Javis-bircham Publications, Inc. owned the office building, and occupied the top fifteen floors, on 46th Street west of Ninth Avenue. The building had been erected in the late 1930s, and was designed in the massive, pyramidal style of the period, with trim and decoration modeled after that of Rockefeller Center.
Javis-Bircham published trade magazines, textbooks, and technical journals. When Daniel Blank was hired six years previously, the company was publishing 129 different periodicals relating to the chemical industry, oil and petroleum, engineering, business management, automotive, machine tools, and aviation. In recent years magazines had been added on automation, computer technology, industrial pollution, oceanography, space exploration, and a consumer monthly on research and development. Also, a technical book club had been started, and the corporation was currently exploring the possibilities of short, weekly newsletters in fields covered by its monthly and bi-monthly trade magazines. Javis-Bircham had been listed as number 216 in Fortune Magazine’s most recent list of America’s 500 largest corporations. It had gone public in 1951 and its stock, after a 3–1 split in 1962, showed a 20-fold increase in its Big Board price.
Daniel Blank had been hired as Assistant Circulation Manager. His previous jobs had been as Subscription Fulfillment Manager and Circulation Manager on consumer periodicals. The three magazines on which he had worked prior to his employment at Javis-Bircham had since died. Blank, who saw what was happening, had survived, in a better job, at a salary he would have considered a hopeless dream ten years ago.
His first reaction to the circulation set-up at Javis-Bircham was unequivocal. “It’s a fucked-up mess,” he told his wife.
Blank’s immediate superior was the Circulation Manager, a beefy, genial man named Robert White, called “Bob” by everyone, including secretaries and mailroom boys. This was, Blank thought, a measure of the man.
White had been at Javis-Bircham for 25 years and had surrounded himself with a staff of more than 50 males and females who seemed, to Blank, all “old women” who smelled of lavender and whiskey sours, arrived late for work, and were continually taking up office collections for birthdays, deaths, marriages, and retirements.
The main duty of the Circulation Department was to supply to the Production Department “print-run estimates”: the number of copies of each magazine that should be printed to insure maximum profit for Javis-Bircham. The magazines might be weeklies, semi-monthlies, monthlies, quarterlies, semi-annuals or annuals. They might be given away to a managerial-level readership or sold by subscription. Some were even available to the general public on newsstands. Most of the magazines earned their way by advertising revenue. Some carried no advertising at all, but were of such a specialized nature that they sold solely on the value of their editorial content.
Estimating the “press run” of each magazine for maximum profitably was an incredibly complex task. Past and potential circulation of each periodical had to be considered, current and projected advertising revenue, share of general overhead, costs of actual printing-quality of paper, desired process, four-color plates, etc.-costs of mailing and distributing, editorial budget (including personnel), publicity and public relations campaigns, etc., etc.
At the time Daniel Blank joined the organization, this bewildering job of “print-run estimation” seemed to be done “by guess and by God.” Happy Bob White’s staff of “old women” fed him information, laughing a great deal during their conversations with him. Then, when a recommendation was due, White would sit at his desk, humming, with an ancient slide rule in his hands, and within an hour or so would send his estimate to the Production Department.
Daniel Blank saw immediately that there were so many variables involved that the system screamed for computerization. His experience with computers was minimal; on previous jobs he had been involved mostly with relatively simple data-processing machines.
He therefore enrolled for a six months’ night course in “The Triumph of the Computer.” Two years after starting work at Javis-Bircham, he presented to Bob White a 30-page carefully organized and cogently reasoned prospectus on the advantages of a computerized Circulation Department.
White took it home over the weekend to read. He returned it to Blank on Monday morning. Pages were marked with brown rings from coffee cups, and one page had been crinkled and almost obliterated by a spilled drink.
White took Daniel to lunch and, smiling, explained why Blank’s plan wouldn’t do. It wouldn’t do at all.
“You obviously put a lot of work and thought into it,” White said, “but you’re forgetting the personalities involved. The people. My God, Dan, I have lunch with the editors and advertising managers of those magazines almost every day They’re my friends. They all have plans for their books: a article that might get a lot of publicity and boost circulation a new hot-shot advertising salesman who might boost revenu way over the same month last year. I’ve got to consider a those personal things. The human factors involved. You can’t feed that into a computer.”
