Being Invisible (2 page)

He rose and left the post office, though not before mailing the stamped letter, which of course was invisible when he held it, but no doubt changed its state once dropped through the out-of-town slot. Not until he was back at the office (having eaten no lunch at all) did it occur to him that he could have taken more than one stamp while the postal clerk’s attention was diverted. Nothing would have been more justified in view of all the coins he had dropped, which the clerk retrieved, no doubt to return to the drawer, so that only the wretched postal system would profit, and mysteriously at that: another confirmation that God looks after the interests of institutions.

But apart from stamps there had been money in that drawer: not simply a supply of coins, from which he could have replaced what he had scattered on the floor, but folding money, dollar bills and more. Invisibly, he could have taken some without incurring any risk whatever.

Wagner felt as though he were sweating heavily, but when he touched his brow it was utterly dry. He had thrown a scare into himself. What a foolish turn his thoughts had taken. He resolved not to become invisible again except for private amusement. Not only had it cost him all his change today, but he had had a very unpleasant experience coming up on the elevator.

He had just missed one car and therefore entered the next alone, but in another moment Morton Wilton and Jackie Grinzing stepped on board. Wilton had recently joined the firm in some managerial role Wagner could not quite identify, but Mrs. Grinzing was head of his own department. Their employer produced catalogues for firms which sold by mail order. Wagner and a half-dozen colleagues wrote the original copy; then it was edited by Jackie and usually returned for revisions before being shown to the clients, who could be counted on to ask for still more rewriting, seldom for reasons that seem justifiable to those who were obliged to do it. The art department also often proved a pain to the writers, as well: with most catalogues the illustrations and layouts were given precedence.

Jackie had never been celebrated for her manners, but she had never before been so rude as not to look at him when he was near. In this case he was so close that had he not stepped aside she would have bumped against him. Nor would Wilton spare him even a glance. Wagner could not refrain from making a bitter grimace that, so far as he was concerned, they could share. Not that it was noticed. People in power tend to become ever more overbearing.

At last he loudly cleared his throat, causing both passengers to assume startled expressions.

“This old contraption sounds almost human,” said Wilton.

Jackie raised her heavy eyebrows. “I get worried by its grunts and groans. I know elevators have got devices on them to catch them if they fall, but still.”

“In an emergency,” said Wilton, who was all sandy mustache above the moist red of the mouth he exposed when speaking, “just hold on to me.” He took Jackie’s hand and put it into his crotch.

Wagner had actually forgotten he was still invisible! He felt his face grow warm. Unseen, he was blushing, not so much because of the indecency (which perhaps could not even be called that: so far as these people were aware, they traveled upwards in absolute privacy), but rather by reason of his own throat-clearing faux pas. How embarrassing it would have been for these two people in particular to discover his secret! It might be sufficient cause to get him fired. Who could tolerate an employee with the capacity to become invisible at will?

For it
was
pure will. Wagner simply decided to become invisible, and it happened.

Remarkable, and in fact pretty ugly, was the muscular way in which Jackie was caressing Wilton’s groin, if that was the word for what looked more like punishment. There was no apparent tenderness on the part of either, and odder yet, not a hint of passion. Jackie was in her ash-blond mid-forties. In one way she looked her age. But coming at the matter from another angle, one might say her appearance was better than could rightly be expected. Wilton was shorter than she and may have been younger, but it was hard to tell with his strawlike hair, head and facial. He was leaning back against the wall of the elevator. He had not touched Jackie since putting her hand on him. His expression was inscrutable. Her own, owing to the shape of her closed mouth, looked almost angry.

It was Wagner, and not either of them, who suffered anxiety at the approach of the floor at which they all were to deboard. Suppose someone was waiting for the elevator directly in front of the door? Wagner was so sensitive to humiliation as to feel it vicariously when he himself was but an observer of an experience in which it was no more than an impending possibility. Thus he was quailing, invisibly, in the far corner when the car stopped and the door slid open.

