The Troubled Air Part 3

"I see." Archer pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Do you suggest that that's the way I do it to Vic Herres, for example? Is that what you would do with your friend Herres, Emmet?"

The plum surge of blood showed in O'Neill's face again. "Please, Clement," he said, "what do you want me to do?"

"I don't know about you, Emmet," said Archer, feeling his hands trembling, "but I can't do it this way. Maybe I can't do it any way, but this is out. So I'll quit now, and you find somebody else who knows how to handle these things better."

"You can't quit," O'Neill said. "Your contract runs another sixteen weeks."

"Mr. Clement Archer," said Archer, "the not very eminent radio director and producer, was last seen entering a private nursing home, suffering from a nervous breakdown due to overwork. Before he went in, he issued a statement regretting his inability to fulfill his obligations due to reasons of health. He was a.s.sured by his lawyers that this was sufficient legal justification for laying down his contractual burdens."

O'Neill listened unhappily. "All right," he said, "what do you want? Within reason."

Archer thought for a moment. "First of all," he said, "I want time. You sprang this on me without warning and you can't expect me to make up my mind in fifteen minutes. Is that within reason?"

"How much time do you want?"

Archer considered. "Two weeks, anyway."

"You won't help Herres in two weeks," O'Neill said.

"Maybe not." Archer smiled. "But maybe I'll help myself. I'm a slow thinker, and if I was smarter I wouldn't be in radio, but in two weeks there's a chance I can get one or two things settled, anyway. For one thing, I might even find out whether these people are Communists or not."

"How'll you do that?"

"In a very novel way. I'll ask them."

O'Neill laughed harshly. "Do you think they'll tell you?"

"Who knows? Maybe they will," Archer said. "The world is full of people with a sickly leaning toward the truth."

"What if Frances Motherwell tells you she's not a Communist?"

Archer considered for a moment. "I won't believe her," he said quietly.

"What if Vic Herres says he's not a Communist?"

"I'll believe him."

"Because he's your friend."

"Because he's my friend," Archer said.

"Then what'll you do?" O'Neill demanded. "After the two weeks are up?"

"I'll tell you then." Archer noticed that his hands had stopped trembling.

"All right," O'Neill said. "You have two weeks. I don't know what I'll say to Hutt, but I'll stall him off."

"Thanks, Emmet," Archer said, feeling pleased with O'Neill.

"Yeah," O'Neill said. "I'll probably be on my a.s.s by next Friday. Here ..." He reached into his pocket and took out a folded piece of paper. It was a galley sheet. "Maybe you'd like to read this." He put it on the table in front of Archer.

Archer opened it and glanced down at it. It was the article from the magazine. It looked badly printed and harmless on the flimsy paper.

"Do you mind if I read it?" he asked.

"Go ahead," O'Neill said. He waved to the bartender for two more whiskies.

"Of all the programs on the air at this time," Archer read, "one of the most flagrant and cynical offenders against loyal and patriotic Americans is University Town, sponsored by the Sandler Drug Company, produced by the Hutt and Bookstaver Agency, and directed by Clement Archer."

"Water or soda?" the bartender asked, standing beside Archer's chair. Archer folded the galley automatically.

"Soda," he said. He watched the bubbly water fill the gla.s.s. The bartender went away and Archer opened the galley again. He read hazily, not being able to focus very well without his gla.s.ses and too lazy to take them out for half a column of print.

The article was written in the aggrieved prophetic style with which people air their views on Communism in the newspapers. There were some pugnacious metaphoric generalities about the necessity of clearing the American air of the termites who inveigled their way into the middle of the American home and then charges that Stanley Atlas, Frances Motherwell, Alice Weller, Manfred Pokorny and Victor Herres were either Communists or sympathizers. It offered some twenty organizations on the Attorney-General's list in which the actors were alleged to hold membership, lumping them all together and making it sound as though all the people who were accused were equally culpable. Pokorny, according to the article, was soon to be brought before the Immigration authorities, with a view toward deportation. The article closed with a blunt hint that if the sponsors of the program did not take action, appropriate steps would be inst.i.tuted by the American people.

