I put on my hat and coat and left the house-slamming the door as hard as I could.
I glanced at my pocket-watch, and saw the time had long since pa.s.sed for me to catch my bus to the office. I decided to take a taxi, though I wasn"t quite sure my budget could afford the added strain. But it was a necessity, so I walked past the bus stop, and hailed a cab as it went past. Went past is correct. It zipped by me without even slowing. I had seen it was empty, so why didn"t the cabbie stop? Had he been going off duty? I supposed that was it, but after eight others had whizzed by, I was certain something was wrong.
But I could not discern what the trouble might be. I decided, since I saw it coming, to take the bus anyhow. A young girl in a tight skirt and funny little hat was now waiting at the stop, and I looked at her rather sheepishly, saying, "I just can"t figure out these cabmen, can you?"
She ignored me. I mean, she didn"t turn away as she would to some masher, nor did she give me a cursory glance and not reply. I mean, she didn"t know I was there.
I didn"t have any more time to think about it, because the bus stopped, and the girl got on. I started up the steps, and barely made it, for the bus driver slammed the doors with a wheeze, catching the tail of my coat.
"Hey, I"m caught!" I yelled, but he paid no attention. He watched in his rear view mirror as the girl swayingly strode to a seat, and he started to whistle. The bus was crowded, and I didn"t want to make a fool of myself, so I reached out and pulled his pants leg. Still, he didn"t respond.
That was when the idea started to form.
I yanked my coattail loose, and I was so mad, I decided to make him ask for his fare. I walked back, expecting any moment to hear him say, "Hey, you. Mister. You forgot to pay your fare." Then I was going to respond, "I"ll pay my fare, but I"ll report you to your company, too!"
But even that tiny bit of satisfaction was denied me, because he continued to drive, and his head did not turn. I think that made me angrier than if he had insulted me; what the h.e.l.l was going on? Oh, excuse me, but that was what I was thinking, and I hope you"ll pardon the profanity, but I want to get this across just as it happened.
Are you listening?
Though I shoved between an apoplectic man in a Tyrolean hat and a gaggle of high school girls, when disembarking, though I nudged and elbowed and shoved them, just desperately fighting to be recognized, no one paid me the slightest heed. I even-I"m so ashamed now that I think of it-I slapped one of the girls on her, uh, her behind, so to speak. But she went right on talking about some fellow who was far out of it, or something like that.
It was most frustrating, you can imagine.
The elevator operator in my building was asleep-well, not quite, but Wolfgang (that"s his name, and he"s not even German, isn"t that annoying?) always looked as though he was sleeping-in his cage. I prodded him, and capered about him, and as a final resort cuffed him on the ear but he continued to lie there against the wall, with his eyes shut, perched on his little pulldown seat. Finally, in annoyance, I took the elevator up myself, after booting him out onto the lobby tiles. By then I had realized, of course, that whatever strange malady had befallen me, I was to all intents and purposes, invisible. It seemed impossible that even if I were invisible, that people should not notice their backsides being slapped, or their bodies being kicked onto the tiles, or their elevators being stolen, but apparently such was precisely the case.
I was so confused by then-but oddly enough, not in the slightest terrified-I was half belligerent, and half pixilated with my own limitless abilities. Visions of movie stars and great wealth danced before my eyes.
And disappeared as rapidly.
For what good were women or wealth if there was no one to share it with you. Even the women.
So the thoughts of being the greatest bank robber in history pa.s.sed from me, and I resigned myself to getting out-if out was the proper term-getting out of this predicament.
I left the elevator on the twenty-sixth floor, and walked down the hall to the office door. It read the same as it had read for twenty-seven years :
Rames & Klaus Diamond Appraisers Jewelry Experts
I shoved open the door, and for a second my heart leaped in my throat that perhaps till now it had all been a colossal hoax. For Fritz Klaus-big, red-faced Fritz with the small mole beside his mouth-was screaming at me.
"Winsocki! you dolt! How many times have I told you when they go back in the pinch-bags, pull tight the cords! A hundred thousand dollars on the floor for the scrubwoman! Winsocki! You imbecile!"
