We Can Build You

  My Service .45 was too large, so instead of it I packed a smaller pistol, a .38, wrapped in a towel with a box of shells. I had never been much of a shot but I could hit another human being within the confines of an ordinary-sized room, and possibly across the space of a public hall such as a nightclub or theater. And if worst came to worst I could use it on myself; surely I could hit that—my own head.

  There being nothing else to do until the next morning I settled down with a copy of Marjorie Morningstar which Maury had loaned me. It was his own, and quite possibly it was the identical copy which Pris had read years ago. By reading it I hoped to get more of an insight into Pris; I was not reading it for pleasure.

  The next morning I rose early, shaved and washed, ate a light breakfast, and started for Boise and the airfield.

  13

  If you wonder what San Francisco would have looked like had there been no earthquake and fire, you can find out by going to Seattle. It’s an old seaport town built on hills, with windy, canyon type streets; nothing is modern except the public library, and in the slum part you’ll see cobblestone and red brick, like parts of Pocatello, Idaho. The slums extend for miles and are rat-infested. In the center of Seattle there is a prosperous genuine city-like shopping area built near one or two great old hotels such as the Olympus. The wind blows in from Canada, and when the Boeing 900 sets down at the Sea-Tac Airfield you catch a glimpse of the mountains of origin. They’re frightening.

  I took a limousine into Seattle proper from the airport, since it cost only five dollars. The lady driver crept at snail’s pace through traffic for miles until at last we had reached the Olympus Hotel. It’s much like any good big-city hotel, with its arcade of shops below ground level; it has all services which a hotel must have, and the service is excellent. There’re several dining rooms; in fact you’re in a dark, yellow-lit world of your own at a big city hotel, a world made up of carpets and ancient varnished wood, people well-dressed and always talking, corridors and elevators, plus maids cleaning constantly.

  In my room I turned on the wired music in preference to the TV set, peeped out the window at the street far below, adjusted the ventilation and the heat, took off my shoes and padded about on the wall-to-wall carpeting, then opened my suitcase and began to unpack. Only an hour ago I had been in Boise; now here I was on the West Coast almost at the Canadian border. It beat driving. I had gone from one large city directly to another without having to endure the countryside in between. Nothing could have pleased me more.

  You can tell a good hotel by the fact that when you have any sort of room service the hotel employee when he enters never looks at you. He looks down, through and beyond you; you stay invisible, which is what you want, even if you’re in your shorts or naked. The employee comes in very quietly, leaves your pressed shirt or your tray of food or newspaper or drink; you hand him the money, he makes a murmuring thank you noise, and he goes. It is almost Japanese, the way they don’t stare. You feel as if no one had been in your room ever, even the previous guest; it is absolutely yours, even when you meet up with cleaning women in the hall outside. They—the hotel people—have such absolute respect for your privacy it’s uncanny. Of course when it’s time to settle up at the desk at the end, you pay for all that. It costs you fifty dollars instead of twenty. But don’t ever let anyone tell you it isn’t worth it. A person on the brink of a psychotic breakdown could be restored by a few days in an authentic first-class hotel, with its twenty-four-hour room service and shops; believe me.

  By the time I had been in my room at the Olympus for a couple of hours I wondered why I had ever felt agitated enough to make the trip in the first place. I felt as if I were on a well-deserved vacation and rest. I could have lived there, eating the hotel food, shaving and showering in my private bathroom, reading the paper, shopping in the shops, until my money ran out. But nonetheless I had come on business. That’s what’s so hard, to leave the hotel, to get out on those drafty, windy, cold, gray sidewalks and hobble along on your errand. That’s where the pain enters. You’re back in a world where no one holds the door for you; you stand on the corner with other people equal to yourself, all as good as you, waiting for the lights to change, and once again you’re an ordinary suffering individual, prey to any passing ailment. It’s a sort of birth trauma all over again, but at least you can finally scuttle back to the hotel, once your business is done.

  And, by using the phone in the hotel room, you can conduct some of your business without stirring outside at all. You do as much as you can that way; it’s instinct to do that. In fact you try to get people to come and see you there, rather than the other way.

