The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories (36 page)

“Well?” Misrell’s voice grated against the silence. “We have now been here a little over two hours, Mr. Williams.”

Williams nodded, not looking up, then he took a deep breath. “This is a communication from Jake Ross.”

Misrell looked around with a half-smile. “Would you be so kind as to share its contents with us?” he invited and commanded at the same time.

Williams took another deep breath. He was at the precipice and he knew there was no sense in delaying the jump any longer. He threw the crumpled paper on the table, squared his shoulders and said quietly, “I can give you the sense of it very quickly, Mr. Misrell. This is Ross’s resignation. He’s moving over to another agency.”

There was an intake of breath all over the room. Each man sat transfixed. Only Misrell moved slightly. His jowls twitched and again his fingers began to drum.

“And?” Misrell asked.

Williams’s voice was almost a whisper. “And he’s taking the automobile account with him.”

Again the intake of breath. Again the frozen suspension of each man at his place. This was the catastrophe that had been building up through the afternoon like a hurricane off shore, ready to move in with crushing destructive force.

A billing like this represented a quarter of an agency’s take during a given year. Its loss was a back-breaking, irreparable wound to an organization and each man in the room knew it. They kept their eyes averted, but listened to the squeak of Misrell’s chair as the president ponderously rose. They heard the flats of his hands slam down on the table top. They heard his short, wheezing breath and then his voice, icy and outraged.

“That account represented a gross billing of something in the neighborhood of three million dollars a year.”

Nausea rose up in Gart He had to hold on to the table. “This is as much a shock to me as it is to you, Mr. Misrell.”

“Is that an honest-to-God fact?” roared Misrell. “It’s as much a shock to you as it is to me, huh? You stupid bastard don’t con me! It was your pet project!
Your pet project
.” The fat man’s face quivered and rolled and undulated. His eyes blazed as he fed rage into himself and roared like a furnace.

“It was your idea to give it to that little college greeny,” he shouted. “Now get with it, Williams! Get with it, boy.” He kicked his chair aside and screwed up his face lie a little baby about to cry. He pointed a finger at Williams. “So what’s left, Williams? Not only has your pet project backfired, but it’s sprouted wings and left the premises.” Grandly, emotionally, and with great theatricality, he spread his fat hands. “I’ll tell you what’s left to us, in my view. Nothing but a deep and abiding concern about your judgment in men.”

The various executives sat with their heads down, in the vast embarrassment that permeated the room. Williams continued to gaze at the table, wondering how long it would last. He felt like a man in a rack, the screws being turned tighter and tighter, the pain going higher and higher, thinking all the while it couldn’t get worse, while all the time it did get worse.

Misrell pounded the flats of his hands on the table again. “This is a push business, Williams,” he said.

(God, how many times Williams had heard him use that phrase.)

“Push, push, push business! Push and drive! But
personally
push and drive! You don’t delegate responsibility to little boys, Williams!” he screamed, making Williams look up to face the punishment. “You should know better than anyone else.”

A thought crossed Gart Williams’s mind. Misrell was enjoying this. He was taking pleasure in it. It was a twisted, perverse, ugly enjoyment, but enjoyment it was, and something deep inside the thin, sick man revolted in disgust. He stared, fascinated, at the big mouth that jabbered at him and screamed and wiggled and twisted and spewed out phrases that were so repetitious, so familiar and so impossible to listen to again.

“It’s a push, push, push business, Williams,” the fat mouth railed at him. “It’s a push, push, push business all the way, all the time, right on down the line—”

Williams knew the words were coming up. He didn’t think he would let them out, but they came out. Like screaming shrapnel, they exploded into the room and smashed against the walls.

“Why don’t you shut your mouth, fat boy?
”

The executives stared at Williams, open-mouthed, aghast. Misrell’s jaw hung down in almost comic fashion as he gaped at the insane man at the other end of the table.

There was no retreat for Williams now. There was no evading, no covering up. “Why don’t you shut your mouth, fat boy?” It had been said. The outrage had been committed. It was now a matter of record and could not be obliterated. Gart Williams knew all this. So he leaned forward in his chair and pointed a finger at Oliver Misrell.

