“Yeah, didn’t you.”
Now I saw my dad hovering nearby. And–disagreeably– Pris Frauenzimmer in her long gray cloth coat, pacing back and forth, glancing at me with exasperation and the faint hint of contemptuous amusement.
“One word from it,” she said to me, “and you’re out. Good grief.”
“So what,” I managed to say feebly.
To his daughter, Maury said, grinning, “It proves what I said; it’s effective.”
“What–did the Lincoln do?” I asked. “When I passed out?” Maury said, “It got up, picked you up and carried you up here.”
“Jesus,” I murmured.
“Why did you faint?” Pris said, bending down to peer at me intently. “What a bump. You idiot. Anyhow, it got the crowd; you should have heard them. I was outside with them, trying to get through. You’d think we had produced God or something; they were actually praying and a couple of old ladies were crossing themselves. And some of them, if you can believe it–”
“Okay,” I broke in.
“Let me finish.”
“No,” I said. “Shut up. Okay?”
We glared at each other and then Pris rose to her feet. “Did you know your lip is badly gashed? You getter get a couple of stiches put in it.”
Touching my lip with my fingers I discovered that it was still dribbling blood. Perhaps she was right.
“I’ll drive you to a doctor,” Pris said. She walked to the door and stood waiting. “Come on, Louis.”
“I don’t need any stitches,” I said, but I rose and shakily followed after her.
As we waited in the hall for the elevator Pris said, “You’re not very brave, are you?”
I did not answer.
“You reacted worse than I did, worse than any of us. I’m surprised. There must be a far less stable streak in you than any of us knows about. And I bet someday, under stress, it shows up. Someday you’re going to reveal grave psychological problems.”
The elevator door opened; we entered and the doors shut.
“Is it so bad to react?” I said.
“At Kansas City I learned how not to react unless it was in my interest to. That was what saved me and got me out of there and out of my illness. That was what they did for me. It’s always a bad sign when there’s effect, as in your case; it’s always a sign of failure in adjustment. They call it parataxis, at Kansas City; it’s emotionality that enters interpersonal relations and makes them complicated. It doesn’t matter if it’s hate or envy or, as in your case, fear–they’re all parataxis. And when they get strong enough you have mental illness. And, when they take control, you have ‘phrenia, like I had. That’s the worst.”
I held a handkerchief to my lip, dabbing and fussing with the cut. There was no way I could explain my reaction to Pris; I did not try.
“Shall I kiss it?” Pris said. “And make it well?”
I glared at her, but then I saw that on her face there was vibrant concern.
“Hell,” I said, flustered. “It’ll be okay.” I was embarrassed and I couldn’t look at her. I felt like a little boy again. “Adults don’t talk to each other like that,” I mumbled. “Kissing and making well–what sort of dumb diction is that?”
“I want to help you.” Her mouth quivered. “Oh, Louis– it’s all over.”
“What’s all over?”
“It’s alive. I can never touch it again. Now what’ll I do? I have no further purpose in life.”
“Christ,” I said.
“My life is empty–I might as well be dead. All I’ve done and thought has, been the Lincoln.” The elevator door opened and Pris started out into the lobby of the building. I followed. “Do you care what doctor you go to? I’ll just take you down the street, I guess.”
“Fine.”
As we got into the white Jaguar, Pris said, “Tell me what to do, Louis. I have to do something right away.”
At a loss I said, “You’ll get over this depression.”
“I never felt like this before.”
“I’m thinking. Maybe you could run for Pope.” It was the first thing that popped into my mind; it was inane.
“I wish I were a man. Women are cut off from so much. You could be anything, Louis. What can a woman be? A housewife or a clerk or a typist or a teacher.”
“Be a doctor,” I said. “Stitch up wounded lips.”
“I can’t stand sick or damaged or defective creatures. You know that, Louis. That’s why I’m taking you to the doctor; I have to avert my gaze–maimed as you are.”
“I’m not maimed! I’ve just got a cut lip!”
Pris started up the car and we drove out into traffic. “I’m going to forget the Lincoln. I’ll never think of it again as living; it’s just an object to me from this minute on. Something to market.”
I nodded.
“I’m going to see to it that Sam Barrows buys it. I have no other task in life but that. From now on all I will think or do will have Sam Barrows at the core of it.”
If I felt like laughing at what she was saying I had only to look at her face; her expression was so bleak, so devoid of happiness or joy or even humor, that I could only nod. While driving me to the doctor to have my lip stitched up, Pris had dedicated her entire life, her future and everything in it. It was a kind of maniacal whim, and I could see that it had swum up to the surface out of desperation. Pris could not bear to spend a single moment without something to occupy her; she had to have a goal. It was her way of forcing the universe to make sense.
“Prig,” I said, “the difficulty with you is that you’re rational.”
“I’m not; everybody says I do exactly what I feel like.”
“You’re driven by iron-clad logic. It’s terrible. It has to be gotten rid of. Tell Horstowski that; tell him to free you from logic. You function as if a geometric proof were cranking the handle of your life. Relent, Pris. Be carefree and foolish and stupid. Do something that has no purpose. Okay? Don’t even take me to the doctor; instead, dump me off in front of a shoeshine parlor and I’ll get my shoes shined.”
“Your shoes are already shined.”
“See? See how you have to be logical all the time? Stop the car at the next intersection and we’ll both get out and leave it, or go to a flower shop and buy flowers and throw them at other motorists.”
“Who’ll pay for the flowers?”
“We’ll steal them. We’ll run out the door without paying.”
“Let me think it over,” Pris said.
“Don’t think! Did you ever steal anything when you were a kid? Or bust something just for the hell of it, maybe some public property like a street lamp?”
“I once stole a candy bar from a drugstore.”
“We’ll do that now,” I said. “We’ll find a drugstore and we’ll be kids again; we’ll steal a dime candy bar apiece, and we’ll go find a shady place and sit like on a lawn for instance and eat it.”
“You can’t, because of your lip.”
I said in a reasonable, urgent voice, “Okay. I admit that. But you could. Isn’t that so? Admit it. You could go into a drugstore right now and do that, even without me.”
“Would you come along anyhow?”
“If you want me to. Or I could park at the curb with the motor running and drive you the second you appeared. So you’d get away.”
“No,” Pris said, “I want you to come into the store with me and be right there beside me. You could show me which candy bar to take; I need your help.”
“I’ll do it.”
“What’s the penalty for something like that?”
“Life everlasting,” I said.
“You’re kidding me.”
“No,” I said. “I mean it.” And I did; I was deeply serious. “Are you making fun of me? I see you are. Why would you do that? Am I ridiculous, is that it?”
“God no!”
But she had made up her mind. “You know I’ll believe anything. They always kidded me in school about my gullibility. ‘Gullible’s travels,’ they called me.”
I said, “Come into the drugstore, Pris, and I’ll show you; let me prove it to you. To save you.”
“Save me from what?”
“From the certitude of your own mind.”
She wavered; I saw her swallow, struggle with herself, try to see what she should do and if she had made a mistake– she turned and said to me earnestly, “Louis, I believe you about the drugstore. I know you wouldn’t make fun of me; you might hate me–you do hate me, on many levels–but you’re not the kind of person who enjoys taunting the weak.”
“You’re not weak.”