Being Invisible (21 page)

He remembered now: surely it had been he who had gone for pizza. He was not at all hungry but had needed a breather. He did not relish being seen by the desk clerk, who might well suppose that if the john was finished the whore’d better come down soon or get the old heave-ho. But when he reached the cage and saw the man with the wayward collar-point staring vacantly out into the very area through which he was passing, he realized that he was invisible again, this time as the result of no volition whatever.

There being no convenient means by which to get a cooked pie while invisible, Wagner materialized at the counter of the branch of the Pizza on Earth chain just around the corner from the hotel and also the office. He might have been recognized here by members of the daytime staff, but that was out of the question now: the wall clock, in the form of a pizza, with imitation-pepperoni-cylinder hands, informed him that the time was 1:12.

On the round trip he was accosted by two streetwalkers and saw three more. One, leading a wiry little bowlegged client, entered the hotel just ahead of him on his return. He had never before been in the neighborhood of his office this late in the day. Apparently it was a sort of Tenderloin after business hours. The desolate bar in which he and Mary Alice had got into the condition to visit the nearby hotel was now turning raucous. Laughter and clinking could be heard from within. Coming back, he encountered a truculent drunk who staggered out the door in a rush of noise and beer fumes.

“Gimme that pizza pie,” this man demanded, clawing towards Wagner’s flat box. Wagner found it politic to vanish until he returned to the room.

“Well,” said Mary Alice when he had folded back the lid of the pizza box, “you’ve already succeeded in making me unhappy. I distinctly said all cheese, and yet what do I see on the top? Mushrooms!”

Having, with all his worries, forgotten her instructions, he had produced an invented explanation to the effect that the mushroom was ready to go, whereas had he waited for “plain” he would have been kept away from her for more painful minutes. But there was nothing coy about Mary Alice, and at this point she no longer sought reassurance. Her annoyance proved to be genuine. She turned over, buried her face in the pillows, and went immediately into a resentful but sound sleep.

Now he had awakened and was staring at her tangled back of head. Though he was sober and the day had just begun, he was lacking altogether in a spark of enterprise. While none of his recent misfortunes had been properly the result of his own errors—the malice of chance had simultaneously been operative everywhere—his amour propre had never been feebler. It was absurd that a man who could become invisible at will was not able quickly to take dominion over his existence but instead must go from one predicament to another. Invisibility might seem an overwhelming advantage to have on other mortals. If what you wanted to do was make an ass of your fellow man, tormenting him from an impenetrable hiding place, then you could not do better. And of course it was incomparable for snooping on the most private of events. An unseen personage could be privy to all manner of shame. For criminal activity, from espionage to the snatching of purses, it would be the ultimate technique. One invisible assassin, for example, might single-handedly bring down a nation. A Wagner without conscience could have sold his services to any one of a host of international brigands and been instantly rich. A heroic Wagner might save common decency from its many enemies domestic and foreign.

Instead he lay here, head supported on a fist (for Mary Alice had appropriated his pillow the night before), staring at the stained ceiling, remembering how one such had allegedly fallen on Miles Elg. All his current problems were associated with women: to the list of Babe, Nan, Sandra, and Jackie must now be added the name of Mary Alice. What a reckless thing for him to have done; he should have resisted her; he had no character at all.

He touched her shoulder. “Mary Alice.”

“I’m awake.” And, judging from the clarity and strength of her voice, had been for some time.

“We’d better get up.”

“Why? I’m sure I don’t have a job to go to now.”

“I’m the one who was fired,” Wagner said.

Mary Alice rolled over. Not being one for much makeup when wearing office attire, she provided no morning disillusionment. “I just stepped out for a word with you on the fire stairs,” said she. “I haven’t returned yet.”

“I see,” Wagner said. “But I’m sure it can be explained to Jackie: you suddenly took sick or something.”

