Vital Parts (39 page)

Cars kept zooming by. The eternal flux, mankind in motion, but from outer space you could see only geographical distinctions, blurred by clouds, but the world apparently looked just like a ball-of-the-world, South America with its elongated tail, the boot of Italy: amazing. Matter was so rich, and there were tears in things.

Gen said, with a hint of worry: “I'm not putting down science. What I seriously question is your part in this, Carl. Your only association with medical affairs is in being a lifelong hypochondriac. Who are you going to freeze, your mother? You had better, because you can't get along without her.”

“I haven't been able, ever, to get along
with
her,” Reinhart said semifacetiously.

“You are given to cute sayings, but you really should examine that relationship, Carl. That has been the trouble all along. A mama's boy like you should never have got married in the first place.”

The turn-off for the old business district lay just ahead, a hairpin for which you had to brake down to twenty. So occupied, Reinhart was not in a situation in which to formulate a rejoinder, and Genevieve, with her keen knowledge of practical psychology, exploited the advantage.

“I suppose what you'll want to do now is set up housekeeping with her again. I'd move into Senior City if I were you. And we'll have to set up some sort of escalator arrangement on the child support and alimony, should she leave you all that money,” and so on, spite, spite, spite.

Oddly enough a parking spot offered itself quite near the boutique. Reinhart entered into a competition for it with an insane female who was backing at high speed the length of the block. To save time he had to nose in at an angle, but he won.

He returned the keys to Gen, who said: “OK, Carl. No reason why we can't act like intelligent people and let our lawyers handle the rest of it.” She laughed quite prettily. He was again conscious of her scent, as he had been on the trip out, and he now remembered the other girl it reminded him of: also Genevieve, though looking back he could see how that one developed into this one, given his own contribution.

The woman he had beaten out for the parking spot, a slender young-mother type in sunglasses, with freckled arms tensed against the steering wheel, had stopped opposite his window and was cursing him.

“Blow it out your barracks bag,” Reinhart told her, fetching up an old one from the days before she had even been born, fresh bitch.

Her response was in a series of Anglo-Saxon expletives, dating from much farther back.

Reinhart turned to Gen: “Forget about all that bravado talk. Look, I'm starting at fifteen thousand per annum, which is actually some sort of grant that according to Bob is tax-free. This is guaranteed.” He put his hand on her hard knee and said wryly: “This is a sure thing, because I'm not running it.”

Gen began to melt in an unprecedented style. She put her hand on top of Reinhart's, she showed him her softening eyes, she spoke in a voice which, relative to her usual, was benedictory.

“You know, Carl,” she said, “I'm not the worst person in the world.”

Reinhart was moved, while at the same time feeling the satisfaction of cynicism confirmed: he knew that quoting the figures would do the job. And why not? Money was properly enough a gauge of virility in a day when violence was widely condemned. Women had to have some means of measurement, and men a goal.

“You're the best wife I ever had,” he told her, taking the uncomfortable edge off his sentimentality with a bit of irony.

“But,” Gen said with her loving look he had not seen for so many years, “there is someone else.”

Oh, that's perfectly OK
, Reinhart almost said from the depths of his bliss, an emotion that always made him tolerant of other's foibles.

“Somehow I knew you'd understand,” said Gen.

Something was clicking in Reinhart's mouth: his teeth seemed to be chattering in mid-July.

He said: “I suppose you wouldn't want to tell me who.”

Gen smiled at the bridge of his nose. “All right, then. You'd know eventually anyway. Harlan Flan.”

“The owner of these dress shops,” said Reinhart, who had heard the name often enough. “He's under thirty still, isn't he?”

“Imagine,” said Gen. “Falling in love again.”

The title of Marlene Dietrich's biggest hit.

13

There were moods in which Reinhart could admit to himself that his peeping at the girl next door constituted prima facie evidence that he was a dirty old man, a term which was recognized everywhere in the culture—though not in that of many Oriental societies—as referring to a comic condition. The desire to commit a crime conjoined with the inability or lack of equipment so to do was for some reason humorous throughout Western civilization. Look at those movies in which a gang of inept thugs tried to rob a bank and botched it: their failure made them downright lovable.