Archer sighed when he finished the article. Except for the names, it was so familiar, and by now, so boring. He was always surprised at the freshness and vigor with which the crusaders of the press could stir up the old names and the old charges. Even if a man felt that they were true and he was serving his country n.o.bly by repeating them, it took a special imperviousness to boredom to roar them over and over again like that. Power, he glimpsed dimly, is finally in the hands of those who find a geometrically increasing pleasure in repet.i.tion. The equivalent among saints would be a man who merely said, "G.o.d, G.o.d, G.o.d," ten thousand times a day. I am probably a weakling, he thought, because I demand novelty.

"Dandy, isn't it?" O'Neill asked. He had been staring at Archer's face as he read, studying it for hints of what Archer was feeling.

"Delicious prose style these fellows have perfected," Archer said. "Can I keep it so I can study it?"

"Sure," O'Neill said. "But burn it when you're through with it."

"You're jittery, Emmet," Archer said. "Maybe you ought to join Alcoholics Anonymous."

"Yeah," said O'Neill. "I'm jittery all right. And I don't join anything."

"Thanks," Archer said, "for the two weeks. I hope it doesn't cost you your job."

"Who knows?" O'Neill stared at him sourly. "You marked me lousy tonight, didn't you?"

Archer hesitated. "A little, maybe. Around the edges."

"It's always nice to have honest friends." O'Neill let his breath out in a long, sighing sound. He looked truculent and embarra.s.sed, like a boy who has just been taken out of a football game by the coach for allowing himself to be blocked out of a play. "Honest friends," he said ramblingly, "in this day and age ..." He put his head in his hands.

Archer stood up. "I'm going home," he said. "I've had enough fun for one night. Can I give you a lift?"

"No," Emmet said, still with his head in his hands. "I'm going to stay here and drink. I'm having a fight with my wife and I'm waiting for her to fall asleep." He picked up his head. "Sometimes," he said unsmilingly, "I wish I was back in the Marines. On Guam."

"Good night," Archer said. He patted O'Neill's shoulder lightly. Archer went out. O'Neill, sitting alone in the dark and empty restaurant, ordered a double Scotch.

3.

FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER ARCHER OPENED THE DOOR OF HIS HOUSE. He saw that there were lights on upstairs and he knew that Kitty was awake.

"Kitty," he called from the hallway, closing the door behind him. "Kitty, I'm home."

"Clement." Kitty's voice floated softly down the stairwell. Even in merely calling his name, there was the private tone of pleasure and welcome with which she always greeted him. "I'm in bed, darling."

"Do you want anything?" he asked, throwing his coat and hat over a chair in the hall. "Before I come up?"

"Well ..." He could picture her sitting in bed, pursing her mouth, slowly making up her mind. "Well ... There're some fresh cookies in the jar. And a gla.s.s of milk. Half a gla.s.s."

"On the way up," Archer said. He went through the living room to the kitchen. There were some freesias in a bowl, a tropical, summer scent, and the maid had fixed the room before she had left for the night and all the cushions were crisp and perfect on the couch and chairs. The room was a pleasant hodgepodge of furniture styles, with some early American tables and Victorian chairs in bright silk upholstery and you could tell that an interior decorator had never been allowed past the front door. Home, Archer thought comfortably, home. He could feel himself relaxing, forgetting O'Neill, forgetting the program, forgetting the folded galley sheet in his pocket.

When he entered the bedroom, carrying the milk and cookies, Kitty was sitting up in bed, the pillows piled behind her, her head in a blue bandana, because she had washed her hair during the evening. She looked absurdly young with her bare, full shoulders and the brilliant handkerchief tied in a bow around her hair, like the pretty girls driving through vacation towns in the summertime on the way to the beach. Archer put the tray down and leaned over and kissed her shoulder. "That's for lying in bed half-naked," he said.

"Ummn," Kitty said, patting the bed beside her, indicating that she wanted him to sit there. "The service in this establishment is getting better every day."

Archer took off his jacket and tossed it over a chair and opened his collar and took off his tie before he sat down on the bed. Kitty sipped her milk, looking like an obedient little girl at early dinner. "I'm gluttonous," she said. "I've been lying here all night, thinking of food. You know what I kept hoping?"

"What?"

"I kept hoping somebody would have a flash of inspiration and go into Schrafft's and buy a pint of ice cream. Coffee ice cream."

Archer laughed and patted her knee under the quilt. "Tomorrow," he said. "I promise tomorrow."

