OPUS 21 (41 page)

She was as honest as she's able to be--for a time. Her mother instinct kept her going awhile. But she was soon laying the boys in the back room even though she was doing your cooking, nights. She offered me a deal--and if that doesn't cure you, son--" I racked the brain for a conclusion--"well, go on up and buy a hunk."

He didn't say anything.

I suppose he sat for five minutes.

His face was just--sweaty, like everybody's--and gray, and apparently relaxed.

When he walked over to the window, I thought I'd won, and my nerves gave an inch or two--so I could go on living--a little while longer, myself.

But he leaned way down, lifted his long, slatty leg, stepped out on the terrace, and hopped up on the parapet.

Sixteen stories of straight wall.

I went after the God-damned fool.

He turned around and sat there.

"Don't come any nearer," he said. His voice was like bad brakes.

So I leaned against the sill.

He saw, quicker than I, that his ankles were in range of a dive. He pulled them up, pivoted, and stretched out on the top of the wall. It was cement--about a foot wide. And baking hot. He rocked and wriggled for a minute, took off his coat, folded it, and stuffed it under himself. While doing that, he almost lost his balance. He caught a fingerhold on the inside edge of the concrete, which stuck out over the bricks a half or three-quarters of an inch.

"Paul," I said, "for God's sake, come in."

"I like it here."

"Okay."

"I want to think."

"Help yourself."

"You wouldn't understand."

I went back through the window and into my apartment. I was quivering like a broken spring and my mind wasn't tracking. I shoved into the bathroom and poured a glass of water. Equal parts of fright and fury--as intense as I'd ever felt--slopped the water. I drank what was left. Then I went back to the window.

"Listen," I said. "I can't stop you, if you want to knock yourself off. But this is my apartment. Jump from somewhere else, will you?"

"I haven't decided."

"Well, then, come on in and make up your mind. I'm high-shy. I don't like to stand on that terrace. And seeing a guy--even you--silhouetted against my skyline makes me sick at the stomach."

"It's the only thing I ever heard of that makes you sick!

New experience for you. You like new experiences. Try to get a kick out of it."

"Okay," I said. "Jump, then, you yellow sissy."

He nearly did. He swung around so his legs dangled in the air--all those stories above the sidewalk. His fingers on the concrete rim turned white and his muscles vibrated.

"Paul!" I moaned at the fool.

He pulled back. ''I'm not afraid," he--said--as if to himself and in a surprised tone.

"It's just that--I haven't quite decided."

"Please, cooky!" I put all the begging I have into it.

He shrugged. "Maybe--later."

He let go and fished in his pockets.

"Wait," I said.

I climbed out again with the cigarettes. Possibly--

"Toss 'em!"

I threw one--he reached--and it sailed out of sight, the sun catching it at the top of its arc. I tossed another. He got that one.

"Better go back inside," he said.

He lighted up and commenced to smoke.

I went in.

By then I was beginning to think a little. If I had a rope, I might get it over him.

Only I didn't have a rope. And I might fail on the first try--in which case there probably would not be a second chance. If I could distract him for a bit, I still might grab him.

Only, if there was any slip-up about that--he'd dive the sixteen floors. Well, then--what did you try to remind them of? How bright they were? How young? Or did you keep taunting them until they either went, or gave up? It looked as if that last wasn't right for Paul.

My phone rang.

"Mr. Wylie? This is Mr. Harrison--at the desk." He sounded upset. He's a nice guy--the assistant manager.

I said, "Yes."

His sigh seemed relieved. "Would you mind looking out your window? A woman has just come into the lobby who says there's a man in shirt sleeves sitting on the parapet."

"There is," I said. "It's my nephew, Paul Wilson."

Mr. Harrison laughed uneasily. "Pretty dangerous--"

I glanced at Paul. He was staring straight down again.

"He's on the verge of jumping."

"Jumping!"

"And I can't get near enough to grab him. Whatever you do in a case like this--for God's sake start doing it quick! Only--if anybody tries to snatch him and he knows it--

he'll probably go."

