Then he turned around and said to the other man. Well, son, I hope you like our coffee better today than you did yesterday morning. Leisurely he removed his jacket, rolled up his white poplin sleeve and showed the purplish bruise on his biceps where the tray had struck him as the car drove off. He just showed it and looked down at the other man’s face which still had not spoken or altered its set expression.
Well, said Billy, there is no hard feelings between me and any member of the family you belong to and never will be as long as your brother, Braden, and I have got anything to do or say about it. I reckon you come in here to make an apology to me. But I want you to know you don’t have to make it. All you have to do is set there and drink your coffee and leave the girl a dime tip!
With this benevolent speech still on his lips, Billy Spangler elevated his hips from the white porcelain stool and started out toward the sunshiny exterior to shake hands with Braden Pearce. But before he had completed the beginning of his easy movement, he heard a spitting sound. He did not quite turn around but he knew what had happened. Gewinner Pearce had spit in his cup of coffee. Billy had seen the quick snakelike jerking forward of the head of Gewinner and the startled look on the face of Little Edna and heard the sound of the spitting all at once. Billy was motionless. He stayed in a frozen position, half looking out toward the car of Braden Pearce and half regarding the crouched figure of Braden’s brother. While he stayed immobilized that way, Gewinner had taken out his wallet. He set on the counter a hundred-dollar bill and then he said quietly, I am not the type that leaves a dime tip!
Almost immediately after he made that speech, in fact with the words still on his lips, he swept past Billy Spangler. The smooth, plushy sleeve of his light-tan overcoat brushed against Billy’s bare arm as Gewinner swept past him, and Billy saw him go on out of the drive-in and cut rapidly across the street, not even turning to look at his brother’s car.
Apparently only two people, besides Gewinner, knew that Gewinner Pearce had not apologized but had spit in his cup of coffee. Little Edna knew it and Billy Spangler knew it. They glanced at each other. Little Edna had a tight, scared face as she seized a wet dishcloth and wiped the counter, and Billy Spangler, for the first time in his adult life, had a feeling of fear, of anxiety cold and deep, way down in his warm young bowels, making them cold, and with it was also a touch of awe and revulsion.
Hey, Prince, called Braden to Gewinner, but Gewinner ignored him and stalked out to the street. Then Braden called out. Hey, Billy.
Billy came out of the drive-in like a man stumbling out of a bomb-shattered building, in a state of shock or concussion; he came out with his jaws a little ajar and a sightless look in his baby-blue eyes.
Well, what happened, did the prick apologize to you? I want to know the truth, now.
Somehow Billy couldn’t report the truth of the weird thing that had happened inside, all he could do was jerk his head affirmatively and raise a hand as if saluting or bestowing a blessing.
O.K., that’s that, shouted Braden and his bullet-proof limousine shot forward, preceded by two motorcycle cops wnth screaming sirens, reaching The Project before Gewinner reached the imitation drawbridge of the Pearce castle.
Gewinner assumed that there was bound to be another confrontation scene with his brother that evening and he thought he would show his boldness by coming downstairs for it. However, it so happened that Braden and Mother Pearce had hopped off by helicopter to the State Capital in order to appear at the deathbed of the Governor who had been shot down unexpectedly while laying the cornerstone of the Trust in God Mission Building.
Gewinner got this information from the butler in the great downstairs hall.
Then nobody’s in, he reflected aloud.
Yes, me, in the gameroom, called out Violet.
He found her in there with a tall crystal shaker and a long silver spoon, stirring a considerable number of cocktails, apparently for one person which was herself.
1 didn’t go along with Braden and Mother Pearce, she told him somewhat unnecessarily.
Oh? Why not?
Because the whirlybird makes me so dizzy that I can’t walk a straight line when I get off it. I guess it’s just not my type of locomotion. Will you have a martin?
Is that some variation on a martini?
It’s a boatload of martinis laced with a dash of absinthe, which is illegal in this country, but dear old Senator Connor got it through customs by putting a rum label on the bottle when he came back from his talks with General Amados in Rio, just a few days before he had his last stroke in Vegas.
She said all this so quickly and brightly that you might have thought she was making plans for Christmas, and Gewinner found himself feeling more at home with her than ever.
Do you mind if I take off my dinner jacket? he asked her.
1 don’t care if you take off everything you’ve got on.
I won’t go as far as that, said Gewinner, removing only his jacket.
While she was chilling the martinis, he commented on the unseasonable warmth of the castle. He said: You know the castle is always overheated because Mother Pearce has anemia and control of the thermostat.
Oh, do I know! said Violet. Isn’t she the cutest little thing? She goes around in her little Angora wool sweater as if she was always chilly in the castle and she keeps on turning the thermostat up a notch higher.
Maybe she wants to sweat us out.
That’s a thought, agreed Violet.
Her next remark was something in the nature of a non sequitur.
This room, she said, isn’t bugged. The library is bugged and so are the dining room and the conservatory. This room used to be bugged but something went wrong with the bugging apparatus just a few minutes after Braden and Mother Pearce went out of the castle ce soir.
