We Can Build You

  “Can’t I kiss you on the mouth?”

  “No,” Pris said, “that’s too intimate.”

  “You can shut your eyes.”

  “Instead, you turn off the lights.” She drew her hands away, rose and went to the wall switch. “I’ll do it.”

  “Stop,” I said. “I have an overwhelming sense of foreboding.”

  At the wall switch she stood hesitating. “It’s not like me to be indecisive. You’re undermining me, Louis. I’m sorry. I have to go on.” She switched off the light, the room disappeared into darkness. I could see nothing at all.

  “Pris,” I said, “I’m going to drive to Portland, Oregon, and get the kosher corned beef.”

  “Where can I put my skirt?” Pris said from the darkness. “So it won’t get wrinkled.”

  “This is all some crazed dream.”

  “No,” Pris said, “it’s bliss. Don’t you know bliss when it runs into you and butts you in the face? Help me hang up my clothes. I have to go in fifteen minutes. Can you talk and make love at the same time or do you devolve to animal gruntings?” I could hear her rustling around in the darkness, disposing of her clothes, groping about for the bed.

  “There is no bed,” I said.

  “Then the floor.”

  “It scrapes your knees.”

  “Not my knees; yours.”

  “I have a phobia,” I said. “I have to have the lights on or I get the fear I’m having intercourse with a thing made out of strings and piano wire and my grandmother’s old orange quilt.”

  Pris laughed. “That’s me,” she said from close by. “That perfectly describes my essence. I almost have you,” she said, banging against something. “You won’t escape.”

  “Stop it,” I said. “I’m turning on the light.” I managed to find the switch; I pressed it and the room burst back into being, blinding me, and there stood a fully-dressed girl. She had not taken off her clothes at all, and I stared at her in astonishment while she laughed silently to see my expression.

  “It’s an illusion,” she said. “I was going to defeat you at the final moment, I just wanted to drive you to a pitch of sexual desire and then—” She snapped her fingers. “Gooooodnight.”

  I tried to smile.

  “Don’t take me seriously,” Pris said. “Don’t become emotionally involved with me. I’ll break your heart.”

  “So who’s involved?” I said hearing my voice choke. “It’s a game people play in the dark. I just wanted to tear off a piece, as they say.”

  “I don’t know that phrase.” She was no longer laughing; her eyes were no longer bright. She regarded me coolly. “But I get the idea.”

  “I’ll tell you something else. Get ready. They do have kosher corned beef in Boise. I could have picked it up any time with no trouble.”

  “You bastard,” she said. Seating herself she picked up her shoes and put them on.

  “There’s sand coming in the door.”

  “What?” She glanced around. “What are you talking about?”

  “We’re trapped down here. Somebody’s got a mound going above us, we’ll never get out.”

  Sharply she said, “Stop it.”

  “You never should have confided in me.”

  “Yes, you’ll use it against me to torment me.” She went to the closet for her coat.

  “Wasn’t I tormented?” I said, following after her.

  “Just now, you mean? Oh heck, I might not have run out, I might have stayed.”

  “If I had done just right.”

  “I hadn’t made up my mind. It depended on you, on your ability. I expect a lot. I’m very idealistic.” Having found her coat she began putting it on; reflexively I assisted her.

  “We’re putting clothes back on,” I said, “without having taken them off.”

  “Now you regret,” Pris said. “Regrets—that’s all you’re good for.” She gave me a look of such loathing that I shrank back.

  “I could say a few mean things about you,” I said.

  “You won’t, though, because you know if you do I’ll come back so hard with a reply that you’ll drop dead on the spot.”

  I shrugged, unable to speak.

  “It was fear,” Pris said. She walked slowly down the path, toward her parked car.

  “Fear, right,” I said accompanying her. “Fear based on the knowledge that a thing like that has to come out of the mutual understanding and agreement of two people. It can’t be forced on one by the other.”