She made a resentful chin. “And it was me who was going to explain to her about
you.
”

“That was a generous offer, Mary Alice, but what Jackie has against me is not something that another person’s intervention could help, I’m afraid. I made a mistake. With the best will in the world, but still a mistake.” His body was embarrassing him: the proximity of a naked woman was arousing his appropriate part. This seemed to be an isolated phenomenon: at first he had not taken mental notice of it, and now, trying consciously to ignore and then to resist the burgeoning assertion, he was being defied.

“Oh, come on, Fred,” Mary Alice said irritably, “it was because of that anonymous letter.” She shook her head. Another woman might long since have arisen and combed her hair. “I’m sorry, but I got tired of waiting.” She grimaced at him. “So look at the pickle I landed up in.”

“Oh, you haven’t lost your job,” Wagner said. He found her statements cryptic but was not impatient to have them deciphered. “I’ll blame your absence all on myself. What do I have to lose? I’m out anyway.”

Mary Alice propped herself up on an elbow and looked down into his face. “Fred, you still aren’t getting it.
I
w
rote the letter that got you fired.
” She made this confession angrily, as though
he
were the culprit.

Perhaps he was. “I don’t know where you got that funny idea,” said he. “It was the letter
I
wrote to Jackie that did it. I never heard of any other... unless you mean—” No, that was impossible: how could Mary Alice speak of what went on in the men’s restroom?

“Of course, that’s exactly what I mean,” said she, glaring down at him. “You hadn’t made a move toward me in all those weeks, and I happen to know your wife walked out on you, and you and Roy were always together, you have to admit that.”

Wagner at first felt more curiosity than anger. “Then you didn’t actually know there
was
some depraved activity going on in there?”

She wrinkled her blunt little nose at him. “You’re not saying you’re bisexual?”

“Certainly not.” He told her about “Artie.” However, by now he was experiencing the onset of resentment. “It’s decent of you to admit your error,” he said, “but it was an awfully reckless accusation, and it could have—”

“Now, don’t you dare
attack
me,” cried Mary Alice, “when I’m
admitting
a lack of judgment, not to mention that I’m offering to go to Jackie and make a clean breast of it.”

Which was more than she had done with him, Wagner reflected in a moment of perverse humor: she had yet to reveal the contents of her brassiere. But what he said was, “I guess it doesn’t matter now.”

“It certainly does!” Mary Alice said with urgency. “She might fire me, but I don’t want her to go on thinking my lover is queer.”

For a moment Wagner despaired of setting her right. She had not listened to him at all. Furthermore, he was now incongruously at full, imperious distension. It would seem to be the moment for a dramatic move.

Suddenly he rolled over on top of her.

She cried, “Hey!” and suggested resistance, but when his hand swooped behind her back and unhooked the brassiere she went limp.

Her bare breasts were undersized. The cups of the garment were stuffed with material that though inorganic must have felt natural enough the night before.

It was too late to hook her up again. He didn’t mind small breasts at all, and after a moment of mental adjustment these seemed more appropriate to her slender body than had the twin melons, but how to convey that to her without offending? His way with words would seem peculiar to the written language. And he sensed that by penetrating her the night before he had lost the authority and respect that had been his as the veteran who had trained her in their profession.

“So now you know,” said she.

“You have a beautiful body.” He had an unexpected inspiration: “You’re like a silver fish.”

“That’s one way to say I’m flat-chested,” Mary Alice said. “Listen,
you’re
not exactly well-built.”

Funny, he would never have said he was, but she was being gratuitously insulting. Nevertheless, it had been he whose action had humiliated her.

So he said, “Don’t argue. You have an exquisite body.” He caressed her delicately.

“I wish you wouldn’t poke at me like a pork chop,” she complained, sliding out of bed onto her feet. Now that she had nothing more to conceal she displayed not even that routine modesty that had seemed natural to every woman with whom Wagner had ever been intimate: perhaps not that extensive a roster, but presumably enough to make the point. A few had on occasion proudly paraded in the nude, but none had ever simply forgotten she was naked, as Mary Alice gave evidence of doing now as she trudged in an almost slatternly stride to the window, to pluck back a piece of the shade and peer down at the street.

“All the creeps are going to work,” she said, making a face as she turned away. “Well, I never did like that stupid job. Good riddance.”