Are you sure about that?
I’m as sure about that as if I’d broke it myself, so you and I can talk on any subject we choose.
Is there something in particular you wanted to discuss with me? asked Gewinner.
Excuse me for a moment, she said.
She went to a window and opened it to admit a pigeon that had a piece of paper attached with a rubber band to one leg. She removed the paper and scanned it hastily while the pigeon waited, either nervously or restlessly, on the billiard table.
Intuitively Gewinner decided that this was an occurrence which it was best to pretend not to notice.
Hmmm, said Violet.
Then she rolled the piece of paper into a ball which she dropped in her cocktail and swallowed. She then tore off a sheet of paper from a memo pad on the bar and scribbled rapidly on it. That done, she whistled to the pigeon which flapped over to the bar and held a leg out for the return message and the rubber band.
All this went off quite smoothly and in less than a minute the pigeon was flapping back out the window.
Violet looked more amused than bemused.
I don’t know how Mother Pearce can possibly imagine that I could be so stupid as not to realize that she is promoting a match between your brother and Babe. I’d be so willing to surrender Braden to Babe that if I was a licensed justice of the peace or an ordained minister of the church I would be delighted to bind them together in holy matrimony. However, it’s necessary for me to remain in the castle a little bit longer because of my appointment.
Violet, said Gewinner, you are a very unusual girl.
Thank you, she said, so are you. Oh, excuse me, I don’t mean a girl, I mean unusual, honey.
Where are you from?
Oh, from a long time ago, was her somewhat mysterious answer.
Then she went on talking.
The calisthenics at night, she said, are making the skin of my body look like a boatload of orchids and I have a funny feeling that when Braden succumbs to the attractions of Babe, he’s going to look like a boatload of orchids himself, because I think Babe, with her stomp and all, is a personality like a whole football team condensed into one single being. Why do
I feel I can talk to you so freely?
Because the room isn’t bugged?
Oh, that isn’t it. I think what it is, is you are some kind of a changeling, something else, not of this world, you know.
Thank you, said Gewinner. May I ask you about the pigeon bit?
Of course you can. I have an old school chum named Gladys who thinks that the most obvious and discreet method of exchanging messages is by carrier pigeons. Would you like her to send you a little message that way?
What kind of message?
Oh, she’d think of something.
At this moment there was a terrific clatter in the hall that built to a climax when an unusually fat little girl bounced or bounded, or both, into the gameroom, and immediately began to heckle Violet.
Mommy Violet drinks too much. Mommy Violet drinks too much!
That’s Mommy Violet’s business, not yours, precious.
The child stuck out her tongue at her mother and at Gewinner in very rapid succession, and then rushed over to the slot machine that paid off in gumdrops. She hit the jackpot at the first try and howled with insane delight.
What is the name of this strange child? asked Gewinner.
Why, I don’t remember, all I remember about her is that after the first look at her I got myself what they call a diaphragm and regard it as my dearest earthly possession.
Child, said Gewinner, if you like candy, run up to the tower and look around for a great big box up there. It’s full of marshmallows and chocolate cherries and marzipan and divinity flavored with strychnine.
Oh goody good, screamed the child and clattered off to the tower without even asking what the strange words meant, having understood “candy.”
Violet talked to Gewinner about The Project.
It seemed that Braden had gotten carried away by a mood of boastfulness one night and had bragged to Violet that it would soon be possible to possess and control the whole planet by pressing a button connected with a wire. You just pressed the button connected with the wire and the whole fucking thing would either be blown to bits or fall under the absolute dominion of The Project, and he, said Braden, was the one who would press the button when the delicacies and intricacies of the contraption were completely mastered.
Yes, but suppose, said Gewinner, reflectively, Braden did push the button but somebody else had cut the little wire?
I love you, said Violet, and I see that you love Braden as much as I do.
Yes, I would love to be there when he pressed the little button and it dawned on his sensitive mind that someone had cut the little wire…
There was not such a thing as a periodic spy scare in the town of Gewinner, now grown to a city. The scare was not periodic, it was constant. The Project and the town-city were haunted by it the way old people are haunted by dread of disease. Nobody came into The Project without going through an exhaustive screening process. It is not likely that anybody came into the town without being investigated or secretly watched. Everybody knew that there were a lot of plain-clothes detectives around the town. They called them the PeeCees, and whenever you saw somebody you didn’t know standing around on a corner with an air of elaborate unconcern you could be pretty damn sure it was one of those PeeCees, and if he gave you a glance it was likely to loosen your bowels.
