The Ax (23 page)

Quinlan looked at me, with a gentle smile. He’s a great absorber, Quinlan. He said, “You’d like to thaw, Burke, wouldn’t you? Knock down the wall?”

“I didn’t know I was doing that,” I said. “I thought I was just trying to hold myself together.” But it’s true; I’d caught glimpses of myself, here and there in her description.

He went on smiling, and said, “You didn’t buy the computer to insult Marjorie, did you?”

“No, of course not,” I said. “That never even occurred to me.” That had been part of the description where I had not caught sight of myself, and I was grateful to Quinlan for calling attention to it.

His smile now moved over to include Marjorie, who was sitting there looking exhausted. No, not exhausted, not like somebody who’s just run a long time, but drained, like somebody who’s just had an operation. He said to her, “We’re all of us paranoid, Marjorie, you know,” and shrugged. “Like right now,” he said, “I’m wondering how you feel about taking advice from a black man. Are you just humoring me? Do you laugh behind my back, in your car together?”

“We don’t laugh about anything,” Marjorie said, which I thought an overstatement, but kept my mouth shut.

Quinlan smiled more broadly; he has a very broad smile, when he wants. “Paranoia is not a good guide,” he suggested, then looked back at me and said, “But Marjorie was right about the cryogenics, wasn’t she? You’re frozen, waiting to be thawed when there’s a cure.”

“That sounds right,” I admitted, “though I’m not sure what to do about it. I mean, it’ll be hard to retrain myself.” Retrain; retraining. The sick joke of downsizing, and now I’ve volunteered to try it in my home.

“We’re in no hurry,” Quinlan told me, and looked at Marjorie again, to say, “Isn’t that right? As long as we know the problem’s out in the air, and progress is being made, we’re in no hurry, are we?”

“I feel much better,” Marjorie said. “Just being here, just talking about it.”

I couldn’t tell them, of course, that the situation is going to change for the better, the much better, pretty soon now, no matter what we do in the counseling. Two resumés and Upton “Ralph” Fallon, that’s all that’s left. I’m a short-timer now, in cyrogenics.

But I’m glad Marjorie got to say all that, and I’m very glad I got to hear it. I don’t want to lose her, any more than I want Billy in jail. I don’t want any of the extra bad things that happen to people in our situation, I don’t want the fringe banes.

We’re at sea, that’s my image, not cryogenics. We’re lost at sea on a raft, and it’s up to me to keep the raft together, ration the supplies, keep us afloat until we find shore. That’s my task, my position. If it’s made me cold to Marjorie, then I’m wrong, I’m trying too hard. Hurting her can’t help me, or anything else. I’ve been
too
focused, that’s what it is. I have to try to relax, even though all I really want to do is keep my guard up twenty-four hours a day.

In any event, now we know who the guy is. James Halstead; always James, never Jim. Banker turned Mercedes salesman. Now we know, and we don’t care.

That was yesterday, and today is Wednesday. I’ve just kissed Marjorie goodbye at Dr. Carney’s, warmly, with love. Now I’m on my way to kill GRB.

The weight of my raincoat is more balanced today as I walk through the woods, with the Luger in the right pocket and two apples in the left. Today I’m prepared for a long wait.

It’s not yet ten in the morning when I reach GRB’s house and take up my position, seated on the stump at the edge of the woods, behind the pool house. The house over there beyond the lawn seems shut up tight, as though the owners have gone away forever. But she, at least, was here the day before yesterday, when I saw her hike through the woods, hitting trees with her shillelagh.

I settle down, trying to find a position that’s more comfortable for my back, on this stump, and I wait. And after a while, I find myself thinking about this or that part of yesterday’s session with Longus Quinlan, and how all of that history just came pouring out of Marjorie. I must be a different person from the one I always thought I was, if she had to keep so silent around me for so long, if she had to create this entire scenario, an affair, counseling, before she could suddenly blurt it all out like that, like a dam bursting.

I remember what I said yesterday about retraining, that word from when I got the chop, bubbling to the surface all at once there, and I think I’m serious about it. I’ve just been going along, doing my best to take care of my family, but ignoring the effect I was having on Marjorie, taking it for granted she was happy with me.

Retraining. That was part of the separation package at the mill, what
they
called retraining, and what
they
called retraining was so miserable and false that I really ought to find some other word for the reappraisal I want to make in connection with myself. What
they
called retraining was…

I don’t suppose they actually meant it to be insulting. I think what they were trying to do was keep us all calm and hopeful until we were well out the door, and that’s why we had the severance packages and the inspirational meetings and the offers of retraining, all this crap.

At first, I was even hopeful about the idea of retraining. I’d read all the stuff about it, the same stuff we’ve all read, how it’s going to be necessary in the brave new world of tomorrow for people to move on from job to job, learning new skills along the way, and how males older than fifty have the hardest time giving up the old skills in exchange for the new skills, and I was absolutely prepared to prove that particular generalization false, here’s
one
guy can adapt, just try me.

And so they tried me, all right. They offered me air conditioning repair.

Where am I, in a vocational high school or a minimum security prison, which one? Air conditioning repair? How is this a brand new skill to carry anybody into the brave new world of tomorrow? And what does air conditioning repair have at
all
to do with my entire work history? I manage assembly lines, that’s what I
do
.

Okay, forget specialized paper processes, just talk about assembly lines, the management thereof, and that’s what I do. Retrain me to run a different kind of assembly line, all right? I’m adaptable. The product lines are still out there, the products are still churning out the factory door. I’m happy to retrain, if it connects with
me
in any way at all, if it makes any kind of sense.

