Part 6 (1/2)
”Two doesn't make a gang.”
”What do you know about it, Bob?”
”Not much. What's this about a committee? Since when has a committee ever produced great art?”
”Oh, don't you ever listen? I told you all about it last yesterday. Or was it the day before? Never mind, I did tell you.”
”Oh, sure, I remember,” he said. ”Whose idea was that?”
”Some bureaucrat's. I'm sure the other days don't have such problems. It's just . .
Though it was not fair to let his mind wander, he could not help it. Gril, Rootenbeak, and Castor had risen from the depths like sunken s.h.i.+ps filled with gas from decaying corpses. Never before, well, hardly ever before, had he found it hard to shut out the other days. Usually, when he was in Wednesday, he was almost completely Bob Tingle; Wednesday was sufficient unto itself. Now, the pattern and routine had been shattered. There were three daybreakers on the loose, and two could be very dangerous. Well, one could be. Rootenbeak might come across him and recognize him, but it was not likely that he would say anything to the authorities about Bob Tingle looking so much like Jeff Caird. Unless he did so anonymously via TV. Castor that maniac could have been lurking nearby in the shadows and seen him running from the house to this apartment building. Or Castor might be apprehended at any moment and, as Horn had put it, spill the beans.
”Bob!”
Tingle pulled himself from his mental mora.s.s.
”Sure, I agree with you. Committees stink. But look at it this way. If you were living in the old days, you wouldn't have a thing to say about the production. This way, you might get some things changed.”
”Committees arejust like balloons, always up in the air, subject to the whims of the winds or of the windy, and they come down when they run out of gas. I'm telling you, the whole show's going to crash. Utterly cras.h.!.+ And I'll be ruined, utterly ruined!”
He sipped on the coffee and said, ”Tell you what. I am an official at the World Data Bank . .
”I know that. What about it?”
”I'll find out if there's anything in the way of blackmail material that can be used against the committee members, especially against Pandi and Shenachi. You can use it, if I find any, that is, to get those two to knuckle under. Of course, I might have to dig up dirt about everyone on the committee.”
She rose from the chair, came around the table, and kissed him. ”Oh, Bob, do you think you could?”
”Sure. Only . . . doesn't the ethics bother you? It'll be . .
”It's for art's sake!”
”Mostly for your sake, isn't it?”
”I'm not just thinking about me,” she said. She went back to the chair and poured more coffee. ”It's the whole production. I'm thinking organically. For everybody's good.”
”I don't know that I can get enough leverage to pry the composer loose from her atonal music. Even if I could, that means a long delay, a new score written.”
She shrugged and said, ”Who cares? It's not like the old days. We're not dependent on money.”
”Yes, and I think it'd be better if you were. However, let's not talk about that now. I'll see what I can do. Now ... aren't you lucky to have me? Where's your grat.i.tude?”
She laughed, and she said, ”You haven't done anything yet.”
”I've built up some credit for good intentions.”
”A contractor for the highway of h.e.l.l. You don't need any excuse, you know. However, let's wait until tonight. I'm in a better mood after practice.”
”Not lately,” he said. ”You've been coming home furious and disgusted.”
”The better to work out anger and frustration then. You aren't really complaining, are you?”
He stood up. ”I never complain about anything unreal. Someday, our moods will mesh, and this apartment will explode.”
”I don't want to have to look for a new one,” she said. She kissed him again. ”What're you going to do?”
”I have a busy schedule today,” he said, ”but I'll work on the research for Project Blackmail somehow. To make sure that I have enough time, however, I should go to work early.”
”Early?” she said, her eyes widening.
”Yes, I know. It'll be dangerous. You can work as hard as you wish and put in long hours, and n.o.body frowns on you. You're an artist. But I'm a bureaucrat. If I go in early and stay late, and my fellow workers find out, they might check up on me. I can't have them find out that I'm doing unauthorized work, opening channels irrelevant to my work. I'd be in real trouble then.
”Maybe it'll be better if I just go to work at the appointed time. I'll just slough off some of my regular work. My coworkers don't mind if I'm lazy or inefficient-that makes me a regular guy, one of the old gang-and my superior won't mind if I don't get too far behind. I'm allowed an unofficial margin for lagging, you know. Just so I don't make trouble for my superior by forcing him to call me in for a reprimand.”
