"The rumors are getting a little sloppy."
"Poetic is the word according to Globke. But things keep going. Things haven't let up at all. The press is still having the dry heaves over your disappearance. The underground press. The radical press. The trade press. The straight press. The revolutionary press."
"It can't be much of a disappearance. ABC was here this morning. Do you want the package or not?"
"Do I want the package or not? Well now that's not the easiest question to answer. I do want the package, yes. But what do I want to do with it? Now that's something else. I've been given a plane ticket and certain instructions. But there are other courses I might pursue. These people known as Happy Valley aren't necessarily prepared to understand every little nuance of the situation. I mean presumably the thing is up for bidding. It's a free market, isn't it? There are subtleties. Maybe somebody is prepared to bid on this product. There are nuances. There are ambiguities. Life itself is sheer ambiguity. If a person doesn't see that, he's either an asshole or a fascist."
"But you'll take the package with you."
"Absolutely," he said. I'll do that absolutely. In fact I leave on vacation in a matter of hours. Point or points unknown. Globke will have to get along without me for the next few weeks. Actually I haven't made my big decision yet. I want to wait till the last minute. This flight or that. I may choose to take my seat at the negotiating table with Dr. Pepper. Or I may decide to deal on my own. Straight salary gets to be boring, tax structures being what they are. So who knows? I may risk all."
"Florence Nightingale and a whole lot of bandages."
He raised the shopping bag.
"Here, take this," he said.
"What is it?"
"It's the product."
The package he took from the shopping bag looked the same as the one in the trunk. Brown wrapping paper. Brown gummed tape. Same size. Roughly the same weight. Hanes displayed his amusement by putting his hand to his face and gazing into the middle distance.
"Opel," I said.
"Very good. Excellent. I didn't think you'd know. She gave it to me when I was last here. You were sleeping the sleep of the innocent. She told me to call it the product. I don't normally approve of private jokes. But in this case, two people I've admired – why not? Apparently she was going to leave it here for you to find once we were on our way to Pepperland. She had no intention of coming back here, as you may or may not know. When we finished with Dr. Pepper she planned to head directly for Spain. Eventually you'd find the package and that would be the end of the little joke. But when the courier turned out to be an old acquaintance, namely myself, she thought it would be a nice idea to embellish the joke by having me deliver the goods. I have no idea what's in there and don't intend to ask. To be opened when the Glob begins to menace. Her words. When the Glob begins to menace."
"Whatever it is, it's my birthday present."
"Happy birthday," he said. "But I want you to know I'm disappointed you don't have any advice for me on what kind of cartridge recorder to get. I love to get advice from people at the top of a particular professional heap. Any kind of advice from such people I find is worth listening to."
"Any kind at all?"
"Absolutely," he said.
"Be willing to die for your beliefs, or computer printouts of your beliefs."
"That's nearly a very interesting remark," Hanes said.
I opened the trunk, gave him the original package and replaced it with Opel's gift. That night there was a woman in the hall when I went down the stairs. She was in the process of opening the door to the first floor apartment. Her galoshes, with shoes inside them, were set against the wall, dripping snow, and she stood in bare feet and sorted through the keys in her handbag. She was a short compact woman whose ankles seemed to have a special density. I nodded to her – the kind of greeting exchanged by men confined in submarines for long periods.
"I'm the woman downstairs," she said. "Up-on-three told me there was a new person. You're not noisy, that's for sure. If it's too cold, hit the pipes. Micklewhite. Downstairs from you."
"Right."
"I been here it seems like a hundred years. My husband used to be the super. But he died of complications. I take care of sending up the heat. If you get cold, hit twice on the pipes. My kid inside isn't normal. Don't worry if you hear noises."
"It doesn't get very loud."
"My husband had all kinds of cockamamie ideas. First off he wanted to sell the kid to a carnival. But who'd buy him? They wouldn't be able to sell enough tickets for all the trouble it takes to take care of him. Then he wanted to rent him out to colleges where they have doctors and nurses studying in there. I put the kibosh on that. I said you're dreaming. I said nobody wants to look at this kid. I said the only thing to do is leave him here and keep the door closed."
"What's his name?" I said.
"His name? He don't have a name. We never figured he'd live past four months with a head like his head. But did we get fooled. Did we get stuck with a lemon. My husband, he figured make the best of it. Find an interested party and either sell the kid outright or lease him by the month. Carnivals, they have seasons. Take him, bring him back, take him, bring him back. You should have seen that s.o.b. He used to work out schemes and plans and arrangements, left and right. I said hooey. I said you're dreaming. I said you'll have to go to the booby hatch to find an interested party. He wanted to take out ads, my husband. Carnivals, they have special newspapers. He kept working out plans and more plans and more plans until the day he keeled over. You should have seen him keel over. It was just after the second operation. Tessie was here, the candy store's daughter. We watched him keel right over. I told Tessie I said I bet it's complications. But he had big plans. You should have seen him talk. He was only this big but he had a mouth on him like a power saw. I'll tell you what he was because you wouldn't guess it if you saw him. He was a horse pervert. He went to the track rain or shine. Him and the chink from the Bronx, they went to the track in blizzards with their hats down over their ears. He lost thirty, forty simoleons on the average every time they went. The chink had winners left and right. The chink knew the scratch sheet, he knew the smart money, he knew the track, he knew the weather, he knew the animals. My husband, he didn't know shit from Shinola. He'd starve himself half to death to save enough money to give it to a horse. But don't mind my mouth. I talk and talk and never know what's coming out. It's loneliness, that's all it is. It's living with someone that can't form a word."
I tried to remember what I was doing on the stairs. I had my lumber jacket on but I didn't know where I was headed. I stayed outside the building for a while. A man in a long coat stood in the alley between Lafayette and Broadway. When I went back upstairs it was quiet everywhere. No bowel sounds in the plumbing and little of Fenig tracing his way to productivity. The man from ABC had left his card on the table. Although I'd never seen him on television I was able to recall almost every detail of his appearance. He possessed that high gloss common to interchangeable celebrities, to the male secretaries of important female executives, to lawyers with connections in show business. His clothes had seemed extremely tight, equipped with hidden straps, and he hadn't changed expression for the course of his visit. Television. Maybe it was all a study in the art of mummification. The effect of the medium is so evanescent that those who work in its time apparatus feel the need to preserve themselves, delivering their bodies to be lacquered and trussed, sprayed with the rarest of pressurized jellies, all to one end, a release from the perilous context of time. This is their only vanity, to expect to dwell forever in hermetic sub-corridors, free of every ravage, secure as old kings asleep in sodium.