The Seventh Candidate (29 page)

Worse, when he scrutinized the “upholders of
order” he became aware that something had happened to them too.
Some policemen wore no tie. Others sported beards and long hair.
One was actually smoking a thin cigarette that stank like
smoldering hay. Again he remembered the great impeccable
black-uniformed figure of his father.

Lorz began visiting
Crossroads
every day.

The idea, he told himself, was to protect
Theo in case of trouble. The form this protection would take, given
the director’s slight build and fear of overt violence, wasn’t
clear in his mind. In any case, he dedicated his lunch-break to his
new employee. It was a little like that mad month-long pursuit in
the hospital corridors, he sometimes thought. He’d stride
stiff-legged down these other, subterranean, corridors or jog at
tremendous speed up and down the escalators. Sometimes he
encountered Theo on one of the numerous platforms of the giant
station. More often, unfortunately, in the corridors. There was
less danger, Lorz thought, when Theo worked on the platforms. They
were never empty even in the afternoon. It was different in the
maze of the corridors. The director couldn’t help picturing his
employee in the comparative solitude of those white-tiled tunnels,
an easy prey for teenage thugs.

Actually the boy was seldom alone there.
There was nearly always a knot of bystanders about him as about the
underground musicians or jugglers or sword-swallowers. In terms of
pure virtuosity Theo outdid these. No poster went uncorrected, even
ones that to the director’s trained eyes seemed unmarred. The boy
also undertook the rectification of posters vandalized, in the
director’s opinion, beyond cosmetic repair.

Nothing found grace in his eyes. Nothing put
him off. Nothing distracted him. No sooner had he finished with one
poster than his gaze fastened on the next one as he leaped down
from the ladder. Without looking away he’d squat before the
knapsack and his keen-sighted hands would choose the correct
bottles for the new task.

Lorz was careful to keep on the outskirts of
the small crowd. He didn’t want to distract Theo, he told himself.
Actually there was little danger of this happening. The boy was
wholly dedicated to the war on the graffiti. He saw nothing but the
posters, the afflicted thighs, arms, smiles, forests, breaking
seas, skies. The only faces he seemed aware of were the giant
printed ones and what marred them.

Lorz would stand there at an angle that
allowed him an unimpeded view of the boy’s profile and hands. He
would watch Theo and move with him down the corridor, as in a
museum, pursuing masterpieces. He would go on watching and then
suddenly remember to look about and scrutinize the spectators about
him for dangerous faces. That was the reason, after all, he was
there. Then he would return his attention to Theodore.

At first, from one visit to another there was
a complete turnover of the bystanders. But in the second week of
his visits, the director became aware of a soft ageless man with a
lumpish face and curious long yellow hair. Hadn’t he already been
watching Theodore last week in some other corridor? But where else
had the director seen him? He had a memory block

The fifth time Lorz joined Theodore, in
the corridor leading to the
West Gate
terminus trains now, the man was there again and sent the
director a long-lashed gaze and a smile of recognition. “We meet
again, Edmond,” he murmured. Stiff-featured, the director didn’t
acknowledge the greeting. Didn’t he work? Didn’t he have other
things to do than to follow the director’s employee about? Lorz
strode away.

The next day, the director joined the knot
of spectators about Theodore’s ladder before panel 169 in
the
Summer
Hill
corridor. At the
same moment that Lorz perceived the man again, Theo broke free of
the images and recognized the director. The boy stood immobile on
the top step, staring at his employer, clearly awaiting
instructions. Their roles were reversed. Now it was Lorz who was
being obstructive. For of course he had no instructions to give.
The boy’s performance was almost frightening in its perfection and
by his presence Lorz had interrupted it.

The small crowd was looking at both of them.
Lorz went into long and perfectly superfluous observations
regarding the brush-size and shade of green for the poster, clearly
establishing the nature of their relationship. He ended with dry
praise for the work accomplished.

