Part 15 (1/2)

I pulled what I had gotten from the till drawer from my pocket, and pointed it at him. ”Now just settle back, Mr. Jim, and there won't be any trouble.”

He raised his hands very melodramatically, and shuffled backward till his knee-backs caught the edge of the bed and he sat down with a plop.

”Oh, take down your hands,” I said. ”You look like a bad western movie.” His hands came down self-consciously.

Denny looked at me. ”What's he doin', Mr. Jim?”

”I don't know, Denny; I don't know,” Jim said slowly, with thought. His eyes were trained on the barrel of the snub-nosed revolver I held. His eyes were frightened.

I found myself shaking. I tried to hold the revolver steady, but it wavered in my hand as though I was inside the eye of a tornado. ”I'm nervous, fellow,” I said, partly to let him note it, as if he hadn't already, and half to rea.s.sure myself that I was master of the situation. ”Don't make me any worse than I am right now.”

He sat very still, his lowered hands folded in his lap.

”For two weeks now, I've been close to going insane. My wife couldn't see or hear or feel me. No one in the street could. No one for two weeks. It's like I'm dead...and today I found you two. You're the only ones like me! Now I want to know what this is all about. What's happened to me?”

Denny looked at Mr. Jim, and then at me.

”Hey is he cuckoo, Mr. Jim? You want I should slug him, Mr. Jim?”

The old man would never have made it.

Jim saw that much, to his credit.

”No, Denny. Sit where you are. The man wants some information. I think it's only fair I give it to him.” He looked at me. His face was soft, like a sponge.

”My name is Trempson, Mr.-ah-Mr. what-did-you-say-your-name-was...?”

”I didn't, but it's Winsocki. Albert Winsocki. Like in the song.”

”Oh, yes, Mr. Winsocki. Well,” his poise and sneering manner were returning as he saw he at least had the edge on me in information. ”The reason for your current state of non-noticeability-you aren't really insubstantial, you know... that gun could kill me...a truck could run us down and we'd be dead-is very complex. I'm afraid I can't give you any scientific explanations, and I'm not even sure there are any. Let's put it this way...”

He crossed his legs, and I steadied the gun on him. He went on. ”There are forces in the world today, Mr. Winsocki, that are invisibly working to make us all carbon copies of one another. Forces that crush us into molds of each other. You walk down the street and never see anyone's face, really. You sit faceless in a movie, or hidden from sight in a dreary living room watching television. When you pay bills, or car fares or talk to people, they see the job they're doing, but never you.

”With some of us, this is carried even further. We are so unnoticeable about it-wallflowers, you might say-all through our lives, that when these forces that crush us into one mold work enough to get us where they want us, we just-poof! disappear to all those around us. Do you understand?”

I stared at him.

I knew what he was talking about, of course. Who could fail to notice it in this great machined world we'd made for ourselves. So that was it. I had been made like everyone else, but had been so negative a personality to begin with, it had completely blanked me out to everyone. It was like a filter on a camera. Put a red filter on and everything red was there-but not there. That was the way with me. The cameras in everyone had been filtered against me. And Mr. Jim, and Denny, and ”Are there more like us?”

Mr. Jim spread his hands. ”Why, there are dozens, Winsocki. Dozens. Soon there will be hundreds, and then thousands. With things going the way they are...with people buying in supermarkets and eating in drive-ins and this new subliminal TV advertising...why, I'd say we could be expecting more company all the time.

”But not me,” he added.

I looked at him, and then at Denny. Denny was blank, so I looked back at Trempson. ”What do you mean?”

”Mr. Winsocki,” he explained patiently, but condescendingly, ”I was a college professor. Nothing really brilliant, mind you, in fact I suppose I was dull to my students. But I knew my subject. Phoenician Art, it was. But my students came in and went out and never saw me. The faculty never had cause to reprimand me, and so after a while I started to fade out. Then I was gone, like you.