"Oh--my--God!"

"It's a mess. I'm sorry. And I need help. Intelligent help--quick."

"Do what I can."

I went back to the window.

"Who was that?" Paul asked. "Another whore?"

"The management," I said. "You're attracting attention."

He grinned acidly. "I know. Quite a few people already."

"Showing off?"

"Not giving a damn."

I sat down in a chair. I needed to sit down. Presently I called out to him, "If I get Marcia on the phone, will you talk to her?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Because things are past that." He looked up Madison Avenue toward nothing.

"Way, way past that."

I smoked a couple of cigarettes.

Nothing happened. The sun went down a few more inches. I suppose the top of the parapet got cooler. Big, square shadows began to ride up the buildings across the street.

"Paul, come on in! Let's talk. You're in no condition to be doing what you imagine is thinking--and you know it! Anybody can put a period after his life, any time.

What you need is a vacation. A decent one--with jack to spend--maybe at the seashore or up at Lake George. I'll give it to you. I'll persuade Brink you need the time off--"

He laughed--laughed like somebody masticating gravel. "All the dough in the world couldn't buy me off this perch."

"Nobody's trying to buy you. I'm trying to--"

"Oh, shut up. I want to think."

There was a light knock on my door, at that point. I opened it. A cop stood out there and a fireman behind him and Mr. Harrison behind them. The cop had a tough, smart face and he whispered. "Will he jump if we come in?"

"Search me."

"You okay?"

"More or less."

"Can you keep him talking? We're rigging a net in the apartment below there.

We've got a couple of experts on the way, besides. Leave this door ajar--so they can get to your bedroom."

I nodded.

They slipped away.

Paul asked, when I came back, "Who was it?"

"The maid."

He accepted that.

"Cigarette?"

"Thanks."

I got outside and sat on my windowsill, about ten feet from him. "I remember," I said, "the first time it happened to me."

"What happened?"

"The first time I was really in love. Her name was Ruth. She was a little gal.

Light-brown hair and the kind of eyes that look up at you. Little breasts and shy, inquisitive hands. I--"

"Save it for the magazines."

"I was crazy about her. But I had to go to college and I couldn't afford to see her often. Couldn't afford to take her to the proms. A Christmas vacation came around and we threw a party at the house of a friend whose folks had gone south. We all got tight. I missed her when I was dancing--and started looking. I found her upstairs--in a bedroom--

with a guy in my class. After that--"

"--you knew they were just like trolley cars."

"When I was working on the
New Yorker
--I fell again. A gal from Holyoke--"

"Horse manure to Holyoke."

"Paul. What are we supposed to think--to do--when we spend all the energy and time and dough to make a brilliant adult out of a promising kid? By 'we'--I mean at least a hundred men and women. The kid turns out to be super-good. Everybody chips in to make sure he has every possible opportunity. He is tops in his class. He gets an inside hot spot on the most important project in his nation. Every single person who ever knew him-loves him--and is button-popping proud of him. But one day he has his feelings hurt badly--and there's not one thing we can do for him. We try. But it's no dice. So he climbs out of a window and slams about a billion dollars' worth of brains and the time and energy, and hope of other people, to smithereens, on the curb. We bury what's left of him.

And then we sit around asking each other what the use is. Our best wasn't good enough for him or for us. We keep asking ourselves what the hell he did expect of life--and of us-

-that he didn't get."

Paul at least listened--which was a clue: he'd listen to a piece about himself.

But he said coldly, "Your values are pretty sleazy, Phil. Only a day or two ago, you were telling me that we physicists had sinned. That we deserved to be punished. That all we'd done was evil. Now--because you're in a corner--physics is suddenly the most important thing in the nation. May I repeat--horse manure!"

"Sins of omission," I said. "You guys think of yourselves as honest--and you are, in one way. About science, you don't cheat or lie, ever. It's the solitary triumph of our age. And look at the results. Progress in objectivity accelerates by a factor of hundreds---

thousands--in a couple of centuries. I'm for that. But that--alone--isn't enough. You birds look at your objective integrity as if it were all there is to virtue. It's not. Listen, Paulo.