In fact a little crowd
was
waiting just outside. Some of them greeted Wagner’s fellow passengers. Others stepped quickly into the car, barring Wagner’s own exit. None acted as if they had seen Jackie abrading Wilton, for surely she had simply stopped when the elevator had. It took no great sleight of hand. Wagner realized he was a nervous wreck. Penned in now by the new passengers, he was forced to ride back down to the lobby.

When finally he reached his floor he hastened to the men’s room, locked himself into one of the booths, and returned to visibility. Again the flesh was first to be transformed, and had there been an observer he would have seen a stark-naked man some seconds before the clothes were phased in. However, the entire process was carried out in much less time than had been needed at the post office.

Someone did see Wagner emerge from the booth and in consequence turned away with flared nostrils, obviously supposing, in distaste, that he had produced a stink. An erroneous impression of this sort was very difficult to correct without being silly, unless of course the man had been a friend, but he was rather some half-recognized person from the art department. For that matter Wagner had no real friends at the office—nor, in truth, out of it with the exception of his old roommate Cal Cavanaugh, with whom he had continued to be close for a while after college, but by now seldom saw, Cavanaugh having since moved to the suburbs and fathered two children in quick succession.

After his wife left, Wagner had dreaded being seen in the elevators and corridors of the apartment house in which he lived, for there were fellow tenants who were inclined to strike up a conversation when in proximity to another human being of local residence. Wagner had himself been of this taste. He had mildly enjoyed the small-talk about sports with Marvin Benderville, who lived somewhere around the bend of the hall in circumstances of which Wagner was not aware and in fact had no interest in learning, and exchanging complaints with a cadaverous-looking man named Todvik about the absentee management of the building, unreachably remote except when the rent was due, and the all-too-evident though practically useless super, not the sullen, cynical type so often to be found in such employment but rather a young man whose habitual high spirits were encouraging, till one began to suspect, from his failure to accomplish any task he undertook, they were either chemically induced or the symptom of mental impairment. Whichever, after the ritualistic reference to this functionary’s latest stunt (“Know what Glen did today? Threw a lot of old paint cans down the incinerator. Firemen put it out before the walls got too hot to touch, but the building’s been cited for the black smoke that covered the neighborhood. We’ll pay for that with the next hike in rents”), Todvik often added, “I certainly keep my daughter out of the basement.” Though in Wagner’s judgment Miss Todvik, who looking thirty-five was seventeen only if you had been so informed, was more than a match for Glen, physically or in force of character. She had the foulest mouth Wagner had ever encountered in a female; reeked, in the close quarters of an elevator, of hops and smoke; and once, perhaps drunk or worse, had intimated to him that she was available for sexual purposes though not for free.

There were more attractive females in the building, and he knew some of them well enough to exchange bromides en route through hallways or lobby. Two were roommates and shared an apartment with still a third young lady whom Wagner had never actually seen owing to her demanding schedule of college plus job. The two he knew, Ellen Mackintosh and Debbie Fong, worked for the same bank. They were both genteel and well dressed. The latter was presumably Chinese but pretty obviously native-born, speaking Standard American. Though both women were attractive, Wagner had never desired either—or, more’s the pity, anyone else except Babe, whom, to his knowledge, they had never met, for their hours would have been different from hers: she worked in an art gallery that didn’t open till late morning, and never used the basement laundry room. Yet since his wife had left him, he found meeting Ellen and Debbie unbearable. Perhaps it would have been easier with either alone, but together they represented the kind of team to which he himself no longer belonged.

The other woman with whom he was slightly acquainted was named Sandra Elg. She had red hair, ivory skin, a large bosom, and formerly a handsome, sinewy-necked husband who sold expensive imported cars and was thought to have been a racing driver in his prime, which obviously had been not long before. Wagner was no authority in this area, being licensed to drive only those cars with an automatic transmission. As it happened, Elg had died suddenly, out of town, only a few days earlier, as Mrs. Elg had informed him when, despite his efforts to slip down the hall to the incinerator at a time when he was unlikely to encounter any of the other tenants, namely, one o’clock in the morning, the elevator door opened just as he was passing it and she emerged, overdressed as always, with the usual décolletage and heavy scent. She was not in mourning attire but spoke in a melancholy tone when she told Wagner of her loss.

