Seconds (6 page)

“Oh, yes,” the woman said, “the company's very up to date. The whole idea is to treat the client as a complete person and make him feel at home, whether at work or play. Only, the difference is that we
care.
I mean, our entire purpose is to serve the client. His happiness is all that's important to us. Really,” she added, waltzing her fingers playfully across his chest, “if we don't succeed in providing that service, then we've failed. That's what our president says, over and over.”

“I'm sure that's right,” Wilson said, remembering the kind-faced old man who had conversed with him so reassuringly the night before. “As a matter of fact, that's supposed to be the guiding principle in banking nowadays, too. We adopted a new motto a few years ago, for instance. ‘The Friendly Bank.' ” He smiled drowsily. “Of course, it didn't make any difference. We didn't care any more about our clients, personally, than before, but our public relations man made a very strong case at the time for that motto. He said, as I recall, that people were terribly anxious to feel that they were wanted, and that if our corporate image—that was his phrase, not mine—if our corporate image could only wear a friendly smile, why then they would come flocking to us with their funds. Well, nothing happened. I suppose it was because we were still too strongly bound to the old tradition, thinking that people wanted us to handle their money, when they really wanted us to love them . . . Now,” he added, from the depths of his sleepiness, “that's a strange thing for a banker to say.”

“But you're right. That's the whole point—loving.
We
love you, Mr. Wilson. Yes we do.” Her voice seemed inexpressibly soothing to him now, and with a sigh of gratitude, he turned toward her. “You just cuddle up and forget about everything,” she went on, drawing his head down so that his face nestled into the warmth of her bosom, and clasping him close with a faint rocking motion of her arms. “Isn't that better now?”

“Mmmmm.”

“You're going to sleep, aren't you?”

“Mmmmm.”

“That's the boy. That's the good boy.” She continued the rocking motion and at the same time began to hum softly what sounded like a little nursery tune, which sent a purr flowing from her body to his. He seemed to be sinking deliciously into a fragrant sea of tenderness, lulled by her faraway voice. “That's my goodykins. That's my sweet lamb . . .” The sea received him entirely. It was warm, protective, and wholly his, and it caressed him sweetly with the vibrations of her lullaby.

H
e regained consciousness only once during the operation. He was lying on his stomach, his head turned to one side, and when his eyes opened, he beheld the naked body of a man occupying a similar position on an operating table some six feet distant. The face, turned his way, seemed familiar, and the longer he examined it, the more convinced he became that it was his own, but unpleasantly distorted, as if it were paralyzed in some fixity of emotion—laughter or fright, he could not tell which.

At any rate, Wilson assumed that he was seeing his own body, perhaps reflected in a mirror or possibly projected through some hallucination produced by drugs, and so he was concerned to see a man in white bend over the naked figure and begin to pluck delicately at the eyebrows with a pair of tweezers. Wilson waited for the prickings of pain; they did not come. He tried to move his hand up toward the eye, in vain, but when he sought to speak he produced a kind of grunt that encouraged him to try again. It was here that the man in white stopped his work, turned, and gave a peremptory signal. Someone clapped a rubber mask on Wilson's face, and he sank regretfully into oblivion once more.

When he at last awoke, he was in bed in what had every semblance of being a private room in a hospital. The walls were white. There was an odor of disinfectant. On the table beside the bed was a gay bouquet of flowers with a card bearing the words: “Warm personal regards—Charley.” There was a transistor radio, too, softly tuned to symphonic music, and stacked beside it were several paperback mystery novels.

Wilson's face felt prickly. He reached up to touch it and saw that his fingers were wrapped in bandages; he thought that his face was bandaged, too, but because of his wrapped hands, could not be sure. Finally, he managed to work his pajama sleeve up above his wrist, so that he could press his face with the bare flesh there, and he was able to confirm his first impression. The entire lower part of his face was apparently bound by tape and gauze, and his jaws throbbed rather painfully. He moved his arms and legs in an exploratory way, and wriggled his toes; he was relieved to find that only his face and fingers seemed to have been involved in the operation.

