What was the song in Finian’s Rainbow? “If I’m not with the girl that I love, I love the girl I’m with.”* Something like that. He reached for Deirdre in the dusk and she turned and cuddled closer to him. The sheet was no longer wrapped around her. He buried his face in her neck, blowing lightly against her skin.
The phone rang.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Bigelow sat bolt upright and grabbed the phone off the end table, shoving it beneath a pillow behind him so the ringing seemed distant and far away. One damned interruption after another, he thought.
Who the hell could be calling tonight? Wrong number, probably.
He turned back to Deirdre, who was open and waiting for him.
Even while reaching for her, he was dimly aware that for some strange reason his eyes were beginning to water.
He automatically closed them. Making love was one of The few activities for which human beings needed no sight, he thought. He was unaware of the slight haze of smoke that was starting to drift out of the suite’s ventilation grill high on the wall and was promptly lost in the dusk of the room.
Behind him, smothered by the pillow, the telephone continued its futile ringing.
Portion of lyrics from “When I’m Not Near the Girl I Love,” music by Burton Lane, lyrics by E. Y. Harburg. Copyright ) 1946 by Chappell & Co Inc. Copyright renewed. Used by permission of Chappell & Co Inc.
CHAPTER 30
Lex Hughes was having trouble with the new electronic calculator.
The keys on the machine were much smaller than those on the old Monroe adding machine that it had replaced and he was always accidentally punching two keys at once. It must have been something like that which had thrown the totals off by a hundred dollars. A simple mechanical slip, but it had taken the better part of an hour to find the error.
It was the sort of thing that was always happening to him, Lex Hughes thought. The story of his life.
He leaned back and sighed. He was very tired, too tired even to feel the usual despair that frequently overwhelmed him when he was working in the office alone at night. For a moment he wished he hadn’t let Carolyn go-she was good at finding errors quickly.
It was more than the sense of physical fatigue that he felt; it was the realization that he was devoting his life’s work to the handling of other people’s money. It was routine; it was drudgery; it was dull-and it was something more than that. it you’re so Smart why aren’t you rich? But he would never be rich, he would never even be comfortably well off. He would slowly inch his way up the promotional ladder and by the time he reached the lower executive ranks, there would then be the final banquet and the equivalent of a gold watch.
The perfunctory handshake and the unspoken wish that he clean out his desk as soon as possible for his replacement, who would be young and clear of eye and champing at the bit in the outer office. Then a dull retirement and the losing battle against the actuarial charts-accompanied in his golden years by a shrew of a wife who would devote her remaining days to making his life miserable for not having filled hers with charm and excitement and the pleasure of possessions.
In her own way, she would finally find a fulfillment that would always escape him.
If he were suddenly granted three wishes, he thought, the first would be that he could be a small boy once again, so he could cry without being thought unmanly.
He got up from his desk and carried the last of the ledgers and his calculation sheets into the vault. He wouldn’t take anything home tonight; for once the weekend would be strictly for rest. On the way out of the vault, he stopped and glanced back briefly. The money drawers were like a magnet for him. How many answers to life’s problems lay within those deceptively plain metal drawers… . And then, suddenly feeling guilty, he looked up at the Eye, certain that it was reading his thoughts. The red light glowed as the camera slowly panned toward him. Thou Seest Me, he thought again. The camera was full on him now and he imagined that he was looking through the lens into unplumbed distances. The sensation gave him a feeling of vertigo.
He hated heights and looking into the camera was almost the same as staring down the entire eighteen floors into the security room.
He wondered if anybody was looking back.
At that instant, the red light winked out.
His breath seemed to freeze in his throat. I No, it couldn’t be so.
Lights did burn out. It was only the light. On Monday, they’d send someone up to replace the bulb, and the camera would follow him again with its implacable red eye.
Only … the camera wasn’t scanning. At the same instant the red light had winked out, the motor driving the camera stopped and the lens poised motionless, leering directly at him. Now there was no sense of staring down great heights. Intuition whispered that the Eye was dead, that its lens had filmed over and the monitoring screen eighteen floors below had faded into a dull gray, as if a heavy shade had been pulled over the Credit Union area.
He could feel the sweat begin to form under his arms.
The room was now completely silent, the barely audible whir of the camera’s scanning motor stilled. There was only the sound of his own breathing, of the heavy pounding of his heart … and of distant sirens.
Fire engines, he thought, distracted. And they must be very near if he could hear them in the almost soundproof offices.
Suddenly suspicious, he scurried around the rail and ran down the aisle between the rows of desks to the hall door. Once there, he paused for a second in indecision, looking back at the dead camera. It hadn’t moved an inch.
He turned back to the door, opened it, and peered out into the hall.
Nothing, he thought, feeling vaguely disappointed. And then something caught in his throat and nose; the faint, acrid smell of fire. He squinted down the hall at the elevator bank. Lazy tendrils of smoke were floating out of the shafts, bluing the air in the corridor.
More smoke was drifting from an air-conditioning duct a few feet farther down.
For the first time he was aware of how close the air in the office had become. Somewhere down below someone had turned off the ventilating fans. There was a fire in the building, he thought slowly.
How major a fire, he didn’t know. But it had knocked out the camera coaxial and, in effect, drawn a curtain between him and the rest of the world.
He slammed the door and leaned against it, his heart racing. Cut off from the world, cut off from the all- seeing Eye. He ran back to the Credit Union area, feeling the first stirrings of panic. He’d have to get out, but first he’d have to shut the vault doors. They were fireproof and it would have to get awfully hot to damage the contents, but he had read about money being charred within a safe. It could happen. He mopped the perspiration from his forehead and glanced up again at the dead camera.
It was up to him; it was his responsibility. The money and the records must be kept safe. It was too bad that the Eye couldn’t see how seriously he took his responsibilities, how dependable a man he was in his position.
“You could never find anybody better,” he said quietly, not even realizing he was saying it aloud. “No one better,” he repeated as though to reassure himself.
The camera said nothing, its dead Eye staring at empty space.
He looked back somberly at the Eye, feeling that if he had been wearing his hat, he should take it off. It was his duty to take the money to a safe place; it was, his responsibility.
And then, suddenly, he had another thought. A terrible, frightening thought. What if a distant God had taken pity on him and had given him this one final chance to escape the prison of his life?
But God doesn’t work that way, he thought.
Doesn’t He? an inner voice asked. Hughes hesitated a moment, then slowly reached for his brief case. He undid the clasp and upended it, letting the few papers within fall to the floor. He couldn’t turn his back on this opportunity, he thought, his mind suddenly cold and crystal clear. It was his last chance, the risk was worth it. The deposits were insured. He would be injuring nobody.
He shouldered the vault door all the way open, for one of the few times in his life feeling strong and in complete command of his actions. For the first time in years, he didn’t feel obligated to consider the wishes of
