Pohlstars (16 page)

"Kill myself.

"No you wouldn't, for Christ's sake. You'd hire other people to have fun for you. And then with this process- he patted the ugly thing that looked like a wristwatch, but Cowpersmith now realized was not- you can play back their fun, and maybe it isn't much, but it's all the jollies you can ever get. Right, Shirley?

She shook her head and said sweetly. "Shit.

"Well, anyway, it's
something
like that. I guess. It's kind of secret, I think probably because it's someone like Howard Hughes or maybe one of the Roekefellers that's involved. They won't say. But the job's for real, Tud. All I have to do is have all the fun I can. They pick up the tab, it all goes on the credit card, and they get the bill, and they pay it. As long as I wear this thing, that's all I have to do. And every Friday, besides all that, five hundred in cash.

There was a pause while Bette Midler flowed over and around them from the speakers and Cowpersmith looked from the girl to his friend, waiting for the joke part. At last he said, "But
nobody
gets a job like that.

"Wrong, friend," said Shirley. "You did. Just now. If you want it. I'll take you there tomorrow morning.

Behind the door stenciled
E.T.C. Import-Export Co., Ltd.
there was nothing more than a suite of offices sparsely occupied and eccentrically furnished. Hardly furnished at all, you might say. There was nobody at the reception desk, which Shirley walked right past, and no papers on the desk of the one man anywhere visible. "I've got a live one for you, Mr. Morris, Shirley sang out. "Friend of Murray's.

Mr. Morris looked like a printing salesman, about fifty, plump, studying Cowpersmith over half glasses. "Good producer, he agreed reluctantly. "All right, you're hired. And he counted out five hundred dollars in bills of various sizes and pushed them across the desk to Cowpersmith.

Cowpersmith picked up the money, feeling instantly stoned. "Is that all there is to it?

"No! Not for me, I've got all the paperwork now, your credit card, keeping records—

"I mean, like, don't you want me to fill out an application form?

"Certainly not. He opened his desk drawer and pulled out a wristwatch-shaped thing. Cowpersmith could not see all of the inside of the drawer from his angle, but he was nearly sure there was nothing else in it. He handed it to Cowpersmith and said, "Once you put it on it won't come off by itself, but we'll unlock it any time you want to quit. That's all. Go have fun. By which, he added, "I don't actually mean screwing, because we've got plenty of records of that already.

"What then? asked Cowpersmith, disconcerted.

"Hell, man! Up to you. Water skiing, skin diving, breaking the bank at Monte Carlo. What do you dream about, when things look bad'? You do dream, don't you?

"Well, sure, but- Cowpersmith hesitated, thinking. "I always wanted to eat at La Tour d'Argent. And, uh, there's this crazy poison fish they have in Japan-

"Sounds good, the man said without enthusiasm. "I'll have your card delivered to you at your hotel tomorrow.

"Yes, but wait a minute. What's the catch'?

"No catch, Tud, said Shirley, annoyed. "Jesus, what does it take to convince you?

"Nothing like this ever happened to me before. There has to be something wrong with it.

"No there doesn't, said Mr. Morris, "and I have to get busy on your card.

Cowpersmith found himself standing up. "No, wait, he said. "How-how long does the job last?

Shrug. "Until you get bored, I guess."

"Then what?"

"Then you turn in your recordings. And you take your last week's pay and go look for another job."

"Recordings? Cowpersmith looked down at his wrist, where, without thinking about it, he had clasped on the metal object. is this a tape recorder?

"I'm not into that part of it, Mr. Morris said. "I only know my job, and I've just done it. Good-by."

And that was all she wrote. At Shirley's urging, Cowpersrnith checked into a small but very nice hotel on the Upper East Side, went to a massage parlor, ice-skated at Rockefeller Center, and met Shirley for a late drink in a Greek bar in Chelsea. "Good start, she said. "Now you're on your own. Got any plans?

"Well, he said experimentaly, "I think I can still make the Mardi Gras in Rio. And I heard about a safari tour to Kenya—"

"Travel, huh. Why not'? She finished her drink. "Well, we'll keep in touch—"

"No, take it easy, he said. "I don't understand some things."

"There isn't any reason for you to understand. Just enioy."

"I tried to call Murray, but he's gone off somewhere—"

And yoa're going too, right? Look, she said, "you're going to ask some probably very important questions, to you, but all I know's my own job"

"Which is?"

"—which is none of your business. Go enjoy. When Mr. Morris wants to he in touch with you he'll be in touch with you. No. Don't ask how he'll find you. He'll find you. And so good night.

