Farewell, Lala, we won’t see you again. We leave you to your new friend, James Berberick. We congratulate you upon your new attachment, your new contact, as the businessmen say. Above all, your new connection.
Yet you remain of our circle. We are all connected. You connect with James Berberick. James Berberick connects with Luella. Luella connects with Brown. Brown connected last night with Officer James Phelps. Phelps connected this morning with Iris. Iris connects with Harold. Harold connects with you. Our circle has no end. Farewell, Lala, we won’t see you again; we rejoin your neighbor Brown, who is walking down Nineteenth Street toward your daughters walking uphill home from school.
“Apologize,” says Brown aloud, to the phantom of the candidate McGinley, “for your obscenity to me.” Louisa and Catherine observe Mr. Brown talking to himself. They cross the street,
Brown, embarrassed, straightened up, squared his shoulders, thrust out his chest, and “quickened his steps.” What’s that? We hear an echo: “Brown quickened his steps down the corridor in order to enter the elevator with Schwarzlose.” There we began Chapter One, almost twenty-four hours ago. Time flies.
Tonight he’d do no such thing, he vowed. What was his terrible compulsion to enter the company of hated men? Such people only deepened Brown’s agitation, and it was all such a waste of time, such men were beyond redemption. Burn it down with phosphorous balls, drop phosphorous balls down the elevator shaft, sprinkle them in the men’s room, light up the urinals, shut them up in desk drawers, and slowly depart the premises while the fire takes hold and rages and the firemen come. Assist the firemen. Here on Nineteenth Street Brown walked downhill past the house of Fireman White, who had always been cordial to Brown and Junie at Fire Company Number Two. Junie climbed the topmost ladder, steered the after-truck. It was a fine family, all children well and grown. Some men were more fortunate than others.
Remember car, he thought. He felt for his streetcar change. He felt for Luella’s tube of green money, too. My Very Dear Officer Phelps, Brown wrote in his mind, waving to the proprietor of the 49’er Market, turning the corner, and descending the steep street on the corrugated sidewalk, Certain authorities are especially disturbed that you violate traffic regulations . . . park illegally . . . illegally turn left . . . park by fire hydrants. Surely the first duty of an officer of the law is to uphold it.
Fuck off, creep. It banged in his ears. Brown would extract an apology. Was it possible? — no, it could not be possible that a man elected to Congress today could have spoken that way to Brown last night. Outrage bruised him. “If you will apologize to me,” he said, walking now upon the flat of Douglass Street, “I’ll not harpoon you with a hot harpoon,” though it seemed doubtful to Brown that he could extract an apology from McGinley. McGinley never apologized to anyone. It was a different world McGinley lived in. Officer Phelps had heard the insult. Brown would snatch the gun from the young officer’s belt. Suppose no gun were there? Then Brown would snatch the officer’s belt and whip McGinley to death in McGinley for Congress Headquarters. The officer’s pants would fall down.
But Brown hadn’t been able to kill even a dog last night, how could he kill a man tonight? Perhaps it wasn’t in him. All his training conspired against him — first religion, later language and reason. Yet perhaps he was working up to it. If he hadn’t killed anyone last night he had nevertheless made one barking telephone call, one bomb-scare telephone call, and kidnapped one dog. These were violent actions. But he had no other weapon against violence: consider that the man who had murdered Junie was this day being elected to public office! How was Junie’s “father” to bear such an event? What response was possible short of revenge? An eye for an eye. “Hello there,” called Brown to a gentleman at the corner of Eighteenth & Douglass, for whose face he had no name. He felt Iris’s hand upon his chin. She was named for a flower, mother of Fafa, Tata, Dada, whatever it was. “You don’t need a shave,” the mother said. Fat and skinny had a race, all around the pillow-case.
But even assuming that McGinley, soon to be Congressman McGinley, apologized for last night, they wouldn’t be square. They’d only be where they had been, for McGinley still owed Brown one “son,” or, to be more accurate, step-son. McGinley, Chairman of the Draft Board, had denied at the time the personal appeal of the boy, who claimed that he had learned from his father to detest all killing. But McGinley denied the appeal upon the grounds that Brown was never father to the boy, not even technically step-father, no legal papers ever having been drawn. “Not legally, no,” Brown argued, “but God notices our marriage, and the boy was mine from the cradle,” which McGinley denied, and sent the boy to war, and Junie cried out, “I won’t carry any gun,” to which McGinley replied, “We’ll see if you will when the time comes.”
