WAGNER’S MAIDEN EFFORT AS bank robber took place at lunchtime on the following day. Fortune favored him at the outset: Pascal had a dental appointment late in the morning and therefore would not be in a condition to eat lunch, even if, as he boasted, nothing more was done to his teeth than the semiannual prophylaxis. Naturally he make no reference to the kick Wagner had given him the night before, but apparently it had done its job, for nothing was missing from the desk. Presumably something of this sort could be used to correct unpleasant or even dangerous addictions. If every time a heavy smoker lighted up, he received, from thin air, a boot in the behind, he might well be able to overcome the habit. Whether this would be a powerful enough deterrent to the use of addictive drugs, however, was another matter. And of course to have any significant social effect such measures would have to be enacted by an army of invisible men.
Wagner couldn’t kid himself: invisibility must be used to further his own interests, and as soon as he began to take money that was not his, those were antisocial, which was to say, criminal, in the same area as embezzlement and forgery. He had a choice: he might have walked into a bank with a real or fake gun, stuck up a teller, then escaped by becoming invisible. But for a man with no experience of action, this plan had little allure. Pointing a genuine, loaded firearm at another person would be difficult for him, and even with a toy pistol he would not have adequate confidence to hold it steady. With either, he might well be shot down by bank guards or a fortuitous police officer... He chose the other option.
And another bank than the one at which he maintained a checking account, for though his was a large branch with many tellers, all of whom were incessantly being exchanged for newcomers, and none of whom gave him so much as a glance as he stood before the window, not to mention that while committing the crime he would be invisible from start to finish, Wagner intended to err only on the side of caution. Should the invisibility fail—and it seemed to him it might; it had yet to be tried under conditions of extreme stress—he still would have a chance to escape unrecognized. Most of his colleagues took their paychecks to the same institution used by him, whereas he was certain to be utterly unknown to all mortals found on the premises of a bank say four blocks north and two west. Which was the way of the city: that not in one’s immediate neighborhood was Mars.
However, having found such a bank and entered in the most unobtrusive manner an invisible person could enjoy, viz., occupying the slot of a swinging door being moved by a visible man in the compartment ahead, Wagner got quite a shock, for who were the first people he saw as the door came around but Jackie Grinzing and Morton Wilton! The latter was handing a sheaf of small documents to a teller at the nearest window.
Discouraged, Wagner stayed right in the door and let himself be turned on around to where he had come from. On the sidewalk he was roughly jostled as a remarkably robust man stepped with energy into what seemed an empty space. Encountering the unseen but palpable Wagner, he was confused but even more determined to make headway than at the outset. The result was a short but violent episode in which Wagner got punched in the nose by a flailing arm, perhaps even his own. Witnesses of the event were not quick to believe the other man was even eccentric. One passerby addressed a companion: “Must be a bee or wasp in there.” “Or maybe,” said the other, “just a stink.”
“Damn,” said Wagner, aloud, having finally realized his escape: he felt a wetness on his upper lip. “Do I have a nosebleed?”
“I don’t see any blood,” said one of the latest people on the scene, walking on Wagner’s invisible right foot, addressing her companion. “It’s just your imagination.”
Wagner had to find somewhere out of traffic to plot his next move, else he would continue to sustain damage, for the to-and-fro parade was growing. He stepped to the side of the door just as Jackie and Wilton emerged.
On the sidewalk Wilton grinned at her and asked, “E.F.?”
“No, F.F.,” said Jackie, with an expression that looked at first like pain but was apparently a form of desire.
They went west, undoubtedly en route to a hotel. Invisibility would be a boon to the blackmailer. The technique certainly should be kept out of the hands of a real criminal.
It was unlikely that Wagner would encounter anyone else he recognized, but this bank seemed jinxed for him. There was another at the catercorner. He headed for it, and immediately had another unpleasant experience. Being invisible had, despite the punishment he had only just received in the swinging door, made him feel immaterial, and as he started to cross the street in defiance of the heavy traffic moving on it, he was almost struck by a lurching van.