Let’s say you’re the owner of a company that services air conditioning units in large office buildings, and you have an opening for a repairman, and thirty guys apply (and thirty guys will apply) who have had
years
of experience repairing air conditioners, and I show up with a certificate of two months’ training in air conditioner repair and a quarter century of experience in manufacturing specialized paper products. Are you gonna hire me? Or are you not that crazy?

Take James Halstead, the banker turned car salesman. Is that
retraining
? He looks like a banker, which means he looks like a Mercedes salesman. He already has the suit. Is he where he is because he actively welcomed retraining, or is he where he is because he failed? Did he seek for solace in Marjorie’s arms because he’d made a successful transition to the brave new world of tomorrow, or because he was discarded like last year’s computer? Can it be he’s unhappy because he just found out the bank didn’t need him after all? Those complacent days of plenty, riding the commuter train three days a week to what turned out not to be his actual life, but just a game they were letting him play, for a little while.

When one of his old bosses comes in to buy a Mercedes, using the money they’ve saved on his salary, do they recognize him? They do not. But he recognizes them. And never lets on. And smiles, and smiles, and sells the car.

That’s retraining.

Eleven-fifteen; she appears, in the same hat and cardigan and corduroys, but a different blouse. The last time, the blouse was light blue, this time it’s light green. She carries the shillelagh again, and she marches across the lawn like the commander of a prisoner-of-war camp on inspection. She goes through the gate in the electric fence, and strides off up the path:
crack… crack… crack…

Is he in there? Do I dare try it? I have at least half an hour, probably more, before she gets back, judging by last time. I can’t sit here forever, day after day, on this stump, like a leprechaun.

I rise—stiff already—and cross to the gate, and let myself through, carefully hooking it shut behind me. I thought at first I’d slink around to the right, along the fence, past the rhododendron beds and the birdbath, to where the wires of the fence are attached to the right rear corner of the house, but now I realize there’s no point hiding. What if he does see me? So what? I’m a respectable looking man in a raincoat, walking across his lawn, probably got lost out there in the woods, looking for directions. He comes to the door, he asks if he can help, and I shoot him.

So I cross the lawn, not exactly boldly, but casually, looking around as though with a normal curiosity about somebody else’s home. Nobody appears at a door, nobody appears at a window. I veer to the left, cross the patio, and try one of the sliding patio doors. It glides open, and I step inside.

The central air conditioning is on, discreet but apparent. If anything happened to it, I wouldn’t know how to fix it.

This is a dining room, with its view through the glass doors to the patio and pool. I cross it, and now I’m definitely a trespasser, not an innocent man lost in the woods.

I move swiftly and quietly through the house, first downstairs, then up, and it’s empty. GRB isn’t here. At the very end, I open the door from the kitchen to the attached garage, and there’s no car in it.

He’s out. Where is he? Does he have a counterman job, like Everett Dynes? Is he selling automobiles? How do I find him? How do I get my hands on him?

I’m crossing back through the kitchen when I glance out the window and see her coming, still marching firmly forward, headed this way across the lawn, mashing it every second step with her stick. A shorter walk today; damn.

I don’t want her to find me, because I don’t want to have to kill her. For many reasons I don’t want to kill her, but the primary reason right now is that her husband isn’t home, and if I leave her dead and him alive he’ll be alerted, he’ll be surrounded by police, I’ll never get my hands on him. If I kill her, and then wait for GRB to come home, what happens if he
doesn’t
come home? What if he’s on an overnight job interview, won’t be back till late tomorrow?

I can’t stay here, to wait for him. I can’t kill this woman, so I can’t permit her to know I’m here.

She uses the patio door, or she has in the past, the same door I just came in by. When she enters, which way will she go?

Either the kitchen, I think, or the downstairs bathroom, which means through the dining room and the smaller sitting room and the hall,
not
through the large living room facing the front of the house. So I move into the living room, and crouch behind the sofa that stands in the middle of that large space. It looks toward the stone fireplace, with its back to the large bow window showing front lawn and the driveway that recedes downward toward the invisible main road. Crouched here, behind the sofa, eight feet from that window, I’m fully exposed to anyone out front, but why would anyone be out front?

I hear her enter, as the door glides open, and then shut. I hear the final
click
as she puts the shillelagh down, its tip striking the polished wood floor.

I crouch behind the sofa. My right hand grasps the Luger in my raincoat pocket. I try to remember to keep my finger away from the trigger, afraid I’ll spastically shoot when I don’t want to, probably wounding myself, certainly alerting her, surely destroying everything I’ve done so far.

I hear the duller
tocks
of her shoes as she crosses the dining room. This way, or the other?

The other. Across the smaller sitting room, into the hall, and into the bathroom. Yes, a brisk walk in the woods does exercise the bladder, doesn’t it, and that’s why the walk was cut short. And she shuts the bathroom door, even though she’s alone in the house, as her mother taught her.

I rise up, behind the sofa, and take my right hand out of my pocket, away from the Luger. My fingers are stiff, like arthritis. Briskly, I cross the living room and the dining room. As silently as possible, I slide open the door, exit, slide it shut. I trot across the lawn, wanting to be well off her property before she’s done in the bathroom, because next she’ll surely go on to the kitchen, and from the kitchen windows over the sink she’ll have a full view of this entire lawn.