Lady Bird Johnson
c/o “Greatest Mass Murderer of Recent Time”
Texas
My Very Dear Lady Bird Johnson, Brown wrote in his mind, crossing Eureka Street, approaching Diamond Street, strolling past Station G, where James Berberick once kept a postal box to accommodate pornography, Your campaign to beautify America certainly didn’t get very far. I see that your husband did a great job beautifying Vietnam. Please give him my best wishes if you see him, passing Cala Foods now, and up ahead was Edna’s & Jerry’s. Toys, said their sign in bold letters. It was the first word Junie learned to read, but whether he learned to read it here or downtown at Mordecai’s Toys they never decided, smiling and waving at Edna and Jerry themselves stationed at their counter as Brown traveled past upon his route to the Hibernia Bank, which he entered, extracting Luella’s tube of green money from his pocket, snapping the rubber band free, and waiting in line to be served by a teller — the very teller Lala referred to on page 139: “One of the tellers at the Hibernia Bank turns me on.” He rolled the rubber band like a ring upon his finger to remind him to give Luella the deposit receipt.
Brown walked north on Castro Street to Market. He waved to the proprietor of The Family Store and to the barbers in Pinto’s. Pinto himself had known Luella’s father, once worked a chair beside him somewhere (it wasn’t too clear). Brown hastened to the corner, standing beside the Bank of America, hoping nobody would bomb the bank before the red light changed, and crossed with the green light to the pedestrian island just as the street-car rose like a surfacing whale from Brown’s father’s tunnel, its motorman this day a young black man with a small black beard and octagonal sun-glasses which he had worn through the darkness of the tunnel.
Occasionally, years ago, when Brown was a boy, it was his father’s face behind the glass, rising from the tunnel, and if Brown had ever predicted to his father that some day the face would be bearded and black his father would have replied, “Kid, you’re off your nut. God made motormen white.” He stepped up into the car, dropped his fare into the box, and walked to the rear. Step if you please to the rear of the car. It was his father’s policy to get the please in early, driving this tunnel for thirty-five years, retiring, walking the streets of the neighborhood five years more, dying, having provided his son with a start upon life, and wonderfully proud of the boy, too, who could read and write with the best of his class, and went in time to the newspaper and thereby knew all the ins and outs of things, all the reasons for all the manipulations behind the scenes, and met all the big-wigs face to face and visiting notables and stars of stage and screen, no street-car for him, no firehouse, no precinct, no City Hall burn, no sir. “Move down toward the rear, folks,” the black motorman called, and Brown obliged, luckily finding a seat he hadn’t seen from the front. Remember car, he thought; he’d left his car downtown last night when he’d gone riding out with Officer Phelps. He sat. Out of the window, across the street, Manasek’s storefront flew past, where James Berberick had turned, committing himself to Luella; and Brown now with his rubber band on his finger, gliding along his father’s tracks.
Brown worked diligently. Behind him a western window admitted a brilliant square of sunshine, but he never turned to the window, which sickened him: encrusted by grime, a ruin of neglect, it hadn’t been washed in years. Then the square of sunshine vanished, the day darkened, the lights of the city room went up, and Brown fit his green eyeshade to his forehead, running one finger around his head beneath the elastic, to eliminate snarling, as if the fate of things depended upon his precision.
This was old habit, old conviction, lingering in Brown from those youthful years of his life when he had indeed believed that much depended upon him, when he had thought of his labor as holy calling, only to discover as time went by that nobody needed the precision he offered, for he offered too much. He was expendable, replaceable; life was cheap. The world demanded in a writer of headlines not wit, not care, not application, not accuracy or devotion or a religious spirit, but only speed, only a rough approximation between the headline and the story below, which was in turn only a distant approximation of the event. “You’re a worrier,” said Schwarzlose to Brown years and years ago, and often since. “You worry too much. It’s only a headline. It’s all over tomorrow,” whereupon Brown in the dead of night, or by the light of the sun through the unwashed window, dropped phosphorous balls everywhere and burned down the Chronicle building, as inflamed priests in all history burned down whatever churches betrayed them.