Leaping back to the curb, he was pretty close to giving up the project for this day. Yes, his nose was bleeding. In his current condition he could not see the liquid on his exploratory fingers, but blood it had to be. Perhaps it was dripping on his tie and shirt. He put a handkerchief to his face. When he returned to visibility what a mess he would be! He must clean himself up in one public toilet or another, and to do that he would have to be visible. He was really botching what had seemed simple enough in projection, at least for the preliminary phases. If he had such trouble merely entering a bank, what could he expect when helping himself to money?
But in fact the last-named turned out to be the most easily accomplished achievement of the day. He crossed the street with the light, went into the other bank, lingered near the electrically latched door-gate between the executives’ desks and the tellers’ area until it was opened—which took no time at all, for persons came and went frequently in the incessant transaction between the two—moved along the counter as he had in the post office, and, when one of the tellers (who were all female), took a step to the side, he scooped a handful of hundred-dollar bills from her open cash drawer. As the designers of this bank had shrewdly placed these drawers below the line of vision of anyone not abnormally tall, given the width of the fake-marble counter as it extended towards the customer, plus the plate-glass barrier above it, the eyeglassed, balding man on the other side did not observe the theft—though no doubt if he had so done he would have assumed the fault lay in his own vision. That was the beauty of being invisible: in questionable circumstances people tend not to believe their own eyes.
Wagner’s leaving the scene of the crime was as neat as had been his arrival. He now applied himself to the problem of the blood on his clothing. Ironically enough, this proved insuperable to the successful bank robber, the man who could vanish at will. He could not clean himself unless he could see what he was doing. If he materialized before the mirror in a public toilet, he could be seen by others. Now, there was nothing to link someone suffering from a nosebleed with a bank robbery, especially when the thief had been invisible, and the money might not be missed until the tallies at the end of the day, so Wagner had no serious reason for worry. He was nevertheless averse to showing his bloodstains; they could be interpreted as having been received while committing a crime of violence, and under the subsequent interrogation by the police, he might crack. He was after all a bona fide lawbreaker now, for the first time in his life. Stiffing the lunch counter had been in the guise of taking a loan. There could be no alternative characterization of the means by which he had filled the pocket of his jacket with hundred-dollar bills.
On the way back to the office he stopped off at a five-and-dime and stole a little pocket mirror. At his building he had to share the elevator with a sudden crowd of lunch-time returnees. His presence was unknown to the others, and with innocent brutality they crushed him into a corner. The man just ahead turned to see what could be the baffling obstruction, and flooded him, at the range of four inches, with foul breath. He was not released until the car climbed to three floors above his own and the throng departed as one.
Finally arriving at his own offices, he went to the men’s room and into a booth. He became visible there and inspected himself in the pocket mirror. There was some blood on him, but less than he had supposed: a few drops, now dried brown, on his left lapel, none on his tie. He was able to make himself presentable with a saliva-moistened handkerchief.
He brought the beautiful new bills from his pocket. They were so fresh and crisp as to have cohered as if they were yet in the teller’s drawer. He felt the emanations of their power. He would not have been astonished had the stack emitted an audible hum of generatorlike might. He counted them. He had taken twenty-two bills. That was two thousand, two hundred dollars, a long ton of money to obtain during a lunch hour with very little work.
Pascal was standing before the mirror when Wagner emerged. Even in his discomfort the former never missed so slight an event as another man’s leaving a toilet stall. He was angled over a washbasin, face all but touching the glass, palpating his upper lip.
His reflection spoke. “It feels all puffed up.” He pulled his face back. “How’s it look to you? Swollen?”
“No,” said Wagner. “Why? Were you punched?”
Pascal winced in reproach. “Didn’t I say I was going to the dentist’s? He gave me not one shot but two. Then drilled for what seemed like an hour, but said it was only a minor cavity.” Now he poked out a cheek-swelling with his tongue, deflated it to add, “Hope never to see a major one.” He moved quickly so as to accompany Wagner out the door.
But Wagner certainly did not want to be seen leaving the men’s room in such company, in view of the vile charges that had been anonymously placed against him.
He snapped his fingers. “Damn.” He showed the sick smile with which one sometimes confessed to a weakness and said, knowingly, “Go ahead. I’ve got to finish what I came here for.”
