Seconds (5 page)

“I see.”

“Then we have death of the third class,” added Mr. Ruby, speaking between mouthfuls. “I refer, of course, to suicide, which is in the price range of fifteen thousand. Here, surgery is reduced to a minimum, because for the monetary convenience of the client, we arrange for the obliteration of all or parts of the body.” He paused to pick his teeth. “Ordinarily, this means that the head is blown apart by the blast of a shotgun inserted in the mouth. You can readily see that dental surgery would be an extravagance here.”

“Yes.”

“But then, of course, with suicide, you risk severe family distress, if only on religious grounds,” continued Mr. Ruby, buttering a piece of cornbread. “I don't recommend it to you frankly.” He popped the cornbread into his mouth. When he had swallowed it, he glanced inquiringly at Wilson. “Do you want me to review disappearance for you, sir?”

“I think not.”

“Good. I was hoping you would choose death. For a man of your substance, cost ought not to be decisive. Shall we make it death of the first class, then, Mr. Wilson?”

“No—I mean, I can't be sure—”

“Of course, sir. You can't be expected to decide at once. Think it over,” said Mr. Ruby, pressing a button on the communications box. “There's a good deal else to be done, Mr. Wilson, and you ought to give this matter some consideration in the meantime. If I do say so myself, sir, the question of death selection may be the most important decision of your life.”

Apparently in response to Mr. Ruby's signal over the communications box, two other gentlemen entered the room at this point and were introduced to Wilson as trust officers. He did not catch their names, for he was in an understandable state of confusion, nor was he particularly aware of their appearance, except to notice that one was tall and the other one short.

“These are the trust instruments, Mr. Wilson,” said the tall one, as his partner handed Wilson a set of documents impressively festooned with ribbons, seals, and stamps. “And your revised will, drawn in accordance with the requirements of the trust, naturally, and all predated, of course, and, moreover, since these instruments are, in a literal sense, forged, we have taken the liberty, sir, of forging your signature on them as well, to save you the trouble. Your real name is used, I should add!” The trust officer tittered modestly at his joke. “We show them to you sir,” he added, “so that you may approve them, as a matter of information, sir.”

Wilson stared wonderingly at the documents.

“It's the standard mechanism, sir,” the officer went on. “The trust provides for liberal settlements on your wife and child, effective at the time of your death, deriving from funds resultant from your conveyance and assignment to us, as your trustees, of your holdings and properties . . .”

Wilson found himself no longer able to hear the trust officer's words because of a curious buzzing in his ears. He tried to ignore it, but it became louder, and the more he strained his attention toward the opening and closing of the officer's mouth, hoping to guess at the words in that way, the more difficult it was to maintain his sense of equilibrium, for as the buzzing increased, so did certain extraordinary perception, which he ascribed to the fact that he had eaten virtually nothing all day, and had been subjected to a continuous series of shocks and frustrations. For example, the documents slipped from his fingers, but instead of flopping to the rug, they appeared to float in the air and to glitter there with unnatural brilliance, and then he heard, above the buzzing, what was evidently his own voice shouting: “I'm not a client! I don't want to buy death!” and he was dimly aware that the trust officers had gathered up their papers, and that Mr. Ruby, the lawyer, had begun punching the communications box. Finally, after what seemed a considerable interval in which someone assisted him to drink a cup of hot soup, he found himself, strangely enough, witnessing a moving picture projected on a portable screen which had been placed at the far end of the room.

The subject of the film, it developed, was himself. He was seen first strolling rather pompously along a street, obviously unaware of the hidden camera that was recording his movements. When had they done it, Wilson wondered. That very day? His portly figure was clothed in the grey suit, true enough, but that was not conclusive, and the street scene itself was slightly out of focus—but as he watched the screen further and saw his unsuspecting self proceeding blithely through an unidentifiable crowd, his apprehensions mounted sharply. Why had this film been taken . . . and why was it being shown to him now? Intuitively, he grasped the reason. Of course, there was but one possible answer—a splendidly logical one, and when the scene abruptly shifted, he was fully prepared for what then flashed before his eyes: the episode in the boudoir, where he clearly committed the most savage assault upon the defenseless woman.

The projection machine stopped. The lights of the office were switched on, and two men in clerk's jackets proceeded to pack up the equipment and to rearrange certain pieces of furniture which had been moved aside to make room for the screen. Wilson observed them silently. He was almost relieved that the purpose of his entanglement with the woman had been explained; otherwise, he seemed free of all emotion, as if the accumulation of distressing circumstances had finally plunged away into a void of their own weight, bearing with them his entire stock of feelings.

