When he tried to sneak a peek on his way to the bathroom, the installer, crunching newspaper and paint chips as he moved, positioned himself to block the view. The guy had taken off his jacket, and white dust sprinkled his jeans and denim shirt. He jumped back into place as Parker came out, blocking a glimpse of littered wires and springs and the dark interior of the open panel.
“Would you like a sandwich? a beer?” Parker leaned to one side, mirrored by the installer, who was trying to fill his sight. (The man shook his head.) “I don’t suppose I could—”
“John thinks it’ll work better if you don’t know what it does.” The installer wiped his hands on a rag. “But okay, if you’ve got a minute you can help me test one thing. You go in there,” he pointed to the living room, “I’ll be right out.”
Parker went to the couch and sat down. He placed his right ankle on his left thigh, clamped his folded hands over his knee, and drew a breath. “Whenever you’re ready.”
The installer came out carrying a speaker the size of a tabletop radio’s; a cord attached to the speaker played out till he stopped in front of the couch. “I’m going to test the subliminals.”
“Did you say subliminals?” Parker recalled the Doomsday Baby and thought his worst fears were being realized: John had contrived something whimsical and complicated. “I always thought that stuff didn’t work. I heard that scientists…”
Grinning, the installer began to recite the words in unison with Parker: “…tested subliminal advertising back in the fifties and the early sixties.”
Parker stopped and stared. “And…” He waited for the installer to provide the next word.
“it’s…”
They completed the sentence together: “…all bunk!”
“Wow!” Parker laughed. “You mean that was subliminal advertising?”
“Yup. They’ve been running that one on TV and radio for years.”
The installer set the speaker on the floor and returned to the back. A few seconds later the speaker emitted a scratchy rendition of Glen Miller’s “In the Mood.”
The installer poked his head round the corner. “What are you feeling?”
“Thirsty,” Parker said.
“Great. Test completed.”
“Wait!”
The installer’s head reappeared.
Ignoring an expression he’d seen countless times before—the look that means, “This job would be great if I wasn’t for the damn people”—Parker said, “I’m going to hear the same subliminal message as my intruder…should I be wearing earplugs or something?”
The installer ran a hand over his skull, smoothing down his hairs. “No.”
Parker tried to think it through. “I suppose it could still work if the message was something like ‘go to sleep.’ ”
“You’re thinking of hypnosis. Subliminals don’t work that way.”
“Let’s see. It could still get the job done if it says ‘run away’ and we both run away, or ‘turn yourself in to the police’ and we both—”
“Specific subliminal commands are hit-and-miss; they don’t work that precisely. The subliminals here aren’t that kind, and they’re only a small part of the system. Okay?”
“Something along the lines of ‘Save the babies’?”
The installer’s face disclosed nothing but his impatience. “Look. If you’re having second thoughts, I could still pack it up.”
“Wait! Just answer this.” Parker stood up. “If your life depended on having the world’s ultimate security system, would you trust this one?”
“Ultimate security,” said the installer, “means something different for everyone. John thinks this is the ultimate security for you. Of course if you don’t trust John…”
“John’s a genius and my best friend. There’s no one I’d trust more to get me through this.” Hearing himself make the choice calmed Parker down. The installer went back to work. Parker went back to grading with his faith restored, except for one bad moment when what sounded like a giant spring uncoiled with a cartoonish BOING!
* * *
—
When he’d finished grading he decided to go teach his class as usual. In part it was an act of defiance—“You know where to find me, bastards!,” etc.—but the installer wouldn’t be done for hours, the bodyguard wasn’t due till five, and he’d probably be just as safe at work. He could have hidden out for a while but thought the best survival tactic might be mindless adherence to routine.
Looking out the window of the El, he worked on his protective obtuseness. The train made it easier, the crush of strangers and the rhythm of the ride creating a near-trance state of their own. He tried to fix on the bright vacancy beyond his smeared reflection and the blinking rush of trees.
As usual he had the feeling people were staring, and he concentrated, if that was the word, on ignoring it, until a shape in his peripheral vision leaned across the shape on the seat next to him, and a woman’s voice asked if he was Jeffrey Parker. He couldn’t manage to snip her out of the world, as he had the man in the restaurant, and he felt like he was merely being rude as he continued to stare out the window. After she’d gone the feeling of people staring remained. He tried to recall a time when he could count on reassuring himself by having a look.
The prospect that what he’d see would not be reassuring finally made it impossible not to look. He saw his own face on the front page of a newspaper held open above the first of the backward-moving seats.
It was Steve Dobbs’ tabloid, The Exhibitionist. The headline read, PROFESSOR PLAGUED BY VAGUE FORCES. He and his image on the front page regarded each other with mutual puzzlement. He couldn’t tell when the photo had been taken but made a note that if he lived through the day he’d shave off the damn mustache. For decades he’d barely noticed it—shaved around it, flicked off crumbs, and otherwise forgot it was there. At the time he’d grown it, he’d supposed it made him look like a gloomily sensitive Eastern European intellectual; he looked like the last man in the disco.