But Junie died because nobody worried enough. Cronkite the messenger called warriors “advisors” long after they had ceased to be advisors and had certainly become warriors, though he must have known better, but cared too little for precision or religion or devotion, or couldn’t afford it, and anyhow the point was to hold your audience, make a show, amuse the commuter, entertain the family digesting, don’t bother their heads, keep it moving, make it fast, make it lively, faster, faster, compete, speed it up, whereas precision slowed you down, worrying slowed you down.
Brown, working diligently beneath his eyeshade, depositing phosphorous balls here and there throughout the building, shooting Cronkite on the seventeenth floor — May their frozen oxygen melt, thought Brown, thinking of the astronauts while driving in slowly behind Stanley Krannick, husband to Luella, bad father to the late Junie, nudging him behind the knees so that he’d fall forward and be gently ground to death beneath Brown’s Goodrich tires. Remember car, he thought, writing in his mind My Very Dear Congressman-Elect McGinley . . . How he could dash those headlines off! “Like nobody’s business,” as one might say, glancing down the copy and spinning out a headline “in a twinkling,” as one might say, all these events, the moon, Chinatown, the draft, the welfare bill, car prices, germ warfare, school boycott, Wall Street, it was all in a day’s work, continuing his letter in his mind You will recall that last night you used vile and obscene language toward me. I am sure that you appreciate that I am hereby giving you the opportunity to apologize. My Very Dear James Berberick I’d like to tear that McGinley pin right off your chest. You don’t know what you’re doing. That man is a murderer. He murdered my son . . . see how he exploits his own son in the wheelchair . . . can’t you put two and two together? . . . you and your glibness, twenty-five million dogs indeed. Excuse me for saying “my son.” I realize that’s not accurate.
He turned his thought now to the question of the banner head. They Made It. Good enough, if the astronauts safely returned, although the headlines writer himself shared none of the joy of the banner headline he created. He resented the diversion of attention from earth to space. While everyone was looking up, murder was occurring down below. Let them crash on the rocks of Maine.
Of course, if McGinley were upset Schwarzlose would need to ask himself the question whether that were bigger news than astronauts safe. Barring earthquake or tidal flood or a major assassination things would develop according to expectation — astronauts find themselves and float safely at last to the proper ocean; McGinley wins; leaving Schwarzlose to decide. Astronauts drown. McGinley upset. These things seemed unlikely, but Brown could sketch banner headlines to cover all eventualities, and of course it was possible, and certainly pleasant to dream about, a double adversity, death in space, death down below, sketching in his mind a pleasing banner headline he’d enjoy seeing himself forced to produce for tomorrow’s newspaper:
Astros Dead, McGinley Harpooned
and rose and strolled from his place at the horseshoe table where he had been sitting for two and a half hours, to the television instrument where his friends and fellow-workers were observing the most recent difficulties of the astronauts, or, to be more precise, failing to observe anything at all since the most recent difficulties of the astronauts appeared to be their unobservability, their having fallen from the sight of all monitors on earth or in the heavens. Brown stood beside Schwarzlose. “What’s happening?” Brown asked.
“I’m going to dinner,” Schwarzlose said.
Resist, thought Brown. Don’t go with him. “Cronkite’s tired,” Brown said.
“He’s been up all hours,” Schwarzlose said.
“Tired and unhappy,” Brown said.
“He keeps talking,” Schwarzlose said, “but he’s got nothing to talk about. They’ve been out of touch for eight hours.”
“When will we know anything?” Brown asked.
Schwarzlose addressed the television. “Come on, boys, come out of hiding. I’m hungry.”
“I’m a bit hungry myself,” said Brown.
“The bastards might have flown right out of the orbit of the earth,” said Schwarzlose.
“Is that possible?” Brown asked.
