Death Kit (23 page)

What he'd written was: “Jim, do you happen to know if there is a state law that makes an autopsy mandatory before someone is cremated?” And Jim had scrawled below. “Yes, I believe there is. Almost positive. Why?”

Diddy looks up; tries to fabricate an astute, friendly nod.

Jim is probably right. Still, what was performed Monday or Tuesday morning upon Incardona wasn't the autopsy Diddy wanted. The important thing for Diddy to remember is that if he wanted to check further, it was easy to find out for sure. Since Diddy tends to find any reliable piece of information soothing, why hasn't he already resolved this question? Could have called the
Courier-Gazette
or City Hall days ago to inquire about the existence of such a regulation.

He can do that later. (Now) must try to concentrate on what's at hand, Watkins & Company, the present. Diddy trying to behave as if the sole reason he is upstate, living for a week in this city, is business: he was picked—a flattering assignment—to attend the company conference. Trying to convince himself inwardly, while he lets the rote behavior of the competent junior executive persuade the others.

Diddy the Good was taking a business trip. Banish all private projects. Especially those two. Pursuing his investigation into the workman's death and his feelings about it. Visiting Hester in the hospital, and exploring his sentiments toward her.… Neither project is going well, a fact that's making him not so much uneasy as somewhat giddy and lightheaded. Does this lack of success make his projects more pure?

Watkins is delivering some evasive remarks about the merger. Reassuring everyone that the executive board merely has the matter under consideration. No final decisions have been made.

Finally, the vote. The scientists, leaders of the faction Diddy has supported, carry the day. One last go at improving Scope 21, pushing it back into first place, once more ahead of all competing models. Their motto: Don't give up! Diddy agrees. On Monday morning, he had found the arguments of both factions plausible. (Now), by Thursday, Diddy is amazed these policy issues are even a subject for general debate. Doesn't everyone here realize that some people just know more than other people. Don't the scientists know far more than Reager and Watkins do about Scope 21? Management just has to trust them. And as for the merger, maybe it's a good idea.

Eating in the cafeteria on the second floor. But not cafeteria style. Due to the presence of a guest speaker, lunch was more formal than it had been on the preceding two days. A director of the local television station outlined the projected half-hour panel discussion and interview program on which Watkins & Company will be featured as “Business of the Month.”

“We need three volunteers for the panel discussion,” said Reager after the speaker—his name began with H—sat down. “If you don't mind, I'll suggest a few candidates. Anyone named is of course perfectly free to refuse. And don't you others be envious if you're not chosen. I'm not”—he laughed hoarsely—“making a serious rating of my colleagues.” Pause. “Comensky.” A black-haired young biochemist at the end of the head table took a spoonful of fruit salad out of his mouth and nodded without expression. “Michaelson.” Head of sales, West Coast. Another expressionless nod. “Harron.” Though Diddy surely knew his own last name, he did wait a few seconds; then realized with embarrassment that he'd been wandering again. Waiting for someone else to say the yes for him? He nodded, too.

“Good,” said Reager. “Now this won't take up too much of your time. We'll need you for a briefing tonight at the Channel 10 studio at nine-fifteen. Mr. Watkins and I will be there, of course.”

“Just a quick run-through,” said the TV producer, trying to be helpful.

Reager pretended to ignore the interruption. “And then we meet before the show, which is scheduled to go on, live, at 11 a.m. Saturday morning.”

“That's right,” chimed in the man from the television station, again without having been invited to speak. Reager frowned.

Coffee was being brought in. The head table, where Reager and Watkins sat, no longer solicited the attention of everyone else in the room. The noise level steadily rising. Having downed one cup of coffee, Diddy was already on his second when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Jim leaning over; hushed voice. “Why did you say yes to Reager, you dope? You could leave for New York Friday night. Now you're stuck here through Saturday.”

“I don't mind,” whispered Diddy. “I'd planned to hang around for the weekend anyway. A friend of mine has just checked into the Warren Institute here for an operation.”

“Oh, sorry,” said Jim. “But hey, before I forget, what the hell was that goofy note all about?”

