Easy and Hard Ways Out (28 page)

Brundage, beset by a dozen different emotions, two dozen, a hundred, felt himself begin to black out. He sat down. “Christine, you mean you're leaving, and yet you want me to … I don't really understand.”

“We started something,” she said. “And we never finished. What I wanted then, I still want. I want to have you any way I can, Ken, even if it's only in memory.”

Brundage felt as if he were hearing movie dialogue; such words from such a person could not possibly be directed at him. He suppressed the urge to look over his shoulder.

“Christine, frankly, I'm at a loss. I mean, of course I'm attracted to you, and I've told you how I feel about your work, but are you sure, you know, that what we're doing … that you won't have any regrets?”

That's it, shmuck
, said an inner voice.
Go salvage the loss from the win
.

“You're too considerate,” said Christine. “Intelligent, and considerate. Who could resist the combination? Of course I'm sure. Meet me at my apartment right after work. We'll go separately, just so there's no suspicion. You remember how to get there?”

Brundage, in a daze, nodded.

She bent down, kissed him gently on the forehead, a soft, wet, sericeous kiss. Visions of genitalia swept through Brundage's head.

“Wear the lotion,” she whispered, and left.

His wife had hired a private detective who trailed him to the apartment, took twelve poorly focused coital snapshots to remember the occasion. Disdaining divorce despite Brundage's generous alimony offer, she gave the photos to the
Daily News,
which printed two showing blurred unnatural acts (eyes of subjects masked by thin black bars to conceal identities)
.
SEX-CRAZED NOTED SCIENTIST,
the caption began; a week later Brundage was expelled from the IEEE
.

He hadn't handed in a progress report for two days. Already, Ardway must've received a computer notice apprising him of the oversight. Brundage didn't care. This was going to be a turning point in his life, some sort of crazy culmination, values restored to their proper order. On Thursday morning, he was as nervous as a high school boy on a first date. He'd gotten a haircut the day before, bought a new pair of slacks, even brushed his teeth. He was becoming human! And he knew it, could feel it. There was something to care about now; no,
someone
to care about. Some
one
. He paced his office. He noticed his stomach bulge, tried a few tentative toe touches. He opened his engineering notebook, closed it immediately. He looked out the window; a light snow had begun, the flakes blowing and swirling in the gusty wind. Won't stick, thought Brundage.

Lunchtime came and went, unnoticed. Amelia's instructions were to admit no one that day, absolutely no one, for any reason. In the afternoon, as always, he began picturing Christine undressed, began imagining the details between her legs, the exact pattern of hair growth, its thickness, measurements of the opening's length, width, and depth in centimeters, angular orientation in degrees. Disgusting, fascinating thoughts flew through his mind,
Daily News
photos of unnatural acts: would she do … oral sex? The very word sent shivers through him. Oral. In fifty-four years he'd never thought it possible, resigned himself to a life unblown. What would happen? Would he pass out? Have a punishing heart attack? Stroke? He called Harriet, said he wouldn't be home till late that night. Big crisis in the office. She accepted the information passively, a bad sign, a sign of some damn thing or other, thought Brundage, but he didn't care.

Three thirty. He sat hunched in the office, a clenched muscle, tight with stored energy. Christine would be leaving now, a little early, getting home, waiting. Again he rose, looked out the window. A few cars had already started to exit the parking lot, windshield wipers beating like rubber wings against the snow, tires already skidding on the slippery ground. Maniacs, thought Brundage. Look at them. He heard a man's voice outside his door as he cut short his reverie and went to slip on his coat and peaked hat. He could hear Amelia and the man arguing as he locked his briefcase and gave a final glance around. This was it. His date with destiny.

He opened his office door vigorously, caught a brief tableau of Brank being shouted at by Amelia, rushed through the lab and out into the hall. He fled through the corridors, Brank at his heels, yelling words at him, petitions, causes, desperate, crazy things that were unrelated to Brundage's getting into bed with a passionate woman and losing himself in her flesh.