“Certainly it’s possible,” Schwarzlose said, as if such a possibility were well known. But he himself had heard it only minutes ago, as one of several speculations. Only the other day the astronauts had been gathering rocks and stones on the moon. Biggest moon haul, Brown had written, his banner head expressing enthusiasm. But what did Brown care for the rocks of the moon? Fall down a crater, he had thought at the time. Let them lie helpless on their backs in the ferocious sun, and let their friend in his rendezvous capsule go sailing around and around the moon forever, waiting for his fried friends to show up. Let him be an object lesson to mankind, momento, mind your own business, clean up your own rocks first before starting on the moon. Charity begins at home. As a boy, Brown’s first negative thoughts regarding his church arose from his noticing its mania for foreign missions. Devout Luella! Remember deposit receipt, he thought.
Schwarzlose had moved away from his side. Brown felt that presence gone. Schwarzlose was leaving for dinner. Brown removed his eyeshade and hung it upon its nail, took his coat, and pursued his old colleague, acquaintance, enemy, “quickened his steps down the corridor in order to enter the elevator with Schwarzlose,” where tonight, as last night and nights before, the message read:
SCHWARZLOSE
SUCKS
or
SC
SU
HWARZLOSE
CKS
depending upon whether the door was whole or parted.
“You didn’t come back after dinner last night,” said Schwarzlose, staring straight ahead at the elevator doors.
“I’ll be back tonight,” said Brown.
“How’s the wife?” Schwarzlose inquired in a kindlier tone.
“Just fine,” said Brown, walking forth with Schwarzlose into the night, standing together for a few seconds on the sidewalk, and parting there, Brown toward the library, or so he intended, so vowed, and so he would if he could.
He was gaining control of himself. He had worked well tonight, resisted dinner with Schwarzlose, and he intended to return to work after his own. He would be sensible during the hour ahead, write one useful letter, his day’s good deed My Very Dear Father of the Montana Shrine, he began, crossing Mission Street at Sixth but beginning again My Very Dear Rod Serling, I saw an item some time ago that you disown your recent television drama because it inspired a bad action. Please be informed that a true artist bears no responsibility for the actions he inspires. Your obligation is only to tell the truth of your feelings. But perhaps you are not a “true artist.” I hadn’t considered that, walking along Seventh Street toward Market, crossing his father’s streetcar tracks, and remembering that he had eaten a large lunch at Tata Baba Gaga Ferne’s and needn’t eat much dinner. Perhaps he’d eat at midnight with Luella.
If McGinley did not apologize Brown would harpoon him with a hot harpoon. Zip! Never mind writing letters, he’d go in for action now. He’d poison Paprika. No, the children would grieve. He felt their grandmother’s hand upon his chin. “You don’t need a shave,” the grandmother said. He might form a friendship with that family, they’d barbecue together beneath Harold’s extra-large flag enfolding hamburger fumes. But instead of crossing Market at Seventh he’d walk to Ninth and cross there, and thus avoid McGinley Headquarters by walking Larkin instead of McAllister. How many anonymous letters had he mailed over the years from the mailbox at Larkin & McAllister since that first letter to Stanley Krannick, back in the days when mailboxes were green? Brown had saved Junie from Stanley’s abuse. But McGinley devoured, killed, murdered Junie finally. Thinking these thoughts, diverted, distracted, led astray by his own straying mind, Brown walked McAllister instead of Larkin in spite of his plan to do otherwise, coming upon McGinley headquarters in spite of his plan to avoid it, and of course irresistibly entering, even as he had irresistibly “quickened his steps down the corridor” etc. etc. last night and again tonight.
No crowd had yet begun to gather. The polls were still open. Later the crowd would come, and the evening would again become festive, as it had been last night — campaign workers assembling from throughout the entire district to tally the returns, to watch the numbers mount, each campaign worker watching especially those precincts where he or she had worked. On the wall the great banner still corrupted the Constitution of the United States. On the ceiling the white clouds floated in illusion across the sky, and angels flew among great birds.
Several people were seated on folding chairs about the television, watching the screen for the appearance of the astronauts. If the astronauts were to appear at all they were due now; so said the computer. Now or never. “Tonight or never,” Luella had said only today, in another connection. If the astronauts failed to appear they were lost. They had minutes only, to prove themselves, so to speak, to offer evidence of their existence by appearing in the sky. Gentlemen, do you exist, or did you burn up, explode, lose your air, or did you perhaps float out beyond the influence of earth, never to be seen again, as in a fantasy by our friend Brown? Did some nut “down on one knee in the Florida swamps near the launch-pads” pop the rocket, spring a leak? P-sss p-sss p-sss p-ssssssss?
