Gene Wolfe - There Are Doors

He recalled that the red-faced man had said that Overwood was at the foot of the mountains, and asked, “Would Joe go to the mountains, you think? Somewhere around Manea?”

“Yeah.” Walsh nodded gloomily. “That’s just what ’e might do.”

The light went out.

Walsh’s gritty voice came through the darkness. “Joe’s at the reception desk. They switch it off from there.”

As his eyes adjusted, he made out the dim outline of the doorway. “I’m surprised they let you have visitors this late.”

“One of the guys that works ‘ere’s Joe’s ’andler,” Walsh said. “’E knows I gotta see Joe after the fight.”

He hesitated, but there seemed to be nothing more to say. The little copper pick felt hard and heavy in his hand. “Well, good night, Eddie.”

“G’night.”

In the hall he saw (with a shock of déjà vu) Joe walking noiselessly toward him. He started to speak, but Joe raised a warning finger, and he did not. When they were some distance down the hall, Joe guiding him gently but firmly by the arm, Joe said, “Would you like some coffee? Or pop? They’ve got pop.”

He asked, “Will they give us some this late?”

“It’s machines. W.F. will let us in.”

Joe opened a door that appeared locked, a heavy metal door marked C, with a large lock clearly intended to keep people out. They went down flights of narrow concrete stairs, landing after landing, and through a second door into a wide, empty room where orderly rows of battered wooden chairs and tables stretched into the darkness. One corner of the room was lit, and the black man sat in that corner, still wearing his crisp white uniform, a cup of steaming coffee before him.

Joe waved to him, then fished in his pocket for a scuffed leather coin purse. “I’m going to have a cream soda,” he said. “What would you like?”

“Coffee, I guess. Cream and sugar.”

“All right.” Joe selected two nickels from the purse and snapped it shut. “You can sit down with W.F. if you want to. I’ll bring them.”

He nodded and did as he had been told, wishing he had seen the nickels better. They had not looked quite like the nickels to which he was accustomed.

W.F. said, “What I tell you ‘bout gettin’ out the bed, man? Woo-oh! You ass mud now.” He had an infectious smile.

“You’ll have to turn me in, I guess.”

“You guesses? What you mean, guess? You know I do! Goin’ to be KP for you all year. You get dishpan hands clean up the elbows. The women see you, they think you a hundred years old. Leave you alone for sure.”

He nodded and said, “At least I ought to be able to rip off some chocolate pudding.”

W.F. chortled. “You all right! No wonder Joe like you so fast.”

He glanced over at the big man, now moving slowly from one machine to another, a red bottle in his hand. “Is Joe really a prizefighter?”

“Don’t you know? I his handler. You see me on TV?”

He shook his head.

“Hey, man, you miss a good one—we the main attraction. Hey, Joe, tell him you the main event.”

Joe, coming toward them with the bottle in one hand and a steaming cup in the other, shook his head. “Last prelim.” He looked apologetic. “Five rounds to a decision.”

“Only you didn’t need no la-de-da five rounds. You KO’d him in the third.”

Joe slid the coffee cup over, and slowly, heavily, seated himself in one of the battered wooden chairs. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Eddie thinks I’m the heavyweight champion of the world.”

“I know.”

“I’m not. Probably I never will be.”

He nodded. “I never thought you were, Joe.”

W.F. put in, “But you goin’ to be the main event next time, if that sweet Jenny know her stuff.”

Joe nodded slowly. “Maybe.”

“Maybe! You means for sure.”

“Jennifer’s been managing me since this happened to Eddie. Eddie’s still my real manager. He’ll take over again when he’s feeling better.”

“Eddie used to handle Joe hisself,” W.F. explained. “Then he come here, and there wasn’t nobody ’cause Jenny don’t want to do that. So I says I would. Won’t take no pay—I sees all the fights for free, and everybody see me on TV ’cause one channel broadcasts. Sometimes we on the sports on the news, when they don’t have nothin’ else to show. Everybody say, Whoo! Look at ol’ W.F. swing that towel. Besides Joe usually win, and I like that.”

He said, “It’s nice of you to stand by Eddie. Nice of you both.”

For the first time, Joe had raised the bottle to his lips. It was large and flaunted its name—Poxxie—in raised lettering on the glass. Joe poured most of its poisonous-looking scarlet contents down his throat, which he seemed able to open and hold open, like a valve in a pipe. “I couldn’t leave Eddie when he thinks I’m the champion. I don’t want you to tell Eddie I’m not the champion. It upsets him.”

“I won’t.”

Joe belched solemnly. “And if you can help him …”

Moved by he did not know what spirit, he said, “I think the best way to help him might be for you to become champion. Then he’d be well.”

W.F. crowed, “What I say? You one smart dude. Right on! ”

Joe shook his head. “I don’t think I can do that.”

“I doubt that any champion thought he could do it before he did it.”

The very slightest of smiles touched Joe’s lips, a smile that could not have been seen at all were it not for the impassivity of the wide cheeks and heavy chin. As if to remove the last droplets of Poxxie, a large dark overcoat sleeve rose and scrubbed at that infinitesimal curve; yet the smile remained.

Without in the least intending to, he yawned.

W.F. said, “Guess I better get you into the bed. You did the job, and you about fagged out, I think.”

“I’ll be all right,” he said. He sipped his coffee, finding that it tasted even worse than it smelled. A moment later, W.F. was tucking a blanket around his shoulders. “You gets chocolate puddin’ every meal,” W.F. said. “Even for breakfasts.”

The ringing of the telephone beside his bed woke him. Groggily, he answered it. “Hello?”

A woman’s voice: “Here, Emma, give me that!”

“Lara?” he asked. “Is that you, Lara?”

“ Darling , it’s me!” (Surely that was Lara’s voice, Lara composed and gracious.) “I hope—I really do hope—I haven’t roused you from a sound sleep, darling. But I just got back here—you know how it is—and dear, precious Emma had sat up. And there was absolutely nothing for her to do but this, so I said call the damned place and see if they won’t let me talk with him, there’s a darling, and she did and they would. But not till the poor old dear had talked herself positively blue , didn’t you, Emma? While it got later and later and later and later. What time is it there, darling?”

He said, “I don’t know.”

“It’s after one here, and all I’ve done is come home and call you. Except that I had a bath and a drink first.” Lara giggled. “Sounds as though I drank the bath, doesn’t it? No, Emma mixed me a toddy and made it strong enough to knock down a mare. I can say that now, darling, because she’s gone. Did you get my flowers? Are they pretty?”

“Yes,” he said. “They’re lovely. Thank you.”

“They should be, darling—they cost like gold. But I’m immensely glad you like them.”

He decided to come out with it. “You’re Marcella too.”

“You mean besides all those perfectly awful bitches I play? Yes, there’s a real Marcella too—a real Marcella still, though sometimes I have ever so much trouble getting in touch with her. Besides, it’s so much fun being a bitch, though one doesn’t like oneself half so well afterward. But darling, I want you to know it’s horrible, horribly dangerous, my talking with you, knowing you’re in that awful place, because I’m so tempted to be bitchy with you. Why couldn’t you be good? But I’m coming to see you just as soon as I can. Perhaps then we can find a door out for you together.”