The reverse did not lead to commensurate conclusions. For grown women who lusted for younger men there existed, so far as he knew, no handy term. Life was by no means to be described as an equilibrium.

That is an obvious, even platitudinous conclusion, is it not, Reinhart?
His imaginary playmate, as a child, Jim Jackson, had always called him “Reinhart,” whereas Reinhart had always used Jim's full name. Jim Jackson was an older boy and did everything better than Reinhart. He was useful because Reinhart had no real brother, and one often felt the need to discuss things with someone intimate. Not that Jim Jackson was at all benevolent. More often than not he was a ruthless critic of his creator, and a natural one-upman. Whereas Reinhart felt like a sodden sandbag when he tried to chin himself, Jim Jackson would seize the bar and rise and fall like the moving part of a machine. Then when Reinhart's turn came, Jim Jackson would hang on his knees.

Had he not been one's own invention one would have loathed him. From what Reinhart gathered from friends who had genuine older brothers, the latter acted like Jim Jackson within the family. The difference was that Jim Jackson, unlike a real brother, behaved traitorously when Reinhart was under attack from outside. When, for example, Reinhart was five years old, he was beaten up in a public park by a great big girl of ten or eleven, who stole his orange popsicle. He might have run away from her had not Jim Jackson said: “Don't be scared. You're a boy.” So she slapped Reinhart in the face, and Jim Jackson said: “You can't hit her back because she's a girl and you're a boy.” She took away Reinhart's popsicle. Jim Jackson said: “What a crybaby you are. You got beaten up by a girl.”

Somewhere along the line Jim Jackson was replaced by Reinhart's conscience, which as in all exchanges was both better and worse. If Reinhart wanted to he could expunge Jim Jackson on the moment; he always had that over him as an ultimate. “You can do anything better than I can because I made you that way!” Reinhart might cry, in the sort of chagrin that is a form of satisfaction. But with conscience, he was himself Jim Jackson, and aware of a terrible loss of power.

It had been almost forty years since Jim Jackson's retirement from the scene, but it was still too soon for his reappearance. Reinhart computed that he should have another two decades before true senility settled in, bringing with it the incunabula of the first to the second childhood. Blaine would then be where Reinhart was now, hopefully with a son of his own, an arch-conservative of the kind who undoubtedly would be, in the then-current backlash fashion, a pursed-lip Puritan with cropped skull, militaristic, traditionally religious, and biased against any form of deviation from the white middle-class norm. Thought of this brought a wince of pleasure to Reinhart's rheumy old eyes.

Yet it seemed to be Jim Jackson who spoke now in Reinhart's thoughts.
You're still the same old horse's ass, boy
, he said next.
For forty years. That must be some kind of record
.

Reinhart shrugged in mock modesty. Even with Jim Jackson he had to keep up appearances.
Still the same old irony, too
, Jim Jackson said.
You should get a new style
.

I know, said Reinhart.

On the other hand, your strategy has always worked beautifully. The other guy always turns out to be the shit. So why change now? You are better than any of them. Isn't that the idea?

Your interpretation tends to corrupt, said Reinhart. They all have their reasons, which, under the aspect of eternity, may be as good as mine. Take Gen. Think she'd be running off with this young kid if it had been I instead of him who owned the string of shops? And Blaine. He could have been the typical pleasure-loving punk that I was myself: Joe College porkpie hats and old cars with corny slogans written on them in whitewash, Andy Hardy and his infantile values. But no, not him. He might have an abrasive manner, but he is probably right that the system is rotten, the fucking IBM machines have taken over, social injustice is still rife—

When was it not?

But every young man should have a right to learn that for himself.