As the projection men departed, Wilson noted that neither Mr. Ruby nor the trust officers had remained in the room, and that he was now alone there with an elderly, rather feeble-looking man in a black suit, who was sitting on the couch a few feet away.

“So now it's blackmail,” Wilson declared calmly.

The old man smiled. There was nothing sinister about the smile. He was, in fact, a very meek-looking old man, the kind who might well sit on a park bench every afternoon, telling stories to children and feeding crumbs to the birds. He had, moreover, none of the polish and efficiency of Joliffe and Ruby; his white hair was unkempt in a certain way, as if he had attempted in vain to manage it, and on his coat front were tobacco ash, lint, and shiny spots probably traceable to food stains.

“Do you want to talk to me?” the old man inquired, cautiously, but then before Wilson had had an opportunity to reply, he added, confidentially: “By the way, I have a message for you, from that friend of yours you mentioned to Mr. Joliffe.”

“From Charley?”

“That's the name. Well, Charley wanted me to tell you,” the old man continued, his face wrinkling up in the effort of recalling the exact words, “that when you jump into a volcano, it's bound to hurt a little at first.” He gazed uncertainly at Wilson. “Does that mean something to you?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“I hoped it would. Well,” the old man said, fumbling a pipe from his pocket, “you said something about blackmail, Mr. Wilson.”

“I didn't mean—”

“No, it's quite all right. I don't blame you. But it isn't blackmail, you know. It's just a kind of insurance, that's all. It's easier to go forward, isn't it, when you know that you can't go back?”

“Can't go back?”

“No, sir,” the old man remarked sympathetically, “you can't go back. You realized that, didn't you? I mean, from the moment you hung up after Charley's first call? Of course you did. That's why you were so disturbed, because you knew you'd be facing a lot of unusual experiences, some of them unpleasant, and you knew you would need every ounce of courage in your system—”

“You're saying that I can never go back.”

“Not to the bank, not to your family, not to anything you left.”

“I see.”

“Of course you see. And you see because, in your heart of hearts, you don't really want to go back. You want to go forward. Don't you? You want to be reborn. You
are
being reborn, my friend. Those hurts you feel, those are the pains of being reborn.” The old man leaned forward as he spoke these words, inadvertently spilling tobacco from his pipe bowl over his trouser legs. Wilson was touched by his obvious sincerity, by his indifference to his appearance, and even more by the kindliness of his weathered old face.

“But you owe it to yourself, this rebirth,” the old man said earnestly. “The pain will leave you soon, and life will begin again—a new life, a beautiful life. Another chance. And tell me honestly, my boy, will you be missed by those who are left behind? And will you miss them yourself?”

“I . . . don't know.”

“Your good wife, my boy, is she still the heart and center of creation for you? And are you that for her?”

“We . . . get along.”

“And your child, your daughter. What about her, son?”

“Well, we don't see too much of her, actually. She's recently gotten married and lives out West with her husband. He's a doctor.”

The old man nodded with every phrase, and from time to time actually reached out and patted Wilson's knee, an action which so increased Wilson's feeling of rapport that he discovered that there were tears in his eyes. He did not brush them away.

“Excuse an old fool's prying, son,” the old man said, “but what about the usual way of your life? I mean, did you look forward to your game of golf, for instance, or your staff meetings down at the bank?”

“You mean, do I like anything about the way I lived? Well, sir, I find that hard to answer. I was comfortable, I guess. I didn't think too much about things. I left my wife pretty much alone, and she did the same for me. We never quarreled, and in recent years we hardly ever—well, expressed much affection . . . and I did have my boat in the summer, and you're right, I did like to play a little weekend golf, and daub away with my watercolors sometimes in the garage . . .”

Wilson's voice trailed off. He clenched his fists, resisting an impulse to fling himself at the old man's knees and weep bitterly.

“So, this is what became of the dreams of youth,” the old man remarked softly, as if he were simply musing aloud to himself. “Well, son, it's nothing to be ashamed of. You've done no worse than most men. You're a good boy at heart, and you've lived an honest life. It's just time to change, that's all.” He gazed with affection at Wilson, who slowly bowed his head into his hands. “Now, son, I know what you're thinking. There's a tiny little thought still in your head, and that thought is summed up in one word: ‘Desertion.' Well, don't you worry about that. You've taken care of the financial part of it, and as for the rest, well, you don't need them any more and they don't need you. They've got their problems, it's true, but you can't help them, just as they can't help you.”