Brown said politely to a young lady on a folding chair, “Your candidate has slightly misquoted the United States Constitution.” He pointed to the wall.
“It’s too late to change anything now,” the young lady replied in a practical way. She wore a paper hat flying the McGinley colors.
“I’d like to see McGinley,” said Brown.
“Congressman McGinley?” she asked, taking her eyes from the television. But Brown’s eyes alarmed her, and she returned her own to the television: three men dead or dying in space were easier to accommodate than one live angry man at her elbow. It was remote, like the corruption of the Constitution.
“Very well,” said Brown, “Congressman McGinley.”
“He’s at a staff meeting,” said the young lady.
“I’m on my supper hour,” said Brown. “I haven’t much time. He’s got to apologize to me.”
The young lady rose from her chair and crossed the floor to speak to an associate, an older woman who was stapling colored streamers to patriotic paper hats while watching the television. Absorbing the young lady’s message, glancing for a millionth of a second at Brown, the older woman, in a casual way, leaving paper hats and streamers behind her, but carrying her stapling machine with her (for thievery had been astounding in spite of the watchfulness of Officer Phelps), left the public area of the store, passing through a curtained doorway to a private interior. There she aroused Officer Phelps from a nap to tell him that she and the “other girls,” being still “rather shaky” from last night’s bomb scare, wished he were among them instead of asleep. “A funny man’s out front,” she explained.
On a second cot lay the candidate McGinley. With Officer Phelps, he arose to peer through the curtain at the “funny man.”
“I see two funny men,” said Officer Phelps, who saw not only Brown, father of his late friend Junie Krannick, but also, at this moment entering the headquarters, James Berberick. Officer Phelps recalled Berberick’s face from last night at the hour of the bomb scare. We, too, recall seeing him “among the shuffling crowd, another James,” on page 23, and at Lala’s today, and at Luella’s, and back at Lala’s again. We have come to know him rather well.
“There’s that fuck-off creep that gave me a hard time on the shake line last night,” said the aspiring Congressman.
“He’s harmless,” said Officer Phelps in a professional tone, but he instantly regretted his callousness: how little to say of a man with “a sophisticated moral code . . .”!
“Which is the other?” McGinley asked.
“That fellow by the door,” said Officer Phelps. “He hangs around.”
“The funny man wants to see you,” the older woman said.
“I’ll be back in an hour,” McGinley said, though incorrectly; he would never be back.
“Shall I tell him that?” asked the older woman.
“I’ll tell him,” said Officer Phelps, drawing his necktie to his Adam’s apple and stepping forward into the store, or headquarters, approaching Brown, and asking him with a friendly smile, “Are you the funny man?” They shook hands. Officer Phelps was somewhat frightened by the ferocity of Brown’s expression, the tight white lips, the intense eyes, which the young officer mistook as hostility toward him — toward Phelps himself — as if Brown had been reading Officer Phelps’s mind these twenty-four hours, whose scenes and pictures were vivid developing images of love not only for Brown and for the memory of Junie, but for Brown’s “wife,” too, Luella, whom Officer Phelps had met last night in her real-estate office; whom he had attempted to see again at her home this morning, only to encounter Lala, Iris, and subsequently Brown in quest of a dog; and whom he would yet see tonight by appointment, a meeting he had for several hours been anticipating with fantasies not unusual to young policemen — an interview, a discussion of the citizen’s problem, a friendly touch at last, a second touch of increased warmth, and so forth and so on, love and affection, comfort and bliss. He’d protect her from her brutal husband, that Stanley, that father-oppressor of Junie — such were the difficult duties of a policeman. But now Brown was here. What did this mean? What was wrong? Had Luella developed “cold feet”? Officer Phelps knew of these cases of women suddenly overcome by their own guilt, and issuing complaints against suitors when in fact they had been themselves at least half to blame for the vibrations of love. “We keep meeting,” said Officer Phelps, “and I’ve got to confess that the pleasure is all mine, believe me. I understand you want to see Congressman McGinley. He’ll be back in an hour. Can you wait?”
“I’m on my supper hour,” said Brown.