”I wandered around, as you must still be doing, but soon I realized what a fine life it was. No responsibility, no taxes, no struggling for existence. Just live the way I wish, and take what I want. I even have Denny here-he was a handyman no one paid attention to-as my friend and manservant. I like this life, Mr. Winsocki. That was why I was not too anxious to make your acquaintance. I dislike seeing the status quo upset.”

I realized I was listening to a madman.

Mr. Jim Trempson had been a poor teacher, and had suffered my fate. But where I had been turned-as I now realized-from a Milquetoasted hum-drummer to a man cunning enough to find a revolver, and adventurous enough to use it, he had been turned into a monomaniac.

This was his kingdom.

But there were others.

Finally, I saw there was no point talking to him. The forces that had cupped us and crushed us till we were so small the rest of the world could not see us, had done their work all too well on him. He was lost. He was satisfied with being unseen, unheard, unknown.

So was Denny. They were complacent. More than that... they were overjoyed. And during this past year I have found many like them. All the same. But I am not like that. I want out of here. I want you to see me again.

I'm trying desperately, the only way I know how.

It may sound stupid, but when people are day-dreaming, or unfocused on life, so to speak, they may catch sight of me. I'm working on that. I keep whistling and humming. Have you ever heard me? The song is ”Buckle Down Winsocki.”

Have you ever caught sight of me, just out of the corner of your eye, and thought it was a trick of your imagination?

Have you ever thought you heard a radio or TV playing that song, and there was no radio or TV?

Please! I'm begging you! Listen for me. I'm right here, and I'm humming in your ear so you'll hear me and help me.

”Buckle Down Winsocki,” that's the tune. Can you hear it?

Are you listening?

Try a Dull Knife

IT WAS parchanga night at The Cave. Three spik bands all going at once, each with a fat momma shaking her meat and screaming Vaya! The sound was something visible, an a.s.sault in silver lame and screamhorn.

Sound hung dense as a smog-cloud, redolent as skunk-scent from a thousand roaches of the best s.h.i.+t, no stems or seeds. Darkness shot through with the quicksilver flashes of mouths open to show gold bridgework and dirty words. Eddie Burma staggered in, leaned against a wall and felt the sickness as thick as cotton wool in his throat.

The deep scar-burn of pain was bleeding slowly down his right side. The blood had started coagulating, his s.h.i.+rt stuck to his flesh, but he dug it: it wasn't pumping anymore. But he was in trouble, that was the righteous truth. n.o.body can get cut the way Eddie Burma'd been cut and not be in deep trouble.

And somewhere back out there, in the night, they were moving toward him, coming for him. He had to get through to-who? Somebody. Somebody who could help him; because only now, after fifteen years of what had been happening to him, did Eddie Burma finally know what it was he had been through, what had been done to him...what was being done to him...what they would certainly do to him.

He stumbled down the short flight of steps into The Cave and was instantly lost in the smoke and smell and twisting shadows. Ethnic smoke, Puerto Rican smells, lush shadows from another land. He dug it; even with his strength ebbing, he dug it.

That was Eddie Burma's problem. He was an empath. He felt. Deep inside himself, on a level most people never even know exists he felt for the world. Involvement was what motivated him. Even here, in this slum nightclub where intensity of enjoyment subst.i.tuted for the shallow glamour and gaucherie of the uptown boites, here where no one knew him and therefore could not harm him, he felt the pulse of the world's life surging through him. And the blood started pumping again.

He pressed his way back through the crowd, looking for a phone booth, looking for a toilet, looking for an empty booth where he could hide, looking for the person or persons unknown who could save him from the dark night of the soul slipping toward him inexorably.

He caromed off a waiter, Pancho Villa mustache, dirty white ap.r.o.n, tray of draft beers. ”Hey, where's the gabinetto?” he slurred the request. His words were slipping in their own blood.

The Puerto Rican waiter stared at him. Uncomprehending. ”Perdon?”

”The toilet, the p.i.s.soire, the can, the head, the c.r.a.pper. I'm bleeding to death, where's the potty?”