  “Fear of jail, you mean.” She opened the car door and got in, to sit behind the wheel. “What you ought to have done, what a real man would have done, would be to grab me by the wrist, carry me to the bed and without paying any attention to what I had to say—”

  “If I had done that, you would never have stopped complaining, first to me, then to Maury, then to a lawyer, then to the police, then in a court of law to the world at large.”

  We were both silent, then.

  “Anyhow,” I said, “I got to kiss you.”

  “Only on the cheek.”

  “On the mouth,” I said.

  “That’s a lie.”

  “I remember it as on the mouth,” I said, and shut the car door after her.

  Rolling down her window she said, “So that’s going to be your story, that you got to take liberties with me.”

  “I’ll remember it and treasure it, too,” I said. “In my heart.” I put my hand to my chest.

  Pris started up the motor, switched on the lights and drove away.

  I stood for a moment and then I walked back down the path to my motel room. We’re cracking up, I said to myself. We’re so tired, so demoralized, that we’re at the end. Tomorrow we’ve got to get rid of Barrows. Pris—poor Pris is getting it the worst. And it was shutting off the Lincoln that did it. The turning point came there.

  Hands in my pockets I stumbled back to my open door.

  The next morning there was plenty of warm sunlight, and I felt a good deal better without even getting up from my bed. And then, after I had gotten up and shaved, had breakfast at the motel cafe of hotcakes and bacon and coffee and orange juice and had read the newspaper, I felt as good as new. Really recovered.

  It shows what breakfast does, I said to myself. Healed, maybe? I’m back in there a whole, well man again?

  No. We’re better but not healed. Because we weren’t well in the first place, and you can’t restore health where there wasn’t any health to begin with. What is this sickness?

  Pris has had it almost to the point of death. And it has touched me, moved into me and lodged there. And Maury and Barrows and after him all the rest of us until my father; my father has it the least.

  Dad! I had forgotten; he was coming over.

  Hurrying outside, I hailed a taxi.

  I was the first to reach the office of MASA ASSOCIATES. A moment later, from the office window, I saw my Chevrolet Magic Fire parking. Out stepped Pris. Today she wore a blue cotton dress and a long-sleeved blouse; her hair was tied up and her face was scrubbed and shiny.

  As she entered the office she smiled at me. “I’m sorry I used the wrong word last night. Maybe next time. No harm done.”

  “No harm done,” I said.

  “Do you mean that, Louis?”

  “No,” I said, returning her smile.

  The office door opened and Maury entered. “I got a good night’s rest. By god, buddy boy, we’ll take this nogoodnik Barrows for every last cent he’s got.”

  Behind him came my dad, in his dark, striped, train-conductor’s suit. He greeted Pris gravely, then turned to Maury and me. “Is he here, yet?”

  “No, Dad,” I said. “Any time now.”

  Pris said, “I think we should turn the Lincoln back on. We shouldn’t be afraid of Barrows.”

  “I agree,” I said.

  “No,” Maury said, “and I’ll tell you why. It whets Barrows’ appetite. Isn’t that so? Think about it.”

  After a time I said, “Maury’s right
. We’ll leave it off. Barrows can kick it and pound it, but let’s not turn it back on. It’s greed that motivates him.” And, I thought, it’s fear that motivates us; so much of what we’ve done of late has been inspired by fear, not by common sense …

  There was a knock at the door.

  “He’s here,” Maury said, and cast a flickering glance at me.

  The door opened. There stood Sam K. Barrows, David Blunk, Mrs. Nild, and with them stood the somber, dark figure of Edwin M. Stanton.

  “We met it down the street,” Dave Blunk boomed cheerfully. “It was coming here and we gave it a lift in our cab.”

  The Stanton simulacrum looked sourly at all of us.

  Good lord, I said to myself. We hadn’t expected this—does this make a difference? Are we hurt and if so how bad?

  I did not know. But in any case we had to go on, and this time to a showdown. One way or the other.

  11

  Barrows said amiably, “We parked down a little ways and had a talk with Stanton, here. We’ve come to what we seem to feel is an understanding, at least of sorts.”

  “Oh?” I said. Beside me, Maury had assumed a set, harsh expression. Pris shuddered visibly.