“I know that when he comes back he’ll be pleased to see you,” said Officer Phelps, who in his mind’s privacy had several times today taken this man’s “wife” Luella into his arms and covered her with affectionate kisses. “How is your wife if I may ask?”
“Why do you call him Congressman?” Brown asked. “He’s not elected yet.”
“Just following orders,” said Phelps. “How is Mrs. Brown?”
“Mrs. Krannick is very well,” said Brown.
“Last night you stunned me,” said Officer Phelps. “I’m still recovering.”
“I didn’t know you didn’t know,” said Brown. “When we have trouble we think everybody knows.”
“All day long I’ve been thinking of Junie,” said Officer Phelps. Over Brown’s shoulder the young officer saw James Berberick. His chest bore two McGinley buttons, but a little satirically, one upon each breast, like nipples. Officer Phelps placed a folding chair beside Brown, urging him to sit, be comfortable.
“I can’t wait,” said Brown. “I haven’t time. I’m on my supper hour.”
“No word from the astronauts yet,” said Officer Phelps. “They’re past due. I believe they must be dead.”
“Cronkite won’t face it,” said Brown. “They’re dead.”
Officer Phelps brought a second chair and sat beside Brown, not facing the television squarely, however, keeping one eye on the headquarters (telephone especially), and upon James Berberick, too. “To go from the sublime to the ridiculous,” said Officer Phelps, “I’m wondering if your neighbors found their dog yet.”
“He was found,” said Brown.
“I’m delighted,” the young policeman said. “Did he just wander home by himself, I suppose?”
“No, I found him,” said Brown.
How modestly he put it! Officer Phelps admired modesty. Then, of course, if it was Mr. Brown who found the dog it couldn’t have been Mr. Brown who made the barking telephone calls. Officer Phelps was pleased to follow that line of thought. He spoke confidentially to Brown, sitting close. “I’m not going to pretend I’m grieving over those three fellows,” he said. “You’ll get no crocodile tears out of me. I don’t understand all this attention they’re getting. What about plumbers or bricklayers or coal-miners or anybody else that risk their lives or die? These fellows knew what they were getting into when they got into it.”
“They volunteered,” said Brown. “Junie didn’t even volunteer. He had no choice. He was taken. He was murdered by . . .”
“Murdered?”
“By Congressman McGinley,” said Brown, “since that’s what you’re all calling him. You heard what he said to me last night. I thought it was extremely obscene. Didn’t you? Is this the kind of man that’s supposed to represent me in Congress?”
“It’s hard to go on in the face of things,” said Officer Phelps.
“There’s no justice,” said Brown.
“There may be justice in Heaven,” said Officer Phelps, observing the candidate McGinley pass on foot before the headquarters, having left by the rear door to have his “throat sprayed,” as he said — his euphemism, as we observed last night.
Now, briefly, for a few seconds. Officer Phelps held these three men within his vision, Brown beside him, McGinley passing on foot, and James Berberick standing, leaning, his back to the wall, his attention divided between the television and his line of sight to McGinley passing by.
“Don’t give me that Heaven stuff,” Brown said fiercely, seizing Officer Phelps by the arms. “There’s no Heaven and there’s no justice. Everybody knows that now.” The power of his rage was in his hands. He released the officer’s arms as abruptly as he had seized them. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Forget it,” said Officer Phelps. “You’re overwrought. You have a right to be mad.” Brown’s angry face had occupied the officer’s attention fully, and when Phelps’s attention returned to the general area of the headquarters he saw that James Berberick had disappeared — launched himself from the wall, passed through the door to the street, and passed from sight, too. “You should reread that letter your wife received,” said Phelps. “I read it several times today. ‘In your grief you are not alone. Be comforted, and be free of vengeful thoughts.’“
“All very easy to say,” said Brown. “You’ll return the letter.”
“Here,” said Officer Phelps, “or I’ll carry it to her myself.”
“I’m all right,” said Brown, taking the letter from Officer Phelps, receiving his own message of consolation. The letter to “My Very Dear Mrs. Luella Krannick” might as well have been written to “My Very Dear Brown.” Another good deed accomplished! His rage had passed from his hands when he seized Officer Phelps. Now he was free, his work done, his rage complete, having passed outward from himself and flowed gently away, distributed, bequeathed, conferred upon Phelps, upon Luella. Vibrations emanate and become suggestions. Upon Lala. Upon James Berberick. Our circle has no end. We are all connected. Farewell, Brown, we won’t see you again.
