Heavy water was up another two points, read the fax in the M amp; M office in Rockefeller Center in New York, on the same floor, and in much the same spot, in which Sammy Singer had spent almost all his adult working life with Time magazine, an office that, as Michael Yossarian again saw, had windows overlooking the fabled skating rink far below, the glittering, frozen centerpiece of the venerable Japanese real estate complex obtained for money earlier from the vanishing Rockefeller financial dynasty. The rink was the same site on which Sammy years before had, with Glenda, gone ice skating for the first time in his life, and didn't fall, and had gone again with her on more than one long lunch hour after they commenced seeing each other regularly, while she was still pressing him to come live with her in her West Side apartment, together with her three children and her remarkable frontier mother from Wisconsin, who approved of Sammy and departed gladly to live again with a sister on a small family farm after he did-none of the New York parents he knew, not even his own, were ever so gracefully self-sacrificing-and tritium, the gas derived from heavy water, had gained an additional two hundred and sixteen points on the international radioactive commodity exchanges in Geneva, Tokyo, Bonn, Iraq, Iran, Nigeria, China, Pakistan, London, and New York. The rise in tritium was buoyed optimistically by the natural property of that hydrogen isotope to degenerate at a predictable rate in atomic weapons, necessitating periodic replenishment, and the enticing disposition of the gas to lessen in quantity between the time it was sealed by the shipper and the hour it was received by the purchaser, who, more commonly than not, was a manufacturer of novelties or marking devices with outer surfaces intrinsically luminous or an assembler and supplier of nuclear warheads.
Customers frequently reported receiving as much as forty percent less of the tritium than they had paid for and forty percent less than had been packed and shipped, with no indications of theft, diversion, or leakage.
The tritium simply was not there when delivered.
Not long before, a test shipment from merely one building to another to comprehend this loss resulted in no new information and the disappearance of three quarters of the tritium packed for the test. It was inaccurate to say, said a sheepish spokesman, that it disappeared into thin air. They were monitoring the air. The air was not thin and the tritium wasn't in it.
Despite the radiation and consequent potential as a galvanizer of cancer, tritium was still the material of choice for illuminated guides and dial faces, for gun sights for nighttime marksmanship, for icons like swastikas, crosses, Stars of David, and halos that glowed in the dark, and for the stupendous enhancement in the explosive yield of nuclear weapons.
Melissa MacIntosh's ravishing roommate, Angela Moore, whom Yossarian could no longer resist thinking of by any other name than Angela Moorecock, had by now already put forth to her elderly, gentlemanly employers the idea of luminescent items highlighting the more protuberant organs of copulation phosphorescently and had tested on buyers at the toy fair, men and women, her notion for a bedroom clock with a radiating face of tritium in a compound of paint in which the hour and minute hands were circumcised male members and the numbers were not numbers but a succession of nude female figures unfolding sensually and progressively with the hours in systematic stages of erotic trance until satiation was attained at the terminal hour of twelve. Yossarian got hot hearing her discourse on this inspiration for a consumer product in the cocktail lounge a day or two before she sucked him off the first time and sent him home because he was older than the men she was accustomed to and she was not sure she cared to know him more intimately than that, and afterward, because of Melissa's growing affection for him, along with a growing apprehension of AIDS, declined to suck him off a second time or oblige him in any equivalent way; and listening observantly to her rave that first time, he'd found himself with almost half a semi-hard-on, and he took her hand as they sat beside each other on the red velvet banquette at the plush cocktail lounge and rubbed it over the fly of his pants to let her feel for herself.
The great jump in explosive yield induced by the action of tritium in atomic warheads made possible an aesthetic reduction in the size and weight of the bombs, missiles, and shells devised, allowing a greater number to be carried by smaller implements of delivery like Milo 's projected bombers, and Strangelove's too, with no notable sacrifice in nuclear destructive capability.
The chaplain was up in value and completely safe.
"When can I see him?" Michael Yossarian heard his father demand. His father's hair was thicker than his own and curly white, a color for which his brother Adrian was assiduously seeking a chemical formula for tinting; to a youthful, natural gray that would not be youthful on any man Yossarian's age and would not look natural.
"As soon as he's safe," answered M2, in a clean white shirt that was not yet rumpled, wet, or in need of ironing.
"Michael, didn't he just say the chaplain was safe?"
"It's what I thought I heard."
Michael smiled to himself. He pressed his brow against the pane of the glass window in order to gaze down intently at the ice rink below and its colorful kaleidoscope of leisurely skaters, wondering, with a downhearted presentiment of already having missed out on much, if there could possibly be abiding in that pastime rewards he might find diverting if ever he could bring himself to take the trouble to seek them. The reflecting oval of ice was ringed these days with drifting tides of panhandlers and vagrants, with working strollers on lunch and coffee breaks, with mounted policemen on daunting horses. Michael Yossarian would not dance; he could not get into the rhythm. He would not play golf, ski, or play tennis, and he knew already he would never ice-skate.
