Hunger and Thirst (39 page)

Casually, he felt around the bed with his right hand until it closed over the jagged chunk of mirror at his left side.

He held it before his face and opened his eyes.

He looked at his whiskers. They were almost a quarter of an inch long. Shaggy, he thought, Leo, I’m shaggy. He looked at his nose, shining greasily. At his colorless, dry lips. He looked at his right eye. Unblinking eye, he thought. Stupid ox eye. Dead man’s eye.

He tilted the mirror and saw a part of the window reflected in it. He saw the muslin curtains hanging limply in wrinkled folds. He saw the other steam pipe. He saw the railing of the fire escape outside, the rusty vertical bars.

And, far out, through the gauze of the curtain he saw the bright morning sky.

It was a beautiful day.

The sky was bright blue and glaring, he saw. It made him blink slowly. No, it wasn’t blue after all. It was white, white as sheets hanging up to dry in the sun. And hard to look at. No clouds. All glaring white that stretched as far as the eye could see.

He saw the buildings far away, the one with the water tower on it and all the others. Why can’t I go out with my look, he thought. Why couldn’t he fly out on his glance, riding on the rays of light and be where the buildings were reflected? He didn’t want to be trapped. A mounting sense of frustration gripped him as he lay there looking out at the living world and knowing that he could not reach it under any circumstances.

Drawn by the world and drawn by death. It was like magnetism. That was the word. Magnetism. He was a magnet too, all his parts held together by magnetism. Why didn’t the world magnet draw him to itself, suck him out of this room and pull him away to life.

God damn you world!

He closed his eyes and blotted out the jagged silver-edged world. The world isn’t round, the thought spoke itself, the world is just a little jagged piece of silver-backed glass. You can shatter it in your hand. You can cut your wrists on the world and bleed to death.

He held the mirror fragment on his chest.

He ran one finger over its sharpness, felt his heartbeat thud a little heavier as the impulse kept growing stronger and stronger. He swallowed, once, twice, three times. In his weakness, the idea seemed to have no arguments against it. It seemed like a perfectly sound idea. At least it was feasible. Sharp glass edges slicing open veins like a knife slicing open long blue strands of spaghetti. Gentle ebbing of life, drifting away, floating, sinking, sinking … He felt a tingling in his right wrist as if …

He found himself whimpering with fear. He was two people. A glassy-eyed murderer, threatening. A frightened child, remembering …

He solved it.

His brain threw black mist over all though. He slept heavily. And the glass piece slid from his chest while he slept and fell on the bed beside him again.

The elevated station was in full swing.

Trains rushed in breathlessly, spit out nine to fivers, jerked shut their rubber-edged doors and hurried out again. The footsteps of the people thudded on the wooden platform, trembling the structure. They went out through the groaning wooden turnstile spokes and clattered down the metal-carpeted stairs and went quickly to work.

Pay day.

The station stood there, old and sagging, a wandering, thrown-up mass of wood and steel and sloping tin roofs. It looked as if it had sprung up suddenly from the earth, a weird, shapeless, underground monster that stood there quivering and belligerent. It shuddered under the hurrying feet, under the rattle and the pounding of the heavy trains. It braced itself on fat metal legs and held its feet wide apart to let the busses and the cars run in between its legs. It stood old and rusty and mildewed under the April sun, mutely, creakingly, performing duty.

The rumble of the trains didn’t affect him anymore.

Once they had. When he first moved into the room they had kept him awake nights, caused him to jolt into wakefulness just as he was about to sink into slumber.

Now he slept through all their pandemonium, their crazy rattling and thundering. Now the sound was a lullaby to his ears. It was unexpected sound that woke him up that morning.

The machine-gun cry of a starting motorcycle.

A sudden horn in the silence.

An abrupt, explosive burst of gagging and choking by the drunk.

The door to his room banging in its frame, sucked by air.