Daniel Blank nodded understandingly. An hour after they returned from lunch he had a clean copy of his prospectus on the desk of the Executive Vice President.
A month later the Circulation Department was shocked to learn that laughing Bob White had retired. Daniel Blank was appointed Circulation Director, a title he chose himself, and given a free hand.
Within a year all the “old women” were gone, Blank had surrounded himself with a young staff of pale technicians, and the cabinets of AMROK II occupied half the 30th floor of the Javis-Bircham Building. As Blank had predicted, not only did the computer and auxiliary data-processing machines handle all the problems of circulation-subscription fulfillment and print-run estimation-but they performed these tasks so swiftly that they could also be used for salary checks, personnel records, and pension programs. As a result, Javis-Bircham was able to dismiss more than 500 employees and, as Blank had carefully pointed out in his original prospectus, the annual leasing of the extremely expensive AMROK II resulted in an appreciable tax deduction.
Daniel Blank was currently earning $55,000 a year and had an unlimited expense account, a very advantageous pension and stock option plan. He was 36.
About a month after he took over, he received a very strange postcard from Bob White. It said merely: “What are you feeding the computer? Ha-ha.”
Blank puzzled over this. What had been fed the computer, of course, were the past circulation and advertising revenue figures and profit or loss totals of all the magazines Javis-Bircham published. Admittedly, White had been working his worn slide rule during most of the years from which those figures were taken, and it was possible to say that, in a sense, White had programmed the computer. But still, the postcard made little sense, and Daniel Blank wondered why his former boss had bothered to send it.
It was gratifying to hear the uniformed starter say, “Good morning, Mr. Blank,” and it was gratifying to ride the Executive Elevator in solitary comfort to the 30th floor. His personal office was a corner suite with wall-to-wall carpeting, a private lavatory and, not a desk, but a table: a tremendous slab of distressed walnut on a wrought-iron base. These things counted.
He had deliberately chosen for his personal secretary a bony, 28-year-old widow, Mrs. Cleek, who needed the job badly and would be grateful. She had proved as efficient and colorless as he had hoped. She had a few odd habits: she insisted on latching all doors and cabinets that were slightly ajar, and she was continually lining up the edges of the ashtrays and papers with the edges of tables and desks, putting everything parallel or at precise right angles. A picture hanging askew drove her mad. But these were minor tics.
When he entered his office, she was ready to hang away his coat and hat in the small closet. His black coffee was waiting for him, steaming, on a small plastic tray on the table, having been delivered by the commissary on the 20th floor.
“Good morning, Mr. Blank,” she said in her watery voice, consulting a stenographer’s pad she held. “You have a meeting at ten-thirty with the Pension Board. Lunch at twelve-thirty at the Plaza with Acme, regarding the servicing contract. I tried to confirm, but no one’s in yet. I’ll try again.”
“Thank you,” he said. “I like your dress. Is it new?”
“No,” she said.
“I’ll be in the Computer Room until the Pension Board meeting, in case you need me.”
“Yes, Mr. Blank.”
The embarrassing truth was that, as Mrs. Cleek was probably aware, he had nothing to do. It was true he was overseer of an extremely important department-perhaps the most important department of a large corporation. But, literally, he found it difficult to fill his working day.
He could have given the impression of working. Many executives in similar circumstances did that. He could accept invitations to luncheons easily avoided. He could stalk corridors carrying papers over which he could frown and shake his head. He could request technical literature on supplies and computer systems utterly inadequate or too sophisticated for Javis-Bircham’s needs, with a heavy increase of unnecessary correspondence. He could take senseless business trips to inspect the operations of magazine wholesalers and printing plants. He could attend dozens of conventions and trade meetings, give speeches and buy the bodies of hat-check girls.
But none of that was his style. He needed work; he could not endure inaction for long. And so he turned to “empire building,” plotting how he might enlarge the size of the Circulation Department and increase his own influence and power.
