HE WAS AT his office by eight o’clock, fully awake after some three hours’ sleep and scornful of those drugged risers who had slept deeply for eight or more hours. If his limbs felt somewhat alien and fragile, it was a small price to pay for the wonderful ringing clarity of his brain.
A child, hanging on the iron rail up on the sidewalk, stared down at him in open-mouthed curiosity. Norman waved without interrupting his furious house cleaning. He threw away papers by the armload. The dust flew; to the child, Norman was like an unusual engine warming up amid clouds of smoke. In a half-hour the place had the stripped-down aspect of a warship’s bridge. Norman surveyed it with a savage smile, and the filing cabinet seemed to hunch up against the wall, intimidated. He gave a short bark of laughter and sat down by the phone.
First he called the elevator people and demanded in Irwin’s voice that they repair the elevator immediately.
“We’ll schedule a man for January seventh,” the man said dryly. “We’re booked up till then.”
“I said this week,” Norman-Irwin replied with a sharp quietness of command.
“Hey, buddy—you’re only one small job. You don’t give orders like that,” the man said, nevertheless slightly uneasy under the brassy voice Norman affected. “First come, first served.”
“One small job?” Norman said incredulously, feeling himself falling into the part; Del Rio would have been awed by his ability to project. “I guess you didn’t hear me. I said this was Moonbloom Realty.”
“Moonbloom?” the man said in genuine ignorance.
“You’ve heard of Uris, Zeckendorf, Levitt?”
“Yeah, I heard of them.”
“Well, put them all together and you have Moonbloom. You’re lucky I’m even taking the time to reason with you. Do you know that my time is worth . . . two hundred dollars an hour? Now I don’t like to throw my weight around, but we rannana rannana rannana. I’d hate to rannana rannana rannana . . .
When he hung up in the middle of the man’s fervent promise to have service by the middle of the week, Norman lost his breath in laughter. He stopped only when he felt a pain in his chest; then, with a deep breath, he collected himself and dialed Irwin’s number.
“I just wanted to explain why the check I’m sending you is a little smaller than you probably expected, Irwin.”
There was a sputter of words from Irwin, and he waited patiently to go on.
“Four tenants moved out because the apartments they lived in became uninhabitable. I’m working on repairing them.” Norman’s voice had the tiredly patient sound of a father.
“This is getting utterly impossible, Norman,” Irwin said, the indignation making his voice go up like xylophone notes. “I don’t know what’s come over you. You were always so sensible, so down to earth. I used to look at you every so often and I’d say, ‘My brother is one guy you can depend on.’ Are you getting deranged, or what?”
“What did I say that’s got you so upset?” Norman asked, enjoying fraud as though it were an unaccustomed liquor.
“I’ve heard every kind of excuse from the rotten agents I’ve had, but yours beats them all.”
“Irwin?” he said politely.
“Well, for Christ’s sake, telling me the goddamn buildings are shrinking!”
For some reason the silence was like the sound of a voice stuck on the letter “Y.”
“Norman?”
“YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY . . .”
“Are you there?”
“Yes, Irwin.”
“Well, what do you have to say?”
“Only that some things are beyond explanation.”
“That’s no answer.”
“Perhaps, Irwin . . . perhaps buildings can shrink.”
“I don’t know what this is all about. All I know is that if I wasn’t up to my neck with some tax people right now, I’d come over there and straighten this out, one way or another.”
“Please don’t worry, Irwin. Everything is going to be wonderful.”
“I don’t want to hear anything. Just you hear me—that next check better be here in two weeks. And by God, it better show me that those buildings have grown back to normal size.”
“Rest assured, Irwin.”
“Don’t talk, don’t say a thing. I can’t stand to hear your voice. Just do, do!”
“I’ll do,” he promised with a diabolic smile that would have maddened Irwin completely.
“You . . .” And Irwin hung up, leaving Norman with the phone in his hand like a dumbbell he was having difficulty lifting. Finally he placed it in its cradle and caressed it dreamily for a few minutes. Then he cleared his eyes and dialed Gaylord’s home number.
“H’lo,” a child’s voice answered.
“Is this Knight?”
“Nosir,” the child replied.
“Is this Henderson six, oh five eight seven?”
“Yessir.”
“Isn’t this Knight then?”
There was a long pause. Finally he heard the breath in the phone again. “This here mornin’.”
“What’s your name, sonny?”
“Harner.”
“Harner what?”
“Hamer sir.”
“Your last name, Hamer?”
“Knight.”
Norman sighed delicately. “Is your father there?”
There came the sound of whispering. “Who speakin’ please?”
“Moonbloom,” Norman said impatiently.
A whisper again and then, “He not here.”
“You tell him to get to this phone or I’ll fire him.”
The whispering, then “Oh my gooness, he just now come in,” Harner said woodenly.
“Yeah?” Gaylord said, breathing stupendously into the receiver; in Norman’s ear it sounded like a power saw.
“Now, Gaylord, I want you to stand by. All leaves canceled,” he said, feeling the presence of jehad. He was small as Bonaparte, but knew the importance was not himself; rather, perhaps, he was Marshal Ney, animated by obedience to the spirit of his impulse. This was the great campaign—what happened afterward was Irwin’s problem. Let Irwin throw all the tenants out afterward; the fulfillment was in the immediate future. Later was as irrelevant to now as the Hereafter was to life. And he was alive, burned down fine, responsive, passionate. “This afternoon I’ll meet you at Karloff’s room. We are going to wash and paint and burn filth.”
“What do you mean?”
“And tomorrow we paint the Lublins’.”
“What, what is all that?”
“We’re going to work, Gaylord,” he said, almost singing. “We’re going to fix everything.”
“Oh my God,” Gaylord moaned. “Oh my God almighty.”