‘”Strive”?’ he had said, baffled.
The Mole interrupted, ‘Rise higher. Get a better job. That’s what they mean when they say that.’
‘But I like my job,’ he answered.
‘So you’re content,’ Kathy said, in a muffled, bitter voice, ‘to appear to be successful. When you really aren’t.’ And then, sniffling and snuffling, she added, ‘And you’re terrible in bed.’
He got up and went into the living room of their conapt and sat alone for a time and then, instinctively, he made his way into his study and placed one of his treasured Johnny Winters tapes into the projector. For a while he sat in misery watching Johnny put on one hat after another and become a different person under each. And then—
At the doorway Kathy appeared, smooth and naked and slim, her face contorted. ‘Have you found it?’
‘Found what?’ He shut the tape projector off.
‘The tape,’ she stated, ‘that I destroyed.’
He stared at her, unable to take in what he had heard.
‘A few days ago.’ Her tone, defiant, shrilled at him. ‘I was all alone here in the conapt; I felt blue – you were busy doing some drafk nothing thing for Virgil – and I put on a reel; I put it on exactly right; I followed all the instructions. But it did something wrong. So it got erased.’
The Mole grunted somberly. ‘You were supposed to say “It doesn’t matter.”‘
He had known that; known it then, knew it now. But in a strangled, thick voice he had said, ‘Which tape?’
‘I don’t remember.’
His voice rose; it escaped him. ‘Goddam it, which tape?’ He ran to the shelf of tapes; grabbed the first box; tore it open; carried it at once to the projector.
‘I knew,’ Kathy said, in a harsh, bleak voice as she watched him with withering contempt, ‘that your —— tapes meant more to you than I do or ever did.’
‘Tell me which tape!’ he pleaded. ‘Please?’
‘No, she wouldn’t say,’ the Mole murmured thoughtfully. That would be the entire point. You’d have to play every one of them before you could find out. A couple days of playing tapes. Clever dame; damn clever.’
‘No,’ Kathy said in a low, embittered, almost frail voice. Now her face was peaked with hatred for him. ‘I’m glad I did it. You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to ruin all of them.’
He stared at her. Numbly.
‘You deserve it,’ Kathy said, ‘for holding back and not giving me all your love. This is where you belong, scrabbling like an animal, a panic-ridden animal. Look at you! Contemptible – trembling and about to burst into tears. Because someone ruined one of your INCREDIBLY important tapes.’
‘But,’ he said, ‘it’s my hobby. My lifetime hobby.’
‘Like a kid pulling its pud,’ Kathy said.
They – can’t be replaced. I have the only copies of some of them. The one from the Jack Paar show—’
‘So what? You know something, Eric? Do you know, really know, why you like watching men on tape?’
The Mole grunted; his heavy, fleshy, middle-aged face flinched as he listened.
‘Because,’ Kathy said, ‘you’re a fairy.’
‘Ouch,’ the Mole murmured, and blinked.
‘You’re a repressed homosexual. I sincerely doubt if you’re aware of it on a conscious level, but it’s there. Look at me; look. Here I am; a perfectly attractive woman, available to you any time you want me.’
The Mole said, aside, wryly, ‘And at no cost.’
‘And yet you’re in here with these tapes and not in the bedroom screwbling with me. I hope – Eric, I hope to God I ruined one that—’ She turned away from the door then. ‘Good night. And have fun playing with yourself.’ Her voice – actually and unbelievably – had become controlled, even placid.
From a crouched position he bolted toward her. Reached for her as she retreated smooth and white and naked down the hall, her back to him. He grabbed her, grabbed firm hold, sank his fingers into her soft arm. Spun her around. Blinking, startled, she faced him.
‘I’m going to—’ He broke off. I’m going to kill you, he had started to say. But already in the unstirred depths of his mind, slumbering beneath the frenzy of his hysterical antics, a cold and rational fraction of him whispered its ice-God voice: Don’t say it. Because if you do, then she’s got you. She’ll never forget. As long as you live she’ll make you suffer. This is a woman that one must not hurt because she knows techniques; she knows how to hurt back. A thousandfold. Yes, this is her wisdom, this knowing how to do this. Above all other things.