And in his personal life he felt the same need for action after the brief hibernation following his divorce (during which period he vowed, inexplicably, to remain continent). This desire to “do” dated from his meeting with Celia Montfort. He punched his phone for an outside line, then dialed her number. Again.
He had not seen her nor had he spoken to her since that Sunday he was introduced at the Mortons’ and she had napped on his bed. He had looked her up in the Manhattan directory. There it was: “Montfort, C.” at an East End address. But each time he called, a male voice answered, lisping: “Mith Montforth rethidenth.”
Blank assumed it was a butler or houseman. The voice, in spite of its flutiness, was too mature to be that of the 12-year-old brother. Each time he was informed that Mith Montfort was out of town and, no, the speaker did not know when she might return.
But this time the reply was different. It was “Mith Montforth rethidenth” again, but additional information was offered: Miss Montfort had arrived, had called from the airport, and if Mr. Blank cared to phone later in the day, Mith Montforth would undoubtedly be at home.
He hung up, feeling a steaming hope. He trusted his instincts, though he could not always say why he acted as he did. He was convinced there was something there for him with that strange, disturbing woman: something significant. If he had energy and the courage to act…
Daniel Blank stepped into the open lobby of the Computer Room and nodded to the receptionist. He went directly to the large white enameled cabinet to the right of the inner doors and drew out a sterile duster and skull cap hermetically sealed in a clear plastic bag.
He donned white cap and duster, went through the first pair of swinging glass doors. Six feet away was the second pair, and the space between was called the “air lock,” although it was not sealed. It was illuminated by cold blue fluorescent lights said to have a germicidal effect. He paused a moment to watch the ordered activity in the Computer Room.
AMROK II worked 24 hours a day and was cared for by three shifts of acolytes, 20 in each shift. Blank was gratified to note that all on the morning shift were wearing the required disposable paper caps and dusters. Four men sat at a stainless steel table; the others, young men and women, sexless in their white paper costumes, attended the computer and auxiliary data-processing machines, one of which was presently chattering softly and spewing out an endless record that folded up neatly into partly serrated sheets in a wire basket. It was, Blank knew, a compilation of state unemployment insurance taxes.
The mutter of this machine and the soft start-stop whir of tape reels on another were the only sounds heard when Blank pushed through the second pair of swinging glass doors. The prohibition against unnecessary noise was rigidly enforced. And this glaring, open room was not only silent, it was dust-proof, with temperature and humidity rigidly controlled and monitored. An automatic alarm would be triggered by any unusual source of magnetic radiation. Fire was unthinkable. Not only was smoking prohibited but even the mere possession of matches or cigarette lighters was grounds for instant dismissal. The walls were unpainted stainless steel, the lamps fluorescent. The Computer Room was an unadorned vault, an operating theatre, floating on rubber mountings within the supporting body of the Javis-Bircham Building.
And 90 percent of this was sheer nonsense, humbuggery. This was not an atomic research facility, nor a laboratory dealing with deadly viruses. The business activities of AMROK II did not demand these absurd precautions-the sterile caps and gowns, the “air lock,” the prohibition against normal conversation.
Daniel Blank had decreed all this, deliberately. Even before it was installed and operating, he realized the functioning of AMROK II would be an awesome mystery to most of the employees of Javis-Bircham, including Blank’s superiors: vice presidents, the president, the board of directors. Blank intended to keep the activities of the Computer Room an enigma. Not only did it insure his importance to the firm, but it made his task much easier when the annual “budget day” rolled around and he requested consistently rising amounts for his department’s operating expenses.
Blank went immediately to the stainless steel table where the four young men were deep in whispered conversation. This was his Task Force X-1, the best technicians of the morning shift. Blank had set them a problem that was still “Top Secret” within this room.
From his boredom, in his desire to extend the importance of the Circulation Department and increase his personal power and influence, Blank had decided he should have the responsibility of deciding for each magazine the proportion between editorial pages and advertising pages. Years ago this ratio was dictated in a rough fashion by the limitations of printing presses, which could produce a magazine only in multiples of eight or 16 pages.
