“How much do you charge for a shave?” he heard himself asking the barber.
“Seventy-five cents,” the barber said.
“All right,” he answered, and he was about to sit in the chair when an inspiration came to him.
The pills, he thought.
The gelatin capsules in my watch pocket. That’s what they’re for. They’re to clear the vision, they’re to take away this stupid throbbing pain, they’re to put out the flickering light.
He stopped before the chair, and the barber looked at him curiously, the sharp left image and the dissolving right image both smiling up at him expectantly.
“Yes?” the barber said.
“Could I have a glass of water?” Buddwing asked, and then felt a sharp pang of warning. You don’t know what those gelatin capsules contain, he reasoned calmly. If you are Edward Voegler and you stole this suit from the director’s office, those capsules could contain anything, Nembutal or Pentothol or even arsenic! Well, now, let’s be reasonable, he thought. Nobody’s going to put arsenic in gelatin capsules, now, are they? And besides, if this is the director’s suit, and I must say it fits me pretty damn well for another man’s suit, but if it is his suit, the odds are pretty good that the director of Central Icepick would be carrying medication in his watch pocket and not poison. Yes, but the medication could be a sedative — isn’t that what they use in institutions today? Well, don’t you know? If you’re Edward Voegler, don’t you know what they use in the nuthouse? What do they use on you, Mr. Voegler? On me, they use a straitjacket, and leg irons, and a club; that’s what they use on me, all right, smart ass? They throw me in a little Oriental cell with bedbugs in the mattress and cockroaches crawling over the walls, and lice nesting in my hair, okay? They beat me regularly, and they give me mildewed bread and polluted water, and there is a sadistic God... guard... who tells me I am as sane as he is, but those are the breaks, Mac. That’s what they do to me, okay?
“Here you are,” the barber said, holding out the glass of water.
“Thank you,” Buddwing answered. He reached into the watch pocket, caught one of the capsules between his index finger and his third finger, put it into his mouth without looking at it, said “Cheers” to the barber, and washed the capsule down with a swallow of water.
“I have a terrible migraine headache,” he explained, and instantly felt this was the truth. He sat in the chair, and the barber put his striped cloth around Buddwing, and then eased the chair back. Buddwing put his feet up on the chair rest, and felt the barber’s hands working lather into his face. He was suddenly overcome by a delicious feeling of luxury — the warm soap, the barber’s gently kneading hands. He closed his eyes. He could see the flicker even in the darkness, a steady beating on-and-off light that took on a yellow color when his eyes were closed. But with his eyes closed, he was no longer troubled by the superimposed image, and he felt himself relaxing completely. Beside, he instinctively knew this was nothing but a migraine, and that he was probably subject to such attacks and carried the capsules in his watch pocket for just that reason. Instinct. That was the key. If he simply followed his inst
Key, he thought.
Why, I don’t have any keys.
He recognized this with some surprise, and he tried to remember his awakening in Central Park early this morning — it seemed like eons ago — and going through his small store of worldly possessions. He catalogued them in his mind now, just as he had found them when he awakened, and wondered if he had noticed then that he had no keys. I awoke with a gold pen and pencil set, a black book with the number MO 6-2367 in it, a New York Central timetable, a package of cigarettes and a book of matches, two torn movie stubs, and two gelatin capsules. That’s all I had. No wallet, no watch, no loose change. And no keys.
But he had not noticed the fact that he was carrying no keys until just a few seconds ago, and this seemed ominous to him now. Everybody carries keys, he thought. Wait a minute, not everybody. A man in prison does not carry keys. A man in a mental hosp
The throbbing at his left temple increased sharply.
He became terribly frightened of the capsule he had swallowed so casually. What mysterious powder was inside that gelatin, and now inside his body, working its way into his bloodstream? If he awoke without keys, and without a wallet, and without a watch, and without money of any kind, was it not entirely possible and in fact likely that he had come directly from an institution where patients do not normally carry any of these things? But wait, what was he doing with a pen and pencil? Please excuse the crayon I used to write this, but I am not allowed to have anything sharp. Well, the pen and pencil were in the suit, and if the suit was not his, then they were not his, and neither were the train schedule or the black book or the movie stubs or anything. I have no keys, and I have no possessions: a man without keys is a man without anything. No house, no car, no safe-deposit box, no ski rack, no responsibilities.
Nothing.
I have nothing, and I am nothing.
He felt the barber’s razor scraping against his jaw. Slit my throat, he thought, why the hell don’t you? I have nothing, I am nothing; I’m as good as dead, anyway.
The flicker behind his right temple had faded somewhat. He was sure now that the capsule he had taken contained a sedative, and that he would fall asleep in the barber’s chair, and lose Janet forever. He wondered what time it was.
The clock.
It is ticking in the living room. She does not want to buy the clock; she says it is too expensive. The flea market in London, Portobello, the street band that marches through playing “Midnight in Moscow,” is that only last summer? And she does not want to buy the clock, too expensive, we mustn’t let a flea market fool us. Now the clock hangs on the living room wall, and the sound of it fills the apartment, with the other swishing sound running beneath it in counterpoint, I will drown.
He counts seconds.
He is frozen and cannot move. They should not have bought that clock, they should never have gone to Milan, because in Milan, too hot, in Milan is where they look at each other in suffocating heat, and see, and wonder where it all has gone. And to buy the clock in London, against her wishes, this is only an echo of Milan where recognition is swift and cruel and searing. The clock ticks so loudly in the silent apartment. He cannot move, it is too late, the clock is throwing minutes into the room, the clock is ticking off hours, the clock is ticking off a lifetime, and it is too late, and he will not move, too late.