“God, but I can’t stand the sight of you,” he said. “You’re about as palatable as a Crisco sandwich. In addition, you’re the most predatory, thoughtless, unfeeling animal of a man I’ve ever met, let alone worked for.” He looked around the table, his face white and glistening with sweat. “God, how do you stand it, all of you? How do you?”

Again the wave of nausea rose up in him. He lowered his head, spent a moment recovering. Then he took a deep breath and walked out of the room. Sick and frightened, he still could find a tiny fragment of perverse pleasure at the problem in conversation he had left behind. Who says what and how do they start? Perhaps that fat bastard would have a coronary and there would be no need for conversation.

In his own office, his secretary smiled up at him.

“Messages on the desk,” the attractive girl said, “and hot coffee out here. Can I bring you some?” Her smile faded as she saw the look on Gart’s face. “Do you want anything at all?” she asked in a whisper.

Williams leaned against the door and shut his eyes. “Yeah. A sharp razor and a chart of the human anatomy showing where all the arteries are!”

He went into his office and closed the door behind him. He flicked off the fluorescent lighting, and sat down at his desk in the semidarkness. On the desk was a picture of the beautiful woman who was Jane, his wife. And she was beautiful. Beautiful and cold as a glacier.

He put two fingers to his eyes and closed them. He knew what he was. He was a forty-one-year-old man, protected by a suit of armor all held together by one bolt. A moment ago the bolt had been removed and his protection had fallen away from him and left him a naked target.

He had been cannonaded this afternoon by all the enemies of his life. His insecurity had shelled him; his oversensitivity had straddled him with humiliation; his deep-rooted disquiet about his own worth had zeroed in on him, landed on target and blown him apart. He had the ridiculous feeling that he must suddenly burst into tears and it was only with effort that he kept himself from doing so.

After a while he began to hear the whisperings from outside. Secretaries’ voices, the buzzing of interoffice phones. He smiled slightly to himself. The news was getting around. “Did you hear what Williams said to the old man in the conference room?...
Did you hear?
...”

He got his topcoat from the closet, told his secretary that he was going home for the day and went down in the elevator, leaving the shambles behind him.

The New Haven Railroad ran northeast from New York, close to the coast, stopping every twenty-odd minutes to unload tired-eyed men in wrinkled suits. It was on the stretch between Stamford and Westport, where Gart lived, that the conductor paused to take his seat tab and then lingered, smiling.

“How are you tonight, Mr. Williams?”

Williams, aware that his face was gray, nodded. “In the absolute pink.”

“Cold winter this year,” the conductor said conversationally. “It seems to get dark earlier than it ever has.”

“That’s the way of the world,” Williams answered. “The rich get richer and the days get shorter.”

He vaguely heard the conductor chuckle as he moved down the car, then closed his eyes and leaned hack in the uncomfortable seat.

Over and over inside his mind he played the scene that had occurred that afternoon. Misrell’s voice kept pushing around deep inside his mind. “It’s a push, push, push business,” the voice said as it tore into him. “It’s an absolutely push, push, push business. You’ve got to stick with it, boy. You absolutely have to stick with it. It’s a push, push, push business. It’s a push, push, push business.”

Over and over the raspy, grating voice tore at his nerve endings until finally he opened his eyes and shouted out into the car,
“That’s enough!”

A surprised and frightened woman turned around to gape at him from the seat in front. Williams looked away, pretending not to notice her, and watched the bare, lifeless trees shoot by the window, the patches of duty, early snow, the dull gray-black of rolling hillocks, stripped of color. It was a naked winter twilight that stared back at him. After a while the humming clickety-click of the train softened and then blunted Williams’s consciousness and he fell asleep.

He didn’t know how long he dozed, but he was awakened by the noise of the train coming to a stop. A voice called out, “Willoughby! This is Willoughby.”

Williams opened his eyes, rubbed the sleep out of them, and looked out the window. He stared, first with incredulous amazement and then with fear, because outside was a summer afternoon.

