Binky went back to her desk. I loosened my tie and rolled up my sleeves. I had managed to deceive myself into believing that people would be deceived into believing that a man so untidy (in an atmosphere so methodically spruce) must be driving himself mercilessly. The phone rang. It was Wendy Judd, a girl I had dated in college. She was living in New York now, having traveled for a year right after she divorced her husband, one of the top production people at either Paramount or Metro.
"I'm dying, David."
"Don't generalize, Wendy."
"New York is vicious. Listen, before I forget, can you come to a dinner party tomorrow night? Come alone. You're the only one who can save me."
"You know I go bowling with the fellas on Friday night, Wendy."
"David, please. This is no time for jokes."
"Our team is called the Steamrollers. We play the Silver Jets for the all-league title tomorrow. Winner gets a cup with a naked Greek bowling ace embossed on the side."
"Come early," she said. "You can help me toss the salad. We'll talk over old times."
"There are no old times, Wendy. The tapes have been accidentally destroyed."
"Eightish," she said, and hung up.
Outside, the girls were hammering at their little oval keys.
I went for a walk. Everybody was busy. All the phones seemed to be ringing. Some of the girls talked to themselves while typing, muttering shit whenever they made a mistake. I went around to the supply area. The cabinets were the same color as troops in the field. Hallie Lewin was in there, leaning over a bottom drawer. There is no place in the world more sexually exciting than a large office. It is like a fantasy of some elaborate woman-maze; wherever you go, around corners, into cubicles, up or down the stairwells, you are greeted by an almost lewd tableau. There are women standing, sitting, kneeling, crouching, all in attitudes that seem designed to stun you. It is like a dream of jubilant gardens in which every tree contains a milky nymph. Hallie saw me and smiled.
"I heard Reeves Chubb got canned," I said.
"Really? I had no idea he was in trouble."
"Don't breathe a word."
"Of course not."
"Hallie, you've got the sweetest little ass I've ever seen."
"Why thank you."
"Not a word about Reeves now."
"I promise," she said.
I went around toward Weede Denney's office. On the way I saw Dickie Slater, the sixty-five-year-old mailboy, standing behind Jody Moore's desk rubbing his groin. When he saw me he grinned, man to man, and kept rubbing. Jody was on the phone, speaking Portuguese for some reason. I turned a corner and saw James T. Rice running down a hallway at top speed. I had no idea what I wanted to say to Weede. I was upset about the series being dropped and I felt venomous. In similar situations I usually reacted as a child might react after he has been disappointed or rebuked, with a child's petty genius for reprisal. I told bizarre and pointless lies. I broke my typewriter. I stole things from the office. I wrote snake-hissing memos to my subordinates. Once, after an idea of mine had been criticized by a senior vice-president named Livingston, I went back to my office, blew my nose several times, and that night sneaked up to Livingston's office and put the soiled handkerchief in the top drawer of his desk.
Weede was standing in the middle of his office, deep in thought, one hand absently grooming his bald head. He looked at me carefully.
"Can't talk to you now, Dave; wires are burning up; see you first thing in the morning."
On the way back to my office I stopped at Binky's desk to talk some more but she looked busy. I went inside and dialed Sullivan's number again. She was there.
"Utah," I said.
"Hello, David."
"Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, Arizona."
"I didn't see you leave last night. You abandoned me to all those keening necrophiles."
"Steamboat Springs, the Sawtooth Mountains, Big Timber, Aztec, Durango, Spanish Fork, Monument Valley."
"I hear America singing," she said, but not as if she meant it.
"I know a guy with a camp trailer. He's living in Maine somewhere. We can pick him up and then all head west in the camper.
"All I need is an hour's notice."
"Blasting through New Mexico in the velvet dawn."
"I'm late for an appointment," Sullivan said.
I tried to get some work done. It was dark now and I went to the window. Looking south, from as high as we were, I could see the stacked lights extending almost the entire length of Manhattan, and that delicate gridiron tracery in the streets. I opened the window slightly. The whole city was roaring. In winter, when the darkness always comes before you expect it and all those lights begin to pinch through the stale mist, New York becomes a gigantic wedding cake. You board the singing elevator and drop an eighth of a mile in ten seconds flat. Your ears hum as you are decompressed. It is an almost frighteningly impersonal process and yet something of this kind seems necessary to translate you from the image to what is actually impaled on that dainty fork.
I strolled around to Carter Hemmings' office. He was at his desk, smelling the nicotine on his fingers. When he saw me he tried to neutralize the flow of panic by standing up, absurdly, and spreading his arms wide, an Argentinian beef baron welcoming a generalissimo to his villa.
"Hey Dave," he said. "What's happening, buddy?"
"I understand Mars Tyler got the sack," I said.
"No kidding. No kidding. Jesus."
"There's a big purge on. The tumbrels are clattering through the streets."
"Sit down," he said. "I'll get Penny to order some coffee."
"Can't spare the time, Carter. All the circuits are overloaded. How's that laser beam project shaping up? They're starting to put pressure."
"I'm trying to hammer it into workable form, Dave."
"Have a good time with B.G. last night?"
"I didn't know you knew her, Dave."
"Slightly," I said.
"Beautiful girl. But we didn't really hit it off. Dinner. Then I took her home."
"Weede was talking about you during lunch today. He's a curious man, Weede. Sometimes given to rash judgments. Better get cracking on that laser beam thing. I'll be in early tomorrow to take a look at it. Weede'll be in early tomorrow too. We're all coming in very early tomorrow. Have a nice evening, Carter. Say hello to your wife for me."
"Dave, I'm not married."
I went back to my office. Binky was in there trying to straighten out my files. It was almost time to leave. I fixed my tie and buttoned my shirtcuffs. In the corridor all the phones were ringing. I wondered who Trotsky was.
3
People leaned into the traffic, scouting for cabs. Thousands of men hurried toward Grand Central, moving in broken strides, dodging, marching down deep corridors, emptying into chambers, the warm trains waiting, long darkness, newsprint on every finger, the fight against sleep. I liked to walk home from the office because it made me feel virtuous.
The crowds didn't begin to thin out until I got south of Forty-second Street, and traffic was bad all the way. Below Forty-second, people were able to choose their own pace and yet here the faces seemed gray and stricken, the bodies surreptitious in the scrawls of their coats, and it occurred to me that perhaps in this city the crowd was essential to the individual; without it, he had nothing against which to scrape his anger, no echo for grief, and not the slightest proof that there were others more lonely than he. It was just a passing thought. I got home, turned on the TV, undressed, and got in the shower.
I was living then in an apartment overlooking Gramercy Park. My ex-wife lived in the same building. The arrangement wasn't as strange as it may sound-it wasn't even an arrangement. While married we had lived in a larger apartment on the other side of the park. From a friend I learned of the vacancy across the way and it seemed sensible to move in since my wife had just left me and there was no need for such a large place and no point in paying the higher rent. She lived in the Village for a while, taking ballet lessons, courses at the New School, instructions in macrobiotic nutrition; she also joined a film society and began going to an analyst. She invited me down to dinner one evening and said finally, over coffee, that her new life wasn't working out too well. The activities were not very involving and her gentlemen friends seemed able to discuss nothing more important than their season tickets to hockey games, football games and the Philharmonic. She missed Gramercy Park, she said; it was one of the last civilized spots in an ever-darkening city. Some time later an apartment became available in my building. I told her about it and she took it sight unseen.