Alison Lurie - The Nowhere City

This was a crisis. She must get in touch with Iz, as soon as possible. It was past eleven—Dr. Jekyll had classes, he had said he wouldn’t be back until one. There was time, if she went now, if she hurried, to get to Iz, show him the plan, and bring it, and him, back. Then he could speak to Dr. Jekyll, and Dr. Jekyll could speak to the Committee, and the space race could be won after all; all due to a fortunate accident, and to Katherine Cattleman.

Without stopping to think any more, Katherine stood up, shoved the floor plan into her bag, and left the office, locking the door behind her. As fast as she could go without actually running, she went along the hall, down two flights of stairs, and out of the building.

As usual, it was glaringly bright outside. The sun on the cement walls and brick walls hurt her eyes. To Katherine’s right was an orange steel skeleton for the plans she had in her bag, the rooms marked out as cubes of empty space. In imagination, she saw herself and the rest of the Project sitting triumphant up there, suspended in the air around an invisible desk. In the distance, across Westwood Boulevard, she could see the trees and pale roofs of apartment houses; somewhere among them was Dr. Einsam’s apartment.

She started towards it, at first along the path. But soon, becoming impatient, she veered off straight downhill past another excavation, picking her way around construction equipment and piles of cinder-blocks. Another immense modernistic building, six floors of poured concrete and steel, was rising here. According to a sign, it was to be called Parking Structure F. Dust covered her shoes, the ones Iz approved of.

Was she acting crazily? She had never done anything like this at her other jobs. But there had been no need to: back in Massachusetts there was a tradition of administrative calm—changes came so slowly, in such an orderly way, that they were hardly felt. Whereas here everything was always in flux, growing, shifting.

Westwood Boulevard, at the bottom of the hill, was crowded with shiny cars. The eucalyptus trees raised long bare arms like white wooden snakes above the traffic. Katherine crossed over, and started down the path by the tennis courts. Balls flew at her through the air as she went, and rebounded from the wire netting a few feet away—involuntarily she flinched and ducked, and hurried on faster. On the other side of the path, enclosed by an even denser grid offence topped with barbed wire, the university’s experimental citrus trees were in flower and fruit; the air was sticky with orange blossom scent.

She came out on Gayley Street, and ran across between the cars. Dr. Einsam’s apartment building was almost immediately opposite—a large white object, poured over the hillside like a plaster of Paris pueblo. An outside stairway followed it uphill through purple bougainvillea and palms, with open galleries at each landing.

Katherine stopped at the top of the steps, panting and hot. Her pulse was loud, and her knees weak from climbing so fast. She leaned against the wall and looked at her watch. Fifteen minutes were already gone; there was no more time to lose. She pulled the plans out of her bag, turned to the first door along the gallery, and knocked next to the nameplate: I. Einsam.

There was a pause. Katherine didn’t want to stand staring at Iz’s door, so she turned and looked down at the descending steps, the palms and creepers, the glitter of the sun on the cars below. Suppose he weren’t home, what then?

“Well,” Iz said. “You surprise me.” She turned; Dr. Einsam stood on the threshold wearing a red plaid bathrobe.

“I didn’t mean to disturb—I mean, I’m sorry I had to disturb you,” she began, still breathing hard. “But it’s really important: I found the floor plans—here—for the new building. They were on Dr. Jekyll’s desk, and the Project isn’t on them anywhere!’ Iz continued to watch Katherine without changing his small smile of curious interest; she felt that she must be explaining herself badly. “You see, this is the deadline, today, for any changes. The letter says. So I didn’t know what to do—I thought, if you could talk to Dr. Jekyll in time—he’ll be back from class at one—and so I just rushed over to find you. Here.” She held the plans further out towards Iz, but he still did not take them.

“I’m glad you came,” he said. “Come on in.” He pulled the door open, and Katherine followed him into a long low room, with trees and sky spread across one wall. Large exotic plants grew out of containers on the floor. “I was just having my breakfast,” Iz said. “Would you like to join me?”

“No, no thank you.” Katherine was really hungry, or should have been, as it was lunch time, but she was starting to feel uncomfortable. Iz’s very unconcerned manner gave her a sense of having done something serious and possibly wrong—as if soon he would turn on her and rebuke her for having stolen papers off Dr. Jekyll’s desk, or something worse. She looked at the floor and saw dark red carpeting and Iz’s bare feet. His legs, below the bathrobe, were bare too, and covered with dark hairs.

“Well, Katherine, if you don’t mind, I’ll finish my coffee. Here, sit down.” He gathered some newspapers off a low couch.

Katherine sat on the edge of the couch, about six inches from the floor, bending her knees sideways awkwardly. Through an open door at the other side of the room she could see Iz’s bedroom, with an unmade bed and a chest of drawers. On top of the chest, leaning up against the wall, was a racing bicycle. She held out the floor plans again, as if they were her passport. This time Iz took them. He turned the pages quickly while he stood above Katherine, drinking his coffee.

“Uh huh,” he said finally. He looked down at her, and then glanced out of the long window at the view of palms and roofs and distant hills.

“The deadline is today,” Katherine told him again. “It’s right there in the covering letter. It says—” she jumped up and pointed it out on the page he was holding—“Any objections or proposed changes must be sent to the Chairman of the Space Committee on or before March 30,’ you see, that’s today.”

“Ya,” Iz said. “I see. Katherine. Look at the city out there. How do you like it?”

Katherine stood up, and went over to the window. Something was very, very wrong; but what? “Oh yes, it’s beautiful,” she said nervously. “You really do have a wonderful view. The university looks so pretty from here, with the sun on it. Or is that Bullock’s over there?”

“There’s no difference,” Iz said. “It’s like a friend of mine says, ‘I work in the big store at the bottom of the hill.’ Well.” He put his coffee cup down carefully on a table, dropped the plans to the floor, walked up behind Katherine, and ran both hands down her arms.

“Eh!” she cried out, and jumped as if she had touched an uninsulated wire.

Iz paid no attention, he took a step forward, pushing Katherine up against the cold glass of the window, air and trees, and kissed the back of her neck; she felt his body forced against hers, the coarse hair of his beard, his mouth.

“Oh no; I don’t want—” Katherine twisted round, and tried to pull away. “No!”

Iz stepped back, releasing her from the weight of his body, but he kept one hand against the window on each side, so that she could not move away. “What’s the matter with you today?” she said shakily.

“I want to sleep with you,” Iz said. “That’s what you came here for, isn’t it?”

“No. Of course not!”

“Ah, come on. I told you what my rules are. You knew I wasn’t joking.” Though he was not touching her, Iz was standing so close that Katherine could feel his breath and see the hairs growing out of his face into his beard. His arms, too, were covered with wiry black hair; it was on the backs of his hands, and on his legs, and matted on his chest. She felt she had been cornered by a dangerous, irrational animal.