Authors: Thomas Berger
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.
W
AGNER ARRIVED HOME INVISIBLY.
Though this meant he had to wait for another arrival on whose heels he could enter the building, it was worth the trouble to evade the evening doorman, an effusive type who the night before had commented quizzically on Wagner’s return alone and after the dinner hour.
“Mrs. under the weather?”
The provocative question forced Wagner to produce an ungrammatical answer, something he detested doing, but he felt he had to respond quickly and decisively, and therefore could not afford to be impeccable with a man who habitually said “they was” and “he don’t.”
“We each have our own independent career.” His shrug was false, but the internal shudder was genuine.
“Yeah,” said Max the doorman, who seemed too young for what was most of the time a passive job, “but you always eat together.” By means of such particular observations he hoped to ingratiate the tenants, with an eye to holiday tips, and perhaps it was not the worst strategy—except of course in the case of someone with something to hide.
This was another menace against which invisibility was marvelously efficacious. But he should probably remember to show himself periodically. Tonight he slipped into the lobby unseen, just behind an elderly woman who was leashed to a small woolly white dog. The animal of course was aware of him, but luckily was so spoiled as to be aloof and, after a quick twitching of nostrils, dismissed him from further consideration.