He wondered what else he’d missed during all the years he hadn’t been paying attention and realized that today might be his last chance to find out. But he couldn’t afford to be the sort of doomed man who sees things as if for the first time. He believed that all the while he’d been missing everything, he’d been learning precisely how to survive this day.
A woman’s face appeared over the top of The Exhibitionist and caught him looking. He turned back to the window after noting she was more presentable than he expected Steve’s readers to be—stratospheric eyes behind big designer frames, short springy blond hairdo. He supposed this was the one he’d snubbed, and here she was coming up the aisle, probably to call him an asshole. He had it coming, so he resisted taking refuge in the window. She was turning sideways to squeeze through the crowd, grabbing a pole as the train lurched.
She carried a briefcase and had on an expensive tan overcoat unbuttoned over the sort of navy-blue power suit Fran wore. He tried to account for the intensity of her smile and didn’t rule out the possibility that she was insane. “You are Jeffrey Parker!”
The guy next to him—a skinny black teenager in a Cubs cap—drew back his head to check out this Jeffrey Parker: Big deal.
“My name is Natalie Westerman. I was just reading about you!” They shook hands over Parker’s seatmate. “When I think of everything you’ve faced…I don’t think I’d have had the courage.”
He thought of replying, “It doesn’t take courage to ‘face’ a pie when there’s no time to duck. Anyway, I wasn’t paying attention.” But, susceptible to the praise of attractive women, he allowed his silence to be taken for modesty.
“I suppose they say ‘vague forces’ because it involves powerful people behind the scenes?” The breathlessness in her voice was suddenly familiar. She was a fan. He recalled the fawning secretary at Tolerance Management and
wondered if he was about to become the latest celebrity-victim. There’d been a good deal written lately about the blurring of victims and heroes; if pressed by Natalie Westerman he thought he might observe that a victim is just a hero without means.
“May I see that?” he asked, and she handed across the paper.
The threats against Steve Dobbs and his family had served their purpose; the article contained not one detail. Its impenetrable style veered between pseudoscientific abstraction (“Parker lives in a realm between causality and casualty”) and Celtic Twilight lyricism (“his leaden, dove-gray days”). Poor Steve!
“I suppose you’d like me to sign that?”
“Oh yes, please!”
He signed “Vaguely, Jeff Parker” and handed back the paper. A dozen more people pressed around him, some holding copies of The Exhibitionist.
“I couldn’t help feeling a connection as I read your story,” said Natalie Westerman. “I know this sounds odd but I kept thinking—”
“—the same thing happened to you?”
“Why yes!”
“Me too!” said an old man in a leather cap with dangling chinstraps. There were murmurs of assent.
“Not exactly the same thing.” Natalie Westerman narrowed her eyes in the effort to express her meaning. “But I kept thinking there was a connection…that what happened to you somehow…” People around her said “Yeah!” and “Me too!”
He’d thought his story would be greeted a tad more skeptically. People seemed eager to believe it—believed it, considering that the article was hopelessly obscure, without knowing what it was. Perhaps it confirmed something they’d always suspected and had only been waiting for permission to express: They, too, had been forced to eat a peck of dirt.
“Do you believe everything you read in The Exhibitionist?” Parker asked Natalie.
“Of course not! We pass it around the office for laughs, but then you start thinking. Of course some of it is just too dreadful to—”
“The dreadful has already happened,” said a voice behind Parker, so deep it seemed to come up from the rumbling floor of the car. The voice-of-doom delivery left no doubt what he’d find in the seat behind him, but he couldn’t resist the impulse to show off for his fans.
He turned to face the usual props in the latest incarnation. “Ah, there you are!” he said to the faceless man and smoothed down his hair in the mirror lenses. “At least you’re quoting Heidegger. Classing up the act?”
“No, man, it’s the Legion.” This one had long greasy pale-blond hair and a brown beard; he reached into his trenchcoat pocket and unfolded a yellow flyer, which he held up for Parker and the crowd.
The Dreadful Has Already
Happened!
What are you going to do about it?
Come to the Legion of Faceless Men Convention
Today! 6 P.M., Anton J. Cermak Arena
Addressing the crowd, the disguised man said, “It’s today at six o’clock, folks, and you’re all welcome. What you people are talking about—that’s just the sorta thing we’re fighting.”
In the mirror lenses Parker watched himself run a thumb over his mustache. “What do you think, Natalie? Deep-six the mustache?”
“Jeff, it’s an honor,” said the faceless man. “Your fight is ours, man. It would be righteous if you’d come speak to us tonight.”
“And what if I don’t? What if I just don’t go?” It was the question Parker had been asking himself for days. He gave his mirrored face a sardonic expression, hardening every feature, but his fear seemed to leak out of the cracks. “Let me put it this way. I’m not going.”
“Then we’ll all fight the good fight in our separate ways, but I just want you to know, man, we’re with you.”
“You certainly are with me—every time I turn around.”
“Yeah!” said the people in the aisle, cheering whatever they thought he’d said. “Right!” “Damn straight!” They looked angry and mildly disoriented; it was only just dawning on them that the dreadful had already happened.