Such is the ruthless nature of the human heart, the news made him feel better, though certainly he hoped that this truth remained well hidden behind his remarks of condolence. But he could not expect to run into only Mrs. Elg from now on, and anyway he doubted that her sense of bereavement would endure as long as his own, which was perhaps unfair of him, but he was simply unable to believe that a female of her endowments could have his depth of feeling. After Babe left, Wagner honestly never expected to attract another woman his life long. Perhaps that, more than any other reason, was why he decided to try to become invisible—though it would be a misrepresentation to say that one ever makes an altogether conscious resolve in such a matter.

He had happened to be standing, naked, before the full-length mirror on the inside of the bedroom door, when it began. He had only just got out of bed on a Saturday morning, to face the rest of the day, indeed the weekend, alone. With no one to see him, he found he was unable to assume a good posture: he could throw his shoulders back but he could not keep them there. Though actually underweight, he was developing a small paunch: this was due not to an accumulation of fat but rather to the relaxation of abdominal muscles that comes naturally with the years but can be arrested simply enough by regular isometric tensing of the stomach, you don’t even have to work up a sweat. But at this moment Wagner couldn’t do that, either.

He had assumed, without putting himself to a possibly humiliating test, that he was impotent at this period, but to have lost the command of his body in other respects was too much to endure. He sank, in articulated segments, to the floor, where he reassembled himself into what was supposed to be a rigid unit, and in one supreme effort tried to do one genuine pushup, as opposed to the weak-kneed kind, and failed.

The only force strong enough to raise Wagner to his feet was the thought that drinking a cup of coffee might give him strength: this would have been the suggestion of his mother had she still been alive and not gone to an early death to which years of caffeine overloading had probably contributed:
You’ll feel better after a cup of coffee.

But only a quarter-teaspoonful of powdered coffee remained in the jar. Babe had been responsible for maintaining the kitchen supplies; Wagner handled the liquor, the garbage, the laundromat run. Babe had done most of the cooking, that is, defrosting, except when he opened the necessary containers and did the stovework for spaghetti, franks & beans, or baked chicken with a coating acquired when shaken in a plastic bag. Babe had suggested the movies; he subscribed to the magazines. Babe had selected many of his ties. After four years all the duties and privileges had been allocated efficiently, at least in the well-managed marriage such as theirs. Babe certainly had not left because of disorder.

Still naked, Wagner had returned to the bedroom and was once again staring at his body. He wasn’t built all that badly. He was a bit underweight, especially since Babe’s departure. He could have used some sun. His legs looked almost blue behind the dark hair, but they were well shaped and straighter than those of any number of the parenthesis-limbed movie stars so often depicted in bathing trunks and underpants. If only he were able to assume a respectable posture, he could pass, at a distance, for the old Wagner, but alas this was still too extravagant a hope: his most ardent efforts could not correct or compensate for the degenerate slump that began at the bridge of the nose and continued in a broken line to his insteps.

He must now get himself together and go out for a jar of coffee. Suddenly he wished he could do so invisibly! He startled himself, he who had never been given to the fanciful. That was his father’s way. If a sailboat was hauled by trailer down their street, Dad, seeing only the top of the mast from his dinner-table chair, might say, “What if we lived on a canal, Fred? Go everyplace by water, not blacktop. This very home might be a houseboat. How about that?” Not even as a child had Wagner found such fantasies especially entertaining. If he went along with them it was only for the sake of his father, in whom an infantile streak was prominent. Looking out the window into a thick fog, Dad might say, “Like we’re suspended from a balloon! Scary: what if the cables break and we plunge earthwards at an ever-increasing speed? Can you imagine that, Fred?” Wagner couldn’t, but he usually pretended otherwise, at least until a natural feeling of charity towards his father was exhausted in the middle years of teenhood when most human males surrender to meaner tendencies.