Vital Parts (42 page)

“Nazi doctors performed all kinds of experiments on the inmates of concentration camps.”

“So did the doctor at the camp I went to as a kid,” said Eunice. “He balled me. He wasn't a real medical doctor, but a shrink, a psychosexual existentialist with bulging eyes and a funny smell like mustard. I think he was queer for my T-shirt—you know, with Camp Fuckaduck written across the boobs.”

“I can't get over the idea that Streckfuss looks familiar to me.” Reinhart was tying his shoes.

“He wanted to marry me,” Eunice said. “But an oppressive society would have persecuted us. I was fourteen and he was fifty-eight.”

“Please, Eunice,” said Reinhart. “This is serious.”

She giggled. “You just don't dig, do you? I have always had this thing for old men. I can't make it with anybody else. And you're fat besides! You are too much! I want to marry you and live in a little house in the suburbs and go to church and PTA meetings and make the kids costumes for the Halloween parade.” She was crying now.

Reinhart was still distracted. “All right, all right. But I should have stopped that guy and got his story. I have thought Streckfuss a sinister character ever since I laid eyes on him. The trouble with science is that it's amoral.”

“That is positively brilliant, and I love you,” said Eunice.

14

After having lain low under an ineffectual barrage by the police, the sniper had released the jammed elevator, descended to the lobby, bought a packet of cheese crackers at the newsstand, and surrendered himself. His name was Lloyd Alvis, and he gave his profession as Protestant ministerial student. The police allowed him to eat his crackers and pose for TV news shots.

The totals would not be in for several days, but 6 persons had positively been killed, with 2 others it was touch-and-go, and although the early report that 16 individuals had been wounded was an approximation owing to the difficulty of taking an accurate count while the firefight was in progress and hinging on whether those lightly flecked with cuts from broken glass should be included in the same tally with those struck by lead slugs in vital organs, not to go into the question of relative states of impairment, the media of public information nevertheless could aver that in terms of casualties this was the second highest toll-taking by a rifleman shooting from the observation tower of an edifice. It was of course the worst disaster in which the Bloor Building, the 47th tallest in the continental USA, had ever figured, the second worst having taken place in 1951 when a pair of middle-aged lovers leaped off hand-in-hand, after the man's old mother had once again refused him permission to wed.

A psychiatrist from the staff of the local med school assessed Alvis, on the basis of what he had read about him in the earliest dispatches, as a latent homosexual with whipping fantasies, probably impotent, and suffering from penis-inferiority and constipation. “To Alvis the Bloor Building represented a gigantic phallus, of which the observation deck was the glans and the discharge of his rifle an ejaculation.”

Reinhart could remember the day, not long ago, when you could not have got away with using even such medical terminology in a newspaper. For example, twenty years before, when a Marine on furlough had beaten to death a traveling salesman in a downtown hotel room, only knowledgeable ex-servicemen (and practicing deviates) could have grasped from the mealy-mouthed reportage any clue to the motive.

Because he had known none of the victims nor the perpetrator, and because the buildings in Alvis' sights had not, after all, contained the home office of the Ecumenical Insurance Company, his dad's old firm, but rather the Consolidated Electrical, Reinhart saw the importance of the incident as consisting in his failure to recognize Alvis as a sniper and take measures to inhibit the man. Thus he coldbloodedly interpreted this public catastrophe in a personal way: he had passed up a chance to become a hero.

He was watching the TV newscast on a color set in the lounge at the Y. From time to time he peeped through an eye-corner at a thin, attenuated person who sat next him on the institutional sofa and gasped at things on the screen. Oddly enough, they were the only two viewers. The other residents apparently had better fish to fry.

At last Reinhart said: “You know, I was up on that roof. I saw that guy. I spoke to him.”

This person wore a thin mesh shirt of canary yellow. He re-crossed his legs the other way and looked towards the tip of Reinhart's nose. “You must have been
benumbed
with dread.”

“Actually, I didn't even recognize what he was doing.”