He woke and slept, woke and slept. The early morning was a flat, endless pattern of drugged sleep and groggy waking. His eyes would flutter open, crustily. He would gaze stupidly at the ceiling. His eyes would shut again. A sudden noise would set his heart to beating faster, make him gasp into a brief waking state. Then he would wait, not remembering where he was, who he was.

Nothing would happen.

And each time, he sank back into his doped coma. And every moment he slept, his body grew heavier with immobility and more numb. Every time he woke up it was with a feeling of being weaker and drier. Every time he slept he died a little more.

There was something pressing against his left buttock, a lump.

He moaned a little and reached his all-duty right hand over his body. His fingers slid down and touch his back pants pocket.

It was his wallet.

He had forgotten about it completely. He touched it gingerly. Then slid in three fingers and drew it out. He dropped it onto the bed. Outside, the church bells tolled ten o’clock.

He picked up the wallet feebly and set it on his chest.

He looked at it, a heavy fold of black leather.

He pressed it open very slowly, saw the cards, the papers, the faded, gold letters,
Genuine Goatskin
. Goat, he thought.
Mountain goat and piles of money
…

He looked into the money slit. There was a one dollar bill there.

He drew it out and looked at it as the wallet slid off his chest and thumped quietly on the bed.

The bill was old and wrinkled.
This certificate is legal tender
, it read. The number
I
in each corner. The word
one
printed over the number
I
in each top corner and four more times along the bottom and top frames. And
One Dollar
printed over the blue seal in shaded letters and
One Dollar
written in huge letters under the little parabolic name plate that read
Washington
. Must be a one dollar bill, his other mind offered wearily.

George Washington’s nose had disappeared in wrinkles. Good start for a story, his mind said. And George Washington needed a haircut badly. I meant to get a haircut, sir but I’m short a continental. A dollar a dollar, a ten o’clock dollar …

What good is this? the thought came. What good? Can it buy water to drink? No. That thought alone made him want to throw away the money, made him want to throw away everything and just lie there screaming—Water is the only thing, the
only
thing! He didn’t feel like thinking about anything. He felt too sick.

He was too thirsty.

He started at the dollar bill. I’d give you this for a glass of water, he promised as though someone were reading his mind. No, I’d give you it for a shot glass full of water. No, I’d let you have it for a thimble full of water. No, I’d give it to you if you just dipped your finger in water and touched my lips with it. You give me some water and you can have all the money on the floor, how’s that? I
mean
it. You can have all that money on the floor if you let me have a glass of water.

Suddenly, completely, he hated the money. He hated the dollar bill and all those other bills on the floor. He wanted to get rid of them for good, dispose of them violently just to show this invisible person how unimportant money really was to him.

This for a start! he thought
.

He crumpled up the bill and threw it away with great affected carelessness. There now, you see what I mean? I really
mean
it. Now, how about it? A glass of water for all that money?

His eyes slitted. He felt very cunning and shrewd. If only he could talk this poor gullible fool into giving him the most important thing in the world. And for that stupid pile of money too. Ha! He laughed at the crumpled ball he had just thrown away. It stood by the coat.

Then the humor left. His face grew hard and vengeful and his eyes flickered hate. I hate money.

I
hate
it!

No good shit anyway, that’s what it is! What good is it if it can’t buy water? Tell me that! Water should be the standard of exchange instead of …

Yes!!

That’s it. The most brilliant idea. He suddenly felt as if he had found the answer to the most vital problem in the world.

Make water the standard of exchange.

Immediately the plan began to billow and expand in his mind. He felt that if he were convincing enough, someone would come and give him some water to drink. He had only to evolve this plan carefully enough.

Get to it now!

Money as the standard of exchange. Let’s see now. Lecture commencing. He would write a book on it. It would be a new, a wonderfully new economy. Water as the means of exchange. Money as legal tender.

1. Each drop will be adjudged a unit. (That’s it, that’s it!!)

2. A drop will henceforth have the value of a penny. (Yes!)

3. Five drops will be a nickel.

Basis established. A man who had a brook on his land would never lose his bank account. Taxes would be paid in jars and bottles. Never any inflation because if there was too much legal tender the sun would get hotter and dry up the reserve banks and people would drink themselves to parity. Oh God, what a superb idea!

