“So? That means I’m unemployable at thirty-two. Wonderful.”
“There are any number of civilian jobs—”
“I thought you said I’d fail their personality tests, too.”
“Not everyone gives them. And not every company is looking for what we’re looking for. As far as that goes, there’s a book on how to beat those tests. They won’t beat ours, but they’ll get you through the average corporate testing routine.”
“As far as that goes, I’ve had job offers.”
“Naturally.”
“Some fairly good ones. Decent money, work I can handle—”
“Right.”
I studied the rug. “I threw them all away when you people called me. Never gave them a second thought. That’s how much they excited me.”
“Maybe a business of your own—”
“Sure.”
“If you have capital, back pay saved up—”
“I’ve thought about it. I can’t see it.”
More silence. He got up and went to the john. I looked at my drink and tried to think of a reason for finishing it. I couldn’t. He came back, walked over to the window. It was getting darker outside. He came back and sat down again.
I said, “I suppose I’ll sit around on a beach until my money runs out. Then I’ll have to take a job.”
“Sure.”
“Mmmm.”
“A lot of fellows with your training, they find work. You must know what I mean.”
“Mercenaries?”
“Of course, and don’t tell me you haven’t considered it. If it’s adventure you miss, that’s where you’ll find it. Africa’s not that different from Southeast Asia, is it?”
“Maybe not.”
“And the recruiters in Johannesburg and Salisbury don’t use the MMPI. Nor do they really expect loyalty. You’d fit.”
“On whose side?”
“What’s the difference?”
“Oh. That’s a point.”
Another silence. Then he finished his drink, got abruptly to his feet. “Guess that does it, “he said. “I’d have preferred to skip this whole conversation, to tell you the truth. I’m not sure you’d have made much of a stink. A lot of rejects who want answers talk about going to their congressmen or to the press. Not many of them try. But it seemed worthwhile to cool you off. If I told you things you would have just as soon not heard, I’m sorry, but that’s how it goes.”
If he was really sorry, I thought, then his days at the Agency were numbered. Then I amended that. He was really sorry, but he’d forget about it the minute he went out the door. Once he stopped being able to forget, then he would be on his way out.
I let him out. We didn’t shake hands, although he seemed ready to. I had nothing against him, but I had nothing for him, either. He was just doing his job, right?
Two
Two hours later I boarded a jet for New York, and two hours after that I was in my own room in a hotel on West 44th Street. It was a comedown after the Doulton, but I paid my own bill and I liked it better that way. I went through my mail, which included job offers, requests for interviews, and, from the company which had given me the MMPI, an explanation that they had nothing for me at the moment.
In the morning I walked over to Brentano’s and bought a book called How to Beat Personality Tests. That was the actual title. I read a little over a third of it before chucking it out. Then I began writing various companies to explain that I couldn’t accept a position with them at the present time. I wrote four or five letters before it occurred to me that I could attain the same results just as easily by not writing them at all. I tore up the letters I had written, and I threw them out along with the letters from the companies.
I went to a play one night but left after the first act. It was a comedy, and it’s disheartening to be the only person in the audience who isn’t laughing. I also went to several movies. I picked up some paperbacks but rarely read one all the way through. The war stories were too inaccurate. The mysteries were a little better, but I didn’t much care who done it. The big fat novels with quotes on their covers explaining how they probed with fresh insight into the fabric of modern society, those were the worst of all. I couldn’t understand the characters. They were all hung up on trivia, little nothing problems in their careers and marriages. Maybe I might have given a damn if I had had a career or a marriage, but I doubted it. The major point in every book I read seemed to be that people couldn’t communicate with one another. I decided they should all study Esperanto, and I threw the books away one after another.
The movies were just as silly, but I didn’t have to read them. I could just sit there while they happened.
The rest of the time I didn’t do very much at all. There was a television set in my room. I asked them if they could take it out and give me a radio, and they brought me a small AM-FM radio and told me I could keep the television set too. I never turned the tv on. Sometimes I listened to music on the radio, but most of the time I forgot to bother, so I could have lived just as well without it.
I could never think of anybody to call.
One night I picked up a girl in the elevator. Where else would I meet one? This one broke a heel in the elevator, stepping between it and the floor. We got to talking while I freed the heel from the crack, and decided to have dinner together. She went upstairs for new shoes and came back down and I bought her tempura at a Japanese place on the next block. We left our shoes at the door and sat on mats, so I talked about furloughs in Tokyo. She asked if Japanese women were as wonderful as they were supposed to be, which established the program for the evening. I said something about going to a nightclub, and she said she’d have to change, and when we got back to the hotel I found out she was a better girl than I’d suspected. We didn’t have to go anywhere first. We went to her room, and she found a bottle and two glasses, and we went to bed.
She was tall, which I like. She had fine legs and a good bottom and small but honest breasts. Brown hair with a lot of red in it, and marvelous skin, and a good face. There was really nothing about her to object to. We kissed a little and hugged a little and went to bed, and the stupid little soldier wouldn’t stand at attention.
This had happened only once before, not counting the inevitable occasions when alcohol had unprovoked lechery. Just once in the dim past had the old soldier thrown down his arms, and at the time I had been angry, terrified, ashamed, and hopelessly embarrassed, four emotions which persisted until another night and another girl reassured me that I was still a man.
But this time I was none of those things, and all that really bothered me was the absence of reaction; I was suddenly finding myself not only impotent but evidently resigned to it, and it was the resignation that I objected to.
I offered an excuse, more for her self-esteem than my own. Malaria, I explained; I’d had an attack just two nights ago, and this was a common consequence, an almost inevitable after-effect I hadn’t, and it isn’t, but I was so calm and matter-of-fact about it she could hardly fail to believe me. She said we could try some other time, but I felt it was less than gentlemanly to leave her like that. I sort of liked her. So I got down to business with an organ less capricious than the old battle-scarred warrior.
She wanted to return the favor, malaria or no, and it turned out that this was a task at which she was astonishingly adept so much so that the proper response occurred and I was able to conclude the proceedings according to the usual format. I performed passably if not exceptionally, and if she keeps a diary I don’t suppose I deserved much more than a C-plus.
“See,” she said later. “I can cure malaria.”