But improvements in printing techniques now permitted production of magazines of any number of pages-15, 47, 76, 103, 241: whatever might be desired, with a varied mix of paper quality. Magazine editors constantly fought for more editorial pages, arguing (sometimes correctly, sometimes not) that sheer quantity attracted readers.
But there was obviously a limit to this: paper cost money, and so did press time. Editors were continually wrangling with the Production Department about the thickness of their magazines. Daniel Blank saw a juicy opportunity to step into the fray and supersede both sides by suggesting AMROK II be given the assignment of determining the most profitable proportion between editorial and advertising pages.
He would, he knew, face strong and vociferous opposition. Editors would claim an infringement of their creative responsibilities; production men would see a curtailment of their power. But if Blank could present a feasible program, he was certain he could win over the shrewd men who floated through the paneled suites on the 31st floor. Then he-and AMROK II, of course-would determine the extent of the editorial content of each magazine. It seemed to him but a short step from that to allowing AMROK II to dictate the most profitable subject matter of the editorial content. It was possible.
But all that was in the future. Right now Task Force X-1 was discussing the programming that would be necessary before the computer could make wise decisions on the most profitable ratio between editorial and advertising pages in every issue of every Javis-Bircham magazine. Blank listened closely to their whispered conversation, turning his eyes from speaker to speaker, and wondering if it was true, as she had said, that she occasionally rouged her nipples.
He waited, with conscious control, until 3:00 p.m. before calling. The lisping houseman asked him to hang on a moment, then came back on the phone to tell him, “Mith Montfort requeth you call again in a half hour.” Puzzled, Blank hung up, paced his office for precisely 30 minutes, ate a chilled pear from his small refrigerator, and called again. This time he was put through to her.
“Hello,” he said. “How are you?” (Should he call her “Celia” or “Miss Montfort”?)
“Well. And you?”
“Fine. You said I could call.”
“Yes.”
“You’ve been out of town?”
“Out of the country. To Samarra.”
“Oh?” he said, hoping she might think him clever, “you had an appointment?”
“Something like that.”
“Where exactly is Samarra?”
“Iraq. I was there for only a day. Actually I went over to see my parents. They’re currently in Marrakech.”
“How are they?” he asked politely.
“The same,” she said in her toneless voice. “They haven’t changed in thirty years. Ever since…” Her voice trailed off. “Ever since what?” he asked.
“Ever since World War Two. It upset their plans.”
She spoke in riddles, and he didn’t want to pry. “Marrakech isn’t near Samarra, is it?”
“Oh no. Marrakech is in Morocco.”
“Geography isn’t my strong point. I get lost every time I go south of 23rd Street.”
He thought she might laugh, but she didn’t.
“Tomorrow night,” he said desperately, “tomorrow night the Mortons are having a cocktail party. We’re invited. I’d like to take you to dinner before the party. It starts about ten.”
“Yes,” she said immediately. “Be here at eight. We’ll have a drink, then go to dinner. Then we’ll go to the Mortons’ party.”
He started to say “Thank you” or “Fine” or “I’m looking forward to it” or “See you then,” but she had already hung up. He stared at the dead receiver in his hand.
The next day, Friday, he left work early to go home to prepare for the evening. He debated with himself whether or not to send flowers. He decided against it. He had a feeling she loved flowers but never wore them. His best course, he felt, was to circle about her softly, slowly, until he could determine her tastes and prejudices.
He groomed himself carefully, shaving although he had shaved that morning. He used a women’s cologne, Je Reviens, a scent that stirred him. He wore French underwear-white nylon bikini briefs-and a silk shirt in a geometric pattern of white and blue squares. His wide necktie was a subtly patterned maroon. The suit was navy knit, single breasted. In addition to wrist watch, cufflinks, and a heavy gold ring on his right forefinger, he wore a gold-link identification bracelet loose about his right wrist. And the “Via Veneto” wig.
He left early to walk over to her apartment. It wasn’t far, and it was a pleasant evening.
His loose topcoat was a black lightweight British gabardine, styled with raglan sleeves, a fly front, and slash pockets. The pockets, in the British fashion, had an additional opening through the coat fabric so that the wearer did not have to unbutton his coat to reach his trouser or jacket pockets but could shove his hand inside the concealed coat openings for tickets, wallet, keys, change, or whatever.
