Something Happened

  "I don't have to. I get all I want from you."

  "I think the bitch is stealing one of our cars. He started to say something at dinner last night and she gave him a look."

  "I'll ask her."

  "I'll trap her. Make dinner tonight. I like trapping her."

  "You're sure coming home a lot these days."

  "So what?"

  "I didn't mean anything. I'm glad."

  "Neither did I."

  "And you don't have to yell."

  "And I'm not yelling. I don't see why I can't raise my voice around here once in a while without being accused of yelling. Everyone else does. You do. I don't know what you're so edgy about."

  "You're the one who's edgy this morning. I'm glad when you come home. You even whistle. Maybe you're starting to enjoy being here with us."

  "Of course I do."

  "Is everything all right?"

  "Everything's fine. And would be even better if you stopped asking me if everything's all right."

  "I knew it wouldn't last until you got out of the kitchen."

  "No wonder I can't wait to get to work."

  "If anything's wrong at the office I wish you'd tell me."

  "Everything is fine."

  "What's wrong?" Green demands of me bluntly as soon as I get to work.

  "Wrong?"

  "I said it loudly enough." (Oh, Christ--he's in a mood also, and he's taken me unawares.) "Nothing."

  "Don't lie to me."

  His exophthalmic eyes are glaring at me with moist and sadistic petulance, and his sensual face is hot and beady around the brows and mouth. Green will normally not allow himself to perspire where other people can see him. (I wonder if he is bothered more this morning by his thyroid deficiency or his enlarged prostate.) He is wearing a large, soft, box-plaid camel suit with notched, wide lapels and a gray vertical weave and fine violet lines, and can get away with it. The rest of us have to wait for festivals and expositions, although box-plaid slacks are okay on weekends at barbecues, marinas, and country clubs. Green is a flamboyant presence with an overwhelming vocabulary that keeps most of his superiors in the company aloof and ill at ease. Horace White shuns him like the plague. Green courts Horace White; White flees from him toward Black, who despises Green and vilifies him openly; Green retreats, nursing his wounds.

  "Black is an animal," Green has complained to me. "An ape. There's no point talking to him."

  Black is an anti-Semite. Green waits and regards me truculently from behind his desk as though I were to blame for his thyroid, prostate, colitis, or Black.

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "Don't lie to me unconvincingly," he begins almost before I finish, as though he can anticipate my replies. "It's all right to lie if I don't suspect you. I'm your boss. Don't lie to anyone around here unconvincingly if you want to keep working for me. I don't want anyone working for me to be held in contempt by anyone but me."

  "My fucking wife."

  "Don't use that word with me."

  "You asked me, didn't you?"

  "I'm not Andy Kagle."

  "I wouldn't tell that to Andy Kagle."

  "I like your wife."

  "No, you don't, Jack. So do I. What's wrong?"

  "I've had four wives and you've never heard me say anything uncomplimentary about any one of them, even though I've hated them all."

  "She's not so crazy about you."

  "Don't tattle."

  "She thinks you're a bastard because you wouldn't let me speak at the convention."

  "Stop using her."

  "Oh, come on, Jack. You don't like her that much."

  "I don't like her at all, if you want to stay on that subject. Would you like me to tell you why?"

  "No."

  "She drinks too much at some parties and not enough at others. She's stiff and uncomfortable and makes other people that way. She gives off clouds of social uneasiness at company affairs the way other people give off smells."

  "I said I didn't want you to."

  "She isn't much. She isn't rich and she isn't famous or social and she won't help you and she won't help me."

  "You asked me what was wrong, didn't you?"

  "And you're using your wife to avoid telling me."

  "I'm not. What are you in such a bad mood about?"

  "Why are you in a good mood?"

  "I'm not, now."

  "You're sulking, now," he retorts, grimacing, in a cadence of echoing ridicule, and I surmise that he too may be vulnerable to that squirting impulse to mimic hatefully someone who is vexing him unbearably.

  It's called echolalia.

  It's called echolalia (the uncontrollable and immediate repetition of words spoken by another person. I looked it up. Ha, ha).