“I can understand
that
,” said the individual, who could have been any age across a range of twenty years. “He
looks
positively harmless.” He whipped his legs around again. “You never know, do you? We live in such a sick society. I was in the movies the other night when a huge, gross man sat down beside me and with no preliminary demanded that I do a filthy thing to him. The film was
Dr. Dolittle
.”

“I haven't seen it yet,” said Reinhart.

“What amazes me is the assumption other people have that one exists for their pleasure. An utter stranger.” He put his chin against his chest. “Small wonder that poor things like Alvis run amok. And now they'll try him for murder and strap that frail, white little body in the electric chair.”

“Of course he's quite mad,” said Reinhart. “I agree with you there.”

“I
abhor
violence,” the man moaned. “This incident will make me sick for days. Oh why, why do these things happen?” He had shy young eyes in an old face, and his dun-colored hair was combed down across his forehead at a slant. “I really must go before they show lovely little Oriental boys being barbecued with napalm.”

But he made no move to leave. Instead he extended both soft calfskin loafers and shivered them. “He forcibly took my hand and pressed it between his heaving thighs,” he said. “I threatened to scream for the usher, but you don't see ushers any more. A movie theater seems to be entirely automatic nowadays, like an elevator.”

He was apparently a nonfaggot sissy. There were such, Reinhart knew, often sires to large families.

“What a rotten experience,” said Reinhart, glad to get his mind off his own problems for a while, though he found it hard to put himself into these shoes.

“It was hideous, I assure you. And my grief served to make him more ardent. Perhaps poor Alvis had to undergo this sort of thing.”

It was interesting to Reinhart that a good many people interpreted the world's phenomena in a fashion peculiar to themselves.

“Oh, I don't know,” he said. “It might have been pure chance.”

“Which experience?” asked the man. “Mine or Alvis's?”

“Everybody's.”

The man looked around the room. No one else was near them. He said: “Let's go up to my room and have a pillow fight.”

Reinhart shook his head judiciously.

“Strip and sting each other with towels.”

Reinhart said, very calmly: “You're the second deviate, though of a different type, that I have met today. Would you mind telling me why?”

“I'm not queer!” the man replied. “I admit to being immature, but what can you expect in this sort of world? Who wants to grow up? I shall continue to look at life like a child, never losing my sense of wonder.”

“Wait a minute,” said Reinhart. “I'm not criticizing you. Please answer my question. Do I look like the sort of fellow who would play snap-the-towel with another man? Or do I look like the type who would want to do whatever you can do with a preadolescent schoolgirl?”

“Does Alvis look like a killer?”

Reinhart paused for a moment, then asked: “You're not by any chance putting me on? You're not another disguised cop?”

“I know a state trooper,” said the man, “who is as gay as they come.”

“Why don't people like you get hold of yourselves?” asked Reinhart. “Aren't you just being self-indulgent?”

“You spoke to me first,” the man said snippishly, rose, and left the room.

Two of the public telephones in the lobby did not function. On the third Reinhart dialed his former home. Winona answered, of all people. It was strange, suddenly to enter her special frame of reference, stepping out of a fantastic reality into, so to speak, a realistic fantasy.

“Hi, Darry,” said she through a mouthful of something. “Hold on. This pizza is dripping. … Hi!”

“I bet you put it down on some polished surface, dear,” Reinhart said with more nostalgia than reproval. When she came to his attention, he missed her badly.

“There's an anchovy on the phone!” She giggled and a smashing noise ensued. “There, it's off. What can I do for you?”

“How are you, darling? Are you being treated well?”

“Oh, sure. Though something puzzles me. Why don't you eat here any more, Daddy?”

“I don't sleep there, either, Winona. I don't live there at all, in fact.”

“Is there some reason for that? You're not mad at me, are you, Poppy? I thought you had all you wanted of that cake. A great big piece was missing, and I thought you had eaten it. Can you possibly forgive me?” She began to weep.

“Now don't do that,” said Reinhart. “Winona, stop that this instant! Do you hear me? The cake undoubtedly arrived after my exit, and no issue. … Winona?”

