‘Exactly. Conditions are beyond any individual's power. It's when you got to be fatalistic, you know: resigned-like. I'm resigned to seeing Frauenzimmer Associates close forever. Frankly, that's next.' He eyed the famnexdo group of simulacra moodily. ‘I don't know why we constructed you fellows. We should have slapped together a gang of street hustlers, floozies with just enough class to interest the bourgeoisie. Listen, Chic, this is how this terrible item in the Chronicle ends. You simulacra, you listen, too. It'll give you an idea of the kind of world you've been born into.
"Brother-in-law Antonio Costa drove to the candy factory and discovered him three feet down in the chocolate, St Louis police said."‘ Maury savagely closed up the newspaper. ‘I mean, how are you going to work an event like that into your Weltanschauung? It's just too damn dreadful. It unhinges you. And the worse part is that it's so dreadful it's almost funny.'
There was silence and then the male adult simulacrum, no doubt responding to some aspect of Maury's subconscious, said, ‘This is certainly no time for such a bill as the McPhearson Act to come into effect. We require psychiatric help from whatever quarter we can obtain it.'
‘ "Psychiatric help," ‘ Maury mocked. ‘Yeah, you've put your finger on it, Mr Jones or Smith or whatever we named you. Mr Next-door Neighbour, whoever you are. That would have saved Frauenzimmer Associates -- right? A little psychoanalysis at two hundred dollars an hour for ten years ... isn't that how long it generally takes? Keerist.'
He turned away from the simulacra, disgusted, and ate his doughnut.
Presently Chic said, ‘Will you give me a letter of recommendation?'
‘Of course,' Maury said.
Maybe I'll have to go to work for Karp und Sohnen, Chic thought. His brother Vince, a Ge employee there, could get him put on; it was better than nothing, better than joining the pitiful jobless, the lowest order of the vast Be class, nomads who roamed the face of the Earth, now too poor even to emigrate. Or perhaps he should emigrate. Perhaps the time had at last come; he should face it squarely. For once give up the infantile ambitions upon which he had traded for so long.
But Julie. What about her? His brother's wife made matters hopelessly complex; for example was he now responsible financially for her? He would have to thrash it out with Vince, meet him face to face. In any case. Whether he sought a position with Karp u. Sohnen Werke or not.
It would be awkward, to say the least, approaching Vince under these circumstances; the business with Julie had happened at a bad time.
‘Listen, Maury,' Chic said. ‘You can't lay me off, now. I've got a problem; as I related to you on the phone, I have a girl now who -- ‘
‘All right.'
‘P-pardon?'
Maury Frauenzimmer sighed. ‘I said all right; I'll keep you on a little longer. So it hastens the bankruptcy of Frauenzimmer Associates. So what. He shrugged massively.
‘So ist das Leben: that's life.'
One of the two children simulacra said to the adult male, ‘Isn't he a good man, Daddy?'
‘Yes, Tommy,' the adult male answered, nodding. ‘He most certainly is.' It patted the boy on the shoulder. The whole family beamed.
‘I'll keep you on until next Wednesday,' Maury decided. ‘That's the best I can do, but maybe it'll help a little. After that -- I just don't know. I can't foresee anything. Even though I am slightly precognitive, as I've always said. I mean to a certain extent I've generally had valid hunches as to the future. Not in this case, though, not one damn bit. The entire thing is a mass of confusion, as far as I'm concerned.'
Chic said, ‘Thanks, Maury.'
Grunting, Maury Frauenzimmer resumed reading the morning paper.
‘Maybe by next Wednesday something good'll come along,' Chic said. ‘Something we don't expect.' Maybe, as sales manager, I can bring in a huge order, he thought.
‘Say, maybe so,' Maury said. He did not sound very convinced.
‘I'm really going to try,' Chic said.
‘Sure,' Maury agreed. ‘You try, Chic, you do that.' His voice was low, muffled by resignation.
6
To Richard Kongrosian the McPhearson Act was a calamity because in a single instant it erased his great support in life, Dr Egon Superb. He was left at the mercy of his lifelong illness-process, which, right at the moment, had assumed enormous power over him. This was why he had left Jenner and voluntarily checked in at Franklin Aimes Neuropsychiatric Hospital in San Francisco, a place deeply familiar to him; he had, during the past decade, checked in there many times.
However, this time he probably would not be able to leave. This time his illness-process had advanced too far.
He was, he knew, an anankastic, a person for whom reality had shrunk to the dimension of compulsion; everything he did was forced on him -- there was for him nothing voluntary, spontaneous or free. And, to make matters worse, he had tangled with a Nitz commercial. In fact, he still had the commercial with him; he carried it about with him in his pocket.
Getting it out now, Kongrosian started the Theodorus Nitz commercial up, listening once more to its evil message.
The commercial squeaked. ‘At any moment one may offend others, any hour of the day!'
And in his mind appeared the full-colour image of a scene unfolding; a good-looking black-haired man leaning towards a blonde, full-breasted girl in a bathing suit in order to kiss her. On the girl's face the expression of rapture and submission all at once vanished, was replaced by repugnance. And the commercial shrilled, ‘He was not fully safe from offensive body odour! You see?'
That's me, Kongrosian said to himself. I smell bad. He had, due to the commercial, acquired a phobic body odour; he had been contaminated through the commercial, and there was no way to rid himself of the odour; he had for weeks now tried a thousand rituals of rinsing and washing, to no avail.
That was the trouble with phobic odours; once acquired they stayed, even advanced in their dreadful power. At this moment he did not dare get close to any other human being; he had to remain ten feet away so that they would not become aware of the odour. No full-breasted blonde girls for him.
And at the same time he knew that the odour was a delusion, that it did not really exist; it was an obsessive idea only. However, that realization did not help him. He still could not bear to come within ten feet of another human being -- of any sort whatsoever. Full-breasted or not.
For instance, at this very moment Janet Raimer, chief talent scout from the White House, was searching for him. If she found him, even here in his private room at Franklin Aimes, she would insist on seeing him, would force her way close to him -- and then the world would, for him, collapse.
He liked Janet, who was middle-aged, had a waggish sense of humour and was cheerful. How could he bear to have Janet detect the terrible body odour which the commercial had passed on to him? It was an impossible situation, and Kongrosian sat hunched over at the table in the corner of the room, clenching and unclenching his fists, trying to think what to do.
Perhaps he could call her on the phone. But the odour, he believed, could be transmitted along the phone wires; she would detect it anyhow. So that was no good. Maybe a telegram? No, the odour would move from him to that, too, and from it to Janet.
In fact, his phobic body odour could contaminate the entire world. Such was at least theoretically possible.
But he had to have some contact with people; for instance, very soon now he wanted to call his son Plautus Kongrosian at their home in Jenner. No matter how hard one tried one could not entirely suspend inter-personal relationships, desirable as it might be.