* * *
—
As they pulled into the terminal he wondered what his mom would say if he told her about the vague forces and the faceless men. Perhaps she’d say, “The world doesn’t revolve around you, Mr. Bigshot.” The world doesn’t revolve around you, Mr. Bigshot. It seemed a perfect mantra to keep his mind constricted, and he recited it under his breath as he stepped off the train.
* * *
—
He arrived for class early, but most of his students were already there, copies of The Exhibitionist in hand, each no doubt awaiting a chance to confide, “The same thing happened to me!” Adele Slansky had been given a wide berth at the seminar table. It was the first time he’d seen her since the bad-smell incident, and her glittering furious eyes, tremendous behind their cataract lenses, reminded him of those rogue comets which, according to a recent Nova, periodically destroy all life on earth. He’d phoned her after the incident and tried to convince her that he wasn’t the enemy, but her perfectly civil replies were delivered in the tone of someone who says “Have a nice day!” in lieu of throwing a punch.
“Mrs. Slansky,” he’d reminded her that night on the phone, “I’ve known you my whole life.”
“Yes, dear, and I know you.”
“Surely you don’t think—”
“Of course not, Jeffrey. Now why would I believe any such thing, hmmm?”
“The same people who hurt you are trying to hurt me. I think we ought to share what we know.”
“Yes, Jeffrey, I’m sure you know my enemies quite well. I’d love to go on chatting, but I’m in the middle of dinner, and you wouldn’t want to interrupt my meal, would you? Say hello to your mother, dear!”
Taking his place at the head of the seminar table, he braced himself to try again. “How are you feeling today, Mrs. Slansky?”
“How do I feel? Why thank you for asking, dear. I feel just fine.” The magnified ice balls blazed toward collision with the earth.
Just before class began, John Connor Murray walked in and seated himself next to Mrs. Slansky. “I hope you don’t mind my sitting in. Adele and I are going to the convention today.” Instead of the usual white carnation, he was wearing a red rose in his buttonhole. “We have a rendezvous with destiny, young Parker. Shall we split a cab?” Jack expressed destiny with pop eyes and a dropped jaw. And when Parker shook his head dismissively, he goggled his disappointment. Jack turned to Mrs. Slansky, and the two paranoids whispered in the manner of conspirators: nudges, chuckles, sideways glances.
Was it possible that these two were an item? Mrs. Slansky was in her seventies, more than ten years older than Jack, and she’d been weakened by her stroke, while Jack seemed in furiously good health. The last time Parker had seen them together they’d been agreeing that the manager of the Oakton Theater would, if he could, have made Mrs. Slansky dig her own grave. Could mutual paranoia be the basis for romance? It would confirm certain clichés, Parker thought: Love as a conspiracy of two, the purest form of Us Against Them. Parker was jealous, recalling the disdain with which Fran said, “Your conspiracy.” The thought of these two as a couple seemed endearing, though he was doing his best not to picture it too clearly.
He knew he was focusing on gossipy speculation to keep his fears at bay. But if he was hoping to change the subject when class began, his students were having none of it. His complainers wanted to talk about vague forces and faceless men and the little guy. He forbade several students from donning the fake beards and mirror sunglasses that 7-Eleven was handing out free with a ten-dollar purchase. But when Steve Margolis suggested that Parker, having fought the vague forces, was just the sort of role model the Legion was looking for, Parker blew up. “Haven’t I taught you people anything?”
Continuing in a gentler tone, he urged his complainers to
check their sources, define their terms. He warned them against mistaking slogans for arguments, spite for grievance, cattle prods for the still small voice. He reminded them what they ought to have learned after nine weeks of listening to one another’s complaints: that self-pity is funny. That from the moment they slap your ass in the delivery room you have your complaint, and it was easy to mistake it for your cause. He’d been hoping—just in case this proved to be his last class—to leave his students with a Mr. Chips valedictory, but judging by the expressions of puzzlement around the table, he wasn’t carrying it off. He knew that his arguments for logic, empiricism, and common sense were coming out in a giddy adrenaline rush. But he couldn’t stop now, he was on a roll, and he went on to analyze the phrases of the Legion and the Exhibitionist. Vague forces—what were those? The little guy—who was he? The elites—who were they, and why couldn’t some of them be little? As for this plot against him—if there was such a plot, why did the article name no other names, no dates, no sources? He attacked the article so exuberantly that it was only at the end of class that he remembered it was true. Turning down offers to carpool to the convention, he shot out the door. All he wanted now was to pick up his mail, go home, watch TV with his bodyguard, and if necessary watch the world’s most sophisticated security system do its stuff.
“The world doesn’t revolve around you, Mr. Bigshot,” he recited under his breath, buoyed through the crowd in the hall on waves of protective obtuseness. “Hello, Andrea!” he sang to the receptionist as he picked up his mail, and Andrea—a tiny brunette with a ponytail and purple fingernails—handed him a phone message. He read it and stepped back toward the mailboxes, trying to slow down his thoughts. He reread it as people brushed past him reaching for their mail. The worst he could imagine had happened, and all he could do was pay attention. He kept rereading the message, filling himself to the brim. He got to his office somehow, locked the door, and went on rereading the message.
The Blindfold Test Page 24