A nurse appeared, all in white.

“Doctor is coming,” she whispered reverently, and vanished.

Wilson continued to take inventory of his physical condition. He tried to speak, but could only croak dismally. His throat was sore, and he wondered if the surgeons had not fiddled with his vocal apparatus, too, to change his voice. Would his baritone now be bass or tenor? Or would it be higher than that . . . ? The disturbing thought crossed his mind that the company's medical men might have officiously made some permanent and radical alteration which, while it certainly would reduce the chances of his future identification, would never have received his prior approval. He wished that the nurse had addressed him by name. Would it be Mr. Wilson still, or Miss Wilson? He shuddered at the idea; but managed to gain some reassurance when he pressed his bandaged fingers around the area concerned, and felt no pain.

“Doctor is here,” whispered the nurse, appearing once more.

The gentleman who entered the room was dressed not in a surgeon's smock but in a black suit, like a clergyman's. He was lean and grey, and his face bore the scars of some terrible accident, which gave him an impressive expression of spiritual agony.

“All right, Wilson, just lie quietly,” he declared, somewhat brusquely, sitting beside the bed and staring at its occupant in a penetrating way. “You can't talk yet because we yanked all your teeth and you're sore all up and down, eh? So I'll do the talking.” He seemed almost to enjoy Wilson's alarmed movement at the news about the teeth. “You'll feel better in a few days, though. Don't worry. And later on when you get a look at that new mug we're giving you you'll be prancing about like a stud bull, no doubt. Just be patient for a while, until we can get you ready for the world again.”

The doctor at this point held up a folded newspaper before Wilson's eyes. It was opened to an interior page where the obituaries were carried; one of these items had been circled in red ink. Wilson saw that it was his own death notice, but before he could read more than the first few lines, the doctor took the paper away again.

“You were found very nicely dead of a stroke in a hotel,” he said. “All quite ordinary and simple, just as you were told it would be. Funeral services tomorrow. And then you'll be cremated. Any questions?” He grinned rather wolfishly at Wilson. “Since you can't ask any, I'll have to guess them . . . As for your operation, we've begun grafting and ironing out, plus a chin-lift and earlobe trim, all of which will take about ten years off your appearance. We had to yank the teeth, you know, but you've got permanent choppers in place now, and in a week you won't know the difference . . . No, we didn't castrate you, Wilson. That's something every man seems to have on his mind . . . When I say ‘we,' I speak editorially, of course. I'm the house physician, in permanent residence, not a surgeon, but your face was carved up by two of the best grafters in the business, and very high-priced, too.”

Wilson was uneasily struck by the doctor's almost sarcastic manner of speech, and it occurred to him, too, that the man's scarred face was not the most eloquent testimony to the skill of plastic surgery.

The doctor seemed to divine his thought. “You're wondering if you won't turn out like this?” he asked, tapping one marked cheek. “Set your mind at rest, Wilson. It takes money to pay these flesh mechanics. You had the price. I didn't and don't quite yet. That's the simple answer . . .” He frowned moodily at his fingernails. “They keep promising me next month, but it's always next month, and somehow there's always a backlog of clients to be worked up first. Which is true enough . . .”

