Buddwing

8

He thought at first his eyes were still tearing, but when he rubbed at them he found they were dry. It was then that he really thought he was Edward Voegler, the escaped madman. He blinked his eyes shut, and then opened them again suddenly, as though anxious to prove the blurring was only a momentary thing. But as he looked down Lexington Avenue, he could see only a curious optical chaos, and he thought, I’m in the middle of some kind of paranoid fit; something dreadful is about to happen to me. He did not know what this fearful thing would be. Perhaps he would fall to the sidewalk frothing at the mouth like an epileptic, perhaps he would rush down the street, berserk, and break store windows or strangle women and children. He knew only that something was wrong with his vision, and that this curious lopsided askewness made it seem as though everything were wrong, outside his body and deep inside it as well. He kept looking through his own eyes as though he were someone trapped in a room with rain beating against the windows. But no, his vision wasn’t actually blurred, no, not that way, not the way rain will dissolve a window, not the way watercolors will run into each other. Instead, it was as though there were a single sharp image, and then a ghost of that image, overlapping it, so that there were two images, side by side and partially covering each other, the ghostly image on the right dissolving somewhat, as if its edges were melting. At the same time, there seemed to be a curiously odd flicker somewhere off to his side, a pulsing flicker of light that he could not focus because it was somehow behind the field of his vision, far behind his right temple, but he could see it nonetheless, a flicker, flicker, flicker of light, colorless, on, off, on, off. A throbbing pain was beginning in his left temple, and he had the strangest feeling that the left-hand side of his face was going numb, and that his left hand was getting thick and clumsy, the way a hand feels when it has fallen asleep. He was frightened because he did not know what was going to happen next, and he suspected it would be something terrible. But at the same time, he knew this thing that was happening to him had happened to him often before, that he had learned to live with it, and that it would not really be so horrible after all. He found that he could walk quite well despite the strange double-exposed landscape ahead of him, that he could reach for the handle on the barbershop door and touch it with a great degree of accuracy, and open the door, and walk into the barbershop, all without falling. The flickering light was stronger now, like a candle guttering in a sharp wind, just beyond his field of vision, behind his right temple. The barber smiled at him, and there were two faces superimposed, one of the faces melting away at the edges, the barber’s nose smearing into his mustache, the other image sharp and clear beneath the superimposed and slightly askew one.

“How much do you charge for a shave?” he heard himself asking the barber.

“Seventy-five cents,” the barber said.

“All right,” he answered, and he was about to sit in the chair when an inspiration came to him.

The pills, he thought.

The gelatin capsules in my watch pocket. That’s what they’re for. They’re to clear the vision, they’re to take away this stupid throbbing pain, they’re to put out the flickering light.

He stopped before the chair, and the barber looked at him curiously, the sharp left image and the dissolving right image both smiling up at him expectantly.

“Yes?” the barber said.

“Could I have a glass of water?” Buddwing asked, and then felt a sharp pang of warning. You don’t know what those gelatin capsules contain, he reasoned calmly. If you are Edward Voegler and you stole this suit from the director’s office, those capsules could contain anything, Nembutal or Pentothol or even arsenic! Well, now, let’s be reasonable, he thought. Nobody’s going to put arsenic in gelatin capsules, now, are they? And besides, if this is the director’s suit, and I must say it fits me pretty damn well for another man’s suit, but if it is his suit, the odds are pretty good that the director of Central Icepick would be carrying medication in his watch pocket and not poison. Yes, but the medication could be a sedative — isn’t that what they use in institutions today? Well, don’t you know? If you’re Edward Voegler, don’t you know what they use in the nuthouse? What do they use on you, Mr. Voegler? On me, they use a straitjacket, and leg irons, and a club; that’s what they use on me, all right, smart ass? They throw me in a little Oriental cell with bedbugs in the mattress and cockroaches crawling over the walls, and lice nesting in my hair, okay? They beat me regularly, and they give me mildewed bread and polluted water, and there is a sadistic God... guard... who tells me I am as sane as he is, but those are the breaks, Mac. That’s what they do to me, okay?

“Here you are,” the barber said, holding out the glass of water.

“Thank you,” Buddwing answered. He reached into the watch pocket, caught one of the capsules between his index finger and his third finger, put it into his mouth without looking at it, said “Cheers” to the barber, and washed the capsule down with a swallow of water.

