There Are Doors

He nodded. “I think so.”

Unconsciously he had extended his own hand, and when Ella touched it she felt his bandage. “What in the world happened to you? Your face too—you’ve got a burn on your cheek and one on your forehead.”

“They’ve gone away, pretty much,” he said. “They weren’t very bad.”

“Were you in an accident? What happened?”

He nodded again. “I was in this Chinese shop—Mr. Sheng’s. He had fireworks stored in his basement, and something set them off. I think it was a guy named Bill North. Anyway, North was down there, and he’s a cigar smoker.” Though he felt it might be against his best interests, he grinned. “I was drinking tea with Mr. Sheng and his nephew, and a skyrocket came right up the stairs. It hit the wall at the top and came into the room where we were. It scared hell out of us. Then I guess some more must have gone off, because the next thing I knew I was in the street with my ears ringing and a cop and a paramedic bending over me. They said another ambulance had taken Mr. Sheng to the hospital, but—”

Drummond came in, nodded to Ella, raised an eyebrow at him, then smiled.

Ella said, “Good morning, sir.”

Drummond went into the little private office behind Ella’s reception room and shut the door.

Ella whispered, “I want to go in and talk to Dixie just for a minute. You wait here, okay?”

He nodded, studying her as she went into Drummond’s office. She was a little bit heavier than Fanny, he decided. That was an improvement, if anything. And her hair was brown. He felt sure Fanny’s had been black. Of course, no one was or could be like Lara, and he could never mistake any other woman for her. He had known right away that Marcella was really Lara, although Marcella had been a blonde, or at least had appeared to be. You could never tell, he thought, in black-and-white or in pictures drawn by a second-rate artist.

He glanced at his watch. It was eight twenty-eight, but he did not know just when he had come into the Personnel Office; it seemed to him Ella had been in the private office with Drummond a long time.

There was a drinking fountain in the hall outside. He got a drink, filling his mouth with icy water several times and each time making himself swallow it. He had the feeling that he did not always drink enough water, and ought to make himself drink more whenever he got the chance.

When he went back in, Ella was still in the private office with Drummond. He found Time in a pile of magazines on the end table and leafed through it. The President had reaffirmed his commitment to “ordinary Americans” and endorsed a reduction in Social Security benefits; the Near East seemed ready to explode. He wondered if it would help to send the President to the Near East, then tried to remember whether he had ever seen Time or a newspaper There. “There” was, he discovered, his private name for the other world, for the place where Lara was. He could not remember having seen one, although he could not be sure he had not—

Yes, of course, he had seen Walsh’s picture in the paper. This was Here and that was There. He could not remember if the comics had been the same, or whether that paper had carried any comics at all.

The door of the inner office swung open, and Ella came out. She said, “Mr. Drummond will see you now.” He put down Time and went in.

Drummond smiled and said, “Sit down. I’d like to start by admitting that most of this is my fault. I like to keep tabs on all our employees, and I certainly should have kept better tabs on you.”

He sat and found he was facing a large bronze nameplate as well as Drummond. The nameplate read:

A. DICKSON DRUMMOND

Manager of Personnel

He said, “That’s very nice of you, Mr. Drummond. Only it wasn’t your fault, I know that.” He counted silently to three and added, “I really don’t think it was mine either. It just happened.”

Drummond shook his head. “No, I blame myself. I was on the phone with your doctor a moment ago, by the way. She says it’s been a long time since you’ve been to see her.”

He tried to remember whether he had ever been to a doctor. Surely he had, but he could not recall the occasion. Dr. Pille had been his doctor in the hospital, but that was certainly not what Drummond meant. He said, “I guess it has.”

“We want you to see her right away; let me make that clear. Not next week, not tomorrow, not this afternoon—this morning, as soon as you leave my office.”

“I was hoping to get back to my department, sir. There’s a sale, and they need me.”

“And you can,” Drummond told him, “just as soon as you get back from the doctor. Come up here, show me a note saying she’s seen you, and you can get right back to work.”

A great weight lifted from his chest.

“Your doctor will see you as soon as you get to her office—she doesn’t take appointments. There’s no reason you can’t be back at work before lunch.”

He nodded.

“She asked me to ask you whether by any chance you suffered a blow to the head.”

He nodded. “I slipped on some ice and hit my head on the pavement.”

Drummond smiled again. “It could’ve happened to any of us, couldn’t it? That’s all for now. You go over and see her, and don’t forget to bring me the note.”

He rose. “I won’t, sir.”

“One more thing.” Drummond raised a finger. “While you were missing, I had Ella phone your number. She was never able to reach you, but on one occasion she got someone who said his name was Perlman, or some such. Do you know why he was in your apartment?”

He shrugged. “I guess he must have been from the building management company, sir.”