You Live Once Part 35

Pryor stood up slowly. The faces of the listeners changed. The orange fountain pen made a tiny scratching sound as the last few words were taken down.

Pryor turned toward Kruslov.

"Now that you know all the reasons, Captain, now that I have explained everything in detail, may I go home? I'll appreciate it if this is given no publicity."

I swear that Kruslov was so shocked he almost said yes. He licked his lips and said, "Oh no, Mr. Pryor! You can't go home."

"Do you plan to detain me? Here?"

"I'm afraid I've got to."

"Well, get your formalities over as soon as possible then. Will I be able to go home this evening?"

I saw the Kruslov brain begin to tick. He stood up and smiled and said, "Mr. Pryor, rest a.s.sured that we'll take care of all this just as efficiently as we know how. If you'll come along with me, sir?"

They half bowed to each other. As they went out the door together, Willis Pryor said, "Remember now. No publicity. And I'd like to talk to Jud Sutton as soon as possible. Get him for me, please."

"Right this way, Mr. Pryor," Kruslov said gently.

We were all left in the room. Somebody sighed. Then we all filed out of there, not looking at each other. We all shared some nameless guilt. We'd all seen the s.h.i.+ning structures fall, the streets decay, the walls crumble. We didn't want anything to do with each other. Maybe we had all resigned from the human race a little bit.

Young John Olan was standing in the main corridor when I left. n.o.body seemed to want me, so I left. A reporter had edged up to me and I had snarled at him.

John Olan was studying a pocket chessboard.

"More prepared variations?"

I startled him. He recognized me and smiled at me.

"That's right."

He jerked his head toward the other end of the corridor, the official end.

"He did it? My father and my sister?"

"Yes. I'm sorry."

His eyes were dark mirrors, reflecting nothing. His mouth moved in a quick grimace of pain, wiped out immediately.

He looked back at the board in his hand. I no longer existed. He was back in a special clean geometric world, where the G.o.d was reason, where the G.o.ddess was logic, where hearts were prisms, cold and true and neatly cut.

Perhaps it was a good world to hide in.

I left him and walked slowly to my car in the late afternoon suns.h.i.+ne. A thunder front was rolling up the sky, and the sun was beginning to be misted, and the city was full of an orange light, lambent and ominous.

Chapter 11.

I missed Dodd's funeral. Toni drove me out to the airport in my car and I caught flight 818 to New York at one twenty P.M. on Monday, in accordance with the terse telegram I had received.

BE IN MY OFFICE AT FIVE THIRTY TODAY.

STAGE.

I went in no mood of capitulation, with no humility, with rather a well banked anger that burned dull and low under the covering coals.

It was a close thing. I went from Kennedy into heavy traffic and got out of the cab in front of the C.P.P. building on Madison near Fiftieth at twenty after five.

The elevator banks were disgorging their full quota of the sharp-eyed girls from the offices. The big sepia photomural of the Fall River plant above the directory, across from the elevators, looked just the same. The main offices specialize, through handling and atmosphere, in dwarfing you. A boulder in the field, you become a pebble in a shoe when you hit the topside offices.

I was alone on my ride up to the hushed beige splendor of eighteenth floor reception. A soft-voiced d.u.c.h.ess, all prepared to leave her upholstered nest for the day, focused eighteen inches over my head, lifted a forest green phone from the beige formica of a free-form display desk and confirmed my appointment with a rusty little accent that was entirely delicious. I said I knew where to go and, the barometer of my spirits dropping steadily, I trudged back through lesser sanctums to the corner office where a golden girl opened the two-inch-thick door to let me in. Homer Stace, Executive Vice-President in Charge of Production, Member of the Board, sat thick and secure with his back to all the gla.s.s and a segment of the river, and a distant tug with colors sharp and bright against afternoon smog.

"Sit down, Sewell," he said. Mr. Stace is a big florid man who started with grease on his hands. Along the way he cultivated ersatz British mannerisms, a look of spurious stupidity, a b.u.mbling jolly manner. He delights in being underestimated. He's as sharp as a Chicago ice pick

Not for me the window dressing, the mannerisms, the jolly b.u.mbling. For me the cold eye, glacial, unearthed somewhere in Greenland and imported frozen in a block of mercury.

I sat.

"What kind of an outrage is going on out there? Exactly what the h.e.l.l are we taking on these days? Playboys? s.e.x maniacs? Since when does a responsible position with C.P.P.

become- window dressing for a night-life career, Sewell?

You young social lions sicken me. What kind of stupid G.o.d d.a.m.n reason can you think of to convince me that I ought to keep you on the payroll, even to scrub washrooms?"

It worked like an air injection system. It turned on the blower under my banked fire. I stopped sitting. I stood up and slammed both fists down on his desk top.

"What makes you think I want to stay on your d.a.m.n payroll?"

He came right up to meet me, nose to nose.

"People like you are a dime a dozen, Sewell."

"Don't cla.s.sify me, d.a.m.n it."

"I suppose you're unique!" He bawled that with the monstrous arrogance of a rhino.

"Yes!"

"Irreplaceable?"

"Yes!" I hit his desk again.

"I don't have to work for this outfit. I can work for anybody. I'll do all right."

We glared at each other. His voice changed.

"Sit down, d.a.m.n it," he said softly. We both sat down. He made a quarter turn on his big chair, took a mint out of his desk drawer, tossed it into his mouth, turned a bit further and looked out his special window. I looked at the back of his thick stubborn neck.