The Comedy is Finished

response; pity, outrage, embarrassment, humiliation, fear. Everything, in fact, but lust: You’re a great argument for monasteries, baby, he thinks, but he doesn’t say it out loud.

Liz, in fact, is the first to speak, three or four minutes later, saying, “Well?”

He looks at her, and she’s back to her old self, angry, hostile and scornful. She’s also sitting up straight now, the sunglasses hiding her face and the dashiki down over her legs. Koo has nothing to say, but he watches her, waiting for whatever will happen next.

The drug or madness or whatever it was seems gone now. She’s merely a nasty woman; nastier than most. With more belligerence than challenge she says, “Do you think you could make me come like that? You couldn’t. Not even close.”

Koo answers without the slightest overtone of comic manner: “For the first time in my life,” he says, “I know why they call it self-abuse.”

“Funny man,” she says, as mirthlessly as he. Then she shakes her head, saying, “Do you really expect to live through this?”

“I don’t think about it,” he says, while a lump of dread forms in his stomach.

What a lot of different sneers she owns! Using a brand new one, she says, “Afraid?”

“Very. Aren’t you?”

“We having nothing to fear but fear itself,” she tells him. “And that big guy over there with the sword.”

Koo gapes at her; does she realize she’s quoting an ancient line of his?

Yes. With an ironic smile she explains, “They’re showing your old movies on television. Because of all this.”

“Oh. Is that the silver lining, or the cloud?” And, astonishingly, he senses the beginning of human contact between them.

But she won’t let it happen. Souring again, lips turning down, she says, “I’m not your fan. We’re not chums.”

“That’s the silver lining.”

“Shut up for a minute. You’re a boring person.”

“Send me home.”

She looks at him, stolidly. “You’ll never see home again. Now shut your face.”

He says nothing. She wants the last word? Fine, she’s got the last word.

And some last word it is. While the silence goes on and on in the small room—she’s brooding about something, over there behind her sunglasses—her last statement keeps circling in Koo’s head. “You’ll never see home again.” That’s the fear, tucked down into a capsule and neatly answered, the fear that there is no way out, that kidnapping isn’t really what’s happened to Koo Davis. Death is happening to him, that’s what, Death, in easy stages. He’s on the chute, the long slippery chute, sliding down into the black.

It must be five minutes they sit there in jagged silence when the door behind Koo opens again and Joyce enters, looking hopeful and almost happy—and then surprised, when she sees Liz: “So there you are!”

“Maybe,” Liz says, unmoving.

“Did you hear the announcement?”

Liz shrugs.

“On the radio,” Joyce says, as though a piling on of detail will encourage Liz to respond.

Koo says, “Something about me? Excuse me butting in, I take an interest in my well-being.”

“Yes, of course,” Joyce says. “It was from the man Wiskiel. He said the kidnappers should watch a special program tonight at seven-thirty on Channel 11, we’ll have an answer from Washington then.”

“A special? They can’t just say yes or no, they have to bring on the June Taylor Dancers?”

“They apologized for not making the six o’clock deadline,” Joyce goes on, oblivious, “but they said seven- thirty was the absolute earliest they could have the answer ready. Doesn’t that sound hopeful to you?”

She’s asking Koo, having obviously decided not to waste her high spirits on Liz, but Koo isn’t feeling particularly perky himself at the moment, and he says, “What’s so hopeful about it? It can still be yes or no.”

“Oh, it’s much more likely to be yes. If it was no, they could just say so, but if it’s yes they have to get everybody ready, get them out of their jails and all, and that takes time.”

“I hope you’re right,” Koo tells her. “In fact, I’m positive you’re right.”

“I know I am.” Joyce takes everything literally. Now she actually smiles fondly at Koo, and says, “It really hasn’t been that bad, has it?”

Can she be serious? Koo studies her earnest face, and decides she can. He says, “You know how, sometimes, there’s a thing that somebody doesn’t like, and he’ll say, ‘Well, it’s not as bad as a poke in the eye with a sharp stick’? You ever hear anybody use that remark?”

“I think so,” she says, doubtfully.

“Well, this,” Koo tells her, “is exactly as bad as a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. In fact, worse. In fact, two pokes, two eyes, two sharp sticks.”

“Oh, it isn’t that bad,” she says, with a laugh, as though he’s joking.

Koo frowns. He will not do Burns and Allen with this nitwit. “Okay,” he says. “So it isn’t that bad.”

Abruptly Liz yanks herself to her feet, saying to Joyce, “He’s an insect. He’ll be squashed, that’s all, sooner or later. Don’t smile at him, he’s dead already.” And she strides from the room, closing the door hard behind her.

Joyce looks pained, like a punctilious hostess. “Don’t mind Liz. Really. She’s been...upset today.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“I’ll have to—” Joyce is edging, in tentative muddled movements, toward the door, drawn by Liz’ wake. “Things will be all right now,” she says, but her smile is panicky.

Will things be all right? One of these people is talking death, one is talking release, one is talking father-son, one is talking African tribes, and Count Dracula isn’t talking at all. And Koo is not at all as heartened as Joyce at the prospect of this seven-thirty television spectacular; it sounds more like a negotiating phase than a final step, and so far Koo doesn’t much like the way these people negotiate. Making a sudden decision, surprising himself, he says, “Wait.”

“Yes?”

Is this the right move? Who knows; it’s what he’s going to do. “I want you to take a message to Mark.”

“Mark?” She frowns at him, her manner more keen than usual. “Is this the same thing that Larry talked to him about?”

“That’s right. Why?”

“They had a fight about it. Mark and Larry.”

Koo can’t quite contain a sudden triumphant grin. So his instinct is right; Mark went too far with that father-son line, he scared himself. Mark is on the run now, Koo has the edge, and by God he’s determined to find some useful advantage in it. With all these crazy people on the loose around here negotiations with Washington are less useful to Koo than his own initiative; somehow, somehow, he has to get himself out of here. (Was his message received, in that last tape? Was it understood? Is the house being surrounded at this very moment? No, he can’t count on that either; wishing won’t make it so.) “You tell Mark,” he says, “that if he won’t answer my questions I’ll ask them of you.”

“Well, what are they? Why not just ask me to begin with?”

“Tell Mark,” Koo insists. “Then either he comes down or you do.”

She hesitates, then slowly nods: “All right. But I don’t want him to fight with me. I’ll ask him once.”

“That’s fine.”

She leaves, and Koo lies back on the studio couch, staring at the ceiling. Now that it’s too late, he’s no longer so absolutely sure he has the upper hand with Mark. That’s a brutal boy, after all; swift violent action is his specialty.

Although he’s still very weak, nervousness soon drives Koo up onto his feet. He treads slowly the length of the room, door to window, and then back, pausing at the door; with all this traffic in and out, would somebody have forgotten to lock that?

No. He tests it, and it’s still solidly sealed against him. And the next time it opens, will Mark be coming in? With balled fists and enraged eyes? The thought pushes Koo away from the door, and he moves shakily down the