Ричард Стерн - The Tower

“I am sorry to report that the elevator attempt failed.” He paused. “Considering what happened to the first attempt, maybe that is just as well.” Jesus H Jumping Christ, he thought, I am reduced to platitudes. He made himself smile suddenly. “I won’t say that everything is ginger-peachy. It isn’t. On the other hand, we are all right here for the present, and I for one intend to hold the thought that our fire-fighting friends will get here in time.” He paused. “And now I am going to have a drink. After all, this started out as a reception.”

He stepped down from the chair and took Beth’s arm. “A drink,” he said, “and somewhere to talk. I am tired of grinning like an idiot to show how confident I am.” With her, Beth thought, he did not feel that he had to dissemble. There was the miracle.

Together they walked to the bar, and then carried drinks to a deserted corner. The governor swung two chairs into proximity. They sat companionably close, their backs to the room.

It was Beth who broke the silence. “Thoughts, Bent?” she said;

“Gloomy and angry.” The governor smiled suddenly, this time with meaning. “I’m Slinking of waste. Regretting it. Hating it.” He paused. “Mentally shaking my fists at the sky. Exercise in childish futility.”

She could understand the feeling, even share it. She forced it aside. “When I was a child,” she said, “and being punished, confined to my room”—she made herself smile—“I used to try to think of what I would most like to do, concentrate on that. What would you most like to do, Bent?”

Slowly, even perceptibly some of the tension flowed from him. His smile turned easy and gentle. “Retire from politics,” he said. “I have the means and I have had the fun. That ranch out in New Mexico—”

“Just that. Bent? Nothing more.”

He took his time. At last he shook his head. “No. You make me look at myself. I would hate total retirement.” Again the meaningful smile. “I am a lawyer. I’d like to find out how good a lawyer I am.”

“You would be good at anything you decided to do.”

“But the fishing would always be there,” the governor said, almost as if she had not spoken, “and I would see to it that there was always time for it.” He paused. “And since I am painting a picture of Utopia, you would always be there too.”

There was warmth in her mind, in her being. “Is that a proposal?”

Without hesitation, “It is.”

“Then,” Beth said slowly, “I accept with pleasure.”

Nat walked to the door of the trailer and down the steps to stand on the plaza level and stare up at the immensity of the building. Until she spoke, he was unaware that Patty had followed him.

“All the people,” Patty said.

Nat looked then at the huge crowd beyond the barricades. “Times Square New Year’s Eve,” he said. There was anger in his voice. “Goddam ghouls. Maybe we ought to bum people at the stake in public, sell tickets, make millions.”

Patty was silent.

“We’re all to blame,” Nat said. “That’s the first thing. I’m glad Bert never knew.”

“Thank you for that.” Patty paused. “And remember it. Others are involved too. Even Daddy. Everybody’s had a hand in it, not just you, don’t you see?”

He could smile then with effort. “You’re a cheerer-upper.” Unlike Zib, who tended to be stylishly downbeat. And that, he thought, was another of the big city’s characteristics he did not like: the firm conviction that nothing was ever what it appeared to be; that there was nothing really to be for, only against; the ubiquitous you-aren’t-going-to-make-a-sucker-out-of-me defense thrown up like a barbed-wire entanglement to protect the insecure inner compound; all of it in the name of worldly sophistication. Sophistry, perhaps, but not sophistication.

“What is going to happen to all those people, Nat?” Patty’s voice was quietly intense. “Will they—” She left the question unfinished.

“They’re hauling hose in and up,” Nat said, “a floor at a time. Every step is a fight. There are one hundred and twenty-five floors to go.”

“But what is burning? That’s what I don’t understand.”

“Everything. Some of the offices have been leased. Furniture, carpeting, paneled doors, paper records—those are the first to burn. And that raises the temperature to the point where paint will bum and floor tiling and plaster will melt, and that in turn raises the temperature even more until things you wouldn’t believe combustible start to go too.” Nat paused. “I’m not a fire expert, but that in general is how it goes.”

“Suppose,” Patty said, “that the building had been occupied when this happened. Thousands of people instead of a hundred.” She paused. “But numbers aren’t really important, are they? If it were only one person, it would still be—tragic.”

In the midst of her own grief over Bert McGraw’s death, Nat thought, she could still concern herself with others. Maybe because of McGraw’s death, the loss somehow making all men kin.

“What are you going to do, Nat?”

The question caught him off balance. “That,” he said, “is what I’m trying to think of.”

“No,” Patty’s voice was gentle now. “I mean when all of this is over.”

Nat shook his head in silence.

“Will they rebuild?”

He had not even considered it, but the answer came loud and clear: “I hope not.” Pause. “Just this morning,” Nat said, “Ben Caldwell talked of the Pharos, the lighthouse that stood at the mouth of the Nile. For a thousand years, he said. That was how he thought of this building.” He shook his head. “What is the word? Hubris: human pride that affronts the gods. In places in the Middle East they never finish a building. Always a few bricks or a few tiles are left out.” He smiled down at the girl. “That’s because a completed job is considered an affront. Man is supposed to strive for perfection, but he’s not supposed to achieve it.”

“I like that,” Patty said.

“I’m not sure I like it, but I think I understand it. A man told me once that it was good every now and again for anybody to be cut down to size.” He paused. “Let’s go back in.”

“Have you thought of something?”

“No.” Nat hesitated. “But I can’t stay away any more than you can.” A new thought-occurred: “What if you were not Bert’s daughter,” he said, “but just—married to somebody involved?”

“To you?” Small, brave, willing to face even conjecture, hypothesis’. “Would I be down here at the building?” Patty nodded emphatically. “I would. Trying not to be in the way, but I would be here.”

“That’s what I thought,” Nat said slowly, and wondered at the sudden pleasure the knowledge gave him.

Inside the trailer one of the battalion chiefs was on the walkie-talkie. His voice was the only sound. “You can’t tell how deep the fire in the stairwell is above you?” The voice that answered was hoarse with exhaustion. “I told you, no!”

The chief said almost angrily. “And below you?” There was silence.

“Ted!” the chief said. “Speak up, man! Below you?” The voice came at last, almost hysterical this time: “What is this, a fucking quiz show? We’re going down. If we come out, I’ll tell you how deep it was, okay? We’re on fifty-two right now—”

“Inside,” the chief said. “How about that? Any chance? You could break through the door—”

“The goddam door will blister your hand! That’s what it’s like inside. I tell you, we’re going down. There’s no other way.”

Assistant Commissioner Brown took the walkie-talkie. “This is Tim Brown,” he said. “Good luck.”

“Yeah. Thanks.” .