Vital Parts (47 page)

“As a philosopher,” Streckfuss said, “you must know Aristotle: ‘No one can understand nature fully nor miss it altogether, but as each makes his contribution there arises a structure that has a certain grandeur.'”

“OK,” said Reinhart, who had been brought up on the cocky heroes of the silver screen and now found courage in the echo of their idiom. Perhaps vulgarity was fundamental to all heroism. He would have been scared to say,
Yes, you may freeze me
. “OK. You got your boy.”

16

In his moment of bravado Reinhart had been ready to climb into the freezer capsule immediately, as the movie pilot leaps into the cockpit and, the point of view necessarily switching from participant to spectator, is soon thereafter seen diving down the smokestack of a Japanese battleship.

But reality, however fantastic, consists in specificities, seen from one perspective only. For example, Streckfuss had on hand insufficient liquid nitrogen to freeze a mouse. An order was long overdue, owing, said Bob, to a slowdown of the deliverymen's union, perhaps preparatory to an outright strike.

With the new energy derived from his decision to give up, Reinhart seized the phone and called the supplier's number.

“Listen here,” he said, “this is a scientific institution—”

“And we are a business,” said the spokesman on the other end. “If you will pay for your last shipment, we might consider making another.”

Sweet received this information laconically.

“Jesus Christ,” said Reinhard. “I just don't understand you, Bob.”

“I've had to put up some cash margins,” said Sweet. “No cause for alarm. I can get a loan on the warehouse receipts for my storage at Berne.” He dialed a number and began a conversation that might have been in Urdu or Tagalog, so far as Reinhart could fathom.

Streckfuss shook his head. “Leave zese tings to Bopp. I want that in the next fortnight you do not overly excite your nervous system, also that you avoid all ordinary foodstuffs, take no medicines or drugs, exercise moderately but not to the point of fatigue, and sleep as much as possible.”

“
Two weeks?
”

Streckfuss said: “In fact, you must reside in this place. We will make a bett for you here. Mine, indeed. You may use it. I seldom sleep.”

Bob hung up the phone and said: “That's settled, then. I'm leaving now to dispose of these matters. I'll check you out of the Mid-town Y, Carl, and bring back your effects. We'll get the papers drawn up. Take my advice and do not inform your family. You would have certain rights as a missing person. They won't be able to get into your safe-deposit box.”

Streckfuss produced a stethoscope from the pocket of his lab coat and said: “Remove your clozing.”

Now, whereas Reinhart had been ready a few moments before to plunge into the quick-freeze, he balked.

“Just a minute,” he cried. “I can't stay here just like this. I've got things to do.”

“What?” Sweet asked coldly. “What things? You would hardly have volunteered if that were so. And you did volunteer, didn't you, Carl? Nobody tricked you or used pressure of any kind, isn't that true? You will have to swear to that, you know. Or we can forget the whole thing.”

“There's no question, Bob, and you know it. But this is a bit abrupt, on the one hand, and long-drawn-out on the other.”

“Like life itself,” said Sweet.

“I'm glad you mentioned that. It's mine, isn't it? My own damned life.”

Sweet threw his arms up and made his mouth into an O of mock horror. “Far be it from me, Carl …”

“I don't intend to live in this mausoleum for what may be the last two weeks of it, either,” Reinhart announced. “I'm going to call you on that offer of a suite in the Shade-Milton, and I also want a good car.” He stopped to catch his breath. His heartbeat was racing—the sort of thing that did not matter now.

To Streckfuss he said: “I intend to eat rich foods and drink expensive wines. The effects are your problem. You can flush me out when I am unconscious.”

“Ah,” muttered the little scientist, elevating his shoulders to the level of his ears. “Ah, ah.” He put away the stethoscope.

Sweet's neck had gone rigid. “Anything you say, Carl. You're the boss.”

The word had a lovely, brutal sound. In his various business ventures Reinhart had employed a few persons, yet never had he felt superior to them in power, perhaps because he had not possessed anything they really wanted: they invariably went to better jobs when his enterprises failed.

“Can your tailor make up some clothes for me within a couple of days?” he asked Sweet. “In all my life I have never owned a suit that really fitted. I have always felt like a bundle somebody wrapped up for the Salvation Army.”