But he was not screaming at me. He was screaming, that was all. But really, it was no surprise.
Klaus and George Rames never actually talked to me...or even bothered to shout at me. They knew I did my job-had, in fact, been doing it for twenty-seven years-with method and attentiveness, and so they took me for granted. The shouting was all part of the office.
Klaus just had to scream. But he was directing his screams at the air, not at me. After all, how could he be screaming at me? I wasn"t even there.
He went down on his knees, and began picking up the little uncut rough diamonds he had spilled, and when he had them all, he went down further on his stomach, so his vest was dirtied by the floor, and looked under my bench.
When he was satisfied, he got up and brushed himself off...and walked away. As far as he knew, I was working. Or in his view of the world, was I just eliminated? It was a puzzler, but no matter...I was not there. I was gone.
I turned around and went back down the hall.
The elevator was gone.
I had to wait a long time till I could get to the lobby.
No cars would stop for my ring. I had to wait till someone else on that floor wanted down.
That was when the real horror of it all hit me.
How strange...
I had been quiet all my life; I had married quietly and lived quietly and now, I had not even the one single pleasure of dying with a bang. Even that had been taken from me. I had just sort of snuffed out like a candle. How or why or when was no matter. I had been robbed of that one noise I had thought was mine, inevitable as taxes. But even that had been deprived me. I was a shadow...a ghost in a real world.
And for the first time in my life, all the bottled-up frustrations I had never even known were banked inside me, burst forth. I was shocked through and down with horror, but instead of crying, I did not cry.
I hit someone. I hit him as hard as I could. In the elevator there. I hit him full in the face, and I felt his nose skew over, and blood ran darkly on his face, and my knuckles hurt, and I hit him again, so my hand would slide in the blood, because I was Albert Winsocki and they had taken away my dying. They had made me quieter still. I had never bothered anyone, and I was hardly noticed, and when I would finally have had someone mourn for me, and notice me, and think about me as myself alone...I had been robbed!
I hit him a third time, and his nose broke.
He never noticed.
He left the elevator, covered with blood, and never even flinched.
Then I cried.
For a long time. The elevator kept going up and down with me in it, and no one heard me crying.
Finally, I got out and walked the streets till it was dark.
Two weeks can be a short time.
If you are in love. If you are wealthy and seek adventure. If you have no cares and only pleasures.
If you are healthy, and the world is fine and live and beckoning. Two weeks can be a short time.
Two weeks.
Those next two weeks were the longest in my life. For they were h.e.l.l. Alone. Completely, agonizingly alone, in the midst of crowds. In the neoned heart of town I stood in the center of the street and shrieked at the pa.s.sing throngs. I was nearly run down.
Two weeks of wandering, sleeping where I wanted to sleep -park benches, the honeymoon suite at the Waldorf, my own bed at home-and eating where I wanted to eat-I took what I wanted; it wasn"t stealing, precisely; if I hadn"t eaten, I would have starved-yet it was all emptiness.
I went home several times, but Alma was carrying on just nicely without me. Carrying on was the word. I would never have thought Alma could do it, particularly with the weight she had put on the past few years...but there he was.
George Rames. My boss. I corrected myself...my exboss.
So I felt no real duty to home and wife.
Alma had the house and she had Zasu. And, it appeared, she had George Rames. That fat oaf!
By the end of two weeks, I was a wreck. I was unshaved, and dirty, but who cared? Who could see me...or would have cared had they been able to!
My original belligerence had turned into a more concrete antagonism toward everyone.
Unsuspecting people in the streets were pummeled by me as I pa.s.sed, should the inclination strike me. I kicked women and slapped children...I was indifferent to the moans and cries of those I struck. What was their pain compared to my pain-especially when none of them cried. It was all in my mind. I actually craved a scream or whine from one of them. For such an evidence of pain would have been a reminder that I was in their ken, that at least I existed.
But no such sound came.
Two weeks? h.e.l.l! Paradise Lost!
