Joseph Heller - Closing Time

Continuing toward the elevators, they passed a sign pointing off to the Department of Justice. In the next passageway was another directional arrow, this one black, leading to a shortcut to: he new National Military Cemetery. The public area of the new MASSPOB building, with its scintillating shopping center in the soaring atrium, was already the second most popular tourist attraction in the nation's capital; the first most popular was the newest war memorial. One needed special top-secret MASSPOB credentials to go higher and lower than the stacked-up promenades and open mezzanines with their plenitude of nouveau art deco newsstands, food counters, and souvenir shops and their celebrated sideshows, dioramas, and "virtual reality" shooting galleries, which had already excelled in international architectural competitions.

On their right in the basement, an iridescent red arrow like a flaming missile carried their eyes to a directional sign announcing: Sub-Basements A-Z The arrow angled downward suddenly to a closed metal door marked: EMERGENCY ENTRANCE KEEP OUT VIOLATORS WILL BE SHOT This was guarded by two uniformed sentinels, who seemed stationed at the emergency entrance to keep people away. A large yellow letter S against a glossy background of black gave comforting reminder that a new old-fashioned bomb shelter had been installed for the convenience and protection of visitors and employees.

At the elevators were other guards, who would not talk even to each other. Inside the elevator was a TV monitor. Milo and Wintergreen did not speak or move, even when back upstairs in the main lobby of the real world, where tour guides were leading tour groups from tour buses parked beyond the revolving doors in the area reserved at the front entrance. They did not converse again until they were outside in a light spring drizzle and walking away from the august special-secret-projects building in which their meeting had just taken place.

"Wintergreen," whispered Milo finally, "will these planes of ours really work?"

"How the fuck should I know?"

"What will they look like?"

"I guess we have to find that out too."

"If the future of the world is going to depend on it," reasoned Milo, "I believe we ought to make this deal while the world is still here. Otherwise we might never get paid."

"We'll need some drawings. That fucking Strangelove."

"And some copy for a leaflet. Who can we get?"

"Yossarian?"

"He might object."

"Then fuck him," said Wintergreen. "Let him object. We'll ignore the fuck again. What the fuck! What the fuck fucking difference does it make if the fuck objects or not? We can ignore the fucking fuck again, can't we? Shit."

"I wish," said Milo, "you wouldn't swear so much in the nation's capital."

"Nobody but you can hear me."

Milo looked hesitant. The gentle sun shower sprinkled raindrops around him through a prismatic haze that circled his brow like a wreath. "Yossarian has been objecting too much again lately. I could murder my son for telling him it was a bomber."

"Don't murder your son."

"I'd like to get some second-rate hack with a good position in government who's not too scrupulous when it comes to making money."

"Noodles Cook?"

"Noodles Cook is who I had in mind."

"Noodles Cook is much too big for that stuff now. And we'd need Yossarian to make the contact."

"I worry about Yossarian." Milo was brooding. "I'm not sure I trust him. I'm afraid he's still honest."

Yossarian went crosstown by taxi to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the monthly meeting of ACACAMMA, arriving in time for the reading of an anonymous proposal for the creation of a deconstruction fund to reduce the museum from the farcical dimensions to which it had now grown preposterously. He heard the motion ruled out of order, seeing Olivia Maxon turn to fix her glowing black eyes upon him severely while he was turning to gaze with a suppressed smile at Frances Beach, who raised her eyebrows with admiring inquiry at Patrick Beach, who was looking down at his fingernails and paying no attention to Christopher Maxon, who, all jowls and chortles beside him, rolled an imaginary cigar between his fingers, wet its imaginary tip, relished the imagined fragrance he inhaled, inserted the imaginary cigar into a mouth that was real, and puffed himself deeply into a soporific delirium.

ACACAMMA, the select Adjunct Committee for the Advancement of Cultural Activities at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was an exclusive body of which only thirty or forty of the seventy or eighty members had come that day to deal with the same thorny question: if and how to increase revenues from the utilization of the premises for social events like weddings, bridal showers, bridge classes, fashion shows, and birthday parties, or whether to discontinue those incongruous ceremonies altogether as crass.

The potent need as always was for money.

Introduced and tabled for more comprehensive discussion at future meetings were such topics as the art of fund-raising, the art of the deal, the artistry of publicity, the art of social climbing, the art of fashion designing, the art of the costume, the art of catering, and the art of conducting without dissension and bringing to a close on time a meeting lasting two hours that was pleasant, uneventful, unsurprising, and unnecessary.

What dissonance appeared was managed neatly.

A final anonymous proposal that all anonymous proposals no longer be given even perfunctory consideration was referred to the executive committee for consideration.

At the bar of the hotel nearby to which Yossarian escaped afterward with Patrick and Frances Beach, Frances began a gin and tonic and Patrick Beach looked bored.

"Of course I'm bored," he informed his wife with ill-tempered pride. "By now I hate the paintings as much as I hate hearing them talked about. Oh, Frances "-his sigh was the whimsical plea of a martyr-"why must you keep putting us both into settings like that one?"

"Have we anything better to do?" Frances Beach said sweetly to her husband. "It gets us invited to so many other things that are even worse, doesn't it? And it helps keep our name in the newspapers, so that people know who we are."

"It's so we know who we are."

"I think that's divine."

"I have promised to kill her if she uses that word."

"Let's get to the point," said Frances seriously.

"He could not possibly have meant it."

"Yes, he could. Did you mean it, John, when you suggested a wedding in that bus terminal?"

"Of course," lied Yossarian.

"And you think it could be done? A big one?"

"I have no doubt," he lied again.

"Olivia Maxon." Frances made a wry face. "She's giving a wedding for a stepniece or someone and wants fresh ideas for an original venue. That word is her own. The museum isn't good enough since those two Jews had their reception there and those two other Jews were named trustees. Those words are also hers. Poor Olivia just isn't able to remember when talking to me that I might be Jewish."

"Why don't you remind her?" Yossarian said.

"I don't want her to know."

All three chuckled.

"You certainly wanted me to know," chidled Patrick affectionately. "And everyone in my family."

"I was poor then," said Frances, "and an angry actress who thrived on dramatic conflict. Now that I'm married to a man of wealth, I'm loyal to his class."

"With a gift for stilted repartee," said Patrick. "Frances and I are happiest together when I'm away sailing."

"What I never could trust about high comedy," Yossarian mused, "is that people say funny things and the others don't laugh. They don't even know they are part of a comedy."

"Like us," said Patrick.

"Let's get back to our agenda," ruled Frances. "I'd like to see that wedding at your bus terminal, for Olivia's sake. For mine, I'd like it to be the disaster of the century."