He walked to the door. “So long, Hans.” His joviality made metallic and crystalline echoes throughout the lab. Streckfuss was a small, old, almost forlorn figure when seen in perspective. “See you in the funny papers!” That sounded cheap. He must take care not to satiate himself too soon.

In the Bentley's back seat Reinhart said: “I'll need some spending money, Robert.”

Sweet's energy seemed to have flagged. “Sure, Carl. But you can put the car and hotel on the company, and I have accounts at several restaurants.”

“No,” said Reinhart. “I don't want that. I will pay as I go. I'm sick of bills, installment plans, pay-now-fly-later, credit cards, and all the rest of that shit. I want genuine, hard cash, such as you hardly ever see any more. I want to crumple a twenty-dollar bill and throw it at some insolent headwaiter and have him kiss my ass. I want to overtip the embittered hoodlums who work in parking lots and hear them thank me. I want to be stopped for speeding and bribe the cop and get saluted. And most of all, I'd like to stop some bitch of a teen-ager with legs that are bare up to the cheeks of her behind and naked tits inside a see-through shirt, and ask her price: you name it, five hundred, a thousand—”

“Sure, Carl, sure.”

“—and when I reached it, give her the money and leave her untouched. I'd also like to send Captain Storm a sizable sum for the Black Assassins. Anonymously, huh? What do you think of that? That punk, in his idiotic uniform and phony name, while Splendor lies dying.” A gratuitous slur, in view of the boy's manifest concern for his father, but Reinhart tended to project his own son into Storm's jackboots, and vice versa. In time the race problem would vanish, but there would always be failing fathers and succeeding sons.

Call him mad, now that he had guaranteed to be put on ice but he saw the answer to youth. It was Yes. Press on, full speed ahead. Here, spend this on dynamite and drugs. Blow yourself up while out of your skull. Splendid. Anything you want. Utter acquiescence to the demands of all persons who apply, but applicants are urged to act promptly during the fortnight's amnesty. After which, I personally shall cool it.

“Hey!” Eunice shouted again, gathering herself into the seat and reinforcing the safety belt with crossed arms.

“What's the matter?” Reinhart asked idly. He controlled the car with his left hand, and with his right felt her thigh, which was rather flabby if the truth be known. “Let's live a little,” said he.

She pinched her eyes shut. They were overtaking a three-car spread on a tri-laned highway. However, it was one-way and separated from the southbound side by a generous strip of grass defined by concrete curbing, rounded and quite too low to burst Reinhart's tires as he shot over it, getting nicely past the trio of collateral dolts and cutting back down on the pavement without the use of brakes or the loss of rpms.

“You see,” he said. “No cause for alarm. Fast driving is not necessarily reckless. The great Stirling Moss, who has won many a Grand Prix for England, will go ninety on glare ice and yet maintain more control than a little old lady in her wheelchair. Precision is the answer, Eunice.”

Corrupt politicians, in the pocket of local businessmen, had no doubt been responsible for the battery of traffic lights ahead, which were inexcusable on a superhighway, contradicting its purpose as a high-speed thoroughfare. But a rotten shopping center festered nearby, with entrances and exits at the crossroads. A line of station wagons, full of commodities and spoiled children, eyeglassed fathers at the wheels, smug wives alongside, waited to go in or out. An interminable orange light slowed down the pack of cars at the head of which Reinhart charged. The exiting herd began to edge forward. Reinhart kept his foot to the floor, his left palm on the horn, and blasted through.

A standing cop, in white summer cap and orange Day-Glo weskit, seemed to give him a blurred smile. Reinhart was watching Eunice, who was utterly silent. He poked her.

“I used to be one of those jerks,” he said. “With an open Kleenex box, sliding across the back shelf whenever I turned a corner.”

Surly bitch. She failed to respond. Looking back at the road, Reinhart pretended he was a competitor in the Annual Memorial Day Classic at Indianapolis, that his pea-green Edwardian jacket was a suit of fireproof coveralls. Buster Watkins, Jr., an illiterate but engaging Southern daredevil, had just spun out, hit the wall, and was incinerated. One down. That's racing.

He poked Eunice again and heard her groan.