"I mean safe for us." He heard M2 defend himself plaintively and turned to watch. M2 appeared triumphantly prepared for the question he'd been asked. "He is safe for M amp; M Enterprises and cannot be appropriated by even Mercedes-Benz or the N amp; N Division of Nippon amp; Nippon Enterprises. Even Strangelove is barred. We will patent the chaplain as soon as we find out how he works, and we are looking for a trademark. We are thinking of a halo. Because he is a chaplain, of course, a Day-Glo halo. Maybe one that lights up in the dark, all night long."
"Why not tritium?"
"Tritium is expensive and radioactive. Michael, can you draw a halo?"
"It shouldn't be hard."
"We would want something cheerful but serious."
"I would try," said Michael, smiling again, "to make it serious, and it's hard to picture one that isn't cheerful."
"Where have they got him?" Yossarian wanted to know.
"In the same place, I would guess. I really don't know."
"Does your father know?"
"Do I know if he knows?"
"If you did would you tell me?"
"If he said that I could."
"If he said that you couldn't?"
"I would say I don't know."
"As you're saying right now. At least you're truthful."
"I try."
"Even when you lie. There's a paradox here. We are talking in circles."
"I went to divinity school."
"And what," said Yossarian, "do I tell the chaplain's wife? I'll be seeing her soon. If there's anyone else I can advise her to complain to, I will certainly tell her."
"Who could she find? The police are helpless."
"Strangelove?"
"Oh, no," said M2, turning whiter than customary. "I will have to find out. What you can tell Karen Tappman now-"
"Karen?"
"It's what it says on my prompt sheet. What you can tell Karen Tappman truthfully-"
"I don't think I would lie to her."
"We never choose to be anything but truthful. It's right there in our manual, under Lies. What you must tell Karen Tappman," M2 recited dutifully, "is that he is well and misses her. He looks forward to rejoining her as soon as he is not a danger to himself or the community and his presence in the family and the conjugal bed would not be injurious to her health."
"That's a new fucking wrinkle, isn't it?"
"Please." M2 flinched. "This one happens to be true."
"You would say that even if it weren't?"
"That is perfectly true," admitted M2. "But if tritium starts showing up inside him from that heavy water, he could be radioactive, and we'd all have to keep clear of him anyway."
"M2," said Yossarian harshly, "I'm going to want to talk to the chaplain soon. Has your father seen him? I know what you'll say. You have to find out."
"First, I'll have to find out if I can find out."
"Find out if you can find out if he can arrange it. Strangelove could."
M2 paled again. "You'd go to Strangelove?"
"Strangelove will come to me. And the chaplain won't produce if I tell him not to."
"I must tell my father."
"I've already told him, but he doesn't always hear."
M2 was shaken. "I just thought of something else. Should we be talking about all this in front of Michael? The chaplain is secret now, and I'm not sure I'm authorized to let anyone else hear about him."
"About who?" asked Michael mischievously.
"The chaplain," responded M2.
"What chaplain?"
"Chaplain Albert T. Tappman," said M2. "That friend of your father's from the army who's producing heavy water inside himself without a license and is now secretly in custody while they investigate and examine him while we try to patent him and register a trademark. Do you know about him?"
Michael spoke with a grin. "You mean that friend of my father's from the army who began producing heavy water inside himself illegally and is now-"
"That's the one!" M2 cried, and gaped as though confronted by a specter. "How'd you find out?"
"You just told me," laughed Michael.
"I did it again, didn't I?" blubbered M2, and collapsed with a thump into the chair at his desk in a grieving paroxysm of repentant lamentation. Now his shiny white shirt, which was of synthetic fabric, was rumpled, wet, and in need of ironing, and sopping adumbrations of a fidgety, sweltering anxiety were already darkening the fabric below the armholes of a sleeveless white undershirt he never failed to wear as well. "I just can't keep a secret, can I? My father is still angry with me for telling you about the bomber. He says he could kill me. So is my mother. So are my sisters. But it's your fault too, you know. It's his job to restrain me from telling him secrets like that."
"Like what?" asked Michael.
"Like that one about the bomber."
"What bomber?"
"Our M amp; M E amp; A Sub-Supersonic Invisible and Noiseless Defensive Second-Strike Offensive Attack Bomber. I hope you don't know about it."
"I know about it now."
"How'd you find out?"
"I have my ways," said Michael, and turned to his father with a glower. "Are we in munitions now too?"
Yossarian answered testily. "Somebody is going to have to be in munitions whether we like it or not, they tell me, so it might as well be them, and somebody is going to work with them on this, whether I say yes or no, so it might as well be you and me, and that's the perfect truth."
"Even though it's a lie?"
"They told me it was a cruise ship."
"It does cruise," M2 explained to Michael.
"With two people?" Yossarian contradicted him. "And here's another way out, to put your conscience at rest," Yossarian added to Michael. "It won't work. Right, M2?"
"We guarantee it."
