newcomers. A thought occurred to him. Had the strong ones escaped already? If so, why hadn’t the outside world been alerted to the goings-on in Cliffhaven? Or had something else happened to those who resisted or tried to escape and only the passive ones were left?