  Ha, ha.

  Ha, ha.

  (It can go on forever.)

  It can go on forever.

  "Shouldn't I be?" I ask.

  "Shouldn't you be?" he asks.

  "What's up, Jack?"

  "What's up, Jack?" I expect to hear him reply to me in my own voice, as in a nightmare (as I often hear myself lashing back at my wife or daughter in their own voices when I am too riled up and discom-bobulated to think of a more mature way of hurting).

  "Have you been out somewhere sniffing around after a better job?" I hear him inquire instead.

  "Better job?"

  "You won't find one without my help."

  "Should I be?"

  "You wouldn't even know where to look."

  "What's wrong with my position here?"

  I feel myself beginning to perspire.

  "You're starting to sweat," he says.

  "I'm not."

  "It's on your face and coming through your shirt. Why do you give me asinine denials? You know I wasn't asking you what was wrong before when I asked you what was wrong. I didn't mean wrong. I was asking you what was right. I was being sarcastic. You've been acting funny. And I don't mean funny when I say funny. I mean strange. And I don't mean strange, either. I mean buoyant. You've been doing a lot of whistling around here lately."

  "I didn't realize."

  "And you don't stay on key. You must think you're the only one in the company who ever heard of Mozart. You've been making yourself pleasant to a lot of people here I don't like. Kagle, Horace White, Arthur Baron. Lester Black. Even Johnny Brown, and you make more money than he does."

  "It's my job. I do work for them."

  "Fawning? Let me handle all the fawning for the department. I'm better at it than you. They enjoy watching me fawn. Nobody cares about you."

  "Kagle?"

  "Kagle's through," he snaps impatiently with a glow of satisfaction. "He spits when he talks and walks with a limp. I could have his job. I probably could. I wouldn't take it. I don't want to sell. Peddling is demeaning. Peddling yourself is most demeaning. I know. I've been trying to peddle myself into a vice-presidency and haven't been able to, and that's most demeaning of all, when you peddle yourself and fail. If you tell anyone I said that, I'll deny it and fire you. The company won't fire you, but I will. I will, you know. Red Parker."

  "What about him?"

  "Steer clear of him. He's been going downhill ever since his wife was killed in that automobile crash."

  "I feel sorry for him."

  "I don't. He wasn't that fond of her when she was alive. He drinks too much and does no work. Steer clear of people going downhill. The company values that. The company values rats that know when to desert a sinking ship. You've been using his apartment."

  "I wash up. I bring my wife there too."

  "You've been acting like a simpering college fool with that young girl in the Art Department."

  "No, I haven't," I reply defensively. (Now my pride is stung.) "Jack, that's only kidding." (I can feel my eyes welling with tears. They must be moist as his own.) "She isn't pretty enough. Her salary's small."

  "You flirt."

  "I have a reputation for arrogance and eccentricity to protect
me. You haven't. You're only what you're doing. I have rose fever. If I look like crying, it's allergenic. What's so funny?"

  "I wish I could use a word like that."

  "You can't. Not while I'm around to use a better one. You can't think as quickly as I can, either. You don't have style enough to be as eloquent and glib as I am, so don't even try. That girl won't help you. Go for wealthy divorcees, other men's wives, and attractive widows."

  "Widows aren't that plentiful to come by."

  "Read the obituary pages. You're smiling again."

  "You're funny."

  "But you aren't supposed to be laughing now. Slocum, you're in trouble and you don't seem to know it. And I don't like that."

  "Why am I in trouble?"

  "Because you work for me. And you've been too 'fucking' cheerful for my taste."

  "I thought you didn't want that word."

  "You don't seem as much afraid of me as you used to be."

  "I am, right now."

  "I don't mean, right now."

  "Why should I be afraid?"

  "And I don't like that. It makes me afraid. The last thing this Jack Green wants is someone secure enough in his job with me to walk around whistling Mozart's Great Mass in C Minor--I looked it up. Don't grin. You're as easy to impress as the rest of them. What baffles me is how you know it."