It was a little over two weeks from the day Zasu had snubbed me, and I had more or less made my home in the lobby of the St. Moritz-On-The-Park. I was lying there on a couch, with a hat I had borrowed from a pa.s.ser-by over my eyes, when that animal urge to strike out overcame me. I swung my legs down, and shoved the hat back on my head. I saw a man in a trenchcoat leaning against the cigar counter, reading a newspaper and chuckling to himself. That cruddy dog, I thought, what the h.e.l.l is he laughing about?
It so infuriated me, I got up and lunged at him. He saw me coming, and sidestepped. I, of course, expected him to go right on reading, even when I swung on him, and his movement took me by surprise. I went into the cigar case and it caught me in the stomach, knocking the wind from me.
"Ah-ah, buddy," the man in the trenchcoat chastised me, waggling a lean finger in my face, "now that isn"t polite at all, is it? To hit a man who can"t even see you."
He took me by the collar and the seat of my pants and threw me across the lobby. I went flailing through a rack of picture postcards, and landed on my stomach. I slid across the polished floor and brought up against the revolving door.
I didn"t even feel the pain. I sat up, there on the floor, and looked at him. He stood there with his hands on his hips, laughing uproariously at me. I stared, and my mouth dropped open. I was speechless.
"Catching flies, buddy?"
I was so amazed, I left my mouth open.
"Y-you, you can see me!" I caroled. "You can see me!"
He gave a rueful little snort, and turned away. "Of course I can." He started to walk away, then stopped and tossed over his shoulder, "You don"t think I"m one of them, do you?" He crooked his thumb at the people rushing about in the lobby.
It had never dawned on me.
I had thought I was alone in this thing.
But here was another, just like me!
Not for a second did I consider the possibility that he could see me where the others could not, and still be a part of their world. It was apparent from the moment he threw me across the lobby that he was in the same predicament I was. But somehow, he seemed more at ease about it all. As though this was one great party, and he the host.
He started to walk away.
I scrambled to my feet as he was pressing the b.u.t.ton for the elevator, wondering why he was doing that. The elevator couldn"t stop for him if it was human-operated, as I"d seen it was.
"Uh, hey! Wait a minute there-"
The elevator came down, and an old man with baggy pants was running it. "I was on six, Mr. Jim.
Heard it and come right down."
The old man smiled at the man in the trenchcoat-Jim it was-and Jim clapped him on the shoulder.
"Thanks, Denny. I"d like to go up to my room."
I started after them, but Jim gave Denny a nudge, and inclined his head in my direction, with a disgusted expression on his face. "Up, Denny," he said.
The elevator doors started to close. I ran up.
"Hey! Wait a second. My name is Winsocki. Albert Winsocki, like in the song, you know, buckle down Win-"
The doors almost closed on my nose.
I was frantic. The only other person (persons, I realized with a start) who could see me, and they were going away... I might search and never find them.
I was so frantic, in fact, I almost missed the easiest way to trace them. I looked up and the floor indicator arrow was going up, up, up to stop at the tenth floor. I waited till another elevator came down, with the ones who could not see me in it, and tossed out the operator...and took it up myself.
I had to search all through the corridors of the tenth floor till I heard his voice through a door, talking to the old man.
He was saying, "One of the newer ones, Denny. A boor, a completely obnoxious lower form of life."
And Denny replied, "Chee, Mr. Jim, I just like to sit an" hear ya talk. Wit" all them college words.
I was real unhappy till you come along, ya know?"
"Yes, Denny, I know." It was a condescending tone of voice if ever I"d heard one.
I knew he"d never open the door, so I went looking for the maid from that floor. She had her ring of keys in her ap.r.o.n, and never even noticed me taking them. I started back for the room, and stopped.
I thought a moment, and ran back to the elevator. I went downstairs, and climbed into the booth where the bills were paid, where all the cash was stored. I found what I was after in one of the till drawers.
I shoved it into my coat pocket, and went back upstairs.
At the door I hesitated. Yes, I could still hear them babbling. I used the master key to get inside.
When I threw open the door, the man named Jim leaped from the bed and glared at me. "What are you doing in here? Get out at once, or I shall throw you out!" He started toward me.