  Holding out his hand my dad said, “I am Jerome Rosen, owner of the Rosen spinet and electronic organ plant of Boise, Idaho. Do I have the honor of meeting Mr. Samuel Barrows?”

  So we each have a surprise for the other side, I said to myself. You managed, sometime during the night, to round up the Stanton; we for our part—if it’s roughly equivalent—managed to obtain my dad.

  That Stanton. As the Britannica had said: he had connived with the enemy for his own personal advantage. The skunk! And the idea swept over me: probably he was with Barrows the entire time in Seattle; he had not gone off at all to open a law office or see the sights. They had no doubt been talking terms from the start.

  We had been sold out—by our first simulacrum.

  A shocking omen it was.

  At any rate, the Lincoln would never do that. And, realizing that, I felt a good deal better.

  We had better get the Lincoln back on again, I said to myself.

  To Maury I said, “Go ask Lincoln to come up here, will you?”

  He raised his eyebrow.

  “We need him,” I said.

  “We do,” Pris agreed.

  “Okay.” Nodding, Maury went off.

  We had begun. But begun what?

  Barrows said, “When we first ran into Stanton, here, we treated it as a mechanical contraption. But then Mr. Blunk reminded me that you maintain it to be alive. I’d be curious to know what you pay the Stanton fellow, here.”

  Pay, I thought wildly.

  “There are peonage laws,” Blunk said.

  I gaped at him.

  “Do you have a work contract with Mr. Stanton?” Blunk asked. “And if you do I hope it meets the Minimum Wage law’s requirements. Actually we’ve been discussing this with Stanton and he doesn’t recall signing any contract. I therefore see no objection to Mr. Barrows hiring him at say six dollars an hour. That’s a more than fair wage, you’ll agree. On that basis Mr. Stanton has agreed to return with us to Seattle.”

  We remained silent.

  The door opened and Maury entered. With him shambled the tall, hunched, dark-bearded figure of the Lincoln simulacrum.

  Pris said, “I think we should accept his offer.”

  “What offer?” Maury said. “I haven’t heard any offer.” To me he said, “Have you heard any offer?”

  I shook my head.

  “Pris,” Maury said, “have you been talking with Barrows?”

  Barrows said, “Here’s my offer. We’ll let MASA be assessed at a worth of seventy-five thousand dollars. I’ll put up—”

  “Have you two been talking?” Maury interrupted.

  Neither Pris nor Barrows said anything. But it was clear to me and to Maury, clear to all of us.

  “I’ll put up one hundred and fifty thousand,” Barrows said. “And I’ll naturally have a controlling interest.”

  Maury shook his head no.

  “May we discuss this among ourselves?” Pris said to Barrows.

  “Surely,” Barrows said.

  We withdrew to a small supply room across the hall.

  “We’re lost,” Maury said, his face gray. “Ruined.”

  Pris said nothing. But her face was tight.

  After a long time my father said, “Avoid this Barrows. Don’t be part of a corporation in which he holds control; this I know.”

  I turned to the Lincoln, who stood there quietly listening to us. “You’re an attorney—in the name of god, help us.”

  The Lincoln said, “Louis, Mr. Barrows and his compatriots hold a position of strength. No deception lies in his acts … he is the stronger party.” The simulacrum reflected, then it turned and walked to the window to look out at the street below. All at once it swung back toward us; the heavy lips twisted and it said, with pain in its face but a spark glowing in its eyes, “Sam Barrows is a businessman but so are you. Sell MASA ASSOCIATES, your small firm, to Mr. Jerome Rosen, here, for a dollar. Thereby it becomes the property of the Rosen spinet and organ factory, which has great assets. To obtain it, Sam Barrows must buy the entire establishment, including the factory, and he is not prepared to do that. As to Stanton, I can tell you this; Stanton will not cooperate with them much further. I can speak to him, and he will be persuaded to return. Stanton is temperamental, but a good man. I have known him for many years; he was in the Buchanan Administration, and against much protest I elected to keep him on, despite his machinations. Although quick-tempered and concerned with his own position, he is honest. He will not, in the end, consort with rascals. He does not want to open a law office and return to his law practice; he wishes a position of public power, and in that he is responsible—he makes a good public servant. I will tell him that you wish to make him Chairman of your Board of Directors, and he will stay.”

