The Comedy is Finished

mildly, for Peter to speak again.

“Mark! Did you hear me?”

“Yes, I heard you.”

“They’ll give us a plane. They’ll give us a clear route to the airport.”

Mark smiled at the silliness of it. In his mind’s eye he saw the sharpshooters on the rooftops, the curve or corner where the car would of necessity briefly slow to a crawl, the side windows starring and splintering all together, and suddenly everybody in the car dead but Koo. Turning to Koo, Mark grinned and pantomimed a sniper with a rifle shooting down from a rooftop. Koo looked blank, then suddenly nodded in comprehension. “Right,” he said. “But with my luck, the guy’d sneeze.”

“With my luck, so would I.”

“One bullet,” Koo said. “Right through the both of us.”

“You’re an incurable romantic, Koo.”

“Oh, I can be cured. I can be cured.”

Peter’s ragged voice sounded again: “Mark! There isn’t time for this!”

Mark shook his head at Koo, and turned back to the door. “Go away, Peter,” he called. “There’s nothing going to happen here.”

“We have to let them speak to Davis on the phone. They have to know he’s alive before they’ll deal.”

Mark made no response. To Koo he said, “Come over here. Lean your weight against this stuff.”

Getting to his feet, Koo said, “We expect visitors?”

“They’ll shoot the lock off in a minute.”

“What an exciting life you lead.”

Peter again: “Forget what happened before! Everything has changed now! We need him alive, he’s our passport!”

“It’s nice to be needed,” Koo commented, leaning his back against the hamper and the TV set.

“Mark!” came Peter’s hysterical voice. “For the last time! ”

“Promises, promises,” Koo said.

The sound of the shot wasn’t terribly loud, but the vibration of its impact pulsed through the jumbled pieces of the barricade like a preliminary earthquake tremor, and Koo’s side twinged painfully. “That’s a bigger gun,” Mark said.

“You suppose they got nukes?”

The second shot thrummed into the door; bottles tinkled together inside the hamper.

Seated at the small desk in the crowded trailer, Mike looked up when the radio operator called, “Mr. Wiskiel!”

“Yes?”

“Report of shooting from the house.”

“No,” Lynsey said; too low for anyone to hear but Mike. The color drained from her face, as though she might faint, and he noticed how clawlike her hands became when she clutched at the edge of the desk for support.

Mike concentrated on the radio operator, saying, “Anybody hit?”

“No, sir. They want to know what’s their response.”

“We don’t shoot first,” Mike said. “But we return fire.”

“Mike, please!” Lynsey’s whisper was shrill with urgency.

For her benefit, Mike added, “And nobody fires at sounds. We only respond to direct attack.”

“Yes, sir.”

The radio operator turned back to his seat, and Mike held a hand up to stop Lynsey’s protests before they could start. “Listen,” he said. “The guy hasn’t called back. You know what that probably means.”

“You can’t be sure what’s going on in that house,” she said. “They might be arguing among themselves.”

“Fine. If they are, and if Koo Davis is alive, then he’s still where Merville said he was—in an interior room without windows. Firing from outside the house won’t endanger him.”

“You can’t be sure where he is!”

“I can’t be sure of anything till it’s over,” Mike said. “But I’m not prepared to order my people not to respond when attacked.” Picking up the phone, he added, “I’ll talk to them again.”

“Good.”

But they weren’t answering. He let it ring eighteen times, then all at once the line went dead. When he dialed again, he got a busy signal.

“More shooting at the house,” the radio operator said.

Mike slammed the phone into its cradle; pushing back from the desk, he said, “I’m going down there and see what’s what.”

“I want to come with you.”

He looked at her wryly. “What choice do I have?”

“None,” she said.

After Larry shot the telephone, he felt foolish but defiant. He stood there with the revolver in his hand, the shattered phone on the living room floor, and Peter came blundering down the stairs, his voice high-pitched with a new querulousness, crying, “What’s the matter with you? What’s the matter with everybody?”

“We can’t take anymore,” Larry told him. “It has to end.”

Peter stared at the phone. “You utter fool! Now how can we deal with them?”

“Oh, Peter, do you still believe in it all?”

Larry no longer believed. His long morning of thought had led him at last to the understanding that it had all been a mistake, a stupid tragic mistake. He was remembering now something he hadn’t thought of in years; a motto on the wall of his parents’ bedroom back home, cut from some old magazine by his mother and put in a frame from Woolworth’s: Things done in violence have to be done over again. Why had he never read that, or remembered it, or understood it? Why had he always behaved as though meaningful change in the world must be instantaneous, violent, and total?

Hell is paved with good intentions, and Hell was where Larry now found himself. Good intentions had led at last to mere absurdity; himself pushing on a barricaded door, armed with a revolver, trying to get at a terrified old man. Shame and self-disgust had grown in him while he and Peter pressed uselessly at that door. The endless insistent ringing of the telephone had finally been the last straw, and this emptying of the revolver Larry’s last violence. “I’m giving myself up,” he said. “You do what you want. I’m giving myself up.”

“Oh, no, you’re not! No, you’re not! If we’re going to get out of this, we have to show a united front.”

Larry stared. “Get out of this? Peter, we’re going to die here today!”

“I’m not!” Peter’s eyes were open wide and glaring, and pink spittle flew with the agitation of his speech. “I’m going to live, I’m going to come back, I’m going to go on.” Then he blinked down at the destroyed telephone. “Extensions,” he muttered. “We can still make a deal.” And he hurried away to the kitchen.

Weary, Larry sagged onto the sofa and sat there leaning forward, head drooping, the empty revolver held slackly between his knees. He didn’t care what happened now.

Peter came back from the kitchen, calmer and colder. “Well, you’ve done it,” he said. “The phone’s out of order.”

“It doesn’t matter, Peter.”

“It does matter! Larry, I’m not going to finish here. I’m getting out, and you’re going to help. You’re going to.”

Apathetic, Larry looked up. “What do you want?”

“Convince Mark to come out. You can do it. We can’t force our way in there. Convince him we just need Davis as a hostage, so we can get away. Convince him nobody’s going to get hurt.”