Pascal would have argued—that’s the kind of guy he was—but Wagner grimaced, put a hand to his belt buckle, and returned quickly to the booth. He heard Pascal reluctantly leave, but would wait awhile anyhow, for the other, keen on sharing the banalities of routine dental work, was capable of lingering in the hallway. Or even, for the door now was reopened, of returning for more facial examination, anything to keep Wagner captive. Goddamn the man.
Wagner therefore decided, rashly, to become invisible: let Pascal cope with the mystery of where he had gone... But might it not be more likely that in Pascal’s quest to understand he would prove more intrusive than ever?
While Wagner was pondering on the matter someone went into the booth just next his. That did it; he must leave before the new arrival began to strain.
Invisibly, he stepped from the stall and went towards the door, but before he got there it opened to admit the sallow-faced clerk whose sullen manner made visits to the stockroom so unpleasant. It was no surprise that this young man moved more quickly now than when filling an order, but what did seize Wagner’s interest, just as he caught the door on its way back to the jamb, was what the stockroom clerk, whose name was Terry something-or-other, now said aloud, for it was identical to what he had heard the day before, from the large, bluff man in the men’s room of the accounting department.
“Artie?”
The difference now was that Artie answered, saying, “Yeah,” from the booth next to the one Wagner had vacated.
Terry proceeded to join Artie.
Wagner was not tempted to remain and replicate Marcel’s celebrated eavesdropping on the transaction between Charlus and Jupien. By accident he had successfully carried out the assignment that he had rejected when Jackie Grinzing tried to impose it upon him. There was something chagrining in the experience. He had to remind himself that he was also the man who had marched into a bank and taken, with impunity, $2,200: simply plucked it up from a cash drawer, with nobody the wiser. This was the perfect crime, achieved without so much as the threat of violence... though it could hardly be called victimless. No bank would be likely to write off two thousand dollars or believe that the person nearest the source of the loss was without guilt. Of course the teller would be blamed, that pretty and pleasant-mannered young woman. Losing her job would be nothing beside the certainty that she would be prosecuted for grand theft. He had simply destroyed a life, which had proved an easier accomplishment than he could have imagined. The fact was that taking the money at gunpoint would have been preferable, furnishing an obvious villain.
So much for his initial and, as it now seemed, infantile sense of earning a profit without depleting anyone else’s account. It could not be said that he was making good use of invisibility. Thus far he had collected shameful information on several persons by means of inadvertent surveillance, bilked a greasy spoon of several bucks, stolen a sum of money for which an innocent young woman would be blamed, lost some change in a post office, ruined Babe’s dinner date, and run afoul of a plastic model of Siv Zirko’s penis. There could be no satisfaction in the perusal of a record of that sort.
He really must make such amends as he could. He visibly returned to his desk, where after a good deal of sober reflection, he determined to deal by anonymous letter with all the correctable matters except the twenty-two hundred-dollar bills. He would have to return the money in person, invisibly. The mails could hardly be trusted, and even if the parcel reached the bank, the teller would get it only after it had passed through a number of other hands, some of which might be unscrupulous. The unfortunate young woman from whose drawer he had taken the bills might never see them again. No, he must revisit the bank before closing time, before she had done her sums for the day. That could be managed; it was only 1:10 at the moment. Think of that. He had made a frustrated attempt on one bank and successfully robbed another, returned to the office and accidentally caught at least two of the people who used the men’s room for sexual activities—all in scarcely more than an hour. There was an efficiency in being invisible.
As to Terry-from-the-stockroom, a note would surely suffice. Wagner was fluent in epistolary composition. It took him no time at all to type, on the same kind of paper used for copy, the following.
Terry:
Your restroom activities have become known. What you do is certainly your own affair, but there has been criticism of your doing it at the office. I gather I’m the only one so far who can identify you, and having no wish to do you harm, I thought I’d give you this warning without saying anything to anyone else. But if you don’t heed it, and the executives discover your identity, you might lose your job. You might pass the warning along to “Artie” as well, and to anyone else you know who uses his services.
That seemed to say it all. There was no need to add a phony name such as “A Friend,” because he wasn’t one.
The time was now 1:30. Wagner next wrote to Jackie Grinzing.
