Alison Lurie - The Nowhere City

“Well,” Paul said. He definitely didn’t want to defend Nutting or public relations on principle. “All right.” On the other hand, it was Steve and his friends that had got him into the Venice jail, and Nutting that had got him out.

“So, you got to quit.”

“Oh, come on,” Paul tried to assume a buoyant tone. “Somebody has to work for them.”

“Why? There’s plenty of gigs.”

The argument was back to where it had started earlier in the evening; but Paul was spared having to continue it by the return of Ceci, with Dinny and Dinny’s husband. Almost everyone else had left now; again the tables were empty. The candles burned low, and a few chessmen stood on each board in final attitudes of victory and defeat.

“Hey!” Ceci announced. “Larry’s got some pot. Enough for everybody.”

“Cool,” Steve said.

“I’ll throw in a stick,” John offered. “That’s all I’ve got, but it’s the best. Real green.”

Paul looked from face to face. Were they crazy? John was searching in the lining of his guitar case; Larry began laying out cigarette papers on the table, opening a little box of what looked like chopped grass. Dinny sat smiling beside him, a red-striped dish-towel thrown over her shoulder.

“You’re going to smoke marijuana here now?” he asked. “Are you crazy?”

“This is the best time,” Steve said. “They won’t hit this place again for weeks.”

“For Christ’s sake,” Paul said. “At least let’s go to somebody’s pad.”

“Aw, come on,” Ceci said. “Don’t be chicken.”

“No thanks,” Paul replied. “It’s too late for me anyhow. I’ve got to get on back.”

PART THREE

Westwood

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12

KATHERINE WAS SITTING IN a temporary office building at U.C.L.A., in the small, stuffy office which belonged to the Project on Perception and Delinquency, waiting for the bi-weekly conference to take place. It was not quite two o’clock. In the office with Katherine were some chairs, a table, a filing cabinet, and a desk. There was one odd piece of furniture: a long varnished wooden box set up on end, about the size and shape of a penny weighing-machine. Seen from the front, it was simply a narrow panel in which were two push-buttons, with a red light above each one, and the mouth of a chute at the right-hand side. If you got up and looked around the back, you could see a mass of colored wires and relays inside, all feeding into a seismograph-type of recording device.

This object was the Fraudulent Response Perceptor, or Cheating Machine, which Dr. Einsam and two graduate students had built for the project. By the use of electrical tape, the two red lights could be illuminated in any desired planned or random series and at any desired speed. The task of the subject (or S) being tested was to guess which one of the red lights would come on next, and to register his guess by pressing the button under the light he chose. If he were right, as soon as the light came on a marble would drop out of the chute.

It was possible to cheat at this game, because if you did not make your guess at once, but delayed until the light had just come on before you pressed the button, the marble would still drop out of the chute. Meanwhile, however, the unseen recording device would make note of your willful delay.

This was the general principle of the Cheating Machine; but many variations of the procedure were possible. For instance, the preliminary instructions could be altered; an element of competition against other S’s might be introduced; or of praise and blame (the experimenter, or E, coming in during the rest period to remark, as if casually, “Say, you’re catching on pretty well!” or “I don’t think you’re really trying today, are you?”). Or the marbles might be exchanged at the end of the session for pennies, nickels, or dimes.

At this time, a final experimental form had still to be worked out. But test runs on the machine with a varied group of S’s had revealed that, as Dr. Smith put it, “Almost everyone will cheat like crazy if they think they can get away with it, though some will cheat more than others.” This finding did not surprise Katherine, who had a pessimistic view of human nature in general and of southern Californians in particular. Neither was she surprised at the deception practiced by the experimenters. She had worked for social scientists before; she knew that almost all psychological tests were rigged somehow, and thought anyone who volunteered to take them, even for money, a fool. Whenever her eye fell upon the Cheating Machine, she made a mental note to be on her guard. At any moment her employers might try to turn her into an S or worse. As when, a few weeks ago, Dr. Einsam (of course it would be him) said, “So let’s see, we’ve already tried two kinds of reinforcement, money and approval. What else should we cover; let’s think. Definitely we ought to work in physical gratification. Maybe we could plug in Mrs. Cattleman somehow; say we have her sit next to the subject during the experiment, in a tight sweater, to encourage him: what do you think? Or maybe we should just give a bottle of gin to the ones who make the highest score.” Everyone laughed, but Katherine sat stiffly. It especially infuriated her to be equated with a bottle of gin.

The door opened, and Dr. Haraki came in, just on time for the conference. He was always on time, as Dr. Einsam was always late. For about two months Dr. Smith had also been on time, but finally he had got tired of having to wait for Dr. Einsam, and now he too was always late.

“Hi. Nobody else here?” Dr. Haraki said, smiling cheerfully. “I wonder if I could dictate a couple more letters then, while we wait?”

Katherine got out her book. Her salary was paid by the National Institute of Mental Health, but in practice only part of her time was spent on the project. This morning she had been working for Dr. Haraki, writing letters to field interviewers; but now she recorded a letter recommending a student for graduate school and one gently complaining to the Pacific Telephone Company of an overcharge, before Dr. Smith arrived.

“Iz not here yet?” Dr. Smith asked, looking round as if Dr. Einsam might be hidden behind the Cheating Machine. “How are you today?” He made his voice especially cordial to cover the lack of a name.

Dr. Smith knew her name, of course; but at the conference last week Dr. Einsam had suggested that henceforth the three investigators should address Mrs. Cattleman as “Katherine,” while she should call them “Bert,” “Charlie,” and “Iz.”

The idea did not please her. It was simply another sign of Dr. Einsam’s insolence and of the meaningless, vulgar informality of Los Angeles. These people were not her friends, and they would never become her friends. Katherine suspected that Dr. Smith, who had some sense (he was not a native Californian, but came from Chicago), was as much embarrassed by the idea as she was. But he refrained from calling her “Mrs.” now, and sometimes managed “Katherine,” which came more easily to Dr. Haraki. The truth was they were both afraid of Dr. Einsam. Probably because he was a psychiatrist: everybody seemed to be terrified of psychiatrists, especially out here. It was particularly spineless of Dr. Haraki to let Dr. Einsam push him around like that, because after all he was the Principal Investigator for the project and older than Dr. Einsam and an associate professor. He was too good-natured; that was the trouble. But what could Katherine do about it? She could hardly object; she retaliated, though, by addressing Dr. Smith and Dr. Haraki sometimes by their first names; and Dr. Einsam, invariably, as “Dr. Einsam,” or “You.”