"And besides," said Yossarian, with resentment surfacing, "you're only being asked to draw a picture of the plane, not to fly the fucking thing or launch an attack. This plane is for the new century. These things take forever, and we both may be dead before they get one into the air, even if they do get the contract. They don't care now if it works or not. All they want is the money. Right, M2?"
"And we'll pay you, of course," offered M2, coming back to his feet and fidgeting. He was slender, spare, with formless shoulders and prominent collarbones.
"How much will you pay?" asked Michael awkwardly.
"As much as you want," answered M2.
"He means it," said Yossarian, when Michael looked clownishly at him for interpretation.
Michael tittered. "How about," he ventured extravagantly, watching his father for the reaction, "enough for another year in law school?"
"If that's what you want," M2 immediately agreed.
"And my living expenses too?"
"Sure."
"He means that also," said Yossarian reassuringly to his incredulous son. "Michael, you won't believe this-I don't really believe it either-but sometimes there is more money in this world than anybody ever thought the planet could hold without sinking away into somewhere else."
"Where does it all come from?"
"Nobody knows," said Yossarian.
"Where does it go when it isn't here?"
"That's another scientific mystery. It just disappears. Like those particles of tritium. Right now there's a lot."
"Are you trying to corrupt me?"
"I think I'm trying to save you."
"Okay, I'll believe you. What do you want me to do?"
"A few loose drawings," said M2. "Can you read engineering blueprints?"
"Let's have a try."
The five blueprints required for an artist's rendering of the external appearance of the plane had already been selected and laid out on a conference table in an adjoining outer inner conference room just outside the rear false front of the second fireproof stand-up vault of thick steel and concrete, with alarm buttons and radioactive dials of tritium.
It took a minute for Michael to assemble coherence in the mechanical drawings of white lines on royal blue, which looked at first like an occult shambles ornamented with scribbled cryptic notations in alphabets that were indecipherable.
"It's kind of ugly, I think." Michael felt stimulated to be at work on something different that was well within his capabilities, "It's starting to look like a flying wing."
"Are there wings that don't fly?" teased Yossarian.
"The wings of a wing collar," Michael answered, without lifting his analytical gaze. "The wings of a theater stage, the wings of a political party."
"You do read, don't you?"
"Sometimes."
"What does a flying wing look like?" M2 was a moist man, and his brow and chin were beaded with shiny droplets.
"Like a plane without a fuselage, Milo. I've got a feeling I've seen this before."
"I hope you haven't. Our plane is new."
"What's this?" Yossarian pointed. In the lower left corner of all five sheets the identifying legends had been masked before copying by a patch of black tape on which was printed a white letter S without loops. "I've seen that letter."
"And so has everyone else," Michael answered lightly. "It's the standard stencil. You've seen it on old bomb shelters. But what the hell are these?"
"I meant those too."
To the right of the letter S was a trail of minuscule characters that looked like flattened squiggles, and while Yossarian was donning his glasses, Michael peered through a magnifying glass there and found the small letter h repeated in script, with an exclamation point too.
"So that," he remarked, still in very good humor, "is what you're going to call your plane, eh? The M amp; M Shhhhh!"
"You know what we call it." M2 was offended. "It's the M amp; M E amp; A Sub-Supersonic Invisible and Noiseless Defensive Second Strike Offensive Attack Bomber."
"We'd save time calling it Shhhhh! Tell me again what you want."
M2 talked diffidently. What was wanted were nice-looking pictures of the plane in flight from above, below, and the side, and at least one of the plane on the ground. "They don't have to be accurate. But make them realistic, like the planes in a comic strip or science movie. Leave out details. My father doesn't want them to see any until we get the contract. He doesn't really trust our government anymore. They'd also like a picture of what the plane will really look like in case they ever have to build it."
"Why don't you ask your engineers?" mused Michael.
"We don't really trust our engineers."
"When Ivan the Terrible," reflected Yossarian, "finished building the Kremlin, he had all the architects executed, so that no one alive would ever duplicate it."
"What was so terrible about him?" M2 wondered. "I must tell my father that."
"Leave me alone now," said Michael, rubbing his chin and concentrating. He was slipping off his corduroy jacket, whistling a Mozart melody to himself. "If you close the door, remember I'm locked in and don't forget to get me out one day." To himself, he observed aloud, "It's looking cute."
At the turn into the next century, he was cynically sure, there would be months of senseless ceremonies, tied in with political campaigns too, and the M amp; M warplane could be an exalted highlight. And no doubt, the first baby born in the new century would be born in the east, but much farther east this time than Eden.
He looked down again at the plans of this weapon for the close of the century and saw a design that seemed to him aesthetically incomplete. Much was lacking in anticipated form, much was missing. And when he looked at the blueprints and into the future in which that plane would fly, he could spy no place staked out anywhere into which he, in the stale words of his father, could fit, in which he could flourish with any more security and satisfaction than he presently enjoyed. He had room for improvement but saw not much chance of any. He remembered Marlene and her astrological charts and tarot cards, and he felt himself missing her again, even though uncertain he had ever cared for her more than any of the others in his sequence of monogamous romances. It was beginning to scare him that he might have no future, that he was already in it; like his father, about whom he'd always harbored mixed feelings, he was already there. He must risk a call to Marlene.