“Well, you know when I get hungry I can't help myself.” She made some snuffling sounds.

“Unfortunately, dear,” said Reinhart, “I did not have a chance to explain to you earlier that your mother and I have decided to go our separate ways. We have different careers, you know. It is as simple as that. Time marches on. Before you know it, you'll be off on your own. Have you picked a profession yet?”

Winona answered gaily: “Still airline stewardess. You get to see the world for free!” She chortled.

“That's just fine,” Reinhart said, deflecting his sigh. “But you've still a couple of years of high school left. Maybe something else will turn up. I wouldn't set my heart on any one thing, Winona. Maybe a millionaire will marry you.”

She said soberly: “I don't want to get married. I hate fights.”

This caught Reinhart in a sensitive place. “I'm sorry about that, dear. …” But he really didn't know what else to say that would neither confirm her desolate view nor hypocritically deny it. “You might think about Scandinavian Airlines,” he said. “I think they serve smorgasbord. … Say, Winona, is your mother there?”

“I'll call her. But, Daddy, will I ever see you again in all my life?”

“You certainly will, dear. I'm going to get my own apartment any day now, and the first thing I'm going to do is make a big potful of chili con carne and—”

“With spaghetti?”

“Sure, if you want it, and grated cheese and chopped onions and a fried egg on top. Then strawberry shortcake to follow.”

“Bread pudding! Please, Daddy.”

“You name it, Winona.”

“Golly, I love you, Daddy. I'll get Mother.”

But a male voice came on next. Reinhart at first took it for Harlan Flan, Gen's boss and intended, and the swelling veins closed his throat.

Fighting this effect, he gave himself over to glottal adjustments while the voice said: “Sir, you are an unmitigated scoundrel.”

It was Gen's father, the elder Blaine. He went on: “Only my girl's intercession saved you from a savage thrashing at my hands the day you brought her home, years ago, after molesting her repeatedly and then conducting a charade before a J.P. to escape prosecution. Years of pain and humiliation ensued, brightened only by her magnificent son. Else I would have stepped in earlier and crushed you like the sewer rat you are.”

Reinhart actually felt a certain relief. “One good thing has come out of it,” he said. “I don't have to be polite to you any more, you yellow skunk. The next time I see you, Raven, and I don't care how old you are, I am going to hit you in the mouth with all my might and watch what happens to your front teeth.”

Raven cleared his throat. He said: “There's no reason why we can't conduct ourselves like gentlemen. In fact, it will be easier on all parties if your lawyer handles it. I say that for your own good, Carl. Personally I have never considered myself your enemy.”

“I know it was you who told Genevieve about a certain Gloria,” said Reinhart. “But sending that photographer today was lower than I thought even you could sink.”

Raven regained some of his aplomb. “I reject that allegation,” said he. “I sent no cameraman anywhere. I can state that without fear of contradiction.”

“You knew about Gloria because you are a whores' lawyer.” Reinhart said. He felt reckless though having taken in no liquids recently except the Y's watery coffee. “That in my opinion is worse than being a client, any old day.”

Raven was almost back to normal. “I abhor hooliganism,” he said. “It must be expunged without mercy. Excessive pigmentation is not an ameliorating circumstance. I carry a derringer now in my waistcoat pocket. If anyone toys with me I'll blow off his kinky head.”

Reinhart stared at the dirty wall of the phone booth, with its smeared numbers. In all these years he had never recognized that Raven was insane. He felt deprived. You cannot hate a madman.

He said: “This has nothing to do with colored people.”

“The lines of battle are clearly drawn at last,” said Raven, “and that is a relief.”

Reinhart said, with a sudden suspicion: “Are you talking to me?”

“I am discussing social matters with my splendid grandson,” Raven replied. “I find, to my immense gratification, that we are very close in our thinking. He is in the mainstream of the Raven tradition. Our men are bold, our women compassionate.”

“If Blaine is near the phone, I want to speak to him.”