  "I know a girl who--"

  "I can be that pretentious here. You can't. I don't want whistlers working for me. I want drunkards, ulcers, migraines, and high blood pressure. I want people who are afraid. I'm the boss and I'm supposed to get what I want. Do you know what I want?"

  "Good work."

  "I want spastic colitis and nervous exhaustion. You've been losing weight too, haven't you? I've got spastic colitis. Why shouldn't you? I take these pills. I want you to take them. Want one?"

  "No."

  "You will, if you want to keep working for me and ever make a speech at the convention. God dammit, I want the people working for me to be worse off than I am, not better. That's the reason I pay you so well. I want to see you right on the verge. I want it right out in the open. I want to be able to hear it in a stuttering, flustered, tongue-tied voice. Bob, I like you best of all when you can't get a word out because you don't know what that word should be. I'm not going to let you speak at the convention this year either. But you won't know that, even though I'm telling you. You won't be sure. Because I'm going to change my mind and let you prepare and rehearse another three-minute speech on the chance I might not change my mind again. But I will. Don't trust me. I don't trust flattery, loyalty, and sociability. I don't trust deference, respect, and cooperation. I trust fear. Now, that's a fluent demonstration of articulation and eloquence, isn't it? You could never do something like that, could you?"

  "What's wrong, Jack?" I repeat lamely, almost whining, with a weakness that makes me abject. "Why are you doing this?"

  "I have the best paid department in the company. You're stuck here."

  "I know that."

  "I get criticism for the high salaries I pay."

  "I know that."

  "Unless I decide to fire you. I'm stuck here too. Do you know that also? I want inferior people with superior minds who feel in their bones their lives would be over if they lost their jobs with me. And I want that to be true. Now it's visible, now it's coming right out in the open where I want it. Now you're afraid. Yes. Go ahead, Bob, relax--hide your hands in your pockets. They're trembling."

  (I would kill him if I dared.) "Why do you want me to be afraid?"

  "You work for me! I can fire you, you damned idiot. And so can two hundred other people neither one of us even knows about. Do you doubt it?"

  "Christ, no."

  "Isn't that reason enough? I can bully and degrade you anytime I want."

  Oh, Christ, yes--he's got the whammy on me still. He can't fire me; but every cell inside me is convinced he can and bursts open in panic. (My mind has a brain. My glands don't.) And I do not trust myself to reply without stuttering disgracefully, effeminately, a sissy. I do not feel I can unblock my mouth, unlock my tongue, and unlimber all my cheek and lip muscles to try a single word until I have sorted through all possible sounds and selected what that first word should be. And at least the one behind it, which might guide me safely to the next. (If I keep my sentence short, I might get out a complete one. I must begin with a one-syllable word. All possible sounds go clumping about in my mind like a jumble of lettered wooden blocks in a noiseless children's classroom.) Otherwise, there might merely come from me an unintelligible gabble or shriek. I feel like a slice of scorching toast ablaze in a toaster, and then my pores gush open in a massive flow of sweltering perspiration before I even have time to recollect that they don't have to. I don't need to be afraid of Jack Green anymore. I merely have to pretend.

  But I am.

  (And I fear I always will be.)

  I hate him so and wish him dead as Kagle. I wish he had cancer of the thyroid, prostate, and colon. He hasn't. Him I probably would visit in the hospital just to hear him speechless and see him wasting away. I'll probably be in a hospital before he will, and he will not stoop to visit me. (Perhaps he will--just because he'll know I'll think he won't.) I wish I could be like him. I envy and idealize him, even now as he gazes away from me with a look of studied indifference that approaches boredom. He will not even give me the satisfaction of gloating victoriously. (I am not that important to him. How marvelous.) I wish I could do that. Maybe someday, if I practice regularly (when he is not around to observe with excoriating contempt that it is he I am training myself to emulate), I'll be able to carry off similar things with other people with the same disdainful composure.