There are two functions of virtue: one is to find new truths; the other is to dispel old lies; the whole man practices both, equally."

"Grant that--but don't we educate people as fast as we can?"

I shook my head. "Look at you. The scientific description of your situation on this bloody shelf is known to tens of thousands. But not to you. You're the victim of old lies.

You're about to toss yourself into the late afternoon because you were so busy learning new truths in physics that you never bothered to dispel the old lies in your psychology.

You're a damned anachronism! A burnt offering to Woman. You're a puppet of a lot of myths and legends and poor child training. You might as well be a pagan male virgin--

offered up to some fat, female goddess by your tribe. A man that isn't a man. A scientist from the neck up--and a howling heathen from the waist down. Unaware of the fact. A pretty picture!"

"I suppose," he said with the utmost bitterness, "that I would be sitting in your apartment chortling happily--if I had ideals like yours. The scientific integrity of a whore-master."

"My ideals," I said, "at least keep a mediocre author plugging to the end. Yours, apparently won't save one of the world's top mathematicians from one lousy pair of legs."

"That's all you feel about a woman!"

"That's all
you
feel! Fate took away your candy and now you won't play. It was public candy, anyhow--and only good for all the boys. You wouldn't face that. But if you want to love women realistically, that's just what you'll have to face, among a lot of other things. Love lies a long way beyond Marcia's behavior." I tried to grin at him. ''I'm supposed to be a psychologist, myself. There should be a way by which I could persuade what's left of your senses to stop playing Prometheus and get off your rock."

"Outsmart me?"

"Shouldn't I be able? If my dope's any good?"

"It isn't any good, though. Just a flashy bunch of extrapolation and phony biology.

You're no real philosopher, Phil."

"Maybe not. Still--it isn't my product. It's Jung's. He's something of a brain."

"Horse manure."

"There is plenty of it down there in the street," I said. "If you want to add yourself--by a method that will make you indistinguishable from the rest of it--"

He doubled up his fist and smacked the concrete. "Can't you see I'm tormented--

?"

I shook my head a few times. "Yeah. Everybody can--for blocks."

He began to sob. I inched up from the sill and braced myself. All it would take was about one tear-blinded second--

He must have heard something on the floor below because he stopped gasping, suddenly, and leaned way out. Then he began hitching along the wall. He hitched right past me--his eyes on mine the whole way--and I have never seen any eyes exactly like that, before. They knew what was going on behind them--and didn't know. They weren't maniacal--but they were not sane, either.

When he was well beyond my reach, he looked down again and then hitched some more. He passed the corner of my apartment and came to the end of the parapet. A flat brick wall, rising for fifteen feet, made a backstop for him. He was in a corner. And there weren't any windows below him--because that was how the architect had designed the building. The net idea was out. And so, I thought, was the idea of some sort of expert jump at him from an unexpected angle. Unless the roof offered possibilities. I'd never been up there.

I walked down the terrace.

"That's near enough," Paul said.

I leaned on the hot parapet and looked down. About a thousand people had gathered in Madison Avenue--though it had been almost empty an hour before. In spite of the heat wave, in spite of the desertedness of the whole city, there they were--like bugs spilled out of a tin can. Cops among them--hollering and waving traffic through.

Every insect was white on top where the neck had craned the face up toward us.

I let myself absorb the vertical drop until I was weak.

Vertigo gets to me fast. My psychiatrist said he thought it was a symbol--in my case--for striving. I spent too much effort trying to get to some summit where skill, not effort, alone could take anybody. And the struggle was reflected as a physical horror of high places. There must have been something in it, because after assimilating the idea, I was at least able to live in high rooms without feeling queasy. But there may be even more in it--since I still get sick, hanging around the edge of sixteen-story walls.

Paul also was looking down at all the people and the people constantly arriving.

' I'm going in," I said.

He hardly paid any attention.