‘Let – go – of – me.’ Her eyes blazed smokily.
He released her.
After a pause, while she rubbed her arm, Kathy said, ‘I want that collection of tapes out of this apartment by tomorrow night. Otherwise we’re finished, Eric.’
‘Okay,’ he said, nodding.
‘And then,’ Kathy said, ‘I’ll tell you what else I want. I want you to start looking for a higher paying job. At another company. So I won’t run into you every time I turn around. And then… we’ll see. Possibly we can stay together. On a new basis, one fairer to me. One in which you make some attempt to pay attention to my needs in addition to your own.’ Astonishingly, she sounded perfectly rational and in control of herself. Remarkable.
‘You got rid of the tapes?’ the Mole asked him.
He nodded.
‘And you spent the next few years directing your efforts toward controlling your hatred for your wife.’
Again he nodded.
‘And the hatred for her,’ Mole said, ‘became hatred for yourself. Because you couldn’t stand being afraid of one small woman. But a very powerful person – notice I said “person” not “woman.”‘
‘Those low blows,’ Eric said. ‘Like her erasing my tape—’
‘The low blow,’ the Mole interrupted, ‘was not her erasing the tape. It was her refusing to tell you which one she had erased. And her making it so clear that she enjoyed the situation. If she had been sorry – but a woman, a person, like that; they never become sorry. Never.’ He was silent for a time. ‘And you can’t leave her.’
‘We’re fused,’ Eric said. The damage is done.’ The mutually inflicted pain delivered at night without the possibility of anyone intervening, overhearing and coming to help. Help, Eric thought. We both need help. Because this will go on, get worse, corrode us further and further until at last, mercifully—
But that might take decades.
So Eric could understand Gino Molinari’s yearning for death. He, like the Mole, could envision it as a release – the only dependable release that existed … or appeared to exist, given the ignorance, habit patterns, and foolishness of the participants. Given the timeless human equation.
In fact he felt a considerable bond with Molinari.
‘One of us,’ the Mole said, with perception, ‘suffering unbearably on the private level, hidden from the public, small and unimportant. The other suffering in the grand Roman public manner, like a speared and dying god. Strange. Completely opposite. The microcosm and the macro.’
Eric nodded.
‘Anyhow,’ the Mole said, releasing Eric’s hand and slapping him on the shoulder, I’m making you feel bad. Sorry, Dr Sweetscent; let’s drop the topic.’ To his bodyguard he said, ‘Open the door now. We’re done.’
‘Wait,’ Eric said. But then he did not know how to go on, to say it.
The Mole did it for him. ‘How would you like to be attached to my staff?’ Molinari said abruptly, breaking the silence. ‘It can be arranged; technically you’d be drafted into military service.’ He added, ‘You may take it for granted you’d be my personal physician.’
Trying to sound casual, Eric said, ‘I’m interested.’
‘You wouldn’t be running into her all the time. This might be a beginning. A start toward prying the two of you apart.’
‘True.’ He nodded. Very true. And very attractive, when thought of that way. But the irony – this consisted of precisely that which Kathy had goaded him toward all these years. ‘I’d have to talk it over with my wife,’ he began, and then flushed. ‘Virgil, anyhow,’ he muttered. ‘In any case. He’d have to approve.’
Regarding him with brooding severity, the Mole said in a slow, dark voice. There is one drawback. You would not see so much of Kathy; true. But by being with me you’d see a great deal of our—’ He grimaced. The ally. How do you suppose you’d enjoy yourself surrounded by ‘Starmen? You might find yourself having a few spasms of the gut late at night yourself … and perhaps worse – other – psychosomatic disorders, some you may not anticipate, despite your profession.’
Eric said, ‘It’s bad enough for me late at night as it is. This way I might have some company.’