Now, strolling toward Celia Montfort’s apartment through the sulfur-laden night, Daniel Blank reached inside his coat pocket to feel himself. To the passer-by, he was an elegant gentleman, hand thrust casually into coat pocket. But beneath the coat…
Once, shortly after he was separated from Gilda, he had worn the same coat and walked through Times Square on a’ Saturday night. He had slipped his hand into the pocket opening, unzipped his fly, and held himself exposed beneath the loose coat as he moved through the throng, looking into the faces of passersby.
Celia Montfort lived in a five-story greystone townhouse. The door bell was of a type he had read about but never encountered before. It was a bell-pull, a brass knob that is drawn out, then released. The bell is sounded as the knob is pulled and as it is released to return to its socket. Daniel Blank admired its polish and the teak door it ornamented…
…A teak door that was opened by a surprisingly tall man, pale, thin, wearing striped trousers and a shiny black alpaca jacket. A pink sweetheart rose was in his lapel. Daniel was conscious of a scent: not his own, but something heavier and fruitier.
“My name is Daniel Blank,” he said. “I believe Miss Montfort is expecting me.”
“Yeth, thir,” the man said, holding wide the door. “I am Valenter. Do come in.”
It was an impressive entrance: marble-floored with a handsome staircase curving away. On a slender pedestal was a crystal vase of cherry-colored mums. He had been right: she did like long-stemmed flowers.
“Pleath wait in the thudy. Mith Montfort will be down thoon.”
His coat and hat were taken and put away somewhere. The tall, skinny man came back to usher him into a room paneled with oak and leather-bound books.
“Would you care for a drink, thir?”
Soft flames flickering in a tiled fireplace. Reflections on the polished leather of a tufted couch. On the mantel, unexpectedly, a beautifully detailed model of a Yankee whaler. Andirons and fireplace tools of black iron with brass handles. “Please. A vodka martini on the rocks.”
Drapes of heavy brocade. Rugs of-what? Not Oriental. Greek perhaps? Or Turkish? Chinese vases filled with blooms. An Indian paneled screen, all scrolled with odd, disturbing figures. A silvered cocktail shaker of the Prohibition Era. The room had frozen in 1927 or 1931.
“Olive, thir, or a twitht of lemon?”
Hint of incense in the air. High ceiling and, between the darkened beams, painted cherubs with dimpled asses. Oak doors and window mouldings. A bronze statuette of a naked nymph pulling a bow. The “string” was a twisted wire. “Lemon, please.”
An art nouveau mirror on the papered wall. A small oil nude of a middle-aged brunette holding her chin and glancing downward at sagging breasts with bleared nipples. A tin container of dusty rhododendron leaves. A small table inlaid as a chessboard with pieces swept and toppled. And in a black leather armchair, with high, embracing wings, the most beautiful boy Daniel Blank had ever seen.
“Hello,” the boy said.
“Hello,” he smiled stiffly. “My name is Daniel Blank. You must be Anthony.”
“Tony.”
“Tony.”
“May I call you Dan?”
“Sure.”
“Can you lend me ten dollars, Dan?”
Blank, startled, looked at him more closely. The lad had his knees drawn up, was hugging them, his head tilted to one side.
His beauty was so unearthly it was frightening. Clear, guileless blue eyes, carved lips, a bloom of youth and wanting, sculpted ears, a smile that tugged, those crisp golden curls long enough to frame face and chiselled neck. And an aura as rosy as the cherubs that floated overhead.
“It’s awful, isn’t it,” the boy said, “to ask ten dollars from a complete stranger, but to tell you the truth-”
Blank was instantly alert, listening now and not just looking. It was his experience that when someone said “To tell the truth-” or “Would I lie to you?” the man was either a liar, a cheat, or both.
“You see,” Tony said with an audacious smile. “I saw this absolutely marvelous jade pin. I know Celia would love it.”
“Of course,” Blank said. He took a ten dollar bill from his wallet. The boy made no move toward him. Daniel was forced to walk across the room to hand it to him.