“See my secretary,” he shouted over his shoulder in the parking lot, as he fought his way through the snow to his car. He had trouble starting and was late leaving the lot. The Expressway was jammed, strung out with accidents and stalled cars; even the tow trucks couldn't get through. Brundage, the earlaps on his hat still down from force of habit, sat immobilized in the tie-up, left with nothing to do but watch as the storm howled and raged around him. An hour went by. An hour and a half. Precious seconds stolen from him by capricious fate. God, he had to get out! He was being buried alive. The car in front came to life, rolled a few feet forward. Other cars began tentative movements. Creeping. But moving, thank God, moving.

Brundage wondered about Christine. Where was she? Caught like him, or had she somehow made it home? Taken off her dress, put on a nightgown and silk robe. Made a cocktail, and sat down in an easy chair to wait, thighs carelessly (of course) spread apart. Traffic again stopped dead. Brundage began looking around, a caged animal. He turned to one radio station after another. “… although Sanitation reports over ninety percent of the roads sanded,” “… small craft warnings have been …” He shut the radio off abruptly and yelled, “Useless! Useless, idiot
assholes!”
His life's blood was draining one drop at a time and they gave him small craft warnings. Wild-eyed, he pressed his foot on the accelerator, hurtled and skidded onto the shoulder of the road, and somehow made his way to within a few feet of the next exit, where a large hearse formed an impassable blockade. Twenty-five minutes of stagnant agony. He looked behind him; he'd cut in on a funeral procession.

He began to pray without sentiment: Please, God, I'm sorry the man is dead, but he's
had
his. To him it makes no difference if this storm lasts a thousand years. Whereas, look, to me, it's life itself; couldn't you just move the bas—I'm sorry, the departed—a few feet forward? A few feet is all I ask. Abruptly, the hearse rolled forward several yards, and Brundage drove out the exit, not pausing (since he didn't really believe) to say thanks.

He cruised slowly through the streets, trying to get his bearings. He'd gotten off the Expressway two exits before he was supposed to; his best bet was to head in the same general direction he'd been going. The night was pitch-black, the occasional street lamps serving only to illuminate the falling snow. He pressed ahead, driving on for nearly forty minutes before finally admitting to himself that he was lost. He searched the streets for passersby of whom he could ask directions; he saw no one. Who in his right mind would be out in this weather? He tried desperately to remember the route he'd taken two weeks ago. It had seemed so simple … a few honey-voiced instructions from Christine and they were there. He spotted a police squad car, pulled alongside, and rolled down his window.

“Officer! Say, officer. Would you know where—”

And then it struck him. He didn't even have the address! Of all the incredible bumbling stupidities, gross ineptitudes, not only did he not know where he was, he couldn't even ask where he was going. How could he—

“Uh, never mind, sorry,” he said, and rolled the window back up. He drove a few more blocks, and tried to think what he should do. This was ridiculous, this whole business. This just didn't happen to a person.
Other
things happened—the husband discovered him, his wife found out, Christine became pregnant, he got VD—
those
were the things that happened, not
this
. Not getting lost. This was crazy; it didn't fit. How would it sound, a fifty-four-year-old man explaining why he missed his date to get laid: “I got lost.”

All right, he had to think, to calm down. Maybe he could still save it. It was past eight. Looking up Christine's address in the phone book was out; she'd mentioned long ago she had an unlisted number. There was only one hope. He'd go back to the office, locate her records in Personnel, find her address and phone number there, call, say he'd be over immediately. He felt better. He made a U-turn and headed back toward the highway.

“Which way to the highway?” he asked the two patrolmen in a parked car after he'd driven around for nearly twenty minutes. He could not be sure if they were the same officers he'd queried earlier; patrolmen, after all, looked alike. One of them pointed a finger, and Brundage continued in that direction, finally locating the Expressway and getting back on. Although the snow had assumed blizzard ferocity, traffic at the later hour had lessened and he managed to make it back to the Labs in a little over fifty minutes. The parking lot was still about a quarter filled—night-shift workers' cars, and a few late-staying daytime executives'. Brundage felt the snow seeping into his shoes as he trudged to the entrance.

“See your badge, sir?” asked the night guard, who didn't recognize him.

