“To you, Al. Al Bliss, my agent. What happened in the hospital? How’d I get out of there into here? Don’t you know?” His panic ebbed as he forced control on himself; he made his words come out reasonably. “Can you get hold of Heather for me?”
“Miss Hart?” Al said, and chuckled. And did not answer.
“You,” Jason said savagely, “are through as my agent. Period. No matter what the situation is. You are out.”
In his ear Al Bliss chuckled again and then, with a click, the line became dead. Al Bliss had hung up.
I’ll kill the son of a bitch, Jason said to himself. I’ll tear that fat balding little bastard into inch-square pieces.
What was he trying to do to me? I don’t understand. What all of a sudden does he have against me? What the hell did I do to him, for chrissakes? He’s been my friend and agent nineteen years. And nothing like this has ever happened before.
I’ll try Bill Wolfer, he decided. He’s always in his office or on call; I’ll be able to get hold of him and find out what this is all about. He dropped a second gold dollar into the phone’s slot and, from memory, once more dialed.
“Wolfer and Blame, Attorneys-at-law,” a female receptionist’s voice sounded in his ear.
“Let me talk to Bill,” Jason said. “This is Jason Thverner. You know who I am.”
The receptionist said, “Mr. Wolfer is in court today. Would you care to speak to Mr. Blame instead, or shall I have Mr. Wolfer call you back when he returns to the office later on this afternoon?”
“Do you know who I am?” Jason said. “Do you know who Jason Taverner is? Do you watch TV?” His voice almost got away from him at that point; he heard it break and rise. With great effort he regained control over it, but he could not stop his hands from shaking; his whole body, in fact, shook.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Taverner,” the receptionist said. “I really can’t talk for Mr. Wolfer or–”
“Do you watch TV?” he said.
“Yes.”
“And you haven’t heard of me? The _Jason Taverner Show_, at nine on Tuesday nights?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Taverner. You really must talk directly to Mr. Wolfer. Give me the number of the phone you’re calling from and I’ll see to it that he calls you back sometime today.”
He hung up.
I’m insane, he thought. Or she’s insane. She and Al Bliss, that son of a bitch. God. He moved shakily away from the phone, seated himself in one of the faded overstuffed chairs. It felt good to sit; he shut his eyes and breathed slowly and deeply. And pondered.
I have five thousand dollars in government high-denomination bills, he told himself. So I’m not completely helpless. And that thing is gone from my chest, including its feeding tubes. They must have been able to get at them surgically in the hospital. So at least I’m alive; I can rejoice over that. Has there been a time lapse? he asked himself. Where’s a newspaper?
He found an L.A. _Times_ on a nearby couch, read the date. October 12, 1988. No time lapse. This was the day after his show and the day Marilyn had sent him, dying, to the hospital.
An idea came to him. He searched through the sections of newspaper until he found the entertainment column. Currently he was appearing nightly at the Persian Room of the Hollywood Hilton–had been in fact for three weeks, but of course less Tuesdays because of his show.
The ad for him which the hotel people had been running during the past three weeks did not seem to be on the page anywhere. He thought groggily, maybe it’s been moved to another page. He thereupon combed that section of the paper thoroughly. Ad after ad for entertainers but no mention of him. And his face had been on the entertainment page of some newspaper or another for ten years. Without an ellipsis.
I’ll make one more try, he decided. I’ll try Mory Mann.
Fishing out his wallet, he searched for the slip on which he had written Mory’s number.
His wallet was very thin.
All his identification cards were gone. Cards that made it possible for him to stay alive. Cards that got him through pol and nat barricades without being shot or thrown into a forcedlabor camp.
I can’t live two hours without my ID, he said to himself. I don’t even dare walk out of the lobby of this rundown hotel and onto the public sidewalk. They’ll assume I’m a student or teacher escaped from one of the campuses. I’ll spend the rest of my life as a slave doing heavy manual labor. I am what they call an _unperson_.
So my first job, he thought, is to stay alive. The hell with Jason Taverner as a public entertainer; I can worry about that later.
He could feel within his brain the powerful six-determined constituents moving already into focus. I am not like other men, he told himself. I will get out of this, whatever it is. Somehow.
For example, he realized, with all this money I have on me I can get myself down to Watts and buy phony ID cards. A whole walletful of them. There must be a hundred little operators scratching away at that, from what I’ve heard. But I never thought I’d be using one of them. Not Jason Taverner.
Not a public entertainer with an audience of thirty million. Among all those thirty million people, he asked himself, isn’t there one who remembers me? If “remember” is the right word. I’m talking as if a lot of time has passed, that I’m an old man now, a has-been, feeding off former glories. And that’s not what’s going on.
Returning to the phone, he looked up the number of the birth-registration control center in Iowa; with several gold coins he managed to reach them at last, after much delay.
“My name is Jason Taverner,” he told the clerk. “I was born in Chicago at Memorial Hospital on December 16, 1946. Would you please confirm and release a copy of my certificate of birth? I need it for a job I’m applying for.”
“Yes, sir.” The clerk put the line on hold; Jason waited.
The clerk clicked back on. “Mr. Jason Taverner, born in Cook County on December 16, 1946.”
“Yes,” Jason said.
“We have no birth registration form for such a person at that time and place. Are you absolutely sure of the facts, sir?”
“You mean do I know my name and when and where I was born?” His voice again managed to escape his control, but this time he let it; panic flooded him. “Thanks,” he said and hung up, shaking violently, now. Shaking in his body and in his mind.
_I don’t exist_, he said to himself. There is no Jason Taverner. There never was and there never will be. The hell with my career; I just want to live. If someone or something wants to eradicate my career, okay; do it. But aren’t I going to be allowed to exist at all? Wasn’t I even born?
Something stirred in his chest. With terror he thought, They didn’t get the feed tubes out entirely; some of them are still growing and feeding inside of me. That goddamn tramp of a no-talent girl. I hope she winds up walking the streets for two bits a try.
After what I did for her: getting her those two auditions for A and R people. But hell–I did get to lay her a lot. I suppose it comes out even.
Returning to his hotel room, he took a good long look at himself in the flyspecked vanity mirror. His appearance hadn’t changed, except that he needed a shave. No older. No more lines, no gray hair visible. The good shoulders and biceps. The fat-free waist that let him wear the current formfitting men’s clothing.
And that’s important to your image, he said to himself. What kind of suits you can wear, especially those tucked-inwaist numbers. I must have fifty of them, he thought. Or did have. Where are they now? he asked himself. The bird is gone, and in what meadow does it now sing? Or however that goes. Something from the past, out of his days at school. Forgotten until this moment. Strange, he thought, what drifts up into your mind when you’re in an unfamiliar and ominous situation. Sometimes the most trivial stuff imaginable.
If wishes were horses then beggars might fly. Stuff like that. It’s enough to drive you crazy.
He wondered how many pol and nat check stations there were between this miserable hotel and the closest ID forger in Watts? Ten? Thirteen? Two? For me, he thought, all it takes is one. One random check by a mobile vehicle and crew of three. With their damn radio gear connecting them to pol-nat data central in Kansas City. Where they keep the dossiers.