  This time my business could not be conducted within the hotel, however; I did not bother to make the try. I simply put it off as long as I could: I spent the rest of the day in my room and at nightfall I went downstairs to the bar and then one of the dining rooms, and after that I strolled about the arcade and into the lobby and then back among the shops once more. I loitered wherever I could loiter without having to step outdoors into the cold, brisk, Canadian-type night.

  All this time I had the .38 in my inside coat pocket.

  It was strange, coming on an illegal errand. Perhaps I could have done it all legally, through Lincoln found a way of getting Pris out of Barrows’ hands. But on some deep level I enjoyed this, coming up here to Seattle with the gun in my suitcase and now in my coat. I liked the feeling of being alone, knowing no one, about to go out and confront Mr. Sam Barrows with no one to help me. It was like an epic or an old western TV play. I was the stranger in town, armed, and with a mission.

  Meanwhile, I drank at the bar, went back up to my room, lay on the bed, read the newspapers, looked at TV, ordered hot coffee from the room service at midnight. I was on top of the world. If only it could last.

  Tomorrow morning I’ll go look up Barrows, I said to myself. This must end. But not quite yet.

  And then—it was about twelve-thirty at night and I was getting ready to go to bed—it occurred to me, Why don’t I phone Barrows right now? Wake him up, like the Gestapo used to? Not tell him where I am, just say I’m coming, Sam. Put a real scare in him; he’ll be able to tell by the nearness of my voice that I’m somewhere in town.

  Neat!

  I had had a couple of drinks; heck, I had had six or seven. I dialed and told the operator, “Get me Sam K. Barrows. I don’t know the number.” It was the hotel operator, and she did so.

  Presently I heard Sam’s phone ringing.

  To myself, I practiced what I was going to say. “Give Pris back to R & R ASSOCIATES,” I would tell him. “I hate her, but she belongs with us. She’s life itself, as far as we’re concerned.” The phone rang on and on; obviously no one was home, or no one was up and going to answer. Finally I hung up the receiver.

  What a hell of a situation for grown men to be in, I said to myself as I roamed aimlessly around my hotel room. How could something on the order of Pris begin to represent life itself to us, as I was going to tell Sam Barrows? Are we that warped? Are we warped at all? Isn’t that nothing but an indication of the nature of life, not of ourselves? Yes, it’s not our fault life’s like that; we didn’t invent it. Or did we?

  And so on. I must have spent a couple of hours roaming about, with nothing more on my mind than such indistinct preoccupations. I was in a terrible state. It was like a virus flu, a kind that attacks the metabolism of the brain, the next state from death. Or anyhow, so it seemed to me during that interval. I had lost all contact with healthy normal reality, even that of the hotel; I had forgotten room service, the arcade of shops, the bars and the dining rooms—I even gave up, for a while, stopping by the window of the room to look out at the lights and deep, illuminated streets. That’s a form of dying, that losing contact with the city like that.

  At one o’clock—while I was still pacing around the room—the phone rang.

  “Hello,” I said into it.

  It was not Sam K. Barrows. It was Maury, calling me from O
ntario,

  “How did you know I’d be at the Olympus?” I asked. I was totally baffled; it was as if he had used some occult power to track me down.

  “I knew you were in Seattle, you moron. How many big hotels are there? I knew you’d want the best; I bet you’ve got the bridal suite and some dame there with you and you’re going at it like mad.”

  “Listen, I came here to kill Sam K. Barrows.”

  “With what? Your hard head? You’re going to run at him and butt him in the stomach and rupture him to death?”

  I told Maury about the .38 pistol.

  “Listen, buddy,” Maury said in a quiet voice. “If you do that all of us are ruined.”

  I said nothing.

  “This call is costing us plenty,” Maury said, “so I’m not going to spend an hour pleading with you like those pastors. You get some sleep and tomorrow call me back, you promise? Promise or I’ll call the Seattle police department and have you arrested in your room, so help me god.”

  “No,” I said.

  “You have to promise.”