Even his brother Julian was having trouble these days making as much money as he had insolently projected he was destined to make. And his sister too would have to delay her divorce while testing the waters discreetly for a job in private practice with one of the law firms with whose partners she occasionally had contact.
His father would be dead. Papa John had made clear more than once that he did not expect to go deeply into that twenty-first century. For much of his life Michael had confidently presumed his father would always be alive. He felt that way still, although he knew it was untrue. That never happened with real human beings.
And who else would be there for him? There was no one to esteem, no figure to look up to whose merit persisted without blemish for more than fifteen minutes. There were people with power to confer great benefits upon others, like movie directors and the President, but that was all.
The half-million dollars his father had hoped to bequeath him no longer seemed an everlasting fortune. He would not be able to live on the income, though nine tenths of the country lived on less. In time he would have nothing, and no one, have no one, his father had underlined, to aid him. His father always had struck him as somewhat peculiar, rationally irrational and illogically logical, and did not always make consistent sense.
"It's easy to win debates as a nihilist," he'd said, "because so many people who ought to know better absurdly take positions."
He spoke slickly of things like Ewing's tumor, Hodgkin's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, TIAs, and osteogenic sarcomas;, and talked freely about his dying with an objectivity so matter-of-fact that Michael had to wonder if he was kidding himself, or faking it. Michael did not always know when he was serious and when he was not, and when he was right and when he was mistaken, and when he was right and wrong at the same time. And Yossarian would profess that he did not always know that about himself either.
"A problem I have," his father had admitted penitently, but with a hint of pride, "is that I'm almost always able to see both sides of almost every question."
And he was almost always too eager to be friendly with one woman or another, obsessed still with the dream to find work that he wished to do and the need to be what he called "in love." Michael had never found work that he wished to do-the law was no worse to him than anything else, and art was no better. He was writing a screenplay but did not want his father to know that yet. But with one thing central, Yossarian seemed right on the button.
"Before you know it, you damned fool," he'd snapped at him irascibly in a tender bad temper, "you'll be as old as I am now, and you won't have a thing."
Not even children, Michael could add ruefully. As far as he could see, that was not in the cards for him either, not in Marlene's tarot cards or any others. Michael again looked down narrowly at the blueprints before him, pulled his pad closer, and took up a pencil. He did not envy people who wished to work much harder to get much more, but had to wonder afresh why he was not like them.
"You like Michael, don't you?"
"Yes, I like Michael," said M2.
"Give him work when you can."
"I do that. I will want to work more with him on those video screens at the bus terminal. I'll pay him for another year in law school."
"I'm not sure he'll want that. But go ahead and try."
All the parents he knew with grown children had at least one about whose doubtful prospects they were constantly troubled, and many had two. Milo had this one, and he had Michael.
Irritation mingled with puzzlement as he studied the new messages from Jerry Gaffney of the Gaffney Agency. The first advised him to call his answering machine at home for good news from his nurse and bad news from his son about his first wife. The good news from his nurse was that she was free for dinner that evening to go to a movie with him and that the Belgian patient in the hospital was making a good recovery from the bad dysentery generated by the good antibiotics administered for the bad pneumonia provoked by the salutary removal of a vocal cord in the invasive effort, successful thus far, to save his life. The second fax reported that he had now qualified for the mortgage. Yossarian had no idea what that meant. "How did he even know I was here?" he heard himself thinking out loud.
"Mr. Gaffney knows everything, I think," M2 answered, with faith. "He monitors our fax lines too."
"You pay him for that?"
"Somebody does, I think."
"Who?"
"I've no idea."
"Don't you care?"
"Should I?"
"Can't you find out?"
"I'll have to find out if I can find out."
"I'm surprised you don't want to know."
"Should I want to?"
"M2, Michael calls you Milo. Which name do you prefer?"
Milo 's only son turned ill at ease. "I would rather," he said, breathing noisily, "be called Milo, even though that's my father' name. It's my name too, you know. He gave it to me."
"Why haven't you said so?" asked Yossarian, resenting the implication imposed upon him to feel at fault.
"I'm timid, you know. My mother says I'm rabbity. So do my sisters. They keep asking me to change my personality to be strong enough to take over when I have to."
"To be more like your father?"
"They don't think much of my father."
"Who then? Wintergreen?"
"They hate Wintergreen."
"Me?"
"They don't like you either."
"Then who?"
"They can't think of any man who's good enough."
"Let me ask you," said Yossarian, "if you still have your catering company."
"I think we do. It's your company too, you know. Everybody has a share."
