Thomas Disch - 334

Even so, it wasn’t a large enough surprise. But then what is?

“Jan!”

“Hi. I came yesterday too, but your mother said you were asleep. I guess I should have waited, but I didn’t know whether—”

“Take off your coat. You’re all wet.”

January came far enough into the room to be able to close the door, but she didn’t approach the bed and she didn’t take off her coat.

“How did you happen to— ”

“Your sister mentioned it to Jerry, and Jerry phoned me up. I couldn’t come right away though, I didn’t have the money. Your mother says you’re all right now, basically.”

“Oh, I’m fine. It wasn’t the operation, you know. That was as routine as taking out a wisdom tooth. But impatient me couldn’t stay in bed and so—” She laughed (always bearing in mind that life is comic too) and made a feeble joke. “I can now, though. Quite patiently.”

January crinkled her eyebrows. All yesterday, and all the way downtown today, all the way up the stairs, feelings of tenderness and concern had tumbled about in her like clothes in a dryer. But now, face to face with Shrimp and seeing her try the same old ploys, she could feel nothing but resentment and the beginnings of anger, as though only hours had intervened since that last awful meal two years before. A Betty Crocker sausage and potatoes.

“I’m glad you came.” Shrimp said half-heartedly.

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

The anger vanished and guilt came glinting up at the window of the dryer. “The operation, was it for—Was it because of what I said about having children?”

“I don’t know, January. My reasons, when I look back, are still confused. Surely I must have been influenced by things you said. Morally I had no right to bear children.”

“No, it was me who had no right. Dictating to you that way. Because of my principles! I see it now.”

“Well.” Shrimp took a sip from the water glass. It was a heavenly refreshment. “It goes deeper than politics. After all, I wasn’t in any immediate danger of adding to the population, was I? My quota was filled. It was a ridiculous, melodramatic gesture, as Dr. Mesic was the first—”

January had shrugged off her raincoat and walked nearer the bed—She was wearing the nurse’s uniform Shrimp had bought for her how many years ago. She bulged everywhere.

“Remember?” January said.

Shrimp nodded. She didn’t have the heart to tell her that she didn’t feel sexy. Or ashamed. Or anything. The horror show of Bellevue had taken it out of her—feeling, sex, and all.

January slipped her fingers under Shrimp’s wrist to take her pulse. “It’s slow,” she observed.

Shrimp pulled her hand away. “I don’t want to play games.”

January began to cry.

“You know?

“I’d like to see it working again, the way it was meant to. That may sound like less than the whole revolution, but it’s something that I can do, that I can try for. Right? Because a building is like … It’s a symbol of the life you lead inside it.

“One elevator, one elevator in working order and not even all day long necessarily. Maybe just an hour in the morning and an hour in the early evening, when there’s power to spare. What a difference it would make for people like us here at the top. Think back to all the times you decided not to come up to see me because of these stairs. Or all the times I stayed in. That’s no way to live. But it’s the older people who suffer most. My mother, I’ll bet she doesn’t get down to the street once a week nowadays, and Lottie’s almost as bad. It’s me and Mickey who have to get the mail, the groceries, everything else, and that’s not fair to us. Is it?

“What’s more, do you know that there are two people working full time running errands for the people stranded in their apartments without anyone to help. I’m not exaggerating. They’re called auxiliaries! Think what that must cost.

“Or if there’s an emergency? They’ll send the doctor into the building rather than carry someone down so many steps. If my hemorrhaging had started when I was up here instead of at the Clinic, I might not be alive today. I was lucky, that’s all. Think of that—I could be dead just because nobody in this building cares enough to make the fucking elevators function! So I figure, it’s my responsibility now. Put up or shut up. Right?

“I’ve started a petition, and naturally everyone will sign it. That doesn’t take any effort. But what does is, I’ve started sounding out a couple of the people who might be helpful and they agree that the auxiliary system is a ridiculous waste, but they say that even so it would cost more to keep the elevator running. I told them that people would be willing to pay for tickets, if money’s the only problem. And they’d say yes, no doubt, absolutely. And then—fuck off, Miss Hanson, and thank you for your concern.

“There was one, the worst of them so far, a toadstool at the MODICUM office called R.M. Blake, who just kept saying what a wonderful sense of responsibility I have. Just like that: What a wonderful sense of responsibility you have, Miss Hanson. What big guts you have, Miss Hanson. I wanted to say to him, Yeah, the better to crush you with, Grandma. The old whitened sepulcher.

“It’s funny, isn’t it, the way we’ve switched round? The way it’s so symmetrical. It used to be I was religious and you were political, now it’s just the reverse. It’s like, did you see The Orphans the other night? It was sometime in the Nineteenth Century and there was this married couple, very cozy and very poor, except that each of them has one thing to be proud of. the man has a gold pocket watch, and the woman, poor darling, has her hair. So what happens? He pawns his watch to buy her a comb, and she sells her hair to get him a watch chain. A real ding-dong of a story.

“But if you think about it, that’s what we’ve done. Isn’t it? January?

“January, are you asleep?”

“They talk about the end of the world, the bombs and all, or if not the bombs then about the oceans dying, and the fish, but have you ever looked at the ocean? I used to worry, I did, but now I say to myself—so what. So what if the world ends? My sister though, she’s just the other way—if there’s an election she has to stay up and watch it. Or earthquakes. Anything. But what’s the use?

“The end of the world. Let me tell you about the end of the world. It happened fifty years ago. Maybe a hundred. And since then it’s been lovely. I mean it. Nobody tries to bother you. You can relax. You know what? I like the end of the world.”

“Of course, there’s that. When people want something so badly, say a person with cancer, or the problems I have with my back, then you tell yourself you’ve been cleared. And you haven’t. But when it’s the real thing you can tell. Something happens to their faces. The puzzlement is gone, the aggression. Not a relaxing away like sleep, but suddenly. There’s someone else there, a spirit, touching them, soothing what’s been hurting them so. It might be a tumor, it might be mental anguish. But the spirit is very definite, though the higher ones can be harder to understand sometimes. There aren’t always words to explain what they experience on the higher planes. But those are the ones who can heal, not the lower spirits who’ve only left our plane a little while ago. They’re not as strong. They can’t help you as much because they’re still confused themselves.

“What you should do is go there yourself. She doesn’t mind if you’re skeptical. Everybody is, at first, especially men. Even now for me, sometimes I think—she’s cheating us, she’s making it all up, in her own head. There are no spirits, you die, and that’s it. My sister, who was the one who took me there in the first place—and she practically had to drag me—she can’t believe in it anymore. But then she’s never received any real benefit from it, whereas I—Thank you, I will.