The lumpy-faced man with the long yellow
hair sidled up. “O marvelous, Edmond, you’re a friend of his. Why
don’t you introduce me?” The director looked away from that
unbearable face, muttering: “He’s my employee. Go away, I don’t
know you.”

“Of course you do, Edmond,” the man
persisted, placing his hand on Lorz’s chest.

“Go away!” Everybody was looking at them.
Had he shouted?

The director shoved the man away. He
retreated, eyes wide with fear. Lorz advanced on him and shoved
harder, not really a violent shove, but the man lost his balance.
He staggered backward and his head thudded against the sheep of the
poster. The man slumped to a squat. A blood stain was visible on
the illusory softness of the fleece above him. He shook his head in
a daze, touched his head, stared at his red fingers and, moaning,
struggled to his feet.

“You murderer!” he shouted, choked by sobs.
“I’m bleeding to death, you murderer, Edmond Lorz, you murderer
you!”

All that blood as the consequence of a
little shove. There was an absurd disproportion between cause and
effect, like flicking a pebble down a rocky slope and unleashing a
landslide. Lorz was aware that Theo high on his ladder was staring
at the two of them or perhaps at the red stain on the sheep he
would have to cosmetize in a few minutes.

“Help me! I’m bleeding to death! Murderer!
Murderer!”

Three passing youths stared at them both and
grinned broadly. The director turned his back on the knot of
spectators (spectators now of himself and the other) and rapidly
left the corridor.

The other was still shouting, “Murderer!
Murderer!” to his back.

The image of the bloody sheep was still in
Lorz’s mind as emerged from the corridor onto the platform and
hurried into the waiting train.

But in a few minutes Theo’s expert brush
would efface the evidence of Lorz’s first act of violence outside
of persistent fantasy. The thought of the blood stain vanishing
beneath the flow of Basic White calmed him.

After that incident Lorz found it impossible
to mount guard over his employee in the passageways. His new
strategy was to locate Theo in a corridor – when this was possible
– and wait at a distance until he emerged onto a train platform.
Then he would survey the boy from the opposite platform.

But he was often frustrated and returned to
the office without having really seen Theodore. Sometimes he came
upon the boy (attended by his court) rectifying the beginning of a
corridor so enormously long that there was no hope his employee
would ever reach a platform during Lorz’s long lunch-break
(1:30pm-3:00pm).

Even worse were the days when the director
couldn’t locate the boy at all. Theodore had the list of
Ideal
panel numbers but never
cosmetized the posters in methodical order. This meant – assuming
his employee hadn’t been taken bleeding to a hospital – that he
could be working anywhere in the giant station. Lorz was exhausted
from the start at the thought of the twenty-four train platforms
and the labyrinth of corridors and stairs awaiting him.

Days went by without the director catching
sight of the boy during the lunch time visits. It was more and more
like that month’s hopeless search for him in the hospital
corridors.

When he was able to, he surveyed his new
employee from a non-distracting distance on the opposite platform,
often from behind a vending machine. It wasn’t really a
satisfactory arrangement. Half the time the trains pulling in and
out from opposite directions concealed Theodore. And in case of an
emergency how would he be able to get over to other platform in
time?

One day from his vantage point behind the
vending machine he saw the lumpy-faced yellow-haired man on the
other platform, looking about fearfully and then slipping onto a
bench near Theodore on his ladder. He pretended to be reading a
newspaper. Lorz was certain he was staring at Theo above the paper
screen. With a show of indifference, the man changed his position
on the bench as Theo pushed his wheeled ladder further off to
another poster. Now he got up and contemplated his image in the
mirror of a vending machine directly behind Theodore.

The director stepped out from behind his own
vending machine. He was practically by himself on the platform. The
man’s hands froze in the gesture of primping his hair. He’d seen
Lorz.

A train roared in, masking Theodore’s
platform.

When it slid away the man was gone.