And so, for eight dynamite months, Tud Cowpersmith enioyed. He did everything he had ever wanted to do. He made the carnival in Rio and discovered hearts-of-palm soup in a restaurant overlooking the Copacabana beach. He rode a hydrofoil around Leningrad and toured the Hermitage, bloated on fresh caviar. Gypsy violins in Soho, pounded abalone on Fisherman's Wharf, a nude-encounter weekend at Big Sur, high-stakes gambling in Macao. First-class stewardesses on half a dozen airlines began to recognize him, in half a dozen languages. Shirley turned up once, in his suite at the George Cinq, but only to tell him he was doing fine. Another time he thought he saw Murray pushing a scooter at the Copenhagen airport, but he was going one way and Murray another, and there was no way for Cowpersmith to get off the moving person carrier to catch him. He took up motorcycle racing and tried to enjoy listening to the harpsichord and, in spite of what Morris had said, repeatedly and enthusiastically enjoyed a great deal of sex. It was at the time of his second case of gonorrhea that he began to feel enough was very nearly enough, and then one morning his phone rang.

"Cowpersrnith? said Mr. Morris' tinny little voice, very far away. "You don't seem to be having a lot of fun right now. Are you about ready to quit?

Although the pleasure had not been quite as much pleasure lately, the prospect of losing it was very much pain. "No! yelped Cowpersmith. "What are you talking about? Hell, man, you should see the girl I just- He looked around; he was alone in the big bed. "I mean, I've got this date—

"No, whispered the small voice, "that's not good enough. Your EI's been down for three weeks now. Not below the threshold yet. We can still get a little good stuff from you. But the quality's definitely down, Cowpersmith, and something's got to be done about it.

Dismayed, Cowpersmith sat up and swung his feet over the side of the bed. "How do you know about-what is it, my EI'?

"Emotional index? Well, what do you think, man? We continuously monitor the product, and it just isn't what we want.

"Yeah, Cowpersmith conceded. "Look, I just woke up and I'm a little fuzzy, but- He got out of bed, car- rying the phone, and sat in a chair by the window. Outside was Grosvenor Square, with a demonstration going on in front of the American Embassy, so he knew he was in the Europa in London.

"But what, Cowpersrnith?

"But I'll think of something. Hold on.

By this time the staff of the hotel had learned to value him and understand his likes, so the floor waiter, alerted by the incoming phone call, was bringing in his black coffee, American style, with two large glasses of fresh orange juice. Cowpersrnith swallowed a little of one and a little of the other and said, "Listen, can you give me an idea of what he likes?

"Who likes?

"Whoever it is is paying for all this stuff.

"I can't discuss our clients, said Mr. Morris. "They told me not to.

"Well, can you give me some idea?

"No. I don't know what you've been doing; the monitor doesn't show that. It shows where you are and how you're feeling. That's it. We won't know exactly what you've been up to until the debriefing, when they study the recordings. Me, I'll never know. Not my department.

"Well, don't you have
any
idea what kind of stuff they like?

"Mostly, any kind of stuff they haven't had before.

"Hah! Cowpersmith thought wildly. "Listen, how's this? Has anybody just sort of sat and meditated for you?

Pause. "You mean like religious meditation? Like some kind of guru?

"Well, yes. Or just sitting and thinking, like, you know, Thoreau at Walden Pond.

"I give it forty-eight hours, said Mr. Morris.

"Or-well, how about skin diving? Again. The doctor told me to lay off for a little while until my ear healed up after Bermuda, but I heard about this neat stuff at the Great Barrier Reef, and-

"Cowpersmith, said the tiny voice, "you know what you're costing? Not counting the half a thousand a week in cash. Your charge has been running over forty-eight hundred a week, on the average. You got to show more than some spearfishing maybe a couple weeks from now. You got to show
today. And
tomorrow. And every day. So long.

So Cowpersmith kept at it. The meditation didn't seem to be going well after the first hour, so he hired a new travel consultant and for a while things looked bright. Or bright enough. Maybe. He backpacked across the Trinity Mountains and flew to Naples for a swim in the Blue Grotto. He ate couscous and drank akvavit and smoked Acapulco gold, all in their native environment. Then he took a pack mule through the Montana hills, and flew back to Naples for four hours of clambering around the ruins of Pompeii, and hit Paris for nightclubs and Waikiki for surfing...

... But a couple of wipeouts at Diamond Head made his ear feel worse, and one nightclub turned out to be an awful lot like another, except that where the toilet jokes were in French he couldn't understand them. He knew the phone was going to ring again. He didn't need the little machine on his wrist to tell him he was down. He
felt
down.

