There is no need to look for cream, milk or half-and-half (I repeated to myself). Fenig likes his coffee black. There is no need to look for cream, milk or half-and-half.
8
Hanes beturned one day, minus a few of his soft blond locks, dressed a bit less splendidly than usual. He had few virtues as a messenger but I was convinced Globke's use of him entailed more serious things. A sort of image-gathering. Maybe Hanes as an image of my public. Or Hanes as Wunderlick-in-exile. He leaned back against the edge of the raised bathtub, tapping his boot heel on the ancient enamel.
"What do they want?" I said.
"Here's some data from the seventh floor. They thought it should have your immediate attention."
"What is it?"
"Updated assessments and projections."
"Of what?"
"I don't know," he said. "I just know you're supposed to look at this column, that column and the other column. The projections are on the overleaf. They want you to be aware of the current status of things. Then you have to sign or initial this memorandum and I have to take everything back to the seventh floor."
"Stop kicking the tub."
"There's a story you're either doing a concert in England with Watney or you're making a surprise appearance at one of Watney's concerts in America."
"But I'm deceased. I'm deceased, maimed or in Philadelphia."
"These things aren't mutually exclusive."
"You've been pondering these matters?"
"I believe in death-in-life," Hanes said. "One flows through the other. I mean what else is the meaning of a long plane trip spanning continents? What is a three- or four-thousand-mile journey on a 747 except an example of death-in-life? That's the trip you're taking for us. I mean it was your choice and you chose it. You're dead when we want you dead. Then you land and do a make-believe concert. We put you on and take you off. But it was your choice and you chose it. You could have stayed where you were. Things don't get better just because they get more simple."
"I thought you carried signatures back and forth. That's supposed to be your area of competence."
"I don't do anything," he said. "I'm just here – or there. People use me for whatever they want. It's a way of existing. Everybody has a way and this is mine. It's no better or worse than anybody else's."
His voice was malted milk, pleasant and soporific, an Eastern drawl, but determined to mingle certitude and defeat, as if the first could lead nowhere but to the second. Hanes seemed impatient with the world for not knowing the things he knew. The beauty of surrender. The logic of wistfulness. The old age of youth. As I listened I thought a featureless baggy man was striking me in slow motion with a well-polished stone. I moved to another chair, more supple, nearer the window. Some workers placed a guardrail around an open manhole; one of them attached a danger flag and another began to descend. It was late morning. Hanes gave me a piece of paper, then reassumed his stance at the bathtub. I was completely relaxed, melting into the chair.
"That's the memorandum of intent," he said. "You have to sign it or initial it."
"Whose intent?"
"The seventh floor wants you to read it and sign it."
"Can't be bothered, tell them."
"You won't read it?"
"No," I said.
"Will you sign it then?"
"No."
"How about initialing? Will you initial it? Then I can take it back up to seven and they can process it. Or whatever they do. I don't get to seven very often."
"You didn't bring any cash this time. Why is that, Hanes?"
"They said you've spent it all."
"Funny. That's nearly funny."
"You've spent it all, they said."
"It would take eight men eight lifetimes each to spend the money I've earned."
"What you haven't spent is tied up. You've spent a lot."
"What's tied up mean?"
"It's working. They've put it to work."
"Who exactly?"
"The sixth floor."
"I don't want it working," I said. "I'm the one who works. I want my money to sit quietly. That's my idea of the value of money. While I work and sweat, I want to think of my money resting in a cool steel-paneled room. It's stacked in green stacks, very placid and cool, resting up. I realize this isn't everybody's approach to money. But it's my approach and I like it. I envision luminous green stacks. A stainless-steel room. Hundreds of neat green stacks. I don't like to think of money working. I'm the one who works."
"Except you don't seem to be," Hanes said.
I think I slept then, a shallow drop, one level down. A sound seemed to reach me, murderously well regulated, as of sheets of paper sliding out of a Plexiglas machine. I opened my eyes and Hanes was still there, looking down at me, talking right through my sleep, his world-weary TV voice hovering at perfect modulation.
"I like to masturbate in the men's room on six," he said. "Afternoon is best. They're all drugged from lunch. Sitting in their pastel offices. Droning into the phone. I know I'll never get to that point. Their point. I'd rather be used than use others. It's easy to be used. There's no passion or morality. You're free to be nothing, I read their mail. I look in all the confidential files. When I deliver personal notes from floor to floor, I read them in the stairwell. I feel I'm free to do these things. The only thing that unfrees me is music. The men's room on six. I wouldn't try it on seven. I rarely go to seven. The Glob is moving up there next week. Hell probably take me with him but maybe he won't. Hell leave me where I am. That's probably what'll happen. The underground's come up with a superdrug. Did you hear about that? The news leaves me cold frankly. Music is the final hypnotic. Music puts me just so out of everything. I get taken beyond every reference that indicates who I am or how I behave. Just so out of it. Music is dangerous in so many ways. It's the most dangerous thing in the world."
Late in the day it snowed. The men on the radio went wild with news of heavy snow. They seemed unable to stop talking, station after station, into the night, bulletins, announcements, news specials. Every station was on alert for more news of the snow. Programs were interrupted. Announcers sounded close to insanity, their voice levels soaring. Snow watch. Snowplows. Heavy snow. Snowstorm. Deep snow. Big white snow. These men had never in their lives reported stories so full of documentation. It was snowing in this place and that place. It was piling up. It was drifting across the by-passes and interchanges. Their voices nearly cracked with unprecedented mad lyricism as they gave their authoritative reports. It was real snow and it was falling now, at this identifiable point in time. Motorists, pedestrians, vehicular traffic, suburban thoroughfares, snow emergency routes, snow removal equipment, sanitation crews, salt spreaders, accumulations, bridges and tunnels and airports. Snow was coming down out of the sky. It was falling on the city and on the countryside. Big white snow.
Then it stopped. Everywhere the snow stopped falling. The announcers tried to calm themselves. Their disappointment wasn't easy to conceal. Disaster and its various joys had made them hoarse, brought them close to sobs, and now they had to dig themselves out of this massive ecstasy. It was a letdown for everyone. A pre-recorded church service came on and then there was a knock and Fenig appeared at the door, hooded, carrying two paper cups by their shaky handles, his face framed in rising smoke. It was about midnight. I turned off the radio. The house was quiet and no traffic moved on the street. I was beginning to feel completely awake. Fenig seemed tired, bent forward in a chair, slowly knocking his knees together.
"Good coffee," I said.
"It's not instant. I never drink instant."
"I don't think I have anything in the house to eat in case you're hungry."