You have been observed, quite by accident, in a compromising situation with Morton Wilton. The person who saw you is not a moral policeman and neither approves nor disapproves of your liaison. But it has occurred to this person that if you could be observed by one, you might well be seen by others who would not be so tolerant of human foibles. Both you and Wilton, if his ring can be believed, are currently married. It would be easy for some malicious person to make trouble for you. Discretion is advised.
His wristwatch now read 2:05. This note had taken him a bit longer to compose than the one to stockroom Terry, for it was slightly elevated in literary style. For example, he would not have used “liaison” when writing to Terry, nor “foibles,” which, though one could hear its occasional use by a certain whimsical, avuncular kind of TV newsman, had Jamesian connotations: someone in “The Liar” calls the eponymous hero a “fetching dog, but has a monstrous foible.” Or approximately: he hadn’t read it since college.
It was time for him to start for the bank, if he hoped to get there before closing, which might be as early as 2:30. Being invisible had no effect on the speed at which one could move. He enclosed the letters in the manila envelopes used for interoffice mail, and because these were not equipped for sealing, had no closure but the string-and-spindle, he scotch-taped the flaps, which of course would disqualify the envelopes from further use once they were mutilated by the removal of the tape. This was why such employment of tape was forbidden under the rules for office economy newly imposed by Morton Wilton, the adulterous executive.
But were Wagner not to apply some obstacle against the accidental examination of his letters by unauthorized parties, he would once again be responsible for bringing needless discomfort, perhaps even pain, to others. However, since Gordon the messenger had been directed to remain on the alert for the illicit use of scotch tape, dropping them off at his station would probably call Jackie’s unwelcome attention to the envelopes—unwelcome even in the case of the one addressed to her, for if he knew the woman, she would first react to the infraction of the rules and only read the enclosure as an afterthought. She might also even confiscate and read the message to Terry.
Therefore Wagner now entered her office invisibly—she was still out, perhaps by now even finally eating lunch—and, after borrowing the desk-set pen to inscribe “Personal” on the flap, just above the tape, deposited her envelope in the In box. He then delivered Terry’s to the stockroom.
Unless filling an order, the man was never in evidence at or near the counter. If you wanted him, you struck the button of the old-fashioned bellhop’s bell and proceeded to wait interminably. It occurred to Wagner to wonder why Terry did not invite “Artie” into the fastness of his lair, into which no one else, not even Jackie, ever penetrated and which was surely more private than the men’s washroom—unless of course it was the very violation of social modesty, with the concomitant risks, that attracted the stockroom clerk, whose habitual sullenness might well be the symptom of a profound grievance against the way things were. Such persons abounded in the city: their statements, made in the vocabulary of vandalism, could be seen anew each day, on buildings and public conveyances and in parks. No doubt it could be expressed sexually as well.
Wagner rang the bell and placed the envelope upon the counter that obstructed the doorway at waist level. As soon as it touched wood it became visible.
His time in which to reach the bank had somehow dwindled to but eleven minutes, he now saw on the clock mounted above the elevators. Perhaps his watch had been slow; he could not check it now, for, like the rest of him and his, it was invisible.
All cars were on the ground floor. Therefore he took the now familiar staircase. Running down the steps was still a dangerous exercise, but he reached the bottom without tripping, crossed the lobby at so smart a pace he could not alter it or dodge when, at the doors to the street, he met the entering Wilton, of all people, who was two steps ahead of Jackie Grinzing. Wagner did have the advantage, though a captive of his own momentum, of being able to see Wilton, who of course was blind to him and therefore got the worst of the collision; indeed, was knocked out the door and, being palpably of slighter substance than he looked, finally lost his balance and when last seen was likely to fall to the pavement.
As to what either Wilton or Jackie made of this surely puzzling event, Wagner did not have time to pause and observe, but he did reflect that had her escort been more gallant, it would have been she with whom he might have collided.
En route to the bank, he only narrowly averted running into a series of other people, then was himself almost trampled by a husky youth who could have had no idea that a human being occupied what looked like a clear field of play.