“I have a terrible migraine headache,” he explained, and instantly felt this was the truth. He sat in the chair, and the barber put his striped cloth around Buddwing, and then eased the chair back. Buddwing put his feet up on the chair rest, and felt the barber’s hands working lather into his face. He was suddenly overcome by a delicious feeling of luxury — the warm soap, the barber’s gently kneading hands. He closed his eyes. He could see the flicker even in the darkness, a steady beating on-and-off light that took on a yellow color when his eyes were closed. But with his eyes closed, he was no longer troubled by the superimposed image, and he felt himself relaxing completely. Beside, he instinctively knew this was nothing but a migraine, and that he was probably subject to such attacks and carried the capsules in his watch pocket for just that reason. Instinct. That was the key. If he simply followed his inst

Key, he thought.

Why, I don’t have any keys.

He recognized this with some surprise, and he tried to remember his awakening in Central Park early this morning — it seemed like eons ago — and going through his small store of worldly possessions. He catalogued them in his mind now, just as he had found them when he awakened, and wondered if he had noticed then that he had no keys. I awoke with a gold pen and pencil set, a black book with the number MO 6-2367 in it, a New York Central timetable, a package of cigarettes and a book of matches, two torn movie stubs, and two gelatin capsules. That’s all I had. No wallet, no watch, no loose change. And no keys.

But he had not noticed the fact that he was carrying no keys until just a few seconds ago, and this seemed ominous to him now. Everybody carries keys, he thought. Wait a minute, not everybody. A man in prison does not carry keys. A man in a mental hosp

The throbbing at his left temple increased sharply.

He became terribly frightened of the capsule he had swallowed so casually. What mysterious powder was inside that gelatin, and now inside his body, working its way into his bloodstream? If he awoke without keys, and without a wallet, and without a watch, and without money of any kind, was it not entirely possible and in fact likely that he had come directly from an institution where patients do not normally carry any of these things? But wait, what was he doing with a pen and pencil? Please excuse the crayon I used to write this, but I am not allowed to have anything sharp. Well, the pen and pencil were in the suit, and if the suit was not his, then they were not his, and neither were the train schedule or the black book or the movie stubs or anything. I have no keys, and I have no possessions: a man without keys is a man without anything. No house, no car, no safe-deposit box, no ski rack, no responsibilities.

Nothing.

I have nothing, and I am nothing.

He felt the barber’s razor scraping against his jaw. Slit my throat, he thought, why the hell don’t you? I have nothing, I am nothing; I’m as good as dead, anyway.

The flicker behind his right temple had faded somewhat. He was sure now that the capsule he had taken contained a sedative, and that he would fall asleep in the barber’s chair, and lose Janet forever. He wondered what time it was.

The clock.

It is ticking in the living room. She does not want to buy the clock; she says it is too expensive. The flea market in London, Portobello, the street band that marches through playing “Midnight in Moscow,” is that only last summer? And she does not want to buy the clock, too expensive, we mustn’t let a flea market fool us. Now the clock hangs on the living room wall, and the sound of it fills the apartment, with the other swishing sound running beneath it in counterpoint, I will drown.

He counts seconds.

He is frozen and cannot move. They should not have bought that clock, they should never have gone to Milan, because in Milan, too hot, in Milan is where they look at each other in suffocating heat, and see, and wonder where it all has gone. And to buy the clock in London, against her wishes, this is only an echo of Milan where recognition is swift and cruel and searing. The clock ticks so loudly in the silent apartment. He cannot move, it is too late, the clock is throwing minutes into the room, the clock is ticking off hours, the clock is ticking off a lifetime, and it is too late, and he will not move, too late.

He knows where. He knows instinctively.

Dan is on the telephone, no there is something wrong, the sequence is wrong, there is something he will not allow himself to see. Dan is talking in his coldly soothing voice. The telephone is trembling in his hand, but Dan keeps talking calmly and interminably, infuriatingly, as the telephone trembles. Arrangements, people, let me help, what do you want, Dan? can’t you leave me alone? can’t you hear that goddamn ticking clock? don’t you know what it is saying? can’t you stop? can’t you stop? can’t you please for God’s sake stop?

“There we go,” the barber said. Buddwing opened his eyes. The barber was taking off the apron, raising the chair. He looked at himself in the mirror.

“She gave me a haircut,” he said.

“What?” the barber answered.

“Well, long ago.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know,” Buddwing said. He smiled weakly. “How much is that?”

“Seventy-five. Like I told you.”

Buddwing reached into his pocket and took out a dollar bill. He handed it to the barber and glanced at the clock. It was 11:15. “Keep the change,” he said recklessly, and then walked out.

His head was still throbbing as he turned the corner onto Park Avenue. Janet was standing under the canopy, looking up the avenue impatiently when he came up behind her. He put his hands up quickly, circling her face and covering her eyes. She gave a startled little shriek, and then relaxed against his hands and said, “Let me see. Who can it be? Your hands are very gentle, you must be very nice, whoever you are. Let me see.”