The M amp; M Commercial Catering Company was the oldest continuous catering service in the history of the country, having origins in Milo's labors as a mess officer for his squadron in World War II, wherein he contrived the fruitful and abstruse financial strategies for buying fresh Italian eggs from Sicily in Malta for seven cents apiece and selling them to his mess hall in Pianosa for five cents apiece at a handsome profit that increased the squad-ron's capital supply, in which everybody had a share, he said, and bettered the quality of life and the standard of living of everyone there, and for buying Scotch whisky for Malta at the source in Sicily, eliminating middlemen.
"M2," said Yossarian, and remembered he had forgotten. He had no wish to hurt him. "What will you want me to call you when you're here with your father? Two Milos may prove one too many, maybe two."
"I'll have to find out."
"You really don't know, not even that?"
"I can't decide." M2 was writhing. His hands turned red as he wrung them together. The rims of his eyes reddened too. "I can't make a decision. You remember the last time I tried."
One time far back, just before Yossarian went begging to Milo for help in keeping Michael out of the Vietnam War, a much younger M2 had attempted to make up his mind independently on a subject of transcendent importance. He thought his idea a fine one: to answer the call of what he'd been told was his country and enlist in the army to kill Asian communists in Asia.
"You'll do no such thing!" determined his mother.
"The way to serve your government more," responded his father, in a manner more deliberative, "is to find out who the draft boards are not drafting, and then you'll see who's really needed. We'll look into that for you."
The two and a half years M2 spent in divinity school had scarred him for life and instilled in him a traumatic aversion to all things spiritual and a fear and distrust of men and women who did not smoke or drink, swear, wear makeup, walk around anywhere even partly disrobed, did not make sex jokes, smiled an awful lot, even when nothing humorous was said, and smiled when alone, and manifested a shared, beatific faith in a hygienic virtue and selfesteem they thought exclusively their own and which he found malicious and repulsive.
He had never married, and the women he'd kept company with were invariably ladies approximately his own age who dressed plainly in pleated skirts and prim blouses, wore very little makeup daintily, were shy, colorless, and quickly gone.
Make effort as he might, Yossarian could not put to rest the low surmise that M2 belonged to that class of solitary and vindictive men that largely comprised the less boisterous of the two main classes of resolute patrons of prostitutes to be seen in his high-rise apartment building, riding up the elevators for the sex cures in the opulent temple of love on top or downward into the bowels of the structure to the three or four massage parlors of secondary dignity in the sub-basements underlying the several general cinema houses on the first sub-level down from the public sidewalk.
Michael had remarked lightly already to Yossarian that M2 seemed to him to possess all the typical attributes of the serial sex killer: he was white.
"When we went to the terminal," he confided, "he was only interested in looking at the women. I don't think he could recognize the transvestites. Is his father that way?"
" Milo knows what a prostitute is and didn't like us going after them. He's always been chaste. I doubt he knows what a transvestite is or would see much difference if he found out."
"Why did you ask me," M2 asked Yossarian now, "if we still have our catering service?"
"I might have some business. There's this wedding-"
"I'm glad you mentioned that. I might have forgotten. My mother wants me to talk to you about our wedding."
"This is not your wedding," corrected Yossarian.
"My sister's wedding. My mother wants my sister married, and she wants it done at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She expects you to arrange it. She knows you're in ACACAMMA."
Yossarian was genially amazed. "The ceremony too?"
"It's been done before?"
"The actual ceremony? Not that I know of."
"You know trustees?"
"I'm with ACACAMMA. But it might be impossible."
"My mother won't accept that. She says-I'm reading now, from her fax-that if you can't manage that, she doesn't know what else you're good for."
Yossarian shook his head benignly. He was anything but insulted. "It will take money, and time. You would have to begin, I would say, with a donation to the museum of ten million dollars."
"Two dollars?" asked M2, as though repeating.
"Ten million dollars."
"I thought I heard two."
"I did say ten," said Yossarian. "For the construction of another new wing."
"We can handle that."
"With no strings attached."
"There'll be strings attached?"
"I said no strings attached, although of course there will be strings. Your father specializes in string. You're practically out-of-towners, and they just don't take ten million from every Tom, Dick, and Harry who wants to give it."
"Couldn't you persuade them to take it?"
"I think I could do that. And then there's no guarantee."
"There's a good guarantee?"
"There is no guarantee," Yossarian corrected again. "You and your father seem to have the same selective hearing impairment, don't you?"
"Collective hearing impairment?"
"Yes. And it will have to be wasteful."
"Tasteful?"
"Yes. Wasteful. It will have to be lavish and crude enough to get into the newspapers and high-fashion magazines."
"I think it's what they want."
"There might just be an opening they don't know about yet," Yossarian finally judged. "The wedding I mentioned will be in the bus terminal."
M2 reacted with a start, just as Yossarian had expected. "What's good about that?" he wanted to know.
"Innovation, Milo," Yossarian answered. "The museum isn't good enough for some people anymore. The bus terminal is just right for the Maxons."
"The Maxons?"
"Olivia and Christopher."
"The big industrialist?"
"Who never set foot in a factory and never laid eyes on a product any company of his ever manufactured, except maybe his Cuban cigars. I'm helping Maxon out with the logistics," he embroidered nonchalantly. "All the media will cover it, naturally. Will you take the bus terminal if we can't get the museum?"