The bank’s clock was at 2:21½ when he arrived. Good luck now ruled the swinging door: three of its compartments were filled with persons on their way to the street, and no one but him awaited entrance. Inside, however, he had to linger overlong for someone to pass through the electric gate to the back-of-counter area, and when finally a plump young woman did so, she was detained by a man playing the role of the traditional banker, i.e., middle-aged, gray-suited and sideburned; and these people effectively blocked all access to the gate... until, after an eternity, another officer begged their pardon and dislodged them, but he went swiftly through the gate and, instead of letting it look after itself, paused to see the latch close—for all the world as if he knew Wagner stood invisibly by, waiting to pounce.
But at last the young woman, uttering a series of OKs, turned from the man in gray and moved her plump person, dressed in bright green, through the barrier, the switch that controlled which was operated by an employee just inside and to the left. Paperwork was the latter’s main job, but she reserved the corner of an eye for whoever might appear on either side of the gate. Wagner followed quickly in the fat girl’s wake, but, studying the document in her hand, she moved at a deliberate pace, and the gate, in its automatic, prompt return, struck him before he could clear it. It had no significant force, and he was not hurt, but the gate was detained for an instant in its travel. Wagner noticed that and wondered whether anyone else did, but he was inside now and had work to do.
He went swiftly to the station of the teller from whom he had taken the hundred-dollar bills. She was currently occupied with a man buying traveler’s checks. To get the blanks for this purpose she moved far enough from her cash drawer for Wagner to return the notes, though he could not manage to do the job as neatly as he would have liked. The bills had been crisply new when taken; by now, what with his counting them several times, they were not quite as they had been: even a nonprofessional could have seen that at a distance.
But the bank teller was back in place before he could smooth down even the topmost bills. He sprang away, but then, in an effort to reach the drawer from a position just behind her, leaning at too extreme an angle, he was obliged suddenly to alter his center of gravity. He moved one foot and clutched out instinctively with his left, free hand: the latter found itself just below the seat of the teller’s skirt, performing a grasp that partook of both jokey “goose” and grim indecency.
The young woman emitted a steam-whistle shriek, more hurled away than dropped her burden of documents, whirled around, her features gargoyled with indignation... and of course saw no one near enough to have made free with her and got away clean. She clasped her face.
She was being stared at or towards by every human being in the bank, as was he who had brought this mess about, though naturally no one could see him. And now the guard arrived at the window, his revolver trained on the poor devil who had ordered the traveler’s checks.
“Freeze! ...Put the case on the floor, back up two paces, lean forward, placing hands on counter, and spread ’em.” The guard, a seamy-faced man with a head that was probably bald under his cap, gingerly toed the black attaché case away from where the customer had placed it. He shouted in at the teller, “Jane! He say he got a bomb?”
The young woman, still breathing heavily, turned. “Oh, God, no.”
“A pistol, huh?” cried the guard, and then deafeningly addressed the man who was bridging his spread-eagled body, at an extreme angle, between the counter and the patch of floor, four feet out, where his feet were. “Awright, you sack of filth, I’m going to take your piece. If you go for it meantime, say goodbye to your head.” He put the muzzle of the pistol into his captive’s nape. His jargon might be TV-synthetic, but he was surely a genuine menace.
Jane finally rose above her own distress to say, “Joe, he didn’t do anything!”
The prisoner himself found the strength to second her. “I didn’t do anything!”
But Joe kept the gun where it was, telling Jane, “They’ll say anything. Call the boys in blue.”
“Please, Joe,” said Jane. “I had a muscular spasm, is all. It had nothing to do with this man. He’s all right. Please let him go.”
Joe did not relish hearing this plea, and it took much more persuasion to induce him to holster the weapon and permit his victim to stand erect. The latter in a voice of fury assured everyone in the bank that he would not only never again do business with this institution but furthermore intended to hold it legally responsible for his public shaming.
Fortunately for Joe, the distraction of closing time was at hand, and he hastened to go lock the front door against newcomers. No less self-righteous, he stayed there to let people out.
Having made full restitution, Wagner was certainly eager to leave. This episode had been no more successful than his encounter with the so-called artwork that had been modeled on Zirko’s private part. He simply didn’t think these projects through before embarking on them. They were products of his nerves and not his faculty of reason—perhaps because there was nothing reasonable in being invisible.