Anxiety was the occupational disease of The Project employees. There was a neurological hospital on the grounds and a whole staff of psychiatrists. Of course, as soon as a man showed signs of severe nervous unbalance he had to be let out, but God knows how many of the men were concealing little foxes of terror under their radiation-proof uniforms and helmets, anxieties growing into psychoses which they dared not speak of. The staff of doctors walked around with their hands clasped behind them, waiting for patients who were afraid to come in. Not till somebody actually broke down with the screaming meemies was the cat out of the bag, and then of course it was too late. He was hustled out of The Project and out of the town and sent to what they called Camp Tranquillity, which was supposedly a place of readjustment. The place did not have a very savory reputation among The Project employees. There were ugly rumors about it, rumors of people who went there and never were heard of again, at least not after the first hysterically gay postcard saying. This place is heaven! The rumors were never completely authenticated. But you must remember that even the mail coming into the town of Gewinner was screened by a special staff of postal employees. It was not opened. It was examined by a sort of fluoroscope machine, every letter or package that came into the town was examined this way. All that anyone knew for certain was that the first postcard (from the worker sent to Camp Tranquillity) was also the last. If inquiries were addressed to the camp by former friends of the worker, a form letter would be delivered in precisely five days, saying that So-and-so had made a remarkably rapid recovery and had graduated to Rancho Allegro, which was located somewhere in the Southwest—for some reason nobody ever found out exactly where.
It must be remembered about all this that the workers at The Project were extremely busy people, they had practically no time for contemplation and had been chosen for their jobs because they were not introverts, and if they developed introspective tendencies it was certainly not to their advantage to make a public show of them or even a private one. They were better off than any other skilled workers or unskilled workers in the country, especially since the dissolution of the major unions by a recent Act of Congress. They occupied model houses for which they paid a nominal rent and they were retired at the age of forty-five on a comfortable pension to certain segregated communities called Rainbow Lands and Bluebird Hills and Valleys where everybody was about the same age and everyone from the barber to the mortician was a state employee and all the bills were sent to Mr. Whiskers.
Nothing io worry about in Gewinner! That was the cry. No reason for any grouches. No reason for anybody to wear anything but a radiation-proof outfit and a happy smile. In fact, there was a ban on blues music in the town, and the government had established a Happy Song Center where a staff of composers devoted themselves to the composition of light-hearted ballads. There was never a lyric that didn’t mention silver linings, blue birds, sunshine and smiles. These records were on all the café Wurlitzers and the disk jockeys played nothing else. But as I said already, one thing that wasn’t mentioned, but that everybody thought about in secret, was the ever-menacing idea of “the spy.” It interfered with really close and warm relationships among members of The Project community. You never knew, did you? No matter how simple and good a guy might seem to be, who knows but what he was a counterspy, taking notes on you all the time and the notes going into the files of the office that had the big wide-open blue eye painted on the opaque glass of its entrance, and nothing more.
Nobody could be more conscious of the spy threat than was Billy Spangler, and whenever he was screening a possible new employee at the drive-in, he turned on his intuitive powers with terrific concentration. Billy thought that he had singular powers along that line, he thought he was someone who had a real, native instinct about the characters of people, oh, not based on anything scientific but just, well, just a matter of natural sensibility, of aptitude for that sort of thing.
Now this particular morning, which was the morning after Gewinner Pearce had spit in his coffee at the drive-in, and a classified ad for a new waitress had gone into the papers, Billy Spangler was interviewing a number of teen-age girls for the vacancy. Billy knew that, for business reasons, the girl had to be a good-looker as well as efficient and sprightly. “Personable” was the word he used in the ad; Vacancy for lively, personable girl-waiter. Experience less important than background and character.
You may wonder why he used “girl-waiter” instead of “waitress” in the ad. Billy’s use of that less usual term was because the word “girl” was a word that was almost continually in the simple heart of Billy. Girl, girl, girl. The word haunted him even more persistently than the idea of spies and counterspies in the town and The Proje
ct.
Sometimes when he was not thinking at all—and such times were not infrequent, Billy Spangler not being primarily a man of intellectual nature—at those times the word would hop into his thought without any apparent chain of associations, just the word. Girl, girl! And he would whisper it to himself and saliva would fill his mouth as he whispered it. Then he would watch himself. He would look around quickly and swallow. And he would glance self-consciously down the front of his trousers and edge behind the counter of the drive-in or the cashier’s box until his emotion had subsided a little. So the request for a girl-waiter had gone into the papers and there were at least a dozen applicants for the job, mostly girls of high school age or a little older who were daughters of men in The Project.
There were two key questions in Billy Spangler’s method of screening a possible new employee at the drive-in. Number one: What is your opinion of Gloria Butterfield? That was the name of a famous spy at The Project who had been caught by The Eye as she was on her way to deliver a set of blueprints into the hands of enemy agents in a nearby town, two old women and a man, who were posing as relatives of hers, one of whom pretended to be ill. The whole bunch was apprehended, of course. It was a very hush-hush affair, no public trial, only the barest comment in the newspapers, but of course word about it was whispered in conversation and it had never been officially denied that Gloria Butterfield and her associates had come to a particularly unhappy end which was something a little more colorful than capital punishment.
They didn’t shoot no gun, they didn’t cut no string. But one thing you can be sure of. Nobody’s ever going to see the face of Gloria Butterfield again on this earth.