The train had stopped at a small station with a sign that read, “Willoughby.” On the platform of the station were women with parasols and long dresses. Boys in knickers ran back and forth. One carried a fishing pole. Beyond the station was a small village square with a bandstand. Williams could hear the strains of the Sousa music, happily discordant and marvelously reminiscent. The whole scene was bathed in a hot summer sun. Williams tried to digest it, knowing it was a dream, but confused by the absolute reality.

Then he became aware of the railroad car he was sitting in. It was no longer the ugly chrome and green plastic of the car he’d entered in Grand Central Station. It was now the ornate nineteenth-century wood and velvet of trains he’d seen only in pictures or in Western movies on television. Gas lamps hung from the ceiling and soon a little, white-haired conductor appeared at the opposite end of the car dressed in a tight, brass-buttoned suit with an old-fashioned trainman’s cap. He sauntered slowly down the car, smiled at Williams and winked at him.

“This stop is Willoughby,” he announced again.

He started to walk past Williams, who grabbed him.

“What do you mean Willoughby? What’s Willoughby?”

The conductor smiled and nodded toward the window. “That’s Willoughby, sir. Right outside.”

“Wait a minute,” Williams said, his voice tight and unbelieving. “Wait just a minute. What’s going on? There’s no place called Willoughby on this line. And look at it outside. The sun is out. It’s... it’s summer.”

The conductor smiled and winked. “That’s what she is, mid-July and a real warm one, too.”

“But listen,” Williams said, “it’s November. What’s going on, anyway? Williams shut his, eyes tightly, then opened them again. “It’s November,” he repeated. “What is this place? Where are we? What’s happened!”

The conductor gently removed Gart’s hand from his sleeve.

“Please,” Williams said, lowering his voice, “please, what’s going on?
Where is Willoughby?
”

“Willoughby, sir,” the conductor answered. “That’s Willoughby right outside. Willoughby. July. Summer. It’s 1880. It’s a lovely little village.” His smile faded and something intense crept into his voice. “You ought to try it sometime. Peaceful, restful, where a man can slow down to a walk and live his life full measure.”

He walked down the car toward the opposite entrance. “Willoughby,” he announced as he walked. “This stop is Willoughby”

Williams bolted from his seat. He raced down the car to the door that the conductor had closed behind him and out onto the train platform. The next car was completely empty The conductor had disappeared. Williams stopped, his face twisted with pain and bewilderment. His mouth opened to protest or question or plead for someone to give him understanding.

The train lurched, throwing him against the side of the car. He grabbed at the door for support. In that brief moment it had become dark outside and the train car that he walked through, going back to his seat, was once again full of fluorescent lights, reclining seats and ashtrays, with a sprinkling of tired-faced commuters. Williams sat down and gave a quick look out the window at the winter landscape.

“Westport-Saugatuck, next stop,” a man’s voice said.

Williams looked up to see the conductor he was familiar with.

“Have a good sleep, Mr. Williams.” he asked.

“Yeah,” Williams said. “I had a good sleep. A good sleep with an idiotic dream. Idiotic...At least...at least I guess it’s idiotic.” He looked up at the conductor. “Ever hear of a town named Willoughby?”

The conductor screwed up his face thoughtfully “Willoughby? Willoughby where?”

“Willoughby, Connecticut, I guess, or Willoughby, New York.”

The conductor shook his head. “No, not on this run. There’s no Willoughby on the line. No town named Willoughby.”

“You sure?”

“No Willoughby that I’ve ever heard of.” He continued down the aisle. “Westport-Saugatuck, stop. Westport-Saugatuck.”

Gart Williams picked up his briefcase and, very slowly, questions pressing down on him, he walked to the end of the car and out into the winter night.

Gart stood at the bar in the ornate den adjoining the living room of his ranch-house home. He sipped slowly on a long bourbon, relishing the heat of it and the soothingness. It was dulling some of the sharp and ugly recollections of the afternoon and making even more dream-like his experience on the train.

He’d been on the phone to the office and received a complete report on everything that went on after he left. Misrell, it seemed, had shut himself up in his office, incommunicado, for at least two hours after the scene. Then, however, he had sent a memo to Gart’s secretary, announcing yet another meeting for the following day. So, it seemed, the wound had been deep and tearing, but not fatal.