  I said, “Okay, Maury. I promise not to do anything tonight.” How could I? I had tried and failed already; I was just pacing around.

  “Good enough. Listen, Louis. This won’t get Pris back. I already thought about it. It’ll only wreck her life if you go over there and blast away at the guy. Think about it and I know you’ll see. Don’t you imagine I’d do it if I thought it would work?”

  I shook my head. “I dunno.” My head ached and I felt bone-weary. “I just want to go to bed.”

  “Okay, buddy. You get your rest. Listen. I want you to look around the room. You see if there isn’t a table with drawers of some sort. Right? Look in the top drawer. Go on, Louis. Do it right now, while I’m on the phone. Look in it.”

  “For what?”

  “There’s a Bible, there. That society puts it there.”

  I slammed the phone down.

  The bastard, I said to myself. Giving me advice like that.

  I wished I had not come to Seattle at all. I was like the Stanton simulacrum, like a machine: propelling itself forward into a universe it did not comprehend, searching Seattle for a familiar corner in which it could perform its customary act. In the Stanton’s case, opening a law office; in my case—what in my case? Trying somehow to re-establish a familiar environment, however unpleasant. I was used to Pris and her cruelty; I had even begun to get used—to expect to encounter—Sam K. Barrows and his doxie and his attorney. My instincts were propelling me from the unfamiliar back to the known. It was the only way I could operate. It was like a blind thing flopping along in order to spawn.

  I know what I want! I said to myself. I want to join the Sam K. Barrows organization! I want to be a part of it, like Pris; I don’t want to shoot him at all!

  I’m going over to the other side.

  There must be a place for me, I told myself. Maybe not doing the Lunar Fling; I’m not after that. I don’t want to go on TV; I’m not interested in seeing my name in lights. I just want to be useful. I want to have my abilities made use of by the big cheese.

  Picking up the phone I asked the operator for Ontario, Oregon. I got the operator at Ontario and gave her Maury’s home phone number.

  The phone rang, and then Maury sleepily answered.

  “What did you do, go to bed?” I asked. “Listen, Maury. I had to tell you this, it’s right you should know. I’m going over to the other side; I’m joining up with Barrows and the hell with you and my dad and Chester and the Stanton, which is a dictator anyhow and would make life unendurable for us. The only one I regret doing this to is Lincoln. But if he’s so all-wise and understanding he’ll understand and forgive, like Christ.”

  “Pardon?” Maury said. He did not seem to comprehend me.

  “I sold out,” I said.

  “No,” Maury said, “you’re wrong.”

  “How can I be wrong? What do you mean I’m wrong?”

  “If you go over to Barrows, there won’t be any R & R ASSOCIATES, so there won’t be anything to sell out. We’ll simply fold, buddy. You know that.” He sounded perfectly calm. “Isn’t that a fact?”

  “I don’t give a damn. I just know that Pris is right; you can’t meet a man like Sam Barrows and then forget you met him. He’s a star; he’s a comet. You either tag along in his wake or you cease for all intents and purposes to exist. It’s an emotional hunger inside me, irrational but it’s real. It’s an instinct. It’ll hit you, too, one of these days. He’s got magic. Without him we’re snails. What’s the purpose of life anyhow? To drag along in the dust? You don’t live forever. If you can’t raise yourself up to the stars you’re dead. You know the .38 pistol I have with me? If I can’t make it with the Barrows organization I’m going to blow my goddam brains out. I’m not going to be left behind. The instincts inside a person—instincts to live!—are too strong.”

  Maury was silent. But I could hear him there at the other end.

  “Listen,” I said, “I’m sorry to wake you up but I had to tell you.”

  “You’re mentally ill,” Maury said. “I’m going to—listen, buddy. I’m going to call Doctor Horstowski.”

  “What for?”

  “Have him call you there at your hotel.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll get off the line.” I hung up, then.

  I sat on the bed waiting and sure enough, not twenty minutes later, at about one-thirty in the morning, the phone rang once more.

  “Hello,” I said into it.

  A far-off voice. “This is Milton Horstowski.”