He sighed, then gave Wilson a sharp look. “You think you're the only one today? Not on your life, Wilson. There were eight of you shuttling in and out of surgery all during the night. Eight. Don't you believe me? Take a look at this . . .” He whipped open the newspaper again to the obituary page. “Fifteen gents are listed here, each one rich enough to warrant a few paragraphs, and eight of 'em are right here in this building now, alive and kicking under bandages, like yourself . . . One cheapskate bought suicide, and—let's see—three others went out second-class, and the rest, you included, took cerebrals . . . Eight in one day. And that's nothing. Sometimes we handle ten or twelve, especially in the dog-days in late summer, when everybody's depressed and wanting a change. Can you imagine what that means, Wilson? Something like three thousand guys produced every year right on our tables. If I had a buck for every hunk of meat and skin chopped off there, I'd be a rich man . . . All I know is, I'd hate to be in the Cadaver Procurement Section in the busy season. If business expands any more, they'll have to start making 'em out of plastic to fill their orders. We've got a research department working on some of these problems. For example, how long can you keep a stiff in cold storage and still fool the medical examiners? That kind of thing . . . Pigmentation, too. We can get plenty of bodies from Latin America, but most of 'em are on the short side, and then the skin tends to be darkish. You can mess around with features all you like, but you can't just slap on a coat of white paint and expect the survivors to be happy, can you? Well, we'll solve that one, too, in time. As it is, we're using the Latins for a lot of our second-class jobs, where details aren't so important . . . Even so, Wilson, there are some slip-ups now and then. We're only human. Last week, for instance, there was a big stink. This client said he wanted a real professional piece of work, which was understandable because he was ugly as sin. Well, as it turned out, the mechanics had some trouble with his nose, or maybe his jaw. They got off pattern somehow, but they figured he looked pretty good anyway, and so they finished the job and packed him off to his beautiful new life—with him looking like the image of Franklin Roosevelt. Not bad, huh? Except this moneybags happened to have been honorary Republican state finance chairman somewhere at one time. Boy, did he raise hell when he saw a mirror! But there was nothing they could do about it, so this rich bastard is out in the world today, I guess, a walking reminder of the good old New Deal . . . There's a kind of poetic justice in that, Wilson, don't you think so? . . . Wilson? Well, I see you're asleep again . . . Guess I shook you up a little, didn't I? They handed you all that crap about love and rebirth, and now you find out it's just a butcher shop, like everything else, so you don't want to hear about it . . .”

F
or the next several days Wilson remained in a state of lassitude, unvisited except by the nurse, who tended to his physical needs, and by the doctor, who occasionally appeared to poke the various bandaged areas, and to ask, “This hurt much?” Each time, the pain was less, and Wilson's voice returned gradually, too, which he found convenient, since hitherto he had been unable to communicate his wants except by signs, inasmuch as his wrapped fingers were unable to hold a pencil for writing.

On the fourth day, a little bushy-haired man entered, lugging what seemed to be a small square suitcase, which he opened on the floor, out of Wilson's line of sight, and tinkered with for a few moments.

“Excuse me, sir,” the little man said finally, straightening up and drawing a chair close to the bed. “My name is Davalo. I'm your guidance adviser.” He smiled in a self-deprecatory way at the use of the title. “I have reference to your future career.”

“I'm afraid I haven't thought much about that,” said Wilson, truthfully.

“Pardon me, but you have, sir.”

“I'm sorry . . . ?”

“Permit me, please.” Mr. Davalo stooped toward the hidden suitcase. There was a sharp click, followed by a gentle whirring sound like that of a recording machine, which Wilson deduced it was when he heard his own voice issuing from its general direction:

“I want a big ball, a big red ball,” Wilson's voice chanted solemnly. “A big big ball, a red one . . .”

Mr. Davalo plunged at the machine. “I'm sorry,” he muttered, grunting with the effort of bending. “I'm afraid we picked you up a bit too early.” He cleared his throat in an embarrassed way. “We recorded this while you were under gas, you see, and there's always a touch of infantilism to begin with, but later”—he stood up, slightly flushed—“we develop a more mature expressional infrastructure . . . and if you'll bear with me, sir, I believe I have located it now.”

Once more Mr. Davalo turned on the recording machine. His own voice was the first to be heard. In a wheedling tone, it inquired:

“What would you like to do most of all? Most of anything in the whole world? Hmmm?”

“Most of anything?” responded Wilson's voice.

“Of anything.”

“Well, um. I'd like to be a tennis king, like Bill Tilden. That's what I'd like most.”

“Yes, I see. Well, and what after that?”

“That's all.”

“Ahem. Well, suppose you couldn't be a tennis king, for some reason. You'd have to do something else, wouldn't you? Of course. Well, you think about it, and you tell me what that something else would be.”