This victory seemed to justify Lorz’s
presence. So far, it was true, nothing really serious had
materialized. The nearest thing to violence in any way involving
Theodore was the violence – if the word wasn’t too strong for a
couple of pushes – exercised by the director himself against the
lumpy-faced individual.

But at any moment violence could erupt. He
guarded Theodore for three hours at best out of the twenty-five
hours a week the boy worked in the underground. There was another
problem too. What exactly would he do if violence broke out when he
was present? It wasn’t until June 15 – Theodore had been down in
the underground for almost three months by then – that the director
was forced to cope with that situation.

That afternoon on the
East Gate
platform, half-concealed behind a
peppermint vending machine, he observed a dangerous looking duo in
iron-studded leather jackets staring at his employee busy on his
ladder. His vulnerable back was turned to them.

One of the toughs said something to him. The
boy went on with his correction. He didn’t know they existed. The
two drew closer and started rocking the ladder. Theodore’s hand
stopped. He seemed to be emerging from a trance. He turned around
and looked down at them.

The director was helpless. No question of
jumping down from his platform and negotiating the third rails to
reach Theo’s platform. A sign with a skull warned: Five Thousand
Volts!

A train pulled in, concealing them. The
director had to take the long unheroic way across. He raced down
his platform, up a flight of stairs, across to the second flight of
stairs and down.

When he ran out gasping onto the platform
the two toughs had vanished. There was a spattering of red paint on
the pavement. Teddy was back rectifying the poster. Lorz collapsed
on a bench near him and decided that from now on he’d stay on
Theo’s platform. He couldn’t even recall the reason (if it existed)
why he’d maintained such great distance between himself and his
employee.

The second incident was far more serious.
It occurred a week later on the
Riverside Terminus
platform at 3:10pm. The director was
sitting on a bench close to his employee. At regular intervals he
looked up from the magazine on his lap to scan the passersby and
admire Theodore’s performance. Then he returned very briefly to the
magazine whose contents hardly registered on his mind. Now Theo
finished cleaning up the bra ad and pushed the ladder to the next
panel. The director looked about and changed his position on the
bench, maintaining the same careful distance from his
employee.

A middle-aged cowboy with a seamed gnawed
face drew close to Theodore’s ladder. He was perhaps the fifth
madman the director had seen in an hour. The underground swarmed
with them as never before. This one wore a Stetson, a deerskin vest
and decorated varnished boots with spurs. He had a long naked knife
thrust in his silver-buckled belt. He was arguing bitterly with
himself. Now he started arguing with Theodore’s back.

Theo was rectifying Helena. She was high on
a swing in an old fashioned white dress and a broad brimmed hat. It
was the first of five identical posters. The director got up
quietly and stood behind the madman. He fixed his gaze on the man’s
right hand and the knife.

The underground exploded. There were cries
and screams all about him, quickly covered by the thunder.
Everybody on the platform except the director, the cowboy and Theo
scrambled up on the benches. The director bolted the wrong way
toward the edge of the platform.

The first of the roaring motorcycles sailed
down over the stairs, skimming the tiled vault overhead, followed
by a second, and then a third.

The riders were in black leather. They wore
enormous goggles. Their skulls were naked. They were crouched
nearly flat over the handlebars. The machines briefly touched down
on the middle steps of the flight and leaped up again prodigiously
and then arced down toward the platform.

In the split second before the front wheel
of the first motorcycle touched down on the platform the director
recognized them from the cover of an issue of the newsmagazine he
and Theo had corrected. The title
Doom Riders!
had blared forth in red above one of them on his
vast machine bearing down on the reader. He had the celebrated
oiled bare skull – they scorned crash helmets – and a ferocious
Samurai scowl.

Petrified at the edge of the platform, the
director experienced the split-second total recall of a man facing
imminent destruction (not the traditional total recall of his life
but total recall of the Doom Rider article).