Reluctantly, Paul let his field of vision widen to include the other side of the room, where Anita sat on a ladder-back chair before the cherry breakfront that concealed the laundry console. The console had been rolled from the breakfront, whose facade of drawers and doors was one large piece, making the breakfront sort of a small garage for the laundry equipment. The doors of a corner cabinet were open, revealing a television screen, which Anita watched intently. A doctor was telling an old lady that her grandson would probably be paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life.
"Urdle-urdle-urdle," went the console. Anita paid no attention. "Znick. Bazz-wap!" Chimes sounded. Still Anita ignored it. "Azzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Froomp!" The top of the console popped open, and a basket of dry laundry burst from it like a great chrysanthemum, white, fragrant, and immaculate.
"Hello," said Paul.
Anita motioned for him to be silent, and wait until the program was over, which meant the commercial too. "All right," she said at last and turned down the volume. "Your blue suit is laid out on the bed."
"Oh? What for?"
"What do you mean, what for? For going over to Kroner's."
"How did you know that?"
"Lawson Shepherd called to tell me."
"Deuced nice of him."
"Nice of someone to tell me what's going on, since you won't."
"What else'd he say?"
"He supposed you and Finnerty must have had a wonderful time, judging from how terrible you looked this afternoon."
"He knows as much about it as I do."
Anita lit a cigarette, shook out the match with a flourish, and squinted through the smoke she let out through her nose. "Were there girls, Paul?"
"In a manner of speaking. Martha and Barbara. Don't ask me who had who."
"Had?"
"Sat with."
She hunched in the chair, looked out the window soberly, and kept her cigarette hot with quick, shallow puffs, and her eyes watered in the dramatic gusts from her nose. "You don't have to tell me about it, if you don't want to."
"I won't, because I can't remember." He started to laugh. "One was called Barbara, and the other was called Martha, and beyond that, as the saying goes, everything went black."
"Then you don't know what happened? I mean, anything could have happened?"
His smile withered. "I mean everything really went black, and nothing could have happened. I was clay curled up in a booth."
"And you remember nothing?"
"I remember a man named Alfy, who makes his living as a television shark, a man named Luke Lubbock, who can be whatever his clothes are, a minister who gets a kick out of seeing the world go to hell, and -"
"And Barbara and Martha."
"And Barbara and Martha. And parades - my God, parades."
"Feel better?"
"No. But you should, because I think Finnerty's found a new home and a new friend."
"Thank God for that. I want you to make it clear to Kroner tonight that he forced himself on our hospitality, that we were as upset by him as anyone was."
"That isn't quite true."
"Well then, keep it to yourself, if you like him so much."
She lifted the lid of the schoolmaster's desk, where she made out the daily menus and compared her stubs with the bank statements, and took from it three sheets of paper. "I know you think I'm silly, but it's worth a little trouble to do things right, Paul."
The papers contained some sort of an outline, with major divisions set off by Roman numerals, and with sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-divisions as small as (a). At random, and with his headache taking on new vitality, he chose item III., A., I., a.: "Don't smoke. Kroner is trying to break the habit."
"Maybe it would help to read it aloud," said Anita.
"Maybe it'd be better if I read it alone, where there aren't any distractions."
"It took most of the afternoon."
"I expect it did. It's the most thorough job you've done yet. Thanks, darling, I appreciate it."
"I love you, Paul."
"I love you, Anita."
"Darling - about Martha and Barbara -"
"I promise you, I didn't touch them."
"I was going to ask, did anybody see you with them?"
"I guess they did, but nobody of any importance. Not Shepherd, certainly."
"If it ever got back to Kroner, I don't know what I'd do. He might laugh off the drinking, but the women - "
"I went to bed with Barbara," said Paul suddenly.
"I thought you did. That's your affair." She was tiring of the conversation, apparently, and she looked restively at the television screen.
"And Shepherd saw me coming downstairs with her."
"Paul!"
"Joke."
She put her hand over her heart. "Oh - thank the Lord."
" 'Summer Loves,' " said Paul, looking at the television screen judiciously.
"What's that?"
"The band - they're playing 'summer Loves.' " He whistled a few bars.
"How can you tell, with the volume off?"
"Go ahead, turn it up."
Apathetically, she turned the knob, and "Summer Loves," as sweet and indigestible as honey cake, oozed into the air.
Humming along with the orchestra, Paul went up the steps to his bedroom, reading the outline as he went:
"IV., A., I. If Kroner asks you why you want Pittsburgh, say it is because you can be of greater service . . . a. Soft-pedal bigger house and raise and prestige."
Fuzzily, Paul was beginning to see that he had made an ass of himself in the eyes of those on both sides of the river. He remembered his cry of the night before: "We must meet in the middle of the bridge!" He decided that he would be about the only one interested in the expedition, the only one who didn't feel strongly about which bank he was on.
If his attempt to become the new Messiah had been successful, if the inhabitants of the north and south banks had met in the middle of the bridge with Paul between them, he wouldn't have had the slightest idea of what to do next. He knew with all his heart that the human situation was a frightful botch, but it was such a logical, intelligently arrived-at botch that he couldn't see how history could possibly have led anywhere else.
Paul did a complicated sum in his mind - his savings account plus his securities plus his house plus his cars - and wondered if he didn't have enough to enable him simply to quit, to stop being the instrument of any set of beliefs or any whim of history that might raise hell with somebody's life. To live in a house by the side of a road. . . .
Chapter Eleven
THE SHAH OF BRATPUHR, looking as tiny and elegant as a snuffbox in one end of the vast cavern, handed the Sumklish bottle back to Khashdrahr Miasma. He sneezed, having left the heat of summer above a moment before, and the sound chattered along the walls to die whispering in bat roosts deep in Carlsbad Caverns.
Doctor Ewing J. Halyard was making his thirty-seventh pilgrimage to the subterranean jungle of steel, wire, and glass that filled the chamber in which they stood, and thirty larger ones beyond. This wonder was a regular stop on the tours Halyard conducted for a bizarre variety of foreign potentates, whose common denominator was that their people represented untapped markets for America's stupendous industrial output.
A rubber-wheeled electric car came to a stop by the elevator, where the Shah's party stood, and an Army major, armed with a pistol, dismounted and examined their credentials slowly, thoroughly.
"Couldn't we speed this up a little, Major?" said Halyard. "We don't want to miss the ceremony."
"Perhaps," said the major. "But, as officer of the day, I'm responsible for nine billion dollars worth of government property, and if something should happen to it somebody might be rather annoyed with me. The ceremony has been delayed, anyway, so you won't miss anything. The President hasn't showed up yet."