  “Louis Rosen, Doctor.”

  “Mr. Rock called me.” A long pause. “How are you feeling, Mr. Rosen? Mr. Rock said you seemed upset about something.”

  “Listen, you Government employee,” I said, “this is no business of yours. I had a beef with my partner, Maury Rock, and that’s it. I’m now in Seattle on my way to linking up with a much bigger and more progressive organization; you recall my mentioning Sam K. Barrows?”

  “I know who he is.”

  “Is that so crazy?”

  “No,” Doctor Horstowski said. “Not on the face of it.”

  “I told that about the gun to Maury just to get his goat. It’s late and I’m a little stewed. Sometimes when you break up a partnership it’s hard psychologically.” I waited but Horstowski said nothing. “I guess I’ll turn in now. Maybe when I get back to Boise I’ll drop in and see you; this is all very hard on me. Pris went and joined the Barrows organization, you know.”

  “Yes I know. I’m still in touch with her.”

  “She’s quite a girl,” I said. “I’m beginning to think I’m in love with her. Could that be? I mean, a person of my psychological type?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Well, I guess that’s probably what’s happened. I can’t live without Pris, so that’s why I’m in Seattle. But I still say I made up that about the gun; you can quote me to Maury to that effect if it’ll calm him. I was just trying to show him I’m serious. You get it?”

  “Yes, I think so,” Doctor Horstowski said.

  We talked on to no point for a while longer, and then he rang off. As soon as I had hung up I said to myself, The guy’11 probably phone the Seattle police or the FBMH here. I can’t take the chance; he just might.

  So I began packing my things as fast as I could. I got everything into the suitcase and then I left the room; I took the elevator downstairs to the main floor, and, at the desk, I asked for my bill.

  “You weren’t displeased with anything, were you, Mr. Rosen?” the night clerk asked me as the girl computed the charges.

  “Naw,” I said. “I managed to contact the person I came here to meet and he wants me to spend the night at his place.”

  I paid the bill—it was quite moderate—and then called a taxi. The doorman carried my suitcase out and stuffed it in the trunk of the cab; I tipped him a couple of dollars and a moment later the cab shot out into the surprisingly dense traffic.
>
  When we passed a likely-looking modern motel I took note of the location; I had the cab stop a few blocks beyond it, paid the driver, and then on foot walked back. I told the motel owner that my car had broken down—I was driving through Seattle on business—and I registered under the name James W. Byrd, a name I made up on the spot. I paid in advance—eighteen-fifty—and then, with the motel key in my hand, set off for room 6.

  It was pleasant, clean and bright, just what I wanted; I at once turned in and was soon sound asleep. They won’t get me now, I remember saying to myself as I drifted off. I’m safe. And tomorrow I’ll get hold of Sam Barrows and give him the news that I’m coming over.

  And then, I remember thinking, I’ll be back with Pris again; I’ll get in on her rise to fame. I’ll be there to see the whole thing. Maybe we’ll get married. I’ll tell her how I feel about her, that I’m in love with her. She’s probably twice as beautiful now as she was before, now that Barrows has gotten hold of her. And if Barrows competes with me, I’ll wipe him out of existence. I’ll atomize him with methods hitherto un-glimpsed. He won’t stand in my way; I’m not kidding. Thinking that, I drifted off.

  The sun woke me at eight o’clock, shining in on me and the bed and the room. I had not pulled the curtains. Cars parked in a row outside gleamed and reflected the sun. It looked like a nice day.

  What had I thought the night before? My thoughts while going to sleep came back to me. Nutty, wild thoughts, all about marrying Pris and killing Sam Barrows, kid’s thoughts. When you’re going to sleep you revert to childhood, no doubt of it. I felt ashamed.

  And yet, basically I stuck to my position. I had come to get Pris and if Barrows tried to stand in my way—too bad for him.

  I had run amok, but I did not intend to back down. Sanity prevailed, now that it was daylight; I padded into the bathroom and took a long cold shower, but even the light of day did not dispel my deep convictions. I just worked them about until they were more rational, more convincing, more practical.