“Oh, I just wanted to know. I was thinking about something.”

Ernst Wildhaber, one of the scientists, who was seated on Diddy's left, got up; Jim slid into his seat. Smiled. “Sure is a strange thing to want to know in the middle of all—this.” Jim waved his arm eloquently. “Unless there is a connection somewhere. Like you're all pissed off about the merger and planning to bump Reager off. Query. Will autopsy detect arsenic in the creamed chicken and peas, or won't it?”

“Something like that,” said Diddy.

“Well, when you've got all your plans set up and your poisons operational, let me know. I might come in on it with you. Okay?”

“Promise,” said Diddy. “But what I'm really hoping for is to make you my accomplice. From now on, I won't commit a murder without your advice.”

“Just come up with something that leaves no traces,” replied Jim. “And you can count me in. That is, unless I beat you to it and just shove one of those creeps out the window by tomorrow. I'm a pretty impulsive guy, you know.”

Diddy, light in the head, aerated almost, wondering where this conversation was going to lead. What was the next sentence? The one after that? Was it possible that he's about to tell Jim about the undetected crime he's already committed? And after telling, to have yet one more incredulous auditor?

Sitting on the edge of his chair, Diddy sips his coffee. Waiting for the sticky strip of words to spurt from his mouth. Jim has turned away to talk to Denton of R&D, the man on his left. Anything might happen. The urgent blood in his head is spiraling down into his chest. Something hard, cubelike, rising in the back of his throat. He leans toward Jim. But just then Wildhaber returned to claim his seat; signaling the waitress for a fresh cup of coffee. This one's cold. I can't drink it. And Jim went back to his own table.

*   *   *

On the agenda for Thursday afternoon: a special tour of the plant, whose theme is the recently installed manufacturing equipment of which Watkins is so proud. For the benefit, mainly, of the representatives of the company's sales force present at the conference. One of Diddy's tasks in New York, before coming up for the week, had been to prepare and oversee the printing of a brochure explaining the new automated machines for the salesmen to take away with them. A mailing of this material was going out to the rest of the salesmen across the country.

Diddy decided he could skip the tour without anyone caring. At first, was going to phone Hester to say he was coming over immediately; instead of this evening. Then decides to arrive without giving prior notice, hoping that her aunt might wander out or have to leave early. But as Diddy comes down the corridor on Hester's floor, sees Mrs. Nayburn pacing outside her niece's room. As if she were expecting him. She doesn't waste a minute before beginning to fawn. Hester's pimp. He sees the woman gazing triumphantly at the flower's he's carrying.

“Any news from the doctor?” Diddy said mechanically.

Mrs. Nayburn announces that the tests have been completed. Assuming a suitable cornea is available from the Eye Bank, Hester's operation will take place tomorrow.

“And what does the doctor say?” Diddy feeling somehow that what he's heard must be bad news.

“Only that we shouldn't expect too much. My poor darling. She's being so brave.”

“I'm going in now.”

“You go right ahead and do that, Dalton dear. She'll be tickled pink to see you. And I think I'll just leave you two alone.” An unexpected gift.

Entering the room, Diddy was shocked at the pallor of Hester's face behind the black glasses. She looked up. “It's me,” he says.

“I know.”

Diddy, feeling stupid, busies himself filling an empty vase with water and setting the flowers in it. Which he places on Hester's night table before he sits close beside her.

“Oh, roses. Thank you.”

Pleased, Diddy takes her hand and kisses the palm. “How are you today?”

“Sad.”

“Are you worried about tomorrow? Nervous?”

“Not really.” She laughs gloomily. “I know the operation isn't going to be successful.”

“Why are you so sure of that? Is it something the doctors said?”

“No. They try to keep up my morale. But I know.”

Diddy gazes at Hester's face, which he has never seen register such misery. How could he have found that innocent, vulnerable face inexpressive? Her bed is disorderly, and the sheets crumpled. She must have slept badly last night.

