“Sure,” Norvell mumbled. “Uh—now it’s my turn. Excuse me, Arnie. All right?”
When he came back the room wasn’t spinning quite so dizzily, but the warmth in his body wasn’t so gratifying either.
He stared so long at the glass of beer by his chair that Arnie thought it was flat and pressed a replenishment button. “Oh, thanks,” Norvell said, startled.
He picked up the glass and took a sip, then put it down hard. Half of it slopped over. Over the whistle of the suction cleaners draining the spilled beer, Norvell said with sudden misery, “Arnie, I’m in trouble.”
Dworcas froze. After a moment, he said carefully, “Trouble?”
“Yes, trouble. The dirtiest, damnedest, lowest-down trouble Fve ever been in in my life. It scares me, Arnie. I swear to Cod, if it weren’t for people like you—hell, if it weren’t for you fersonally—I don’t know what I’d do. Arnie, I think I’m going to go out of my head! It isn’t just one thing, it’s everything. The job, the wife, that slimy little kid—everything.” He told Dworcas about the grisly dinner with his wife and stepdaughter; about the countless run-ins with Candella; about all of the fights and frustrations that had come to him. “The worst was this morning, just before I went to that lawyer. Candella— God, I couldVe killed him! Or myself. I was reaming out that fittle punk Stimmens when Candella walked into the room. He must’ve heard every word I said, because when I turned •round and saw him he said, ‘Excellent advice, Mr. Bligh, I hope you’ll follow it yourself.’ And Stimmens just stood there laughing at me. I couldn’t do a thing. For two cents I would have gone in and asked him for my contract.”
Dworcas nodded precisely. “Perhaps you should have,” he «id gravely.
“What? Oh, no, Arnie, you don’t understand. General Recreations is lousy on that. They won’t sell unless; they can get their pound of flesh and plenty more besides. We\had a vice-president once, a couple of years ago, got in dutch with the board and wanted out. Well, they set a price of four hundred thousand dollars on his contract. He had some rich relatives, I guess, or anyway he got some money somewhere and tried to bribe another firm to buy him, but of course they wouldn’t pay that kind of money. He had a family, couldn’t give up his job, give up bis house, just like that, you know. He killed himself, finally. It was that or cancel.”
“That’s a point to remember, Norvell. In any engineering problem there are always two components, at least, to any vector.”
Norvell chewed his lip a second. “Oh, I see what you mean,” he said unconvincingly. “There’s no way out.”
Dworcas shook his head. “No, Norvell, that’s what I just said. There are always two ways out.”
Norvell said, “Well——”
“At the shop,” Arnie said, leaning back, “these problems don’t arise, of course. Not like with you temperamental artists. But, of course, I know what I would do.”
“What?”
“I don’t want to interfere——”
Norvell sighed. “I guess you’re right.”
“—don’t want to interfere in your life, but if it were my decision, I’d cancel.”
Norvell goggled. He was suddenly sober.
“That’s right, Norvell. I’d cancel.”
Norvell looked at him unbelievingly, but Dworcas’s gaze was grave and considerate—except, perhaps, for a tiny glint that was enjoying Norvell’s consternation very much. Norvell looked away. He took a deep drink of his beer as Dworcas
said:
“I know it’s a tough decision to make, Norvell. Heaven knows, I’d find it hard to make myself without half an hour or more of serious thought. But what is your alternative?”
Norvell shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He put his beer down; neither man said a word for a long time, while Norvell’s mind raced from Candella to Dworcas to the lawyer, Mundin,
to Virginia to Stimmens to a fire-red mystery marked “Belly Rave” to the old man who had sat weeping out loud while he waited for the broken-field event to start; he had slid through the wire and missed every mine, but the man next to him wasn’t so fortunate and the old man had fainted dead away when he heard the blast.