“I can see that now, sir,” mumbled Wilson from between his fingers.

“What you need, son, is a good night's sleep. Then you'll be fresh in the morning, just like a baby. There'll be a few more details to clear up, but my boys will be working on them, don't you worry.”

“Your boys?”

“That's right, son.”

“Then you're the head of the company?”

“I'm afraid so, son. They usually call me in when there's what they call a difficult case. What they really mean, I think, is that there's a soul worth the saving. There never was a struggle in the soul of a good man that wasn't hard. Believe me, son, I know.”

“I believe you.”

“So you feel all right now, my boy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That's fine. Then we'll just pack off to bed, won't we?”

“Yes, sir.”

Chapter 2

W
ILSON AWOKE
in the morning to the familiar sound of an alarm clock, but even as he reached out to turn it off, he realized by the variation in pitch that it was not his own, and he sat up quickly, staring all around the strange room he was in, as if an analysis of his physical surroundings might lend some coherence to his disorganized recollections of the events of the previous day.

He seemed to be in a hotel bedroom. The top of the dresser was covered, in hotel fashion, by a sheet of glass, and his suit, hanging alone in the closet, had a forlorn and transient air. The pajamas he wore were new; he only dimly recalled having put them on, so exhausted had he been the night before when they had helped him to the room.

They. Yes, of course—they. He went to the adjoining bathroom, fully aware as he did so that he was not in a hotel at all, but still on the premises of the company whose client, it seemed, he had become, and as he inspected the sink and the cabinet, he was again reminded of the completeness of the services provided, for there was a full set of toilet articles awaiting his use, and furthermore, when he returned to the bedroom, he found that breakfast had been left for him on a tray, during his absence. There were two pills on a separate dish, with a note which bore the words, “For Mr. Wilson,” but he did not take them.

As he ate, he wondered idly about his wife and about Mr. Franks, the senior vice president at the bank. Were they frantically telephoning one another by now? Were they in touch with the police? Or could it be that they had not missed him yet? This idea struck him ironically as being the most likely of all. Perhaps no one had particularly noticed his absence. Would he ever really be missed? Days might go by, even weeks, he mused, and then, quite by chance, his wife might decide to organize a dinner party for eight, say, and in the course of reviewing seating arrangements, would discover, to her annoyance, that he was simply nowhere to be found. He wrinkled his face, silently mouthing what he imagined would be her complaint: “ . . . how troublesome it will be. He
knows
how hard it is to find an extra man to make up a party!”

As for the bank, well, that would be a different story, because the bank was more efficient. His absence would be readily noted, but he would not be missed as a person. No, the officers would stride around fretfully, asking whether anyone had seen the vice president in charge of industrial credit operations, who had unaccountably been mislaid.

In the midst of these reflections, which he indulged while recognizing them as a form of self-pity perhaps intended to conceal a real sense of worry and guilt, the door to his room swung open and a woman entered.

“Good morning, Mr. Wilson,” she said briskly, as she advanced. “I hope you enjoyed your breakfast. You'll need it. You've got a busy schedule today.” She seemed to be about his own age, but because she was smartly groomed and dressed, she looked no more than forty. “Oh,” she remarked, eyeing his tray, “I see you forgot to take your pills. Well, you've still got your coffee left. You can swallow them down well enough with that, I should think . . .”

Wilson, meanwhile, had mumbled a confused and hasty response, and sat fidgeting in his chair, feeling at a great disadvantage for the want of a bathrobe, and not knowing whether to stand up and risk the parting of his unfamiliar pajamas, or to remain seated, which would border on a discourtesy. Was the woman a nurse or what? He could not be sure, but the genial note of authority in her voice, coupled with his own inferiority in attire, led him obediently to gulp down the pills.

“What are they for?” he asked meekly.

“For your nerves.”

“I'm—not nervous, really.”

“Well, in any case, it's standard procedure.”

“But look here,” he added suddenly, “I really ought to get some word to my wife—”

“Why?”

“Well . . .” He hesitated.

“Now, Mr. Wilson,” his visitor declared, with a reproving smile, “you're supposed to put all of that sort of thing out of your mind. That's why you're here. You're paying
us
to take care of those details. Don't you fret about them. We've got them well in hand.”

