"Isn't it?"
"Another thing--I got pretty hot when I got wind of how the ground was
being cut out from under you. I made it my business to do something
about it. I hate to see a good man pushed around. Of course I okayed the
orders cutting you down--a matter of routine--I had to follow through.
But then I got busy. A thing like that won't happen again."
"Thanks, Porter. It warms a man to know he's got a friend--a friend like
you."
"Just between us, old man, I'm one of your admirers." Porter laughed and
sprayed charm through the phone like perfume from an atomizer. "But if
you quote me, I'll deny it."
"Oh, I wouldn't think of quoting you, old man," Taber replied in a
kindly voice and put down the phone.
He sat back and closed his eyes. Three people dead. One person maimed.
Blood in the streets.
Good job well done.
He opened a drawer of his desk and reached for the Scotch bottle.
* * * * *
At the Newark Airport he would not trust his suitcase to a porter
because the leather loop holding one side of the handle was very thin
and he was afraid it would break.
Once he had been ashamed of the shabbiness of the bag and had planned to
buy a new one, but now there was an affinity between them, a kind of
warmth.
Were they companions in misery?
He asked the question with a quick smile and then realized he was not
miserable. A little bleak of mind, perhaps, with Minnesota and what lay
ahead affording no glow of anticipation in his mind. But that would
pass. No, he had relegated the hurt to a mental pigeonhole; maybe he
would bring it out and look at it once in a while, after enough time had
passed.
But he was not miserable.
He went to the counter, checked in, and they told him his plane would
take off on time. He glanced at his watch. Thirty-two minutes.
He went back to the bench and found Rhoda Kane sitting beside his
suitcase.
She wore a plain, black suit with a ridiculous little black hat and she
was so beautiful he was angry with her. He hated her. This good-bye
wasn't necessary. Why had she come?
Her face was pale and drawn; her smile was as abstract as the mystery on
the lips of the Mona Lisa. She laid a hand on the suitcase.
"We had our first quarrel over it, remember? We went to Puerto Rico for
that week and I wanted to use mine but you said, 'Goddamn it, if you're
ashamed of my suitcase you're ashamed of me, so the hell with it.'"
"I remember."
He sat down beside her, lit a cigarette, and then dropped it on the
floor and stepped on it. They both looked straight ahead.
"Take me with you, Frank."
"That's impossible."
"I know, but take me with you."
"There will be no money. I'll live in a stuffy room somewhere."
"What difference does that make? Take me."
"You have your job. You're on the way up. It would be unthinkable."
"I don't have any job. I quit. I was halfway through a piece of
copy--very important copy--and I got up and walked into Mr. Frankel's
office. I said, 'Mr. Frankel, it's been very nice working for you. I
appreciate all you've done but I'm leaving now. The pencils are all
sharpened on my desk and the next girl can have the new leather-bound
address book in the lower right hand drawer that I bought but never
used! That was a silly thing to say, wasn't it?"
"I suppose so."
"And the way I phrased it. I actually said I'd bought the lower right
hand drawer and hadn't used it--take me with you, Frank."
"Rhoda, I was so wrong in--"
"_I_ was wrong, Frank. I was trying to mold you into my way of life. I
wanted you, but only as a part of my own eager little world. I had money
so I furnished my apartment. I put this here and that there, and hung a
toothbrush over the sink as necessarily functional, and then I decided I
needed a man in the same way and so I picked you.
"But I found out that the man in the bed was the most important part of
it and without him there wasn't anything. Without him I didn't want any
of the other. Now ... I want to be a wife. A wife is a person who goes
where her husband goes and lives where he lives and shares what he has.
You don't barter and trade--this for that--give up this part to get
that. You give up everything and yet it isn't like that at all because
you're really getting everything."
He took out another cigarette.
"Oh, Frank, it's all mixed up and I'm going to cry, I think."
"It's not mixed up at all," he said quietly. He turned to look at her,
half frowning, half smiling. "Now why in the hell couldn't you have
given me a little notice? Twenty minutes to plane time and I've got to
get another reservation."
"I'm sorry, Frank."
"Maybe there isn't a seat."
"Wouldn't that be terrible?"
"Then we'll have to wait over."
"Why don't you go and see?"
Five minutes later they were walking down the west tunnel to gate
twenty-six.
Frank Corson grinned. "Come on, woman, I'm going to take you across
state lines for immoral purposes."
"How wonderful," she breathed.
* * * * *
Brent Taber was human and his triumph had been a thing of satisfaction
to him--but only momentarily. Now it had a slightly sour taste.
Not that he was unhappy. He was content and almost relaxed as he sat in
Doctor Entman's patio and worked on a Scotch and soda.
"A nice night," Entman said.
"Beautiful. Those stars are about ready to fall into our laps."
"Menace out there? It seems unthinkable."
"Doesn't it?"
"The human animal is a strange creature. He's so capable of refusing to
believe what he doesn't want to believe."
"Maybe he's smarter than we think. Maybe there's no point in looking at
a pending disaster from every angle. The what-will-be-will-be attitude
isn't necessarily like that of the ostrich which sticks its head in the
sand."
"Do the people inside really believe?" Entman asked.
"It's pretty difficult to tell. Sometimes I wonder what my own real
feelings are."
"I wasn't completely briefed on how it ended," Entman said delicately.
"I think the phony specifications got through."
"If they did--if things are really as they appear--"