The electrically operated gate was stuck tight, he learned as he approached the little group of persons on his side of it. A like party stood on the other side.
The woman whose job it was to press the switch was saying, “Didn’t close all the way, so I pushed it shut, and that did it.”
A scowling officer looked through the plate-glass panel that formed the upper half of the gate. “You forced it, Sherry: that tells the mechanism to freeze. It also sounds the silent alarm, for God’s sake. The police will be on their way.”
By striking Wagner, the gate had got itself warped.
“Shit,” said a female voice. “That’s all we need to end a crazy day. Everything’s going wrong all of a sudden.”
Wagner silently agreed. He wished he could, without compromising himself, explain to these decent human beings why such phenomena were taking place. They looked to be much the same kind of people with whom he worked: though culturally superior to them, he was in the same moral boat, like them at the mercy of a city that was heedless of the individual.
A maintenance man was sent for, but, before he arrived, the police appeared as predicted. Fortunately, they were not in an overreactive mood but rather brusque and blasé, a relief after the performance of Joe the guard. They soon left. But when the technician came, it was ever so long before he disengaged the gate so as to permit Wagner’s exit into the lobby, and then there was the matter of the front door, to pass promptly through which one would have had to apply, visibly of course, to Joe.
It was almost 4:30 when Wagner reappeared at his desk. He thought it politic not to make typing noises but rather to edit, by pen, some rough copy he had written that morning, and furthermore to pretend, if need be, he had been doing so all afternoon.
But hardly was he seated when Gordon came along and asked, “Where have you been, Fred? Jackie’s really burned.”
Obviously the plan to maintain that he had been in place for hours could not stand up. “I haven’t been feeling well,” he said instead.
“Well, you weren’t in the men’s room,” said Gordon. “If you mean you went to the doctor, you should have told somebody.”
Wagner rose. “I was over in the accounting-department washroom. It’s more private.”
“It is? I never knew they had toilets of their own.”
Wagner said, “I’ll go explain to Jackie. Then I’ll be right back and type this up for you. I’m still not behind schedule.” He regretted sounding as if he had to justify himself to Gordon, who was technically his only inferior in the department.
“She’s left,” Gordon said. “There’s some meeting of the department heads, and then the day’s over.” He had a very slight edge of girlishness to him. However, it had not been he whom Wagner had seen with “Artie,” but rather Terry, whose manner might be called virilely disaffected. And the guy from accounting, apparently another of Artie’s habitués, was as far from swishy as could be. Undoubtedly there was a dimension of sexual inversion that Wagner could not as yet, with his fragmentary information, delineate.
He now gestured towards his typewriter. “I’ll type this up, then.”
“The Robot Carver copy had to be rewritten,” said Gordon. “Maybe you remember? That’s the electric knife, with the cut-out that automatically stops it when reaching bone.”
“Of course I remember. I did that the day before yesterday.”
“Jackie gave it to me to rewrite,” Gordon said. “I thought you should know that, Fred. ... So you wouldn’t think I was going behind your back.”
Wagner was annoyed with the young man’s sanctimoniousness. “Why should I possibly think that, Gordon? You only do what you’re told.”
Gordon shrugged. “I guess that could be said of us all.”
Wagner couldn’t let him get away with the implication that they were professional equals. “When you’ve been around as long as I,” said he, with a wry twitch of the mouth, “you’ll find it possible to rise above office rivalry. We’re all just earning a living. None of us, except maybe Jackie, would otherwise be working here, that’s certain.”
Gordon blinked his very pale blue eyes. “Oh, I don’t think it’s so bad. The people are a lot brighter than I arrogantly assumed at first, and better educated. Just about everybody has a BA, anyway, and Judy Rumbaugh taught social studies at the college level for a while. And look at you, the budding novelist.”
Wagner made a polite sneer. “I hadn’t realized I let the cat out of the bag. Can you call someone ‘budding’ after five or six years?” He honestly could not recall having ever mentioned his literary aspirations, but obviously he had: first Jackie, now Gordon had made an easy reference to what he thought he considered intimate information, yet he had apparently imparted it to at least two office acquaintances. On the other hand, he could go too far in self-deprecation, especially with someone as young as Gordon, who furthermore had been assigned to rewrite copy of his that had been perfectly all right as it stood.