“Well?” he said.

“Mmm, I like your hands on my face. I’m never going to guess.”

“You have to guess.”

“Give me a clue,” she said, moving back and a little closer to him. “Are you very handsome?”

“Yes, terribly.”

He could feel her body against his, feel every slightest move she made.

“Are you very tall?”

“Very tall.”

“And very young?”

“No, I’m very old.”

She pulled his hands from her eyes with her own, and whirled into his arms. “You’re young,” she said seriously. She kissed him swiftly on the mouth and said, “We’re going to get arrested.” She moved away from him, taking his hand. They began strolling up the avenue. “Where would you like to go? It’s only eleven-thirty, and we have the whole day.”

“There’s a slight problem,” he said.

“There are no problems,” she answered.

“Yes, there are.” He reached into his pocket and took out the remaining dollar and the dime and the nickel. He held them on his palm and said. “This is all the money I have.”

“There are still no problems,” she said. She grinned and added, “I should have realized you were a gigolo. Do you want to walk a little?”

“No,” he said.

“What do you want to do?”

“I want to make love to you.”

“Oh?”

“Yes.”

“I told my analyst about you,” she said, ignoring his statement.

“What did he say?”

“Nothing. He just sat there. At least, I think he was sitting there. I can’t see him because he’s always behind me. For all I know, he knits or cleans his nails or goes to the window and sails paper airplanes.”

“What did you expect him to say?”

“I expected him to say nothing, which is what he always says. Do you mean what did I want him to say?”

“Yes.”

“I wanted him to say, ‘Why, Sam Buddwing sounds like a wonderful person, God bless you, my child.’ But I don’t need him to tell me that.” She squeezed his hand. “I live on Eighty-ninth Street, you know.”

“No, I didn’t know that.”

“Yes. Where I got into the cab. Eighty-ninth and Broadway.” She paused. “I tried to get an apartment on the East Side, near the school, but I couldn’t.” She paused again. “I live alone. A lot of the kids have roommates, but I don’t. My parents live in the Bronx, on Kingsbridge Road. Do you know where that is?”

“Yes. I used to live in the Bronx.”

“Oh, really? Where?”

“Well, it was a long time ago.”

“Yes, but where?”

“I... I don’t remember.”

“That’s a fine example of mental block, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so.”

“If your parents are anything like mine, I’m not surprised. I sometimes wish I could just block them out of existence. Boy, did they raise a stink when I moved. But my brother had left the year before, you know, so I insisted on equal rights. Women are entitled to equal rights, don’t you think?”

“Absolutely.”

“Sure. Did you want to come home with me?”

“If that’s where you want to go.”

“I don’t know where I want to go, Sam, or what I want to do,” she said seriously.

“Then let me decide.”

“I don’t like other people making decisions for me.”

“Then let’s walk.”

“I don’t want to walk.”

“Well... what do you want, Janet?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said petulantly. “Let’s walk.”

They walked in silence for several blocks.

“My brother’s a writer, did I tell you that?” she asked at last.

“Yes.”

“The Pied Piper.”

“What do you mean?”

“With his rats.”

Again, she went silent. Buddwing, walking beside her, suddenly knew how he could find out who he was. The idea was so simple that he wondered why he had not thought of it before this. He would simply go to De Pinna’s, where the obviously hand-tailored suit he was wearing had come from, and ask them who had ordered the suit. He was sure they would have a record of some sort, and perhaps the tailor might even recognize him. There was, of course, the danger that they would tell him the suit had been made for the director of Central Islip, but even that would not be so bad because then he would at least know for sure he was Edward Voegler.

“Mike hasn’t decided which school he wants to belong to yet,” Janet said. She saw the puzzled look on Buddwing’s face, and said, “My brother. The schools of writing.”

“Are there different schools?” he asked.

“Oh, yes, dozens,” she said knowingly.

“Why doesn’t he try combining them all?”

“No, no, Mike has to find his own chemin. That’s what he calls it. He keeps pecking away at his typewriter and telling me, ‘Jan, I’ve got to find my own chemin.’ And I’m the one one seeing an analyst.” She shrugged. “He’ll never make it, you know. I can tell.”

“How can you tell?”

“Just by looking at him. I go into that apartment, and he’s living there like a pig, you know, an absolute pig. His underwear is all over the floor, and there are dirty dishes in the sink, and cigarette butts everywhere you look, and he sits at that typewriter like some kind of beat mystic or something, and he barely looks up when I come in.”