They finished breakfast, and Nokomis went to the bathroom. He hoped that she would not take the clothes from the hamper for was.h.i.+ng. He did not expect her to do so, since she was quite willing to leave the was.h.i.+ng to him. If he remembered correctly, she had done it last Wednesday and would expect him to take his turn today.
Fifteen minutes later, she came back onto the balcony. She was dressed in a white blouse and tight scarlet pants and was holding the strap of her shoulderbag.
”Oh, I thought you'd be in bed, getting ready, anyway.”
He smiled and said, ”No, I was planning how to do the blackmailing research.”
”Good. I'm going to the gym now.”
He stood up, and they kissed briefly. ”Have a good workout,” he said.
”Oh, I will, I always do. I won't be able to meet you for lunch. The committee is meeting during lunch hour at a restaurant.”
During her absence, Tingle had activated a strip on the side of the balcony and checked their schedule. He already knew that she could not lunch with him, and she knew that he knew. But she was not one hundred percent sure that his memory would not fail him. She trusted only herself.
”I'll see you at seven at The Googolplex,” he said.
”I hope the salad is better than the last time.”
”If it isn't, we'll look for a better place next time.”
He sat on the balcony until he had seen her bicycle down Bleecker and north along the ca.n.a.l. As soon as she was out of sight, he rose and went to the bathroom. More than once, she had returned a few minutes after going out of the door, saying that she had forgotten something. She did not fool him; she was checking on him to make sure that he was not doing something he should not. There had been a time when he had wondered if she were an organic officer whose public role was that of a ballet dancer. His investigations through data bank channels had convinced him that she was not.
What was she then? An overly suspicious, perhaps a paranoiac woman. Not at all the woman who should be Bob Tingle's wife. But she had not shown her true nature when he was courting her, and he had been careless in not checking out her personality index before marrying her. Pa.s.sionate love had blinded him, but that was Bob Tingle's nature. Tingle was likely to be carried away by emotions that Jeff Caird would never have allowed to flourish in him. Yet Caird was responsible for Tingle's nature. Caird had deliberately chosen that nature for his Wednesday role because he wanted to feel strongly-as Tingle-what Caird could feel only weakly.
However, Caird must have had some liking for Tingle characteristics, some feeling that he was missing much by being so self-controlled. So Caird, when building, perhaps growing was the better word, when growing the personality of Tingle, had indulged himself, the Caird self. He was paying now for that luxury because his pa.s.sion for Nokomis had put him in danger. Though she was not a government secret agent, she did watch him closely. If she discovered something suspicious that was not concerned with their personal relations.h.i.+ps, she might probe deeper. If she found something that she suspected was criminal, would she turn him in?
He did not think so, but she would be angry because he had not confided in her.
The truth was that he just did not know what would happen if she pried too much. What he did know was that Tingle should not have married her. Tingle should leave her, the sooner the better. But Tingle was still in love with her, though the high pa.s.sion blazing in him in the beginning had become a middling but pleasant warmth. Moreover, if he did tell her he wanted a divorce, he would have to suffer her hurt and anger. She was very possessive and egotistic; she would have to be the one who did the leaving. However, she was not only a great collector of things and of some people, but also fiercely resented having to give any up. Their personal possessions closet was jammed with bric-a-brac, teddy bears, china dolls, mementoes of birthdays and of world and national and district holidays, ballet trophies, recordings of herself from birth on up to a few weeks ago, a first-place medal for the one-hundred-meter dash for Manhattan eighth-grade girls, a good conduct citation awarded when she was twenty subyears (she had never gotten one after that because of her quarrels with various members of the ballet company), and at least a hundred other items.
Tingle had tried many times to get her to throw them out. They were a pain and vexation because she insisted on getting some of them out almost every night and placing them on a shelf. Then she had to put them back in the closet before stoning time. They also made it hard for him to get to his own few possessions or even to the clothes rack.
One day, Tingle knew, his not-easily-aroused temper would take him over, and he would dump her stuff down the trash chute. And that would mean their farewell. Which, logically, from his viewpoint, should come about before her possessiveness and suspiciousness got him into trouble.