"I'll have to ask my mother. Offhand-"
"If it's good enough for the Maxons," tempted Yossarian, "with the mayor, the cardinal, maybe even the White House amp;"
"That might make a difference."
"Of course, you could not be the first."
"We could be first?"
"You could not be first, unless your sister marries the Maxon girl or you want to make it a double wedding. I can talk to the Maxons for you, if your mother wants me to."
"What would you do," M2 asked, with a gaze that seemed circumspect, "with the whores at the bus terminal?"
The white light in M2's gray eyes as he said the word whores invested him instantaneously with the face of a ravenous man blistering with acquisitive desire.
Yossarian gave the answer he thought most fit.
"Use them or lose them," he answered carelessly. "As much as you want. The police will oblige. The opportunities are boundless. I'm being realistic about the museum. Your father sells things, Milo, and that's not elegant."
"My mother hates him for that."
"And she lives in Cleveland. When is your sister getting married?" j "Whenever you want her to."
"That gives us latitude. Who is she marrying?"
"Whoever she has to."
"That might open it up."
"My mother will want you to make up the guest list. We don't know anyone here. Our dearest friends all live in Cleveland, and many can't come."
"Why not do it at the museum in Cleveland? And your dearest friends could come."
"We would rather have your strangers." M2 seated himself gently in front of his computer. "I'll fax my mother."
"Can't you phone her?"
"She won't take my calls."
"Find out," said Yossarian, with more mischief in mind, "if she'll take a Maxon. They might just have an extra one."
"Would they take a Minderbinder?"
"Would you marry a Maxon, if all they have is a girl?"
"Would they take me? I have this Adam's apple."
"There's a good chance they might, even with the Adam's apple, once you fork over that ten million for another new wing."
"What would they name it?"
"The Milo Minderbinder Wing, of course. Or maybe the Temple of Milo, if you'd rather have that."
"I believe they would choose that," guessed M2. "And that would be appropriate. My father was a caliph of Baghdad, you know, one time in the war."
"I know," said Yossarian. "And the imam of Damascus. I was with him, and everywhere we went he was hailed."
"What would they put in the wing at the museum?"
"Whatever you give them, or stuff from the storeroom. They need more space for a bigger kitchen. They would certainly put in a few of those wonderful statues of your father at those stone altars red with human blood. Let me know soon."
And as M2 beat a bit faster on his keyboard, Yossarian walked away to his own office, to cope on the telephone with some matters of his own.
"She wants more money," Julian told him right off in his no-nonsense manner.
"She isn't getting it." Yossarian was equally brusque.
"For how much?" challenged his son.
"Julian, I don't want to bet with you."
"I'll advise her to sue," said his daughter, the judge.
"She'll lose. She'd have money enough if she called off those Private detectives."
"She swears she isn't employing any," said his other son Adrian, the cosmetics chemist without the graduate degree, whose wife had concluded, through an adult education course in assertiveness training, that she wasn't really as happy as she'd all along thought herself.
"But her lawyer might be, Mr. Yossarian," said Mr. Gaffney, when Yossarian phoned and brought him up-to-date.
"Her lawyer says he's not."
"Lawyers, Mr. Yossarian, have been known to lie. Of the eight people following you, Yo-Yo-"
"My name is Yossarian, Mr. Gaffney. Mr. Yossarian."
"I expect that will change, sir," said Gaffney, with no decrease in friendliness, "once we have met and become fast friends. In the meanwhile, Mr. Yossarian"-there was no insinuating emphasis -"I have good news for you, very good news, from both the credit checking services. You have been coming through splendidly, apart from one late alimony check to your first wife and an occasional late separate maintenance check to your second wife, but there is an overdue bill for eighty-seven dollars and sixty-nine cents from a defunct retail establishment formerly known as The Tailored Woman that is, or has been, in Chapter 11."
"I owe eighty-seven dollars to a store called The Tailored Woman?"
"And sixty-nine cents," said Mr. Gaffney, with his flair for the exact. "You might be held responsible for that charge by your wife Marian when the dispute is finally adjudicated."
"My wife wasn't Marian," Yossarian advised him, after cogitating several moments to make sure. "I had no wife named Marian. Neither of them."
Mr. Gaffney replied in a coddling tone. "I'm afraid you're mistaken, Mr. Yossarian. People frequently grow befuddled in matrimonial recollections."
"I am not befuddled, Mr. Gaffney," Yossarian retorted, with his hackles up. "There has been no wife of mine named Marian Yossarian. You can look that one up if you don't believe me. I'm in Who's Who."
"I find the Freedom of Information Act consistently a much better source, and I certainly will look it up, if only to clear the air between us. But in the meanwhile amp;" There was a pause. "May I call you John yet?"
"No, Mr. Gaffney."
"All the other reports are in mint condition, and you can obtain the mortgage anytime you want it."