“Why do you go?”

“Well, I love him, you know,” Janet said simply. She shook her head. “But he isn’t going to make it, and I know he’s not, and I wish I had the courage to tell him. I have this horrible vision of one day going there, ten years from now, and knocking on the door. The whole area will have been reclaimed by Lincoln Center, except for the building Mike lives in. I’ll go into his apartment, and the rats will have taken over. Mike’ll be sitting at that crumby table he uses for a desk, in a typing position, but all his bones will have been picked clean by the rats.” She shuddered and clutched his arm and said, “Oh, that’s horrible, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe I wish he’d get eaten by the rats, I don’t know. Otherwise, why did I think of it?” She shook her head again. “Listen,” she said.

“I’m listening.”

“You won’t, will you?”

“Won’t what? Get eaten by rats?”

“No, I’m serious. I mean hurt me. You won’t will you?”

“No. I won’t.”

“Because I’m a pretty mixed-up girl, you know, and I don’t need anything like that right now. I’ve got enough troubles, with my brother and everything. I mean, this may be the romance of the century and all that, but I’ll tell you the truth, I’d rather pass it by if it’s going to make me unhappy. I’m unhappy enough as it is.”

“I won’t make you unhappy, Janet.”

“I just have the feeling I shouldn’t start up with you, that’s all.”

“What do you want me to say, Janet?” The throbbing pain in his left temple, which he had thought was easing, now seemed stronger.

“I think I want you to say goodbye.”

“All right, then.”

He made a motion as though to move away from her, but she caught at his arm and drew him back sharply. “No!” she said. “I want you to tell me everything’ll be all right.”

“I love you,” he said.

“That’s not what I want to hear.”

“Janet, I don’t know what you—”

“It’s not just going to bed with me, is it?”

“Janet, I told you I love you!”

“I know you love me. But... can’t you say the rest?”

“What rest? What is it you want to hear?”

“That it’s not just going to bed.”

“It isn’t,” he said wearily.

“Then tell me.”

“It isn’t just going to bed.”

“Tell me you’ll take care of me.”

“I’ll take care of you, Janet.”

“Will you protect me, and love me?”

“I’ll protect you, yes, and—”

“And keep me warm?”

“Yes, Janet, I’ll keep you—”

“And make me happy. Will you make me happy, Sam?”

“I’ll make you happy. I’ll love you. I’ll always love you.”

“All those things? Will you do all those things?”

“I will, I will.”

“Say it.”

“I will love you and... and protect you and...”

“Keep me warm...”

“Yes, and keep you warm, yes, and make you happy, I will do all those things, Janet, I promise.”

She looked at him with sadness in her eyes, and then she gave a brief discouraged nod and said, “You’ll screw me, Sam, that’s what you’ll do. That’s all you’ll do.” She sighed heavily. “Will it upset you if I pay for a cab?” she asked.

His headache was gone by the time they reached her apartment. That was all right, but everything else was all wrong. She had been inordinately silent in the cab on the way crosstown and uptown, staring through the window on her side while the pulse in his temple pounded and throbbed. She had not touched him, had not even held his hand, had simply sat far over on her side of the taxi staring through the window. He had felt the headache recede and then emerge more strongly again, recede further, emerge, recede and then fade and then vanish completely, to be replaced by an anger that gathered force as her silence continued. He had promised not to hurt her, but now he wanted only to hurt her. He had promised to protect her, but now he wanted to destroy her. Her silence infuriated him. As the cab wound through the park and then emerged on Central Park West and continued west to Broadway, coming closer and closer to her apartment, he found himself building furious fantasy after fantasy, of beating her, of forcing her to her knees, of striking her repeatedly across the face. Her silence excluded him, and angered him; her silence shut him out of a world he was desperately trying to re-enter. When the cab stopped in front of her building, she paid the driver without a word, raising a disdainful eyebrow, he thought, and then stepped out of the cab and went directly into the building without waiting for him and without looking behind her to see if he was following. The hell with you, he thought, and he almost turned and began walking in the opposite direction, but something pulled him to her, the knowledge that she was a thin thread connecting him with the life of this city, perhaps the only thread. He did not want that thread to break. He followed her into the building.