“Thanks so much,” the youth said languidly. “I get my allowance the first of the month. I’ll pay you back.”
He paid then, Blank knew, all he was ever going to pay: a dazzling smile of such beauty and young promise that Daniel was fuddled by longing. The moment was saved of souring by the entrance of Valenter, carrying the martini not on a tray but in his hand. When Blank took it, his fingers touched Valenter’s. The evening began to spin out of control.
She came in a few moments later, wearing an evening shift styled exactly like the black satin she had been wearing when he first met her. But this one was in a dark bottle green, glimmering. About her neck was a heavy silver chain, tarnished, supporting a pendant: the image of a beast-god. Mexican, Blank guessed.
“I went to Samarra to meet a poet,” she said, speaking as she came through the door and walked steadily toward him. “I once wrote poetry. Did I tell you? No. But I don’t anymore. I have talent, but not enough. The blind poet in Samarra is a genius. A poem is a condensed novel. I imagine a novelist must increase the significance of what he writes by one-third to one-half to communicate all of his meaning. You understand? But the poet, so condensed, must double or triple what he wants to convey, hoping the reader will extract from this his full meaning.”
Suddenly she leaned forward and kissed him on the lips while Valenter and the boy looked on gravely.
“How are you?” she asked.
Valenter brought her a glass of red wine. She was seated next to Blank on the leather sofa. Valenter stirred up the fire, added another small log, went to stand behind the armchair where Anthony coiled in flickering shadow.
“I think the Mortons’ party will be amusing,” he offered. “A lot of people. Noisy and crowded. But we don’t have to stay long.”
“Have you ever smoked hashish?” she asked.
He looked nervously toward the young boy.
“I tried it once,” he said in a low voice. “It didn’t do anything for me. I prefer alcohol.”
“Do you drink a lot?”
“No.”
The boy was wearing white flannel bags, white leather loafers, a white knitted singlet that left his slim arms bare. He moved slowly, crossing his legs, stretching, pouting. Celia Montfort turned her head to look at him. Did a signal pass?
“Tony,” she said.
Immediately Valenter put a hand tenderly on the boy’s shoulder.
“Time for your lethon, Mathter Montfort,” he said.
“Oh, pooh,” Tony said.
They walked from the room side by side. The lad stopped at the door, turned back, made a solemn bow in Blank’s direction.
“I am very happy to have met you, sir,” he said formally.
Then he was gone. Valenter closed the door softly behind them.
“A handsome boy,” Daniel said. “What school does he go to?”
She didn’t answer. He turned to look at her. She was peering into her wine glass, twirling the stem slowly in her long fingers. The straight black hair fell about her face: the long face, broody and purposeful.
She put her wine glass aside and rose suddenly. She moved casually about the room, and he swiveled his head to keep her in view. She touched things, picked them up and put them down. He was certain she was naked beneath the satin shift. Cloth touched her and flew away. It clung, and whispered off.
As she moved about, she began to intone another of what was apparently an inexhaustible repertoire of monologues. He was conscious of planned performance. But it was not a play; it was a ballet, as formalized and obscure. Above all, he felt intent: motive and plan.
“My parents are such sad creatures,” she was saying. “Living in history. But that’s not living at all, is it? It’s an entombing. Mother’s silk chiffon and father’s plus-fours. They could be breathing mannequins at the Costume Institute. I look for dignity and all I find is…What is it I want? Grandeur, I suppose. Yes. I’ve thought of it. But is it impossible to be grand in life? What we consider grandeur is always connected with defeat and death. The Greek plays. Napoleon’s return from Moscow. Lincoln. Superhuman dignity there. Nobility, if you like. But always rounded with death. The living, no matter how noble they may be, never quite make it, do they? But death rounds them out. What if John Kennedy had lived? No one has ever written of his life as a work of art, but it was. Beginning, middle, and end. Grandeur. And death made it. Are you ready? Shall we go?”
“I hope you like French cooking,” he muttered. “I called for a reservation.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said.