In fact, it may be a dangerous error to look at life in terms of justice. It leads to quantitative judgments, quotas, rosters, the relative sizes of mobs, and fucking computers. You see, it is precisely those persons who take justice most seriously who are most unjust. … Why are you defending your family?

Because they are my family.

You are
, said Jim Jackson,
the most unjust man I have ever known
.

Reinhart was standing at the parapet of the observation tower of the Bloor Building, the forty-seventh tallest building in the United States, its rating having fallen since the thirties, when it was constructed, owing to more recent erections elsewhere from coast to coast. He was not armed with its current rank as suicide-site, always a subsidiary function of skyscrapers, but that it had known such use was not only established by his memory but also confirmed by the rusty meshwork rising three feet above his head to terminate in an in-curving section of stranded barbed wire. A nimble individual could still get over it, no doubt, but he would likely cut his hands—which might well dissuade a certain fastidious type of neurotic.

You would get your clothes rusty
, said Jim Jackson.
Why don't you try weed-killer?

Because it would be painful!

Sleeping pills
.

I wouldn't like the feeling of going to sleep when it would be fraudulent, Reinhart said. Funny. If I want to die, I want to die. Beginning it as a nap seems wrong, that's all. And to get my shotgun I'd have to go home. Slashing the wrists in the YMCA showers, that's pretty squalid. Anyway, the fags swarm all over you as soon as you come in the door there. Then there's hanging, but a body of my weight would pull any fixture from any ceiling and crack the floor it fell onto, leading only to more embarrassment. More irony, I'm afraid. A man without a home has a pressing motive for suicide but lacks the privacy in which to commit it. So I came up here. Now I can test the various hypotheses as to death resulting from a fall from a great height. Some say one is unconscious before hitting the ground, owing to the rush of wind or fright itself. I have watched movies taken in the air of free-fall parachutists, an ever more popular sport. They assume the attitude of swimmers.

Enough bravado
, said Jim Jackson.
I'm familiar with your lifelong taste for fantasy-executions: Ronald Colman walking bravely to the guillotine, the guys who before the firing squad spurn the blindfold and make sardonic quips. In real life a man's bowels open on the way to the gallows, and many victims of the electric chair must be carried there. When the human body hits the ground from a fall of sufficient height, fragments of it fly off to considerable distances, including the head, which owing to its spherical shape might bounce and roll for yards. The progress of the head of the last jumper from this observation deck is a case in point, but was never traced in the newspapers for reasons of delicacy. High over an old Volkswagen
on the first bounce, leaping on the second over a brand-new Camaro with racing stripe and wide-oval tires, then under a Number 10 bus
—

You think I don't have enough guts?

I
am simply reminding you that reality is ineluctable. The price must be paid. Suicide is certainly one effective means of dealing with your problem; indeed, the most certain of immediate success, but it is not free and unencumbered
.

But look at the alternative, said Reinhart. I can't show my face again in town if Genevieve marries this Flan.

You would kill yourself because of social humiliation? Isn't that a superficial motive?

You would talk me out of suicide because the means I have chosen are unaesthetic. I don't call that serious. I would be well out of it by the time my head went bouncing down the street.

But you think the other people in town are mainly bastards anyway. So why do you care what they think of you?

It's funny how that happens. No matter how low your opinion is of another guy, you want him to be favorably impressed by you. I've noticed that when dunned by panhandlers.

Better get started, then
, said Jim Jackson.
A man with your figure won't have an easy time with this fence
.

Not yet. That guard has his eye on me. He is suspicious of a person who comes up here alone and talks to himself.

“Well sir,” Reinhart said aloud, very loud, walking towards the functionary. “You can sure see for miles and the people look like ants and the view is really something.”

He was a man of about Reinhart's age, and broken veins in the nose suggested he was no stranger to a drink. This was a job calling for little ambition and no intelligence whatever. Reinhart saw in close-up that the guard's look was very dull indeed. One could probably climb up the wire right in front of him without challenging his manifest disaffiliation. “It's a long way down,” Reinhart added, reaching his quota of clichés from high places.