Again, Wilson felt humbled. Of course, the woman was right, he decided, but at the same time he was irked at the fact that he had been placed in such a vulnerable position—to be confronted without warning by a woman when he was not even properly dressed. It was deliberate, he thought. They wanted to keep him in a docile state of mind, by a combination of social unease and pills.

“You said something about a busy schedule,” he said.

“Yes. First, you go to the Delivery Room.”

“I beg your pardon?”

She smiled. “That's what we call it. The Delivery Room. You're being reborn, you know. Isn't it logical? Well, actually it's our surgery. Completely modern in every respect.”

“Ah, yes. But—why surgery?”

“My, you
are
a little jumpy, aren't you?” She clucked, in mock disapproval. “Look here, you'd better slip into bed again and let me take your temperature, and then I'll tell you all about it.” He glanced uneasily at the rumpled bed, and she added, with a hint of maternal solicitude, “Come on, now. You'll be much more comfortable there . . . That's it. Good.”

She took a thermometer from a case inside her purse and put it in Wilson's mouth, gave the covers a professional touch to smooth them, and looked briefly at her wristwatch.

“Now,” she said in a bright little voice, as if she were about to tell him a bedtime story, “in the first place, you've got to go to the Delivery Room to let the doctors get accurate measurements of your body, so they can pick the right size from Cadaver Storage. It wouldn't do to have one too tall or too short, you know. Well, and then they've got to make certain kinds of special casts of your teeth and your hands and so forth. It's all very complicated and scientific, but they do just marvelous work, and of course it doesn't hurt you the tiniest bit, but they need to do it, you understand, so they can process the cadaver to meet your specifications. You're having a first-class death, I think . . . Yes, I'm sure of it. Well, anyway, that's the first stage, and they don't want to waste time, because you're supposed to be found dead tonight.”

Wilson sat up.

“The cadaver, of course,” she added, gently poking his chest to make him lie down.

He remained sitting and took the thermometer from his mouth. “I understand that. But you said that's the first stage. Is there a second, then?”

“You're not worried, are you?”

“No, I just want to know.”

“Aren't you feeling drowsy?”

“Not a bit. Would you mind telling me—”

“Well, all right. I must say you're a sensitive type, though, Mr. Wilson.” She clucked at him again. “The second stage is cosmetic, naturally.”

“I don't quite grasp—”

“Cosmetic. You can't go out into the world looking the way you do, you know. You'd be recognized at once.”

Wilson sank back. “Of course,” he muttered.

“Believe me, Mr. Wilson, you'll be amazed by what a little change here and there can do for a man. You'll feel younger—and you'll look younger, too. And that'll mean you'll
be
younger,” she went on, soothing him with little pats on the forehead as he lay staring up at the ceiling. “Don't you want to be younger? Goodness,
I
wouldn't mind a little tinkering like that myself, one of these days. You can just thank your lucky stars you can afford all of this. Not that you aren't a fine-looking gentleman as it is, Mr. Wilson, but even the best of us can stand a weeny bit of improvement now and then . . .”

Her voice was gentle and chatty, but it did not completely set his mind at ease. It occurred to him that it had been confoundedly unfair of Charley not to have mentioned this right away. But then, why hadn't he thought of it himself before this? It was obvious enough.

“Look here,” he said, interrupting the woman, “don't I get a chance to, um, approve the . . . the final version, beforehand?”

“Well, we used to do that, but we found that our clients could never really come to a decision. They kept adding a little here and wanting to take a wrinkle out there, and, really, it was a terrible nuisance, and so we dropped that feature.”

“I'm not at all sure I like the idea.”

“Mr. Wilson, we aren't going to have a little problem with you, are we now?” She shook her forefinger at him playfully, and Wilson was again impressed with the company's slyness in assigning a woman to deal with him. As a gentleman, he could hardly make a violent protest in her presence, and besides, the idea of being given a more youthful appearance somewhat intrigued him, especially since it had been urged on him by a woman who was by no means unattractive; which, he assumed further, was still another evidence of the craftiness of the company, in placing this phase of his processing in the hands of a female.

Nevertheless, his expression remained quite worried, and the woman regarded him anxiously.

“Don't you feel a little sleepy now?”

“No, I don't think so.”

“You should, you know. From the pills. Goodness, Mr. Wilson,” she said, placing her hands on her hips and frowning down at him, “we can't have you trundled off to Delivery all nervous like this.”

“I'll be all right.”