  Green is not going to fire me now--he merely wants to abuse. He is having one of his tantrums. (He has static in his head.) But my fear blows hot and my fear blows cold. And I sometimes think I am losing my mind. The fear (and the mind I am losing) does not even seem to be mine (they seem to be his)--broiling on my insides one moment like a blast furnace, chilling my whole skin like foggy winter wind the next, alternating out of control against me from within and without inside the sagging pavilion of my tapered, made-to-measure, Swiss voile, powder-blue shirt, the very finest shirt fabric there is, Green has told me. It's almost funny. I could have worn a dark broadcloth or heavier oxford weave to work today that would have contained without blotches the flows of telltale sweat spreading beneath my arms and trickling down my chest and belly from my breastbone.

  "Try wearing a sweater next time," I can almost hear Green saying, reading my mind. "Cashmere. A cardigan. Like mine. That's why I wear one," I can hear him add, reading his.

  It's almost uncanny the way he's still got the whammy on me. I wish he would die. But this one, I feel with some basis, I might eventually be able to lick. I have age, Arthur Baron, and spastic colitis on my side.

  But not as easily as I'd hoped.

  I'd like to shoot him in the head.

  I wish I could make a face at him and stick my tongue out. (I wish I could have a hot sweet potato again or a good ear of corn.) "Do you want to fire me?" I ask awkwardly instead.

  "I can humiliate you."

  "You are."

  "I can be a son of a bitch."

  "Why should you want to fire me?"

  "Without even giving you a reason."

  "You'd have to replace me with somebody else."

  "To make you remember I can. You're not a free citizen as long as you're working for me. You sometimes seem to forget."

  "Not anymore."

  "Neither am I. To let you feel what true subjugation is. You wouldn't be able to get a better job without my help, and you wouldn't be able to take it if you did. You'd have to give up your pension and profit sharing here and start wondering all over again if they like you there as much as we do here. You'd spend three years and still not be sure. You're dependent on me."

  "I know that."

  "And I'm not sure you always know that. I always want t
o know you are. I always want to be sure you know you have to grovel every time I want you to. You're a grown-up man, a mature, talented, middle-level, mediocre executive, aren't you? You don't have to stand there sweating like that and take this from me, do you? You do have to stand there and take it, don't you? Well?"

  "I'm not going to answer that."

  "Or I can give you another big raise and humiliate you that way."

  "I'll take the raise."

  "I can make you wear solid suits and shirts and striped ties."

  "I do."

  "I've noticed," he answers tartly. "You're also playing golf."

  "I've always played golf."

  "You haven't been."

  "I play in the tournament at the convention every year"

  "With a big handicap. You're in there as a joke, along with those other drunken charlatans from the sales offices. And that's another thing I don't like. You don't belong to the Sales Department."

  "I have to work for them."

  "Would you rather belong to Kagle?"

  "You."

  "Why?"

  "You're better."

  "At what?"

  "What do you want from me?"

  "Who do you work for, me or Kagle?"

  "You."

  "Who's nicer?"

  "He is."

  "Who's a better person?"

  "He is."

  "Who do you like better?"

  "You."

  "Now we're talking intelligently. You shouldn't be thinking of a better job now, Bob." His pace slows, his voice softens. He is almost friendly, contrite. "I really don't think you could find one outside the company."

  "I'm not, Jack. Why should I want to?"

  "Me."

  "You're not so bad."

  "Even now?" His eyes lift to look at me again, and he smiles faintly.

  "You do things well."

  "Everything?"

  "Not everything. Some things, Jack, you do terribly. I even like the way you've been talking to me now. I wish I could be rude like that."

  "It's easy ... with someone like you. You see how easy it is? With someone like you." He sighs, a bit ruefully, sardonically. "I'm not going to fire you. I don't know why I even started. I get scared sometimes when I think about what would become of me if I ever had to leave the company. Do you know what's happening to the price of meat?"

  "It's high, isn't it?"

  "I don't, either. But I worry what would happen to me if I did have to know. They've cut my budget."

  "How much?"

  "That's not your business yet."

  "Kagle said they were going to."

  "You're thick with Kagle."

  "It might help."