"What mortgage? Mr. Gaffney, I intend no disrespect when I tell you categorically I have no idea what the fuck you are talking about when you mention a mortgage!"
"We live in encumbering times, Mr. Yossarian, and sometimes things befall us too rapidly."
"You are talking like a mortician."
"The real estate mortgage, of course. For a house in the country or at the seashore, or perhaps for a much better apartment right here in the city."
"I'm not buying a house, Mr. Gaffney," replied Yossarian. "And I'm not thinking of an apartment."
"Then perhaps you should begin thinking about it, Mr. Yossarian. Sometimes Señor Gaffney knows best. Real estate values can only go up. There is only so much land on the planet, my father used to say, and he did well in the long run. All we'll need with your application is a specimen of your DNA."
"My DNA?" Yossarian repeated, with a brain bewildered. "I confess I'm baffled."
"That's your deoxyribonucleic acid, Mr. Yossarian, and contains your entire genetic coding."
"I know it's my deoxyribonucleic acid, God damn it! And I know what it does."
"No one else can fake it. It will prove you are you."
"Who the hell else could I be?"
"Lending institutions are careful now."
"Mr. Gaffney, where will I get that sample of my DNA to submit with my mortgage application for a house I don't know about that I will never want to buy?"
"Not even in East Hampton?" tempted Gaffney.
"Not even East Hampton."
"There are excellent values there now. I can handle the DNA for you."
"How will you get it?"
"Under the Freedom of Information Act. It's on file in your sperm with your Social Security number. I can get a certified photocopy-"
"Of my sperm?"
"Of your deoxyribonucleic acid. The sperm cell is just a medium of transportation. It's the genes that count. I can get the photocopy of your DNA when you're ready with your application. Leave the driving to me. And indeed, I have more good news. One of the gentlemen who is following you isn't."
"I will resist the wisecrack."
"I don't see the wisecrack."
"Do you mean that he isn't a gentleman or that he isn't following me?"
"I still don't see it. Isn't following you. He is following one or more of the others who are following vou."
"Why?"
"We will have to guess. That was blacked out on the Freedom of Information report. Perhaps to protect you from abduction, torture, or murder, or maybe merely to find out about you what the others find out. There are a thousand reasons. And the Orthodox Jew-excuse me, are you Jewish, Mr. Yossarian?"
"I am Assyrian, Mr. Gaffney."
"Yes. And the Orthodox Jewish gentleman parading in front of your building really is an Orthodox Jewish gentleman and does live in your neighborhood. But he is also an FBI man and he is sharp as a tack. So be discreet."
"What does he want from me?"
"Ask him if you wish. Maybe he's just walking, if he's not ther on assignment. You know how those people are. It may not be yQu. You have a CIA front in your building masquerading as a CIA front and a Social Security Administration office there too, not to mention all those sex parlors, prostitutes, and other business establishments. Try to hold on to your Social Security number. It always pays to be discreet. Discretion is the better part of valor, Señor Gaffney tells his friends. Have no fear. He will keep you posted. Service is his middle name."
Yossarian felt the need to take a stand. "Mr. Gaffney," he said "how soon can I see you? I'm afraid I insist."
There was a moment of chortling, a systematic bubbling suffused with overtones of self-satisfaction. "You already have seen me, Mr. Yossarian, and you didn't notice, did you?"
"Where?"
"At the bus terminal, when you went below with Mr. McBride. You looked right at me. I was wearing a fawn-colored single-breasted herringbone woolen jacket with a thin purple cross-pat tern, brown trousers, a light-blue Swiss chambray shirt of finest Egyptian cotton, and a complementing tie of solid rust, with matching socks. I have a smooth tan complexion and am bald on top, with black hair trimmed very close at the sides and very dark brows and eyes. I have noble temples and fine cheekbones. You didn't recognize me, did you?"
"How could I, Mr. Gaffney? I'd never seen you before."
The quiet laughter returned. "Yes, you did, Mr. Yossarian, more than once. Outside the hotel restaurant after you stopped in there that day with Mr. and Mrs. Beach following the ACA-CAMMA meeting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In front of the Frank Campbell Funeral Home across the street. Do you remember the red-haired man with a walking stick and green rucksack on his back who was with the uniformed guard at the entrance?"
"You were the redheaded man with the rucksack?"
"I was the uniformed guard."
"You were in disguise?"
"I'm in disguise now."
"I'm not sure I get that one, Mr. Gaffney."
"Perhaps it's a joke, Mr. Yossarian. It's told very widely in my profession. Maybe my next sally will be better. And I really believe you ought to call your nurse. She's back on the day shift and free for dinner tonight. She can bring that friend."
"Her roommate?"
"No, not Miss Moorecock."
"Her name is Miss Moore." Yossarian reproved him coldly.
"You call her Miss Moorecock."
"You will call her Miss Moore, if you wish to keep working for me. Mr. Gaffney, keep out of my private life."
"No life is private anymore, I'm sad to say."