“We can't take any chances on that. After all, it's my responsibility. Well,” she added, rising from the chair beside the bed and going toward the bathroom, “we'll just have to give you something more, to calm you down.”

“Really—” Wilson began, but she had gone into the bathroom and had closed the door behind her. He sighed, and feeling in reality somewhat drowsy, turned over on his side, facing the wall, closed his eyes and waited for sleep to come, wondering indolently whether he would awake to find that the plastic surgeons had already completed their work. Would he be permitted to glance in a mirror beforehand, for a last look at his old face?

But before he was quite asleep, he was aware that a pair of hands was quietly unbuttoning the jacket of his pajamas and, more remarkable still, was also pulling loose the drawstring of the trousers. In his somnolent condition, he half-imagined that he was a child, being changed in the middle of the night, and so he lazily wriggled, to help the unseen parental figure slip his pajamas off; then, when he lay naked, and felt the hands that had undressed him begin to knead his shoulders, he grew more wakeful, and decided that the woman was giving him a rubdown, to relax him physically while the pills became fully effective. However, the hands moved to his chest, then to his stomach, where they no longer rubbed but stroked and alternately scratched gently with slow upward motions of the fingernails, and then in a moment, to Wilson's considerable surprise, they descended still lower, where they commenced a delicate massage of a nature he doubted was prescribed in the pages of a nurse's manual. It was at this point that he turned over.

The room was dark, for the shades had been pulled and the curtains drawn.

“Is this supposed to calm me down?” he asked.

“Not at first. But it will later.” Her voice still had its characteristic note of efficiency, despite the fact that she now was ministering to him on a far from impersonal basis, for she lay beside him, unclothed, with her unbound hair coiled down around her neck and shoulders.

“I frequently find this necessary with our more sensitive clients,” she added, taking his hands and placing them against her breasts. “Not that I mind, really. I mean, it's part of the job, and someone who doesn't enjoy their work . . . well, they ought to do something else, don't you agree?”

“Certainly,” said Wilson, somewhat thickly.

She kissed him. “Goodness,” she remarked, her hand having explored his body once more, “you woke up fast, didn't you! Well, remember now, haste makes waste. Don't hurry. Kiss me all over.” And as he complied with her request, she lay on her back, from time to time directing his mouth and hands with expert little movements, until after some minutes she provided him with final guidance, and they struggled harmoniously there, but only for a short time.

“I'm sorry,” said Wilson.

“Not at all. I mean, it's not as if you did this every day, you know. You're not the kind of gentleman who goes running around after chorus girls, after all, and I would suspect that your wife has passed her peak years.” She patted his shoulder reassuringly. “Tell me honestly, Mr. Wilson, when was the last time?”

“Oh . . . three months ago, or longer.”

“There now. You see? When a man's out of practice, it just takes a few seconds, and then—zip!” She snapped her fingers. “All over and done with. But you've got nothing to be ashamed of, Mr. Wilson. Goodness, some gentlemen are impotent, and believe you me, I've really got my work cut out for me in those cases.” She exhaled a little reminiscent sigh at the thought of these special labors. “Oh, but there aren't many of them, actually, mostly because our clients feel sort of at home with a person who's not exactly a child. They're more apt to be relaxed with a mature woman, don't you think? Someone who reminds them of their wives . . . That's the theory, anyway.” She studied Wilson's face, “How do you feel, Mr. Wilson? Tell me. I'm really interested. As a person, I mean.”

“I do feel relaxed,” he answered, honestly. He was silent for a moment, pondering. “It's strange,” he added, “but there's a kind of logic to it all. Let me put it this way. This morning, for example, certain remarkable things have happened to me, not the least of which was the act of adultery, to use a prudish term. Now, I'm not an adulterous man, really, but I feel no guilt at the moment nor do I think I ever will, simply because it all seems quite natural and simple, and—well, logical. I suppose it's partly because, as you have said, you are a wifely kind of person. And then yesterday, what happened then was logical and familiar, too, in a way. Granted that I was in a semi-drugged condition much of the time, still it amazes me, in retrospect, that the whole process didn't strike me as being fantastic—beyond belief. I
did
believe it, though, and that's why I went through with it, barring an occasional objection, and I think the reason for this was that the whole framework of the operation was businesslike and efficient. In short, I was confronted with a process that was, perhaps superficially, quite familiar. The process of providing guidance, advice, and services to a client, roughly similar to the manner in which I myself have been trained, with the exception, of course, that where I have dealt with money, this company deals with human beings.”