Part 14 (1/2)
I put on my hat and coat and left the house-slamming the door as hard as I could.
I glanced at my pocket-watch, and saw the time had long since pa.s.sed for me to catch my bus to the office. I decided to take a taxi, though I wasn't quite sure my budget could afford the added strain. But it was a necessity, so I walked past the bus stop, and hailed a cab as it went past. Went past is correct. It zipped by me without even slowing. I had seen it was empty, so why didn't the cabbie stop? Had he been going off duty? I supposed that was it, but after eight others had whizzed by, I was certain something was wrong.
But I could not discern what the trouble might be. I decided, since I saw it coming, to take the bus anyhow. A young girl in a tight skirt and funny little hat was now waiting at the stop, and I looked at her rather sheepishly, saying, ”I just can't figure out these cabmen, can you?”
She ignored me. I mean, she didn't turn away as she would to some masher, nor did she give me a cursory glance and not reply. I mean, she didn't know I was there.
I didn't have any more time to think about it, because the bus stopped, and the girl got on. I started up the steps, and barely made it, for the bus driver slammed the doors with a wheeze, catching the tail of my coat.
”Hey, I'm caught!” I yelled, but he paid no attention. He watched in his rear view mirror as the girl swayingly strode to a seat, and he started to whistle. The bus was crowded, and I didn't want to make a fool of myself, so I reached out and pulled his pants leg. Still, he didn't respond.
That was when the idea started to form.
I yanked my coattail loose, and I was so mad, I decided to make him ask for his fare. I walked back, expecting any moment to hear him say, ”Hey, you. Mister. You forgot to pay your fare.” Then I was going to respond, ”I'll pay my fare, but I'll report you to your company, too!”
But even that tiny bit of satisfaction was denied me, because he continued to drive, and his head did not turn. I think that made me angrier than if he had insulted me; what the h.e.l.l was going on? Oh, excuse me, but that was what I was thinking, and I hope you'll pardon the profanity, but I want to get this across just as it happened.
Are you listening?
Though I shoved between an apoplectic man in a Tyrolean hat and a gaggle of high school girls, when disembarking, though I nudged and elbowed and shoved them, just desperately fighting to be recognized, no one paid me the slightest heed. I even-I'm so ashamed now that I think of it-I slapped one of the girls on her, uh, her behind, so to speak. But she went right on talking about some fellow who was far out of it, or something like that.
It was most frustrating, you can imagine.
The elevator operator in my building was asleep-well, not quite, but Wolfgang (that's his name, and he's not even German, isn't that annoying?) always looked as though he was sleeping-in his cage. I prodded him, and capered about him, and as a final resort cuffed him on the ear but he continued to lie there against the wall, with his eyes shut, perched on his little pulldown seat. Finally, in annoyance, I took the elevator up myself, after booting him out onto the lobby tiles. By then I had realized, of course, that whatever strange malady had befallen me, I was to all intents and purposes, invisible. It seemed impossible that even if I were invisible, that people should not notice their backsides being slapped, or their bodies being kicked onto the tiles, or their elevators being stolen, but apparently such was precisely the case.
I was so confused by then-but oddly enough, not in the slightest terrified-I was half belligerent, and half pixilated with my own limitless abilities. Visions of movie stars and great wealth danced before my eyes.
And disappeared as rapidly.
For what good were women or wealth if there was no one to share it with you. Even the women.
So the thoughts of being the greatest bank robber in history pa.s.sed from me, and I resigned myself to getting out-if out was the proper term-getting out of this predicament.
I left the elevator on the twenty-sixth floor, and walked down the hall to the office door. It read the same as it had read for twenty-seven years :
Rames & Klaus Diamond Appraisers Jewelry Experts
I shoved open the door, and for a second my heart leaped in my throat that perhaps till now it had all been a colossal hoax. For Fritz Klaus-big, red-faced Fritz with the small mole beside his mouth-was screaming at me.
”Winsocki! you dolt! How many times have I told you when they go back in the pinch-bags, pull tight the cords! A hundred thousand dollars on the floor for the scrubwoman! Winsocki! You imbecile!”
But he was not screaming at me. He was screaming, that was all. But really, it was no surprise.
Klaus and George Rames never actually talked to me...or even bothered to shout at me. They knew I did my job-had, in fact, been doing it for twenty-seven years-with method and attentiveness, and so they took me for granted. The shouting was all part of the office.
Klaus just had to scream. But he was directing his screams at the air, not at me. After all, how could he be screaming at me? I wasn't even there.
He went down on his knees, and began picking up the little uncut rough diamonds he had spilled, and when he had them all, he went down further on his stomach, so his vest was dirtied by the floor, and looked under my bench.
When he was satisfied, he got up and brushed himself off...and walked away. As far as he knew, I was working. Or in his view of the world, was I just eliminated? It was a puzzler, but no matter...I was not there. I was gone.
I turned around and went back down the hall.
The elevator was gone.
I had to wait a long time till I could get to the lobby.
No cars would stop for my ring. I had to wait till someone else on that floor wanted down.
That was when the real horror of it all hit me.
How strange...
I had been quiet all my life; I had married quietly and lived quietly and now, I had not even the one single pleasure of dying with a bang. Even that had been taken from me. I had just sort of snuffed out like a candle. How or why or when was no matter. I had been robbed of that one noise I had thought was mine, inevitable as taxes. But even that had been deprived me. I was a shadow...a ghost in a real world.
And for the first time in my life, all the bottled-up frustrations I had never even known were banked inside me, burst forth. I was shocked through and down with horror, but instead of crying, I did not cry.
I hit someone. I hit him as hard as I could. In the elevator there. I hit him full in the face, and I felt his nose skew over, and blood ran darkly on his face, and my knuckles hurt, and I hit him again, so my hand would slide in the blood, because I was Albert Winsocki and they had taken away my dying. They had made me quieter still. I had never bothered anyone, and I was hardly noticed, and when I would finally have had someone mourn for me, and notice me, and think about me as myself alone...I had been robbed!
I hit him a third time, and his nose broke.
He never noticed.
He left the elevator, covered with blood, and never even flinched.
Then I cried.
For a long time. The elevator kept going up and down with me in it, and no one heard me crying.
Finally, I got out and walked the streets till it was dark.
Two weeks can be a short time.
If you are in love. If you are wealthy and seek adventure. If you have no cares and only pleasures.
If you are healthy, and the world is fine and live and beckoning. Two weeks can be a short time.
Two weeks.
Those next two weeks were the longest in my life. For they were h.e.l.l. Alone. Completely, agonizingly alone, in the midst of crowds. In the neoned heart of town I stood in the center of the street and shrieked at the pa.s.sing throngs. I was nearly run down.
Two weeks of wandering, sleeping where I wanted to sleep -park benches, the honeymoon suite at the Waldorf, my own bed at home-and eating where I wanted to eat-I took what I wanted; it wasn't stealing, precisely; if I hadn't eaten, I would have starved-yet it was all emptiness.