Freese had turned back to the first pages in the file. “But the sexual incontinence was not the first symptom, Mr. Wing. It was the first to come forcibly to your attention. There was a parallel deterioration in her eating habits, her personal cleanliness, her attire, her speech. To attempt layman terms in this thing, you thought she was becoming crude and sluttish out of choice. Actually it was a deterioration of the ability to make choices. She was slowly retrogressing to an animal level of awareness. Animals, my dear fellow, have no table manners and no codes of morality. They sleep when they are sleepy, eat when they are hungry and copulate when there is an opportunity to do so. Many primitive peoples are on this level of existence too. Don’t blame yourself for your inability to detect a condition which baffled several competent professionals for a relatively long period of time. Actually, Sloan caught the scent when he began to realize how closely her condition resembled that which we can expect after a successful prefrontal lobotomy, if that procedure can ever logically be called a success. In her case, of course, it has progressed far beyond that aspect.”
When he arrived at the paper he was alarmed to see that Brian Haas was not in the newsroom. But they said he had gone down the hall for a moment. Borklund had left, saying he would be back about ten-thirty. Haas looked gray and his eyes were dull, but he had kept up with the duties assigned him. Jimmy Wing stepped into the situation and halved Brian’s work load, giving the scarred man a chance to breathe between tasks.
“It’s like housework,” Brian said dolefully. “You try to keep it cleaned up, but all the muddy kids keep galloping through.”
“And somebody keeps shaking the house.”
“Every man does the work of three, and Ben Killian seeks tax shelters. What about this grapefruit release?”
Jimmy scanned it. “Pure flack, but cute. Let’s run it.”
“This is a magazine? A throwaway sheet?”
“Don’t get the impression it’s a newspaper. They don’t have those any more. This is a write-cute outlet for wire services and syndicates, man. Fellow wants the news, he watches his TV and reads Time. If he wants think pieces, he buys Playboy.”
“Grapefruit is good for you,” Brian Haas said.
“Want to go eat?”
“I might not come back.”
At a little after ten most of Monday’s jigsaw was complete. The other departments were finished and gone. Pages one and two were the only ones still loose, with details on a TWA crash in Illinois still to come in, with fillers to piece it out if not enough came over the wire. And the page-one coverage of a meeting in Berlin could be readily truncated to insert a late box if anything came in worth it, wire or local. The press crew had come on, dour skeptical men who believed only in the rich full life of a tight union, despised the printed word and everybody who had anything to do with any other aspect of the business aside from feeding and operating the automatic presses.
Jimmy went to Vera’s and brought back a sandwich and coffee for Haas. Haas said, “I just called Nan. First chance I had. To tell her I think I’ll make it.”
“It’s a joke, isn’t it?” Jimmy said.
Brian looked at him, his expression suddenly cautious. “What does that mean?”
“It’s so jolly and boyish. Like in fraternities. Boy, was I ever hung! But I hit the biology exam for a C.”
“It seems like that to you?”
“Sometimes, Bri. Sometimes.”
“Then why try to help, you superior son of a bitch? So you can feel like an adult?”
“I almost never feel like an adult. I have my own little capsule dramas. Mine just aren’t quite as obvious.”
Haas picked up a pencil and put it down. He picked it up again and broke it, studied the pieces and dropped them into the wastebasket.
“You waited a long long time to give it to me, Jimmy.”
“What am I giving you?”
“I don’t know. I guess I don’t want to know too much about it. With you, I had to make a guess about what was underneath. Everybody does, with you. There aren’t many clues, you know. I made some bad guesses, maybe. You better get away from me for a while.”
“More drama?”
“Not for me, Jimmy. I lost the drama way back. These days I adjust. To the job, to Nan, to you. That’s all. Now I got to make a new adjustment to you, and it’s easier if you stay away for a while. Just say I’m immune to drama, but not to loss.”
“What have you lost?”
Haas smiled. “An imaginary something, boy. Something I invented. Necessity is the mother of invention? Thanks for getting me over the hump.”
“See you around,” Jimmy said and walked out. He had just gotten into his car when he saw Borklund drive into the parking lot. He did not turn his lights on, because Borklund solved all awkwardness of salutation by giving you something to do.
He sat in his car, feeling naughty. It was the only word which seemed to fit. A childhood word, involved with spanking and tears.
“Listen, Bri. I just had to take a hack at the nearest thing, and I’m sorry it was you...”
“Bri, I don’t feel that way about it at all. I mean I think you’re handling it as well as you can, and I just...”
“Bri, I haven’t got this much left that I can afford to lose...”
Friendships, like marriages, he thought, are dependent on avoiding the unforgivable. Sometimes the unforgivable is the way something is said, rather than the words. He told himself he would have gone back in, if Borklund hadn’t arrived just then. He told himself that if he could have gone back in, he could have made things right again. So, in an obscure way, the blame could be divided between Borklund and Haas. Besides, Haas took it all wrong. It wasn’t meant the way he took it. In fact, he seemed very damned eager to take it wrong. That’s the way it goes. You sprain a gut for a friend, and it just makes him anxious to resent you. Do a favor and make an enemy. What did Brian want? An apology, because he’s too sensitive? What kind of a friendship is it, when you’ve got to watch every word you say? What’s this crap about a loss? Is that all the credit he gives me?
Jimmy Wing started the car, jammed it into gear, and yelped the tires as he swerved toward the parking-lot exit.
Fourteen
The Cable Bank and Trust Company had occupied the new building in 1957. Prior to that move, it had been on the corner of Center Street and Columbia Street, four blocks east of the causeway approach to City Bridge. An antique and idiotic law in Florida prohibits the establishment of branch banks. The new structure was on Center Street, a mile east of the old center of the city. It was an oblong of buff stone, aluminum and glass, set back twenty feet from the sidewalk, framed in grass and flowers. On one side of the building was the large parking area. On the other side were the drive-in windows.
Kat Hubble’s desk was on the central floor area thirty feet inside the front entrance, facing it at a slight angle so that she could also see over into the bull-pen area where the minor executive desks were arranged in a spacious geometry.
Jimmy Wing had bird-dogged the job for her. He had learned that Mrs. Whindler, who had held it previously, had suddenly astonished herself and her husband by becoming pregnant after thirteen barren years of marriage. Jimmy had made Kat go directly to Martin Cable. Martin had been delighted to offer Kat the position. It had not occurred to him that his widowed neighbor would have to work.
The sign on her desk — lacy brass against white formica — said Information. But the job was considerably more complex than merely sitting there answering questions. She was expected to remember names and faces and greet the maximum possible number of customers by name. She was available for all manner of small miscellaneous errands inside the bank and in the neighborhood. She was assigned typing chores by departments which were temporarily overloaded.