"Mr. Gaffney, when do we meet?" Yossarian demanded. "I want to look you in the eye and see who the hell I'm dealing with. I'm not easy with you, Mr. Gaffney."
"I'm sure that will change."
"I'm not sure it will. I don't think I like you."
"That will change also, after we talk in Chicago."
" Chicago?"
"When we meet in the airport and you see that I'm trustworthy, loyal, helpful, courteous, and kind. Better?"
"No. I'm not going to Chicago."
"I believe you will be, Mr. Yossarian. You could make reservations now."
"What will I be doing in Chicago?"
"Changing planes."
"For where?"
"To come back, Mr. Yossarian. From Kenosha, Wisconsin, after your visit to Mrs. Tappman. Probably, you will want to continue to Washington directly for your meetings with Mr. Minderbinder and Mr. Wintergreen, and perhaps Noodles Cook too."
Yossarian sighed. "You know all that about me now?"
"I hear things in my work, Mr. Yossarian."
"Who else do you work for when you hear things about me?"
"For whoever will pay me, Mr. Yossarian. I don't discriminate. We have laws now against discrimination. And I don't play favorites. I'm always objective and don't make distinctions. Distinctions are odious. And invidious too."
"Mr. Gaffney, I haven't paid you yet. You haven't sent me a bill or discussed the fees."
"Your credit is good, Mr. Yossarian, if the credit rating companies can be believed, and you can get that mortgage anytime you want. There are excellent lakefront properties available now in New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey, and good seashore values too in Santa Barbara, San Diego, and Long Island. I can help you with the mortgage forms, if you like, as well as with your DNA. This is a good time for a mortgage and a very good time to buy."
"I don't want a mortgage and I don't want to buy. And who was that friend you mentioned before?"
"Of your nurse?"
"'I have no nurse, damn it. I'm in excellent health, if you're still keeping track, and by now she's a friend. Melissa."
"Nurse MacIntosh," Mr. Gaffney disagreed formally. "I am reading from the records, Mr. Yossarian, and the records never lie. They may be mistaken or out-of-date, but they never lie. They are inanimate, Mr. Y."
"Don't dare call me that!"
"They are not able to lie, and they are always official and authoritative, even when they are in error and contradict each other. Her friend is the nurse in the postoperative surgical recovery room you expressed a desire to meet. Her given name is Wilma but people are prone to call her angel, or honey, particularly patients as they emerge from anesthesia after surgery, and two or three physicians there, who now and then entertain ambitions of, as they put it, not I, getting into her pants. That may be a medical term. You may be joined by Miss Moore."
"Miss Moore?" Yossarian, with senses awhirl, was finding (t still harder to keep up. "Who the hell is Miss Moore?"
"You call her Moorecock," reminded Gaffney, in a dropped tone of admonition. "Forgive me for inquiring, Mr. Yossarian. But our listeners have not picked up sounds of sexual activity in your apartment in some time. Are you all right?"
"I've been doing it on the floor, Mr. Gaffney," answered Yossarian steadily, "below the air conditioner, as you advised me to, and in the bathtub with the water running."
"I'm relieved. I was concerned. And you really should call Miss MacIntosh now. Her telephone is free at this moment. She has troubling news about the Belgian's blood chemistry, but she seems eager to see you. I would predict that despite the differences in your respective ages-"
"Mr. Gaffney?"
"Forgive me. And Michael is just about finishing up and making ready to return, and you might forget."
"You see that too?"
"I see things too, Mr. Yossarian. That's also essential to my work. He's putting on his jacket and will soon be back with his first sketches of this new Milo Minderbinder wing. You'll permit Señor Gaffney that little wisecrack? I thought you might find it funnier than my first one."
"I'm grateful, Jerry," said Yossarian, with no doubt left that he was finding Mr. Gaffney a jumbo pain in the ass. He kept to himself his temper of hostile sarcasm.
"Thank you amp; John. I'm pleased we are friends now. You'll phone Nurse MacIntosh?"
"No fancy lingerie yet?" Melissa taunted when he did. "No Paris, or Florence?"
"Use your own for tonight," Yossarian bantered back. "We ought to keep seeing how we get along before we take off on a trip. And bring your roommate, if she wants to come."
"You can call her Angela," Melissa told him tartly. "I know what you did with her. She told me all about you."
"That's too bad, I think," Yossarian said, taken somewhat aback. With these two, he saw, he must keep on his mettle. "For that matter," he charged, "she told me all about you. It must be a nightmare. You could enter a convent. Your antiseptic terrors are almost unbelievable."
"I don't care," Melissa said with a hint of fanatical resolution. "I work in a hospital and I see sick people. I'm not going to take chances anymore with herpes or AIDS or even chlamydia, or vaginitis or strep throat or any of those other things you men like to pass around. I know about diseases."
"Do what you want. But bring that other friend of yours. The one that works in the surgical recovery room. I might as well start getting friendly with her now."
"Wilma?"
"They call her angel, don't they, and honey?"
"Only when they're recovering."
"Then I will too. I want to look ahead."