The dance continued during dinner. She requested a banquette: they sat side by side. They ate and drank with little conversation. Once she picked up a thin sliver of tender veal and fed it into his mouth. But her free hand was on his arm, or in his lap, or pushing her long hair back so that the bottle green satin was brought tight across button nipples. Once, while they were having coffee and brandy, she crossed her knees. Her dress hiked up; the flesh of her thighs was perfectly white, smooth, glistening. He thought of good sea scallops and Dover sole.
“Do you like opera?” she asked in her abrupt way.
“No,” he said truthfully. “Not much. It’s so-so made up.”
“Yes,” she agreed, “it is. Artificial. But it’s just a device: a flimsy wire coat hanger, and they hang the voices on that.”
He was not a stupid man, and while they were seated at the banquette he became aware that her subtle movements-the touchings, the leanings, the sudden, unexpected caress of her hair against his cheek-these things were directorial suggestions, parts of her balletic performance. She was rehearsed. He wasn’t certain of his role, but wanted to play it well.
“The voices,” she went on, “the mighty voices that give me the feeling of suppressed power. With some singers I get the impression that there is art and strength there that hasn’t been tapped. I get the feeling that, if they really let themselves go, they could crush eardrums and shatter stained glass windows. Perhaps the best of them, throwing off all restraint, could crush the world. Break it up into brittle pieces and send all the chunks whirling off into space.”
He was made inferior by her soliloquies and made brave by wine and brandy.
“Why the hell are you telling me all this?” he demanded.
She leaned closer, pressed a satin-slicked breast against his arm.
“It’s the same feeling I get from you,” she whispered. “That you have a strength and resolve that could shatter the world.”
He looked at her, beginning to glimpse her intent and his future. He wanted to ask, “Why me?” but found, to his surprise, it wasn’t important.
The Mortons’ party leavened their heavy evening. Florence and Samuel, wearing identical red velvet jumpsuits, met them at the door with the knowing smirks of successful matchmakers.
“Come in!” Flo cried.
“It’s a marvelous party!” Sam cried.
“Two fights already!” Flo laughed.
“And one crying jag!” Sam laughed.
The party had a determined frenzy. He lost Celia in the swirl, and in the next few hours met and listened to a dozen disoriented men and women who floated, bumped against him, drifted away. He had a horrible vision of harbor trash, bobbing and nuzzling, coming in and going out.
Suddenly she was behind him, hand up under his jacket, nails digging into his shirted back.
“Do you know what happens at midnight?” she whispered.
“What?”
“They take off their faces-just like masks. And do you know what’s underneath?”
“What?”
“Their faces. Again. And again.”
She slipped away; he was too confused to hold her. He wanted to be naked in front of a mirror, making sure.
Finally, finally, she reappeared and drew him away. They flapped hands at host and hostess and stepped into the quiet corridor, panting. In the elevator she came into his arms and bit the lobe of his left ear as he said, “Oh,” and the music from wherever was playing “My Old Kentucky Home.” He was sick with lust and conscious that his life was dangerous and absurd. He was teetering, and pitons were not driven nor ice ax in.
There was Valenter to open the door for them, the sweetheart rose wilted. His face had the sheen of a scoured iron pot, and his lips seemed bruised. He served black coffee in front of the tiled fireplace. They sat on the leather couch and stared at blue embers.
“Will that be all, Mith Montfort?”
She nodded; he drifted away. Daniel Blank wouldn’t look at him. What if the man should wink?
Celia went out of the room, came back with two pony glasses and a half-full bottle of marc.
“What is that?” he asked.
“A kind of brandy,” she said. “Burgundian, I think. From the dregs. Very strong.”
She filled a glass, and before handing it to him ran a long, red tongue around the rim, looking at him. He took it, sipped gratefully.
“Yes,” he nodded. “Strong.”
“Those people tonight,” she said. “So inconsequential. Most of them are intelligent, alert, talented. But they don’t have the opportunity. To surrender, I mean. To something important and shaking. They desire it more than they know. To give themselves. To what? Ecology or day-care centers or racial equality? They sense the need for something more, and God is dead. So…the noise and hysteria. If they could find…”
Her voice trailed off. He looked up.
“Find what?” he asked.
“Oh,” she said, her eyes vague, “you know.”
