By the time I had been in my room at the Olympus for a couple of hours I wondered why I had ever felt agitated enough to make the trip in the first place. I felt as if I were on a well-deserved vacation and rest. I could have lived there, eating the hotel food, shaving and showering in my private bathroom, reading the paper, shopping in the shops, until my money ran out. But nonetheless I had come on business. That's what's so hard, to leave the hotel, to get out on those drafty, windy, cold, gray sidewalks and hobble along on your errand. That's where the pain enters. You're back in a world where no one holds the door for you; you stand on the corner with other people equal to yourself, all as good as you, waiting for the lights to change, and once again you're an ordinary suffering individual, prey to any passing ailment. It's a sort of birth trauma all over again, but at least you can finally scuttle back to the hotel, once your business is done.
And, by using the phone in the hotel room, you can conduct some of your business without stirring outside at all. You do as much as you can that way; it's instinct to do that. In fact you try to get people to come and see you there, rather than the other way.
This time my business could not be conducted within the hotel, however; I did not bother to make the try. I simply put it off as long as I could: I spent the rest of the day in my room and at nightfall I went downstairs to the bar and then one of the dining rooms, and after that I strolled about the arcade and into the lobby and then back among the shops once more. I loitered wherever I could loiter without having to step outdoors into the cold, brisk, Canadian-type night.
All this time I had the .38 in my inside coat pocket.
It was strange, coming on an illegal errand. Perhaps I could have done it all legally, through Lincoln found a way of getting Pris out of Barrows' hands. But on some deep level I enjoyed this, coming up here to Seattle with the gun in my suitcase and now in my coat. I liked the feeling of being alone, knowing no one, about to go out and confront Mr. Sam Barrows with no one to help me. It was like an epic or an old western TV play. I was the stranger in town, armed, and with a mission.
Meanwhile, I drank at the bar, went back up to my room, lay on the bed, read the newspapers, looked at TV, ordered hot coffee from the room service at midnight. I was on top of the world. If only it could last.
Tomorrow morning I'll go look up Barrows, I said to myself. This must end. But not quite yet.
And then--it was about twelve-thirty at night and I was getting ready to go to bed--it occurred to me, Why don't I phone Barrows right now? Wake him up, like the Gestapo used to? Not tell him where I am, just say _I'm coming, Sam_. Put a real scare in him; he'll be able to tell by the nearness of my voice that I'm somewhere in town.
Neat!
I had had a couple of drinks; heck, I had had six or seven. I dialed and told the operator, "Get me Sam K. Barrows. I don't know the number." It was the hotel operator, and she did so.
Presently I heard Sam's phone ringing.
To myself, I practiced what I was going to say. "Give Pris back to R & R ASSOCIATES," I would tell him. "I hate her, but she belongs with us. She's life itself, as far as we're concerned." The phone rang on and on; obviously no one was home, or no one was up and going to answer. Finally I hung up the receiver.
What a hell of a situation for grown men to be in, I said to myself as I roamed aimlessly around my hotel room. How could something on the order of Pris begin to represent life itself to us, as I was going to tell Sam Barrows? Are we that warped? Are we warped at all? Isn't that nothing but an indication of the nature of life, not of ourselves? Yes, it's not our fault life's like that; we didn't invent it. Or did we?
And so on. I must have spent a couple of hours roaming about, with nothing more on my mind than such indistinct preoccupations. I was in a terrible state. It was like a virus flu, a kind that attacks the metabolism of the brain, the next state from death. Or anyhow, so it seemed to me during that interval. I had lost all contact with healthy normal reality, even that of the hotel; I had forgotten room service, the arcade of shops, the bars and the dining rooms--I even gave up, for a while, stopping by the window of the room to look out at the lights and deep, illuminated streets. That's a form of dying, that losing contact with the city like that.
At one o'clock--while I was still pacing around the room-- the phone rang.
"Hello," I said into it.
It was not Sam K. Barrows. It was Maury, calling me from Ontario.
"How did you know I'd be at the Olympus?" I asked. I was totally baffled; it was as if he had used some occult power to track me down.
"I knew you were in Seattle, you moron. How many big hotels are there? I knew you'd want the best; I bet you've got the bridal suite and some dame there with you and you're going at it like mad."
"Listen, I came here to kill Sam K. Barrows."
"With what? Your hard head? You're going to run at him and butt him in the stomach and rupture him to death?"
I told Maury about the .38 pistol.
"Listen, buddy," Maury said in a quiet voice. "If you do that all of us are ruined."
I said nothing.
"This call is costing us plenty," Maury said, "so I'm not going to spend an hour pleading with you like those pastors. You get some sleep and tomorrow call me back, you promise? Promise or I'll call the Seattle police department and have you arrested in your room, so help me god."
"No," I said.
"You have to promise."
I said, "Okay, Maury. I promise not to do anything tonight." How could I? I had tried and failed already; I was just pacing around.
"Good enough. Listen, Louis. This won't get Pris back. I already thought about it. It'll only wreck her life if you go over there and blast away at the guy. Think about it and I know you'll see. Don't you imagine I'd do it if I thought it would work?"
I shook my head. "I dunno." My head ached and I felt bone-weary. "I just want to go to bed."
"Okay, buddy. You get your rest. Listen. I want you to look around the room. You see if there isn't a table with drawers of some sort. Right? Look in the top drawer. Go on, Louis. Do it right now, while I'm on the phone. Look in it."
"For what?"
"There's a Bible, there. That society puts it there."
I slammed the phone down.
The bastard, I said to myself. Giving me advice like that.
I wished I had not come to Seattle at all. I was like the Stanton simulacrum, like a machine: propelling itself forward into a universe it did not comprehend, searching Seattle for a familiar corner in which it could perform its customary act. In the Stanton's case, opening a law office; in my case--what in my case? Trying somehow to re-establish a familiar environment, however unpleasant. I was used to Pris and her cruelty; I had even begun to get used--to expect to encounter--Sam K. Barrows and his doxie and his attorney. My instincts were propelling me from the unfamiliar back to the known. It was the only way I could operate. It was like a blind thing flopping along in order to spawn.