James Berberick in his pea-green BMW 1600 passed from standing to motion, gliding past the mailbox at Larkin & McAllister, past the public library, toward Van Ness, across Van Ness, to Franklin, and turning north. He travels fastest who travels alone. He makes all decisions free of dispute. He does what he damn pleases. Betrayed, sent to war, made brutal, he’d do what he damn pleased henceforth. He had not eaten dinner. He had drunk two cups of tea with Lala Ferne at mid-afternoon, but he was empty now. Later he would dine well.
A slight odor arose from his body, and he expected that it would increase. That was natural. Stress produced odor. He was prepared for odor, as he was prepared for everything else. Be prepared. We Are A Girl Scout Family. Those little chicks were quite all right. Their very white teeth recommended themselves to him. Later he would bathe and dine well and indulge himself a fine cologne. Lately he had formed an interest in Mister L and bought four ounces but not yet used it. It rode on the seat beside him. According to his radio the polls had closed.
What was Brown doing there talking with the pig? Brown too was a pig. What were the two pigs up to? He could tell pigs when he saw them, he felt. It was a plot against him. It was a trap. All three were pigs on Eagle Street. Then Lala and Iris were in on it, too, and they probably weren’t mother and daughter, either. Well, that Lala went a long way in the interest of her job, too, didn’t she? She gave it everything, that’s for sure. Clever how they lured him there! Pigs mingle with pigs. Birds of a feather fuck together.
No, she was no pig, she was a natural masseuse, and they were going to make a great deal of money together. He was convinced of that. According to his radio the astronauts were dead, or at any rate presumed dead, there’d be three days of national mourning up ahead. But when James Berberick had been missing nobody planned any days of national mourning. Nobody had even known he was missing. When he realized that he was lost he realized, too, that nobody cared, nobody was searching for him, he was a company statistic, he was on his own, now and forever. He had been cool and very methodical and kept up his concentration, kept his wits about him, lived with his hunger, and remembered everything he had ever learned or heard or been taught that could have been helpful to him, and by following that procedure he found his way back, shooting as he came, and when he walked back into camp they hadn’t even noticed he’d been gone.
So much for days of national mourning, flags at half-mast. Lala’s flag was extra-large. What would be wrong with a patriotic massage parlor, Jim & Lala, Old Glory Massage, turning onto Fulton now and following Fulton beside the park (the very route of Brown and Phelps last night), tasting hard-boiled eggs, for when he was a boy his mother had always taken hard-boiled eggs to the park. He could go for a hard-boiled egg right now. Well, later. At Old Glory Massage they’d have linens red, white, and blue, fifty stars on the ceiling, the music of bugles, and photographs of Betsy Ross. Shower curtains could be flags. Salute while bathing. With his surplus earnings he intended to try out his motel scheme, too, all rooms bugged with TV closed-circuit cameras, which would certainly be more of an attraction to the proprietor and a few selected friends than watching the sky for three jokers lost on their way back from the moon.
He laughed on Fulton Street, tasting hard-boiled eggs. He wished he had just half an egg at this moment to ease his gut, although it was well to be hungry, too; his precision was excellent when he was hungry, he concentrated well, and he was most methodical. When he had been lost at war in Asia he had been hungry for several days. Yet his mind had never been sharper. His hearing had been particularly acute. Listen for the fencegate, he thought.
Of course it was beautifully dark. He’d been foolish to worry about that. He’d asked Lala’s daughters what time darkness came tonight. That was quite a little family portrait with Christopher up there with his head in the steam, arriving at Twenty-Fifth Avenue and so intersecting with his recent past — the course he’d driven after lunch — and halting once more at the red light at the corner of Balboa where the beautiful black girl had sat combing her hair in the car beside his. Where had she gone? Why hadn’t she waited there for him? He’d have shown her a good time. He intended to be an Equal Opportunity employer. He proceeded, crossing Anza, turning into Geary, and parking his car in Narrow Alley.