“Jesus,” he said, “but you are a drag today.” He shot by a marked police car, the uniformed driver of which touched a finger to the brim of his cap.

People could tell when you were beyond their power. Reinhart had already noticed that when he bought his clothes at Outrageous Foppery, a male boutique. He had the young, lithe, snotty sort of salesman who would have spat upon him but last week, that new species who competed with the customers in attire and lorded it over them in manner, muttonchop sideburns meeting over his mouth, paddlebladed tie, cerise shirt. On his side Reinhart would have detested this half-assed phony. Now he saw him as quite a decent sort, with helpful, amusing ideas. If we must dress, then why not with verve?

Bob had waited in the Bentley. He had been glum ever since Reinhart had agreed to be frozen—which went to show you something about getting what you wanted. Reinhart chose a purple shirt to match the bell-bottom velveteen trousers, and a scarf of swirling colors instead of a proper tie, and rather than knot it, drew the silken ends through his wedding ring and thus added a smear of verdigris to the psychedelic mélange.

His old-style crew cut was incongruous in the mirror, all the more so in that the Edwardian jacket, with its high neck, tended to squeeze him towards the top. Underneath, a plastic belt, wide as a corset, went through the loops of his low-rise pants, cincturing him below the belly button, above which the excess meat was hidden by the jacket's flaring skirt. Reinhart discovered to his pleasure that he was made for the styles of the moment.

The tight jacket took fifty pounds off him. The slacks had been troublesome. The largest available waist had missed closure by a good six inches, but the resident tailor had so to speak jumped into the breach, inserting a big vee of extra material in the ass. Also velveteen, but white. It would be hidden by the jacket's long tail. But the salesman, and several other customers, bearded youths, cheered at the effect, and one boy demanded his own trousers be altered in accord, with not only the rear panel, but another in front giving the effect of a diaper worn over long pants.

Reinhart paid cash for his gear and left everybody in a good mood, indeed almost hysterically agreeable, shouting “Man!” at him. Not all the young were vicious.

But it was the first time Reinhart had ever seen Bob Sweet look startled. When he got into the car, Bob said: “Are you sure about that, Carl?”

“Never more so, Bob. From this perspective the whole new thing in men's clothes looks different to me. And I hope you don't mind my saying that you seem a bit square.”

“No, I don't mind. Far from it.” Bob yawned suddenly. “Back to the hotel?”

“You go,” Reinhart said, “if you want a nap or something, but there is still one jarring note in my ensemble. This outmoded crew cut. I look like a militarist. I'm going to that place that advertises in the paper, Lasagna's Virile Crests, the people who specialize in hairpieces and false moustaches. I don't have time to let my own crop grow out.” He felt a twinge as the sensitive tooth of his soul came down on the adamant seed of this reality. But Bob's awesome look was some compensation. Reinhart enjoyed his chance to show off, perhaps all the more so in view of the price he would pay for it.

At Lasagna's, foremost of the male beauty parlors in the city, Reinhart was fitted into a full wig, with sideburns which plunged an inch below his ears. He chose a rich hue of brown, having not had much fun as a lifelong blond, whatever that ad said. The thought of being frozen did not seem so ugly when he saw his first bewigged reflection. For many years he had had the same general visage, though inevitably aging. Not since '41 when for a semester he had let his scalp grow out, had he seen his locks longer than an inch and a half. Suddenly he had as much hair as Winona, though better groomed.

The barber or fitter deftly swept a comb through it, producing a crackle of static electricity. “Top quality Sicilian,” said he, a small man whose fingers danced with energy. “Bring it in once a month for dry cleaning, otherwise forget it and wear it with pleasure.”

Bob said nothing when Reinhart rejoined him this time.

Reinhart asked: “Do you sleep in your toupee?” Bob curled his lip. Reinhart said: “Of course the situation is not exactly the same. I have real hair underneath. Mine is anchored down by the sideburns.” He tugged at one. “This tape is terrific. That what you use?”

“Fuck off, Carl,” Bob said.

Sports Cars Unlimited occupied the suburban site of Psycho Sam's used-car business of the early postwar era when vehicles were scarce. Reinhart had once had dealings with Psycho, a rude, rapacious man.