Could the act of love have so altered her character? Nobody at the office had been more eager to please than Mary Alice. Her application to the task and her complaisance had done much to compensate for her lack of ability.

“Please,” said Wagner, having drawn up the bedclothes to cover his groin. “Mark my words, you can walk right back in there this morning and nobody will oppose you.”

She went, slumped, to look at her peevish expression in the mirror over the washstand. Wagner studied her buttocks, which were on the spare side, with proprietary smugness. In one limited but essential way, she was his product. But that was surely another truth he could not effectively have expressed to her, at least not while she was in this mood. Yesterday he could not have imagined a querulous Mary Alice, but neither could he have supposed that he would have shattered her hymen by nightfall.

“Christ,” she said now, at last having looked down, “I’m a mess. Couldn’t you at least have gotten a room with a bath?”

Again this was unfair. It had been she who pulled him towards the hotel, but again he was placating. “I was so drunk yesterday I can’t even remember registering here.”

“Thanks a lot!”

He showed a smile that was intended to be endearing. “I haven’t forgotten you.”

Despite her youth Mary Alice could look aged and downright ugly by means of one scowl. “I bet my parents haven’t forgotten me, either.”

Wagner raised his eyebrows at her.

“Well,” said she, “when would I have had the time to call them? You were
screwing
me all night.”

“That’s not fair.” He found the language as offensive as the charge.

“Then who was it?” she shouted. “An unidentified rapist? Dragged me into this fleabag and brutally forced me to do his bidding?”

“Oh, I see. You mean, that’s going to be the story you tell?”

“Who would believe shit like that?” cried Mary Alice.

“We can invent something better.” Wagner’s own voice was now raised. “Haven’t you got a girl friend with whom you might have spent the night?”

“You idiot,” she barked in her new coarse voice, “in that event why wouldn’t I have phoned home?”

“I wish you wouldn’t take it out on me,” said Wagner, making the effort to lower his own volume. “I’m your friend, and I’m in this with you.”

“
Some friend
,” Mary Alice said bitterly. “You just used me for your own pleasure. How often do you come across a fresh young girl in that old folks’ home?”

Wagner now believed he could recognize it was anxiety that worked the extraordinary alteration in her. She was like the callow male youth in the war movies who panics in battle. Perhaps she needed the slap of a grizzled sergeant.

“Get hold of yourself, Mary Alice, and get washed and put on your clothes.”

“You just hate my body.”

He welcomed her return to the self-deprecating. “Don’t say that.” He got up and went to embrace her.

But she dashed to put the bed between them. “Don’t touch me!” She bent over crossed hands. “Don’t put that thing in me again!”

He raised his arms as though he were being held up at gunpoint. “All right, all right. I don’t know what to say when you’re in this mood. But I tell you your fears are exaggerated. You’ll still have your job and I’ll dream up a good story to tell your parents.”

“Just you take care of me,” said Mary Alice. “Just you promise.”

“I just told you I was going to get you out of what you call a pickle, but I don’t think the situation is that grave.”

“You’re going to have to do a lot more than that, if you expect to get any more of
this
.” She made a very coarse gesture.

Wagner felt a chill, though not on the skin. Surprisingly, the room was well heated by an old iron radiator in the corner. “Let’s get out of here first before we formulate our plans,” said he, now speaking towards the mirror. He leaned forward, his genitals sliding into the washbowl, where he washed them and his hands with a sliver of tan-colored soap that had no doubt been used by a succession of harlots and their clients. There was but one towel, thin as a handkerchief.

Mary Alice was sitting on the far edge of the bed, bent forward, with her spine all bumps. He had an awful suspicion she might be weeping, but in an instant she had risen, gone to the dresser, and begun to chew at a limp triangle of the cold pizza found there.

Wagner decided to limit his conversation to the minimum until he could get away. It was difficult for him to think coherently in Mary Alice’s presence.

She finally got perfunctorily washed and quickly dressed. When she again looked as she had before he had possessed her, he found it easy to believe she still was full-chested and untouched by man. But if he therefore assumed her old manner would return as well, he was in error.