He couldn’t understand why someone hadn’t thought of it before.

Carefully, methodically, he went over the plans for his new system of economics. For almost a half hour, thinking of all sorts of ramifications and embellishments. He couldn’t get enough of them. He couldn’t appreciate the idea enough. It was so all-encompassing. And original. And struck through with pure genius. And the most incredible thing about it was that he had been the first one to ever think of it. That was absolutely incredible.

Then why was it so clear, so obvious that he was right?

Why? Because water was the most important thing in the world. People were ignorant idiots for not realizing it. Oh, they realized it, they were just too obstinate and stupid to admit it.

All right now.

Water as means of exchange. He waited for his reward as the discoverer of this momentous innovation. His prize.

He looked through his wallet while he waited. Go ahead, take your time, just bring me some water. It’s all yours, the money I mean. It’s worthless now, we all realize that full well. Oh, it’s worth something to you, I mean to me it’s no good. No, don’t worry about that, you’ll get a lot of value from it.

He drew a slip of paper out of the wallet.

It had Lynn’s address and telephone number on it. He had written it down years before when they’d gotten out of college and come back to New York and Lynn had found himself a job, and then the apartment, all in the space of a month.

The slip also had Leo’s telephone numbers; the one at work and the number of her hotel.

He drew out a card and another slip of paper. He let the other paper fall down, he wasn’t interested in it anyway. He wasn’t interested in any of this really. He was just killing time. While the authorities looked over his astounding plan and decided to reward him with water to drink, valuable fiat to pour down his throat, decided to make him the first millionaire under the new system.

On the second slip of paper he read the name
F.F. Muller
220 E. 65
^th
Street, New York City 21.

He remembered that Muller was a literary agent. When Erick left college, his writing instructor had given him Muller’s name and address. He had sent Muller the best story he’d done at school. Muller sent it back and with it a note that said the story “showed promise” but it wasn’t “quite commercial enough.”

He turned the slip over.
Smith-Corona
#5. he read; the size typewriter ribbon he used. He had finally written it down after getting the wrong size ribbon time and time again.
Comb
– 10-41-14. The combination of the lock he’d had on his gym locker at school.

He dropped the slip of paper casually on the floor. It was worthless. He swallowed and tried to move his tongue. But it only made him thirstier. Come on, he thought, get on with it, you can damn well see that the plan is foolproof. How about that water?

He looked at the card.

Selective Service System, it read. This is to certify that in accordance with the Selective Service Proclamation of the President of the United States
…

Erick Linstrom
(Place of Residence) (Date of birth) (Place of birth)
has been duly registered
…

And in black letters at the bottom:

The law requires you to have this card in your possession at all times for
…

He tossed it on the floor. There, I’m breaking the law, he thought. Come throw me in jail. Put me in a dungeon with water trickling on the walls. Stick me in a damp cell with a dripping sink, make me walk in a dark rainy courtyard like Rubishov, soaked to the skin. Flay me with crushing whips of hose water. Give me the water torture. Hold my head under water in a vat of icy water. Go ahead,
punish me
.

He lay there breathing heavily, waiting for the heavy boots on the stairs, the pounding of black clubs on the door, the splintering of locks and hinges, the carrying away.

Nothing.

His eyes shut. He sighed. He told them to hurry up with the plans for water as the standard of exchange. His mind said—What are you talking about?

He drew out a ragged, washed-out photostat of his discharge paper.

Honorable Discharge

ERICK LINSTROM 12 237 312 Private

Hereby honorably discharged … awarded … a testimonial of Honest and Faithful Service to This Country
.

Given at … Date …

He turned it over, recalling the day he’d gotten it. He remembered sitting meekly beside the T-5’s desk. The corporal rolled in the discharge paper and asked his questions in a bored voice.