David Wallace - The Pale King - An Unfinished Novel

If Sylvanshine was impatient, it was impossible to discern this. He had no poker tell whatsoever that Fogle could see. ‘Pick one.’

‘UIC. DuPage. DePaul.’

‘Perfect. DePaul. So he’ll ask, you’ll say DePaul, he’ll say “Ah, the Blue Demons.” Well, it’s not the Blue Demons, it’s the Blue Devils. But do you correct him?’

‘Actually, it is the Blue Demons. The Blue Devils is Duke.’

A one-beat pause. ‘Whatever. Whatever the team name is, he says the wrong team name. Now, though: Do you correct him?’

Fogle looked from Sylvanshine to Reynolds. Their suit coats were not identical, but their shirts and slacks were, he could see. Reynolds said, ‘Do you?’

‘Do I correct him?’ Fogle said.

‘That’s the question.’

‘I’m not sure exactly what you’re asking.’

‘You do. The correct answer is you do correct him,’ Sylvanshine said. ‘Because it’s a test. He’s testing as to are you a toady, are you intimidated, are you a yes-man.’

‘A sycophant,’ Reynolds said.

‘It was a test?’

‘If he says Blue Devils and you just nod and smile, he won’t say anything, but you’ll have failed a test.’

Fogle looked quickly up at the clock. ‘Is there more than one?’

‘Well, yes and no,’ Sylvanshine said. ‘It’s extremely subtle. You’d have no idea anything was going on. But the whole time you’re interfacing he’ll be testing you, probing you. The whole time.’

‘One other thing,’ Reynolds said, forcing Fogle to turn his head again. ‘There’ll be a kid in there with him. A seven-, eight-year-old kid.’

There was a moment of silence. An unparsable look passed between Reynolds and Sylvanshine. Sylvanshine had a very small, thin, neatly groomed mustache.

‘Is it Dr. Lehrl’s kid?’ Fogle asked finally.

‘Don’t ask him that. That’s the thing. The kid will be in a corner, reading, playing with something. Don’t acknowledge the kid. Nor do you ask him or refer to the kid. The kid won’t acknowledge you, you don’t acknowledge him.’

‘There may also be a hand puppet. It’s an old thing from Audits that he’s hung on to. Call it an eccentricity. If I were you, I wouldn’t mention the hand puppet, either.’

‘For the record,’ Sylvanshine said, ‘it’s not his kid.’

Fogle was looking straight ahead in a ruminative way.

‘The kid’s the kid of one of Dr. Lehrl’s senior staff back at Danville,’ Reynolds said. ‘Dr. Lehrl just likes having the kid around.’

‘Even if the dad isn’t there.’

‘It’s all a long, tedious story. The point, as far as you’re concerned, is don’t acknowledge the kid, and it’s up to you but our advice is don’t acknowledge the Doberman hand puppet either.’

Fogle’s eyelid was doing the maddening fluttery thing again, which neither aide could see. He said: ‘The thing is, can I ask a question?’

‘Shoot.’

‘The college sports team thing — how come you’re telling me?’

Reynolds, at the desk, made a minute adjustment to one of his cuffs. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, if it’s going to be a test when he asks me, why tell me in advance what I should say? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of the test?’

Sylvanshine opened the file on top of the stack beside him and made a small show of marking something inside. Reynolds leaned back in Caroline Oooley’s chair and lifted his arms, smiling: ‘Nice. You got us.’

‘Pardon?’

‘You got us. You passed. The test was: Are you just a toady, so anxious to please the hotshot from National that you’d suck up inside dope and go in there and say what we told you to?’

‘Which you didn’t,’ Sylvanshine said.

‘But I’m not even in there yet,’ Fogle said.

‘Instead, you challenged us on a point of logic.’

‘Granted, a fairly obvious point.’

‘But you’d be amazed how many don’t. How many GS-9s will scuttle in there and correct Dr. Lehrl’s so-called mistake, trying to be a sycophant.’

‘A brown-nose toaderooski.’

What his eyelid felt like was the eyelid equivalent of somebody shuddering. ‘So then this was the test?’

‘Consider yourself slapped five.’

Raising his arms in a gesture of surrender and congratulation had caused Reynolds’s cuffs to protrude unevenly again from the sleeves of his jacket, and he was adjusting them again.

‘So but can I ask another question?’

‘The kid’s on a roll,’ Sylvanshine said.

‘When I go in there, is Dr. Lehrl going to ask me about schools? Did you just make that up?’

‘Let’s turn that around,’ Sylvanshine said.

So now he had to look back over at Sylvanshine again, who hadn’t changed position in his chair over by the magazine and bulletin table even once the whole time, Fogle saw.

Sylvanshine said: ‘Say you were to go in there and interface and at some point he misidentifies your football team — what do you do?’

‘Because,’ Reynolds said, ‘if you don’t correct his mistake, you’re being a toady, and if you do correct him, you’re maybe also being a toady in that you’re acting on inside information we just gave you.’

‘And he despises toadies,’ Sylvanshine said, opening the file again.

‘But is he even in there?’ Fogle said. ‘With some mysterious child I’m supposed to pretend isn’t there? And is that another test — do I acknowledge the kid or not, given what you’ve said?’

‘One item at a time,’ Reynolds said. He and Sylvanshine were looking at Fogle very intently; Fogle thought, for the first time, that maybe they could see the eyelid thing. ‘He calls it the Blue Devils — what do you do?’

The office could be any office. Cove fluorescents on a dimmer, modular shelving, the desk practically an abstraction. The whisper of sourceless ventilation. You are a trained observer and there is nothing to observe. An open can of Tab whose color seems lurid against the beige and white. The stainless steel hook for your jacket. No photos or diplomas or personal touches — the facilitator is either newly posted or on outside contract. A woman with a pleasant, pop-eyed face, hair beginning to gray, in a padded chair identical to your own. Some protrusive eyes give the faces a creepy, staring aspect; the facilitator’s do not. You have declined to remove your shoes. The knob beside the dimmer is your chair’s control; it reclines and the feet go up. It is important that you be comfortable.

‘You do have a body, you know.’

She has no notebook, it occurs. And given its position in the building’s northwest leg, the office should by all rights have a window.

The setting at which you do not feel your own weight in the chair is two-thirds reclined. There is a disposable piece of paper attached to the headrest. Your sight line is the seam of the wall and drop ceiling; the toes of your shoes are visible at the lower periphery. The facilitator is not visible. The seam appears to thicken as the overheads are lowered to the level of a false dawn.

‘The way we start is to relax and become aware of the body.

‘It is at the level of body that we proceed.

‘Do not try to relax.’ Her voice is amused. It is gentle without being soft.

Since we all breathe, all the time, it is amazing what happens when someone else directs you how and when to breathe. And how vividly someone with no imagination whatsoever can see what he’s told is right there, complete with banister and rubber runners, curving down and rightward into a darkness that recedes before you.

It is nothing like sleeping. Nor does her voice alter or seem to recede. She’s right there, speaking calmly, and so are you.