"I kept using mental telepathy," Kitty said, crunching on a cookie. "I said to myself, Now he is walking down the street and he is pa.s.sing Schrafft's and the message stops him in his tracks. 'I hear a voice,' he says to himself. 'It says coffee-flavor.' " She giggled. "I'm going to weigh three hundred pounds before this is over."

"Don't worry about it," Archer said. "You never looked better in your whole life."

"I'm ashamed of myself when I go into the doctor's office and he puts me on the scales." Kitty took another cookie. "I can tell from the way he looks at me, he thinks I'm a woman without any self-control."

"That's exactly the kind of wife for me," Archer said. "Without self-control."

"You're perfect," Kitty said complacently. "You're the absolutely perfect husband."

"Did you have a good day?" Archer asked. He got up and began to undress.

"I stayed in bed most of the time. I'm getting real lazy. I didn't read. I didn't sew. I didn't answer the telephone. I didn't tell Gloria what to order for dinner. I didn't think a single thought. Are you ashamed of me because I'm so lazy?"

"Uhuh." Archer took off his shirt and held it indecisively in his hand for a moment.

"In the closet," Kitty said warningly. "Hang it up. I can tell you're deciding to throw it on the chair."

Archer grinned as he went into the large closet, with his clothes hanging on one side and Kitty's dresses a row of colors on the other. "Some day," he said, as he hung up his clothes and put on his pajama bottoms in the closet, "you're going to go too far with your mind-reading act."

"Isn't it infuriating?" Kitty agreed complacently.

Archer came out of the closet, putting on the pajama jacket.

"What a nice thing," Kitty said, watching him.

"What a nice thing?"

"You have no belly. The first sign I saw of a belly, I'd have to leave for Reno. And I'd hate that. And be careful of your neck, too."

"There's nothing wrong with my neck," Archer said, defensively, feeling it with his two hands.

"All I said was, be careful. I hate the way some men's necks jut out past their ears."

"My," Archer said, b.u.t.toning his pajamas and looking down at her, smiling, "you're a hard woman to live with."

"I want you to be beautiful," Kitty said. "That's not much to ask for, is it?" She put the empty gla.s.s on the table, sighing. "Oh, those cookies are sinful," she said. "Was it nice out in the world today?"

Archer hesitated. No, he thought, what's the sense in telling her?

"OK," he said, sitting on the edge of his bed, a table's distance away from Kitty's. "Did you like the program?"

"Oh, darling," Kitty said guiltily. "I forgot to listen. I was just dozing here and I forgot. Will you forgive me?"

Archer chuckled. "Just don't tell the sponsor."

"I'm getting so rattlebrained," Kitty apologized. "I never remember anything. I guess becoming a mother at such an advanced age is a drain on the brain. I just lie here thinking whether I want the child to have blue eyes and whether he's going to be bald by the time he's twenty-five." She put out her hand and touched Archer. "Am I offending you, darling?" she asked.

"I'm going to my club," Archer said gravely. "Please have my mail forwarded."

"You're perfect, Clement, you know that," Kitty said. "But it isn't really disloyal to hope the boy keeps his hair, is it?"

"No," Archer said. "How do you know it's going to be a boy?"

"The way he kicks. He marches up and down all day like a company of Marines. When I had Jane she just used to give me little ladylike nudges from time to time. Oh-Jane's coming down from school for the week-end. A boy is taking her to the theatre, but we have to give them dinner tomorrow night because the boy is poor, Jane says. If I'm feeling tired, do you think you can manage it by yourself?"

"If the boy doesn't patronize me," Archer said, "like the last one she had here. The organic-chemistry boy."

"Oh," said Kitty, "she's through with him. He did something boring at a dance. Isn't it nice, Jane's not being ashamed of having a mother who's pregnant?"

"Now, Kitty," Archer said, "that's preposterous."

"She's so grownup and modern, Jane," Kitty said. "Everything amuses her, even her parents. I know if my mother had started to swell when I was eighteen, I'd have hidden in the corner of the church for days."

"You were pregnant yourself by the time you were nineteen," Archer said. "Let me remind you."

"That's an entirely different matter," Kitty said primly. "Aren't you going to wash your teeth before you go to bed?"

Archer rubbed a finger reflectively over his front teeth. "No," he decided.

"Why not?"

"My mouth tastes so good," he said. "All the nice food I've had, all the good liquor. I like to wake up during the night and run my tongue around my teeth and remember how well I've eaten all day. Instead of that miserable peppermint and disinfectant flavor."