Brundage fumbled through his briefcase, finally came up with a yellowed square of plastic, a ten-years-younger Brundage caught and preserved in two dimensions, a beetle in an Ice Age glacier. The guard nodded and Brundage went inside. He walked through the corridors, empty nighttime echoes hurrying his stride. He avoided scrupulously the area of the Accounting men's room, where, years before, also late in the evening, a man had emerged suddenly and grabbed him by the collar, a fiend with hairy knuckles who'd screamed into his face, “I'll kill them both,” and then had pushed Brundage to the floor and run off. He got to the Personnel office and peered through the translucent door panels into the darkened interior. The clock in the hall read five after ten. He tried the door, and miraculously, it opened. Inside, he turned on the lights. There were five desks in the room. He walked to a wall lined with file cabinets, the drawers labeled with letters of the alphabet. Placing his briefcase on the floor, he tugged at the drawer marked “P.”
Christine Parness. Oh, Christine, love of my life, wait for me, please, please, I'll find you in these cabinets and come to you
.

The drawer was locked. Brundage began to pound on it, thought fleetingly of calling Maintenance, then pounded on it some more. After a few minutes he stopped and picked up his briefcase from the floor. What must she think? He left the Personnel office, forgetting to turn off the lights, and launched himself once more into the corridors. How could he ever face her again? He tried to fathom her reactions, feel as she must feel.
He simply didn't show up
. A phenomenon never to be explained, an error of omission never understood, a secret, unfathomed grief that had to be borne alone. He felt faint, and took several deep breaths.

And he? Would he mistake strangers on the street for her? Lara to his bumbling Zhivago, loser to nature in his first fight, overcome by small craft warnings and a three-inch accumulation. He found himself near the Advanced Devices lab (certain automatic patterns were built into the brain's very structure) and stepped inside. He made his way to his Amelia-less office and opened the door. His desk was as he had left it, notebook at the center, Progress Report forms near one side, In and Out boxes piled high with trivia. And in a corner, the aftershave lotion he'd forgotten to put on.
STUD. FOR THE TOTALLY MASCULINE MAN.
See? Forgotten. Ah, what could the psychiatrists tell us about that?
About the whole business, actually. What could be more obvious?

Wrong, thought Brundage. No. Wrong.
Wrong!
He opened the bottle (he'd left the, cap loosened) and doused himself with the contents, pouring it on his shirt and neck, down his back, in his sleeves; he smelled like an alcoholic lemon. He threw the notebook to the floor along with the empty bottle and the Progress forms, hurled the In box out of the office, threw the Out box at the window, which it cracked. He hurried out.

In the parking lot he sat in his car, watching the fog spread over the windows, staring at the halos around the sodium vapor lights. Science is the only thing that can save us, he thought. It was true. Order from chaos. After a while, the night-shift workers were let out and made their way to their spots, white puffs of breath like signals in front of them. Cars started and began to roll, to stop short, to cut in and out. Brundage emerged from his Ford and ran to a central position in the lot. He put down his briefcase and began giving hand signals. He belched. He began to yell.

“Move it up there, idiot!
Hold
it, stupid! Let's
go!
Let's
go!
Let's
go
, all you maniacs! Maniacs, maniacs, maniacs, maniacs, maniacs, maniacs …”

They came in about forty minutes, and before a small group of murmuring onlookers, led him away rather easily, hat with the earlaps still snug on his head. Surprisingly, however, his briefcase lay untouched and neglected where he'd left it, until a snow plow caught it the next day, strewing the mangled contents over the soot-blackened snow and slicing the outside fairly much to shreds.

AUERBACH LABORATORIES

Inter-Office Memorandum
12/6/66

From: S. Brine

To: S. Rupp

cc: ––

Subject: Prank paging, lavatory stock disappearance

Our current working assumption is that the same person who is stealing soap, towels and toilet paper from the lavatories is also the individual responsible for the prank paging. This tie-in is hypothesized because of the frequent cultural and historical references in the pages and similar, though deviant, references in certain men's room graffiti. Also, previous theories (see memo of 11/30) have thus far proved unfruitful. Principal suspect at this time is W. Murphy, supervisor of the maintenance department, who has exhibited violent over-reactions to the cost-overrun memos.