“My trouble is that, unlike a lot of my contemporaries, I am as severe with myself as I am when reading others. I discard at least one word for every half-dozen I write. Wish that could be said for hacks like Wulsin and Musgrave, not to mention the tedious Miss R. Kelsinger.”
“Well, they’re all pretty much out of fashion by now anyway,” Gordon said, a little smile twitching at each side of his mouth. “Lesbian satire is pathetic.”
Wagner was taken by surprise. “I didn’t know she was a lesbian,” he foolishly observed.
“She’s not,” Gordon said, clucking twice. “Her last book was a vicious attack on them.”
Wagner groaned,” Of course, That was—”
“Girl’s Girls,” Gordon said impatiently. “Trash.”
“You keep up with things,” said Wagner, with the slightest edge of derision: after the day he had had, he did not intend to sustain a defeat at the hands of this junior. “I admit I don’t. Call me self-concerned, but—”
“Vous avez bien ici autre chose à faire?” Gordon was tightening the screws. “I do some reviewing,” he went on to say. “The Critical Edge—?” He shrugged. “Poetry.” He bent and spoke sotto voce. “In fact, just between you and me, OK?, I’ve been offered a job there. Doesn’t pay what this one does, naturally, and if their grants stop at any time, they’ll have to close shop, but it would be a good place to be, don’t you think?”
To maintain any pride at all, Wagner promptly agreed. The publication in reference was a literary monthly, unread-ably pretentious, financed by either some cultural foundation or a university: he had seen only one copy, brought home by Babe, and had not read more than a few pompous lines of the text, certainly none of the poetry reviews. Nevertheless he told Gordon, “I must have seen some of your criticism there, just didn’t realize you were the same person.”
At last he had said the right thing. Gordon looked pleased. “Yes, I am G. S. Calhoun. ‘Gordon’ just doesn’t sound like a poet to me.”
“You’re a poet as well?” This was a mistake.
“The collection’s not out yet,” Gordon said. “But most of the poems have been published in periodicals, so I think I can use the name.”
“You’ve got a book coming out?”
“Next spring,” said Gordon. “Burbage.”
“You couldn’t do better than that.”
“They’re never going to make me rich,” Gordon said, “but they really do have a fine tradition of publishing verse. Almost nobody else does nowadays.”
Wagner said dolefully, “They can afford it, with what they make from Wulsin’s novels. By the way, I apologize for taking a crack at him before.”
Gordon smilingly raised his hands. “I’m not to be held responsible for all the other books published by Burbage. As it happens, I agree with you about Teddy’s work. But he’s an awfully nice old guy.”
Wagner was under the impression that Theodore Wulsin was only a year or so older than himself. He clasped his hands together. “On another subject, Gordon: you haven’t, have you, noticed anything odd in the men’s room lately?”
Gordon had a steep and smooth brow. Faint furrows were rippling its surface now.
“What kind of odd things?”
Wagner saw the chance to make a minor point. “Well, if they’re ‘odd,’ then I guess they don’t belong to a kind.”
A tremor of eye indicated that Gordon had been anyway grazed, though you’d never know it from his speech.
“Uh, no, I can’t say I spend any more time there than necessary. Why?”
Already suspecting that it was quite possible he would regret having brought up the subject, Wagner nevertheless said, “There have been complaints.”
“About what?”
Wagner lowered his voice. “Deviate activity.”
Suddenly Gordon flushed. He spoke in a high-pressured undertone. “You’re saying this because I’m a poet? Shit on you, Fred.” He spun on his toes and went swiftly away.
What did that signify? Was it a red-herring reflex, or had he really wounded Gordon? Anything could be called poetry, after all, and apparently everything was called sculpture. Wagner decided not to worry about Gordon’s snit, he who had just returned two thousand two hundred dollars so as to save the job of a little teller whom he did not even know. That’s the kind of man he was.
What he had to do at this point was design a means that would bring him a lot of money without hurting anybody. He did not understand how it was possible for him to become invisible, but he was convinced he should not let his gift be used for ignoble purposes.