His car was a hard starter. That much he’d leave to chance. He killed his motor. If it didn’t start again it didn’t, he’d chalk that up as a sign God didn’t want James Berberick to start that car at that moment, sitting listening to his radio, which was telling tonight of the dead astronauts and the local elections. Voters were saddened by the deaths of the astronauts — so said the radio.
Refer to map on page 258 showing Narrow Alley and adjacent thoroughfares. Observe James’s pea-green BMW parked and waiting this Tuesday evening. Observe the route of “Mr. and Mrs. Brown” walking arm in arm on Monday night.
Key
1. Mrs Krannick’s “Real-Estate Office.”
X. Scene of the collision.
2. Route of Brown’s walk with Luella (Monday night) to
3. Her parked car.
James hummed a little song to himself, stepping out of his car and examining with a flashlight his right front tire (that is to say, Lala Ferne’s right front tire) to be sure it hadn’t gone soft, and he unscrewed the cap of his bottle of Mister L and dabbed himself at forehead and temples, and on the wings of his collar. Splash Mister L generously over your face. In the morning. At lunchtime. Evening time. Correct always. And almost incorrect without. James too had plans for clever advertising — on calling cards, in the yellow pages, in various magazines, hotels, motels, barber shops, pool halls, beauty parlors.
McGinley came walking down the alley from Clement Street. This unsettled James, who for some reason had expected McGinley to come from Geary Street. His expectation wasn’t logical. It simply was. He tried his motor, and it started, and it was clear to him that God or his saints or Fate or whoever wished his BMW to start, just as God or Fate or whoever had caused him to turn in Market Street near Manasek’s, or as Fate rang him on the telephone under the name of Mrs. Lala Ferne. He turned his lights on and sat leaning with his chin on the palm of his hand, his elbow on the door, his head slightly averted, so that McGinley passing down the alley might receive the impression that the driver of that automobile was either thinking before driving off, or resting, or sobering, although McGinley was in fact preoccupied with other thoughts: he ignored James Berberick in his car.
McGinley thought for a moment that he might be in the wrong alley, opening Luella’s fencegate and walking through, climbing her wooden steps, ringing her bell, and receiving no answer. He lit a match, but no notice had been left on the door for him except the general messages McGinley for Congress and “Back Soon.” He tried the door, but it was locked. He rapped several times with his fist in a loud, heavy, hard, angry spirit or manner, swearing as he did so, and thinking for an instant that now that he was a Congressman, or certainly shortly to be, he’d crack down on such dirty businesses as these so-called massage parlors, and cause them to be outlawed in all fifty states, excluding however the District of Columbia, where he would live and enjoy them, for he was extremely angry to have been deprived of this moment toward which he had looked with such pleasure: campaigning done, polls closed, no useful action possible, this massage was to have been a serene indulgence before his return to his headquarters to receive the acclaim of his many friends. He turned from the door, kicking it, and yet resigned to the failure of this moment as he had learned to become resigned to failed moments during the course of his campaign: keeping his temper, keeping cool — don’t blow it, he often said to himself, for there was a great deal of money to be made as a Congressman in Washington, descending the wooden steps and letting himself through the fencegate into the alley. He walked toward Geary Street.
James Berberick once more was unsettled. McGinley, having entered at Clement Street, ought to have left that way. James, having entered at Geary Street, had turned to face Geary again, preferring to confront McGinley. But McGinley was leaving now toward Geary, and James was behind him. He had not wanted it that way.
Why Geary? James never knew. Nobody ever knew. Why toward Geary instead of toward Clement? He had parked his car on Clement. Perhaps he had suffered some momentary lapse of memory, some confusion of direction. Perhaps he intended to make a telephone call. But there were many telephones on Clement. James came upon McGinley from behind therefore, calling as he came, “Mr. Chairman of the Draft Board,” which McGinley may or may not have heard. He never turned his head. He never indicated in any way, by any sign or motion, that the car behind him alarmed him. No doubt he was “lost in thought,” as people say — perhaps he had in mind another massage parlor. He assumed that the car behind him would pass him by, but in this he was mistaken, and the driver again called to him, “Luella asked me to do this,” touching him gently behind his knees, striking him down, and he fell forward without sound or speech, broken at the middle.