So he came to a decision, and just sat in his hotel room, sullenly waiting. He had already put eleven thousand dollars in a numbered bank account in Bern and paid off all his old debts, and if it was over it was over.

But he didn't want it to be over.

The more he thought about it, the more he didn't want it to be over.

It was, after all, the finest fucking job in all the world, and everything Murray had said about it was true. No more headwaiters falling all over themselves? No more pretty women to take to the clubs, to the tracks, to bed? He ordered up a couple of bottles of brandy and worked himself up to a weeping drunk and when, the next morn- ing, it was inevitably followed by a dry-mouthed, burning- bellied hangover, he sat wallowing in the misery of his thousand-franc-a-day suite, shaking and enfeebled, barely moving to order up food, and more booze, and more food. The longer he sat, the worse he felt. And the next day. And the next day. And- And by the fifth day, after most of a week of solid, sullen misery, he realized that his phone had not rung. Why not? He certainly wasn't enjoying.

He didn't understand why, but when it came through to his mind that it was so, he didn't really care why. Hope was back. The magic money machine had not turned itself off! So he cleaned himself up. He got himself dressed. He waved off the floor waiter and the major-domo and the concierge and went out for a walk, a perfectly dull, uninteresting, unexciting walk, up the Champs Elysees to the Lido Arcade. He ate a quiche and drank a beer and dropped in on a flick. It was an old Barbra Streisand with French subtitles; he had seen it before, and he didn't care. It bored the ears off him. He enjoyed being bored very much.

But when he got back to the hotel, New York was on the line.

"For homey pleasures, said Mr. Morris' small, distant voice, "you don't get paid this kind of money. You want a McDonald's hamburger, quit and come back.

"I had this feeling you'd call, Cowpersmith acknowledged. "What can I say? I've had it with joy. It is no fun anymore.

"So quit. This was your second warning anyhow, and you don't get but three.

"All right, said Cowpersmith, after a moment of digesting that bit of information. "But tell me one thing. Last week I was
really
down; how come you didn't fire me then'?

"Last week? Last week you were
great.
I thought you knew, pleasure isn't the only sensation they like.

You mean you'll pay me for misery? "One of our best units, said the little voice in his ear, "was terminal stomach cancer. They paid him five grand a week plus full medical every week he didn't take painkillers.

That took a moment to digest too, and it went down hard, but Cowpersmith began to see hope. "Well, I don't want to go that far—

"Whatever you were doing last week was far enough, I'd say.

Then maybe I could—

"Sure, said Mr. Morris. "Nice talking to you. Third strike is out.

Ensued some of the most depressing weeks of Cowpersmith's life. Not miserable. At least not reliably miserable; he could not even be sure, from day to day, that he was quite bugged enough to register a decent misery on his wristband, and that in itself was discouraging. He tried everything he could think of. Inspiration struck, and he made a quick list of all the things he had been putting off because they were awful: went to the dentist, had a barium enema, got tattooed. That took care of three days, and, looking back at them honestly, he had to admit they were not memorably bad, merely lousy. He flew back to Washington and spent two afternoons in the Senate gallery-merely tedious; after the first half hour he stopped hearing what was being said and caught himself drowsing off. He flanged together two stereo systems and poured thirty watts of acid rock into one earpiece and Mahler into the other and came out with only a headache. He invented excuses to go in and out of Kennedy airport, with special emphasis on the Customs line and the hack- stands, but after a while even that anger diminished. Food. Remembering all the enjoyment he had had from good food, he looked for dyspepsia and displeasure from bad. He ate a haggis in Glasgow, flew to Heathrow and had brawn for dinner, caught a commuter flight to Paris and had an American breakfast at Orly. None of it worked very well. It proved to be harder to make oneself unhappy than to find joy, which had, after all, lasted for the best part of a year. The other thing was that deliberately making oneself unhappy made one, well, unhappy. It was not a way he liked to live. He discovered that twenty cups of coffee a day, sixty cigarettes, and a maximum of three hours of sleep gave him a perpetual headachy feeling that made everything an annoyance, but the other side of the coin was that nothing was much
more
than an annoyance; he was simply too beat to care. In desperation he returned to the States and delved into copies of the underground press, answering all the ads he could find for "instruction, "discipline, and so on, but that mostly got him a large number of FBI men and postal inspectors, and the S-M experiences were basically, he thought, pretty God- awful anyway. So he was not all that surprised when, less than five weeks from the second warning, his phone rang again. He was in Waikiki, where he had been nerving himself up to trying to get his ear hurting again in the surf, and he was frankly grateful to be spared it.