She rose from the couch. When he rose to stand alongside her, she unexpectedly stepped close, reached out, gently drew down the lower lid of his right eye. She stared intently at the exposed eyeball.
“What?” he said, confused.
“You’re not inconsequential,” she said, took him by the hand and led him upward. “Not at all.”
Dazed by drink and wonder, he followed docilely. They climbed the handsome marble staircase to the third floor. There they passed through a tawdry wooden door and climbed two more flights up a splintered wooden stairway flecked with cobwebs that kissed his mouth.
“What is this?” he asked once.
“I live up here,” she answered, turned suddenly and, being above him, reached down, pulled his head forward and pressed his face into the cool satin between belly and thighs.
It was a gesture that transcended obscenity and brought him trembling to his knees there on the dusty stairs.
“Rest a moment,” she said.
“I’m a mountain climber,” he said, and their whispered exchange seemed to him so inane that he gave a short bark of laughter that banged off dull walls and echoed.
“What?” he said again, and all the time he knew.
It was a small room of unpainted plank walls, rough-finished and scarred with white streaks as if some frantic beast had clawed to escape. There was a single metal cot with a flat spring of woven tin straps. On this was thrown a thin mattress, uncovered, the striped grey ticking soiled and burned.
There was one kitchen chair that had been painted fifty times and was now so dented and nicked that a dozen colors showed in bruised blotches. A bare light bulb, orange and dim, hung from a dusty cord.
The floor was patched with linoleum so worn the pattern had disappeared and brown backing showed through. The unframed mirror on the inside of the closed door was tarnished and cracked. The iron ashtray on the floor near the cot overflowed with cold cigarette butts. The room smelled of must, mildew, and old love.
“Beautiful,” Daniel Blank said wonderingly, staring about. “It’s a stage set. Any moment now a wall swings away, and there will be the audience applauding politely. What are my lines?”
“Take off your wig,” she said.
He did, standing by the cot with the hair held foolishly in his two hands, offering her a small, dead animal.
She came close and caressed his shaven skull with both hands.
“Do you like this room?” she asked.
“Well…it’s not exactly my idea of a love nest.”
“Oh it’s more than that. Much more. Lie down.”
Gingerly, with some distaste, he sat on the stained mattress. She softly pressed him back. He stared up at the naked bulb, and there seemed to be a nimbus about it, a glow composed of a million shining particles that pulsed, contracted, expanded until they filled the room.
And then, almost before he knew it had started, she was doing things to him. He could not believe this intelligent, somber, reserved woman was doing those things. He felt a shock of fear, made a few muttered protests. But her voice was soft, soothing. After awhile he just lay there, his eyes closed now, and let her do what she would.
“Scream if you like,” she said. “No one can hear.”
But he clenched his jaws and thought he might die of pleasure.
He opened his eyes and saw her lying naked beside him, her long, white body as limp as a fileted fish. She began undressing him with practiced fingers…opening buttons…sliding down zippers…tugging things away gently, so gently he hardly had to move at all…
Then she was using him, using him, and he began to understand what his fate might be. Fear dissolved in a kind of sexual faint he had never experienced before as her strong hands pulled, her dry tongue rasped over his fevered skin.
“Soon,” she promised. “Soon.”
Once he felt a pain so sharp and sweet he thought she had murdered him. Once he heard her laughing: a thick, burbling sound. Once she wound him about with her smooth, black hair, fashioned a small noose and pulled it tight.
It went on and on, his will dissolving, a great weight lifting, and he would pay any price. It was climbing: mission, danger, sublimity. Finally, the summit.
Later, he was exploring her body and saw, for the first time, her armpits were unshaved. He discovered, hidden in the damp, scented hairs under her left arm, a small tattoo in a curious design.
Still later they were drowsing in each other’s sweated arms, the light turned off, when he half-awoke and became conscious of a presence in the room. The door to the corridor was partly open. Through sticky eyes he saw someone standing silently at the foot of the cot, staring down at their linked bodies.
In the dim light Daniel Blank had a smeary impression of a naked figure or someone dressed in white. Blank raised his head and made a hissing sound. The wraith withdrew. The door closed softly. He was left alone with her in that dreadful room.