  Presently Maury said softly, “I never would have thought of that.”

  Pris said, “I—don’t agree. MASA shouldn’t be turned over to the Rosen family; that’s out of the question. And Stanton won’t buy an offer like that.”

  “Yes he will,” Maury said. My father was nodding and I nodded, too. “We’ll make him a big man in our organization—why not? He has the ability. My good god, he can probably turn us into a million-dollar business inside a year.”

  The Lincoln said gently, “You will not regret placing your trust, and your business, in Mr. Stanton’s hands.”

  We filed back into the office. Barrows and his people awaited us expectantly.

  “Here is what we have to say,” Maury said, clearing his throat. “Uh, we’ve sold MASA to Mr. Jerome Rosen.” He indicated my father. “For one dollar.”

  Blinking, Barrows said, “Have you? Interesting.” He glanced at Blunk, who threw up his hands in a gesture of rueful, wry resignation.

  The Lincoln said to the Stanton, “Edwin, Mr. Rock and the two Mr. Rosens wish you to join their newly-formed corporation as Chairman of its Board of Directors.”

  The sour, embittered, harsh features of the Stanton simulacrum faltered; emotions appeared, disappeared. “Is that the actual fact of the matter?” it said questioningly to the group of us.

  “Yes sir,” Maury said. ‘That’s a firm offer. We can use a man of your ability; we’re willing to step down to make way for you.”

  “Right,” I said.

  My father said, “This I agree to, Mr. Stanton. And I can speak for my other son, Chester. We are sincere.”

  Seating himself at one of MASA’s old Underwood electric typewriters, Maury inserted a sheet of paper and began to type. “We’ll put it in writing; we can sign it right now and get the barge towed out into the river.”

  Pris said in a low, cold voice, “I consider this a deceitful betrayal of not only Mr. Barrows but everything we’ve striven for.”

  Staring at her, Maury said in a shocked voice, “Shut up
.”

  “I won’t go along with this because it’s wrong,” Pris said. Her voice was absolutely under control; she might have been ordering clothes over the telephone from Macy’s. “Mr. Barrows and Mr. Blunk, if you want me to come along with you, I will.”

  We—including Barrows and Blunk—could not believe our ears.

  However, Barrows recovered quickly. “You, ah, helped build the two simulacra. You could build another, then?” He eyed her.

  “No she couldn’t,” Maury said. “All she did was draw the face. What does she know about the electronic part? Nothing!” He continued to stare at his daughter.

  Pris said, “Bob Bundy will go with me.”

  “Why?” I said. My voice wavered. “Him, too?” I said. “You and Bundy have been—” I couldn’t finish.

  “Bob is fond of me,” Pris said remotely.

  Reaching into his coat pocket, Barrows brought out his billfold. “I’ll give you money for the flight,” he said to Pris. “You can follow us. So there won’t be any legal complications … we’ll travel separately.”

  “Good enough,” Pris said. “I’ll be in Seattle in a day or so. But keep the money; I have my own.”

  Nodding to Dave Blunk, Barrows said, “Well, we’ve concluded our business here. We might as well get started back.” To Stanton, he said, “We’ll leave you here, Stanton; is that your decision?”

  In a grating voice the Stanton simulacrum said, “It is, sir.”

  “Good day,” Barrows said to all of us. Blunk waved at us in a cordial fashion. Mrs. Nild turned to follow Barrows—and they were gone.

  “Pris,” I said, “you’re insane.”

  “That’s a value judgment,” Pris said in a faraway voice.

  “Did you mean that?” Maury asked her, ashen-faced. “About going over to Barrows? Flying to Seattle to join him?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll get the cops,” Maury said, “and restrain you. You’re just a minor. Nothing but a child. I’ll get the mental health people in on this; I’ll get them to put you back in Kasanin.”