Her apartment was on the third floor. She unlocked the door and waited for him to enter the kitchen, and then locked the door behind him and slipped the chain on it. She turned toward him and smiled briefly, a very curious grudging smile, and then put her arms around him and kissed him. She kissed him with surprising ferocity, moving her lips and grinding her teeth against his, and thrusting her hips forward. He could feel the hard bulging mound of her beneath the straight black skirt, pushing against him fiercely, and then she ripped her mouth from his and looked directly into his face with an anger in her eyes, a fury he had not seen there before, and she said, “Go on in. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

She indicated the other room with a toss of her head, and then turned and went into what he assumed was the bathroom. He suspected she was going to put on a diaphragm and the knowledge distressed him because this was not at all what he had expected of her, not the experienced insertion of rubber and cream, not this cold-blooded intensity that seemed to be on her face, that seemed to govern the movement of her body, frightening him. He walked into the other room. The bed was still unmade, the sheets rumpled from the night before. The room seemed to be a combination bedroom-living room, with bookshelves on one wall, and a record player, and a stack of 45 rpm’s on the floor beside the player. A framed photograph of a boy in an open-throated white shirt was resting on a shelf beside the bed. He did not know why, but he assumed it was her brother. He sat on the edge of the bed and took off his shoes, and then lay back against her single pillow, which was stained with lipstick.

He hoped she would not come to him naked. He thought that if she came to him naked, he would leave the room immediately. He could hear water running in the bathroom, and then silence. She is taking off her clothes, he thought, and was suddenly saddened by what seemed to be an exaggerated theatricality, the setting of a stage, the costuming of performers; it had not been this way with Doris long ago. He closed his eyes and waited. He heard the bathroom door opening, and then whispering shut behind her, she closed it so gently, and then heard the padding of her bare feet across the kitchen linoleum. She stopped beside the bed. He opened his eyes.

She had loosened the pony tail, and her hair fell softly about her face now, intensifying the green of her eyes and the paleness of her cheeks. She had taken off the black skirt and the tights and the French-heeled pumps, but she was still wearing her sweater and he knew from the soft yielding look of its front that she had first removed her bra and then put the sweater on again. Below the sweater, she had put on white cotton panties, flat over her stomach, cut high against her full thighs. Her narrow hips were tilted forward in a phony model’s stance that magnified the thrust of her crotch, made it seem pulsing with an eager forward inner rush of its own. He reached out his hand, palm upward, and seized her between the legs.

“You’re still dressed,” she whispered.

She fell onto the bed beside him, his hand still clutched relentlessly between her legs. She undressed him swiftly, contorting her body the way she had contorted her face earlier, performing innumerable physical tasks simultaneously, her hands busily working as she loosened and unfastened and stroked and unbuttoned and teased, her lips covering his mouth and then sliding over his throat when she unbuttoned his shirt, her thighs rotating against his restless hand between them, her back arching, and then twisting, rolling onto her side, unloosening his belt, and thrusting her hand deep, rooting blindly, grasping him harshly and fiercely and possessively, pulling him rigidly free, and giving a faint rushing moan, her legs moving again in a rocking piston motion, one leg jutting straight suddenly to hook his trousers with the heel of her foot, the other leg still bent, the knee coming up against his chest, polished white, and then throwing his shirt wide and bending over almost double to kiss his belly and his groin, her mouth opening over him in a sidelong wet and sliding motion, and kicking his trousers free, and lifting her own sweater to reveal the small perfect breasts and puckered schoolgirl nipples, Doris, he thought, Doris. She rolled her body onto his and slid her hands flat beneath the elastic of her panties, pushing them downward swiftly over her flat stomach and deep navel, freeing her crotch from his hand, moving rapidly out of the panties, knee bending, and then rolling onto him again. She hesitated over him for a moment, spread-legged, teasing him, poised, and then descended in a kind of harsh and vicious glee, covering him, pulling him into her. “Oh, love,” she said. “Oh, love.”

He came at once, and in the moment of his coming he hated her vehemently and he almost wept at his own anger. She continued to grind against him mercilessly, repeating the words “Oh, love,” lovelessly. He did not help her. He was sure she was unsatisfied when finally she stopped; he didn’t give a damn.

The room went still.

He lay exhausted and spent and angry on the twisted sheet.

He looked at her silently. Her eyes were closed, she was still breathing harshly, her hands clung to her own breasts, holding them tight.

In a little while, he rose and began dressing. She did not say anything. She watched him quietly, lying on the bed in angular tense softness, the white curve of her hip in negative silhouette against the dark wall behind her, her head propped on one hand, her elbow bent. When he was fully clothed, he walked to the kitchen door. He took the chain from its slot, and unlocked the door.

He looked back at her briefly where she lay on the bed still and silent with her head on her hand and her elbow bent, gazing at him with anger and fear in her green eyes.

“Goodbye,” he said, clean and sharp.

“I knew,” she answered, and he went into the hall and closed the door.