“Look, Hester, it's true many corneal transplants aren't successful. But many are. Don't think of it as if it were like getting a skin graft from someone else or acquiring someone else's kidney. A graft in the eye will take, in a fairly large number of cases. The eye is special, not so adept as the rest of the body at rejecting foreign substances. You know, there aren't any blood vessels in the cornea. And the eye in general has fewer antibodies than other organs.… But I'm sure your doctors have told you all that.”

“How do you know so much?”

“My father was a doctor. And I was pre-med in college.”

Diddy, hearing a replay of his last words inside his head, felt anew the grotesque intersection of their situations. Hester, unable to see with the naked watery eyes God had given her. Himself, engaged in publicizing the machine-eye that assumes the normal skills of unaided sight, and seeks to move beyond them. To a man wielding a microscope, his own seeing eyes are blind.

The girl seemed to be weighing what Diddy said. Then shook her head. Misery again stationed itself in her face. Could she be so naïve as to imagine that all she would need to be happy, always happy, is to recover her eyesight? If that's what she imagines, then think what Hester suffers, sure as she is that she's not going to see. Either not ever or never again?… Not only does the imagination dupe us, so we're always hankering after what we don't have, and in particular what we've lost; as if its possession or repossession would be our salvation. Diddy also thinks how the imagination localizes suffering. Creates and re-creates imaginary anatomies: exotic cavities, magic cartilage, organs of the secret life.

Yes, eyes are special. But besides the eyes of the flesh, which are mostly water, there are the secret eyes. That either see or do not see. This is the only consolation Diddy dares to offer Hester, since he must take seriously her premonition that the surgery will fail. Don't you know, he says, that you can really see? In a way most people with sight can't. And that most of what people are looking at with their eyes is just debris.

Gertrude, the nurse, comes through the door with the bare thermometer in hand to stick in Hester's mouth, and bustles about the room with a vaguely censorious air while waiting for the necessary time to elapse before taking it out. Leaves, after giving Hester a large white pill to swallow.

“How disagreeable that woman is,” exclaims Diddy. They haven't spoken while she was in the room.

“Very.”

Damn them all! But no, we were talking about something. “About what I said before, Hester. What do you say?”

The girl shifted in her bed; readjusting her pillows. Diddy hastened to assist her.

“What do you say, Hester?”

“That you overestimate me.”

“Not at all.”

“Yes. You think I have some special wisdom because I'm blind.”

Because she is blind? Diddy hadn't thought he was making that connection. Only rediscovering the paradox of the wise person who happens to be blind as well. Diddy about to apologize for his tactless presumption, when the girl, in a timorous tone, went on. “Maybe you're right. Being blind does make one see better in a way. Nothing is either ugly or beautiful. When that's not of concern, an awful lot of scum is blown off the mind and the feelings.”

Diddy, in his chair, feels her words as an immense blow. Though they take a few moments to traverse some unidentified distance. A good blow, like the harsh stroke of an osteopath knocking a dislocated shoulder into place. Not painful at first. The blow is moving out, in ever widening circles. (Now) Diddy feels—there's no other word for it—exact. Exactly where he is; being exactly where and how he wants to be. Can a few quiet words do that? Strip something away to permit this feeling, one he's never had before in his life? Not ever. Like being in the very center of something dense, surging, and resilient. In the center, but with no sense of being pressed in on all sides. A feeling of plenitude, instead. And of harrowing lucidity.

(Now) the blow, having rushed past him, already light years away, begins to ache. Tears rinse his eyes. Falling toward the mattress, the crown of his head against Hester's left thigh, Diddy comes undone. His shoulders bulge with sobs, which he cannot, dares not, try to control. But Hester doesn't lean forward to embrace him. Without sitting up, she extends one arm and rests her palm between his shuddering shoulder blades.

Diddy waits for her touch to become healing, to stanch the warm grief. It doesn't.

“Tell me,” says the girl.

“I can't.” But he can. Words have dropped the temperature, chilled his grief, begun to still its flow. Wiping his eyes. “I'm crying for many things. For you. For me. And over what you said just now. If you only knew how I suffer from my kind of seeing. How it hurts to see everything … almost everything as ugly.”