"Bright Lights, Big City" - читать интересную книгу автора (McInerney Jay)

THE DEPARTMENT OF FACTUAL VERIFICATION

Monday arrives on schedule. You sleep through the first ten hours. God only knows what happened to Sunday.

At the subway station you wait fifteen minutes on the platform for a train. Finally a local, enervated by graffiti, shuffles into the station. You get a seat and hoist a copy of the New York Post. The Post is the most shameful of your several addictions. You hate to support this kind of trash with your thirty cents, but you are a secret fan of Killer Bees, Hero Cops, Sex Fiends, Lottery Winners, Teenage Terrorists, Liz Taylor, Tough Tots, Sicko Creeps, Living Nightmares, Life on Other Planets, Spontaneous Human Combustion, Miracle Diets and Coma Babies. The Coma Baby is on page two: COMA BABY SIS PLEADS: SAVE MY LITTLE BROTHER. There is a picture of a four- or five-year-old girl with a dazed expression. She is the living daughter of a pregnant woman who, after an automobile accident, has been lying in a coma for a week. The question that has confronted Post readers for days is whether or not the Coma Baby will ever see the light of the delivery room.

The train shudders and pitches toward Fourteenth Street, stopping twice for breathers in the tunnel. You are reading about Liz Taylor's new boyfriend when a sooty hand taps your shoulder. You do not have to look up to know you are facing a casualty, one of the city's MIAs, You are more than willing to lay some silver on the physically handicapped, but folks with the long-distance eyes give you the heebie-jeebies.

The second time he taps your shoulder you look up. His clothes and hair are fairly neat, as if he had only recently let go of social convention, but his eyes are out-to-lunch and his mouth is working furiously.

"My birthday," he says, "is January thirteenth. I will be twenty-nine years old." Somehow he makes this sound like a threat to kill you with a blunt object.

"Great," you say, going back to the paper.

When you next look up the man is halfway down the car, staring intently at an ad for a business training institute. As you watch, he sits down in the lap of an old lady. She tries to get out from under him but he has her pinned.

"Excuse me, sir, but you're sitting on me," she says. "Sir, sir. Excuse me." Almost everyone in the car is watching and pretending they're not. The man folds his arms across his chest and leans farther back.

"Sir, please get off of me."

You can't even believe it. Half a dozen healthy men are within spitting distance. You would have jumped up your- self but you assumed someone closer to the action would act. The woman is quietly sobbing. As each moment passes it becomes harder and harder to do anything without calling attention to the fact that you hadn't done anything earlier. You keep hoping the man will stand up and leave her alone. You imagine the headline in the Post: GRANNY CRUSHED BY NUT WHILE WIMPS WATCH.

"Please, sir."

You stand up. At the same time, the man stands up. He brushes his coat with his hands and then walks down to the far end of the car. You feel silly standing there. The old lady is dabbing at her eyes with a Kleenex. You would like to see if she's all right, but at this point it wouldn't do much good. You sit down.

It's ten-fifty when you get to Times Square. You come up on Seventh Avenue blinking. The sunlight is excessive. You grope for your shades. Down Forty-second Street, through the meat district. Every day the same spiel from the same old man: "Girls, girls, girls -check 'em out, check 'em out. Take a free look, gentlemen. Check it out, check it out." The words and rhythm never vary. Kinky Karla, Naughty Lola, Sexsational Live Revue -girls, girls, girls.

Waiting for a light at Forty-second, you scope among the announcements of ancient upcoming events, strangling the lamppost like kudzu, a fresh poster with the headline MISSING PERSON. The photograph shows a smiling, toothy girl, circa Junior Prom. You read: Mary O'Brien McCann; NYU student; blue eyes, brown hair, last seen vicinity Washington Square Park, wearing blue jumper, white blouse. Your heart sinks. You think of those left behind, the dazed loved ones who have hand-lettered this sign and taped it here, who will probably never know what happened. The light has changed.

You stop at the corner for a doughnut and coffee to go. It's 10:58. You've worn out the line about the subway breaking down. Maybe tell Clara you stopped to take a free look at Kinky Karla and got bitten by her snake.

Into the lobby, your chest constricting in anticipation, your throat getting dry. You used to feel this way walking into school Monday mornings. The dread of not having finished your homework -and where were you going to sit at lunch? It didn't help being the new kid every year. The stale disinfectant smell of the corridors and the hard faces of teachers. Your boss, Clara Tillinghast, somewhat resembles a fourth-grade tyrant, one of those ageless disciplinarians who believes that little boys are evil and little girls frivolous, that an idle mind is the devil's playground and that learning is the pounding of facts, like so many nails, into the knotty oak of recalcitrant heads. Ms. Clara Tillinghast, aka Clingfast, aka The Clinger, runs the Department of Factual Verification like a spelling class, and lately you have not accumulated many gold stars. You are hanging on by the skin of your chipped teeth. If the Clinger had her way you would have been expelled long ago, but the magazine has a tradition of never acknowledging its mistakes. The folk history of the place has it that no one has ever been fired: not the narcoleptic theater critic who confused two different off-Broadway premieres and ran a review that combined elements of a southern family saga and a farce about Vietnam; not the award-winning plagiarist who cribbed a five-thousand-word piece direct from a twenty-year-old issue of Punch and signed her name to it. It's a lot like the Ivy League, from which its staff is mostly drawn, or like a cold, impenetrable New England family which keeps even the black sheep suffocating within the fold. You, however, are a minor cousin at best; if there were a branch of the family business in a distant, malarial colony, you would have been shipped off long ago, sans quinine. Your transgressions are numerous. You can't call them specifically to mind, but Clingfast has the list in one of her file cabinets. She takes it out from time to time and reads you excerpts. Clara has a mind like a steel mousetrap and a heart like a twelve-minute egg.

Lucio, the elevator operator, says good morning. He was born in Sicily and has been doing this for seventeen years. With a week's training he could probably take over your job and then you could ride the elevator up and down all day long. You're at the twenty-ninth floor in no time. Say so long to Lucio, hello to Sally, the receptionist, perhaps the only staffer with a low-rent accent. She's from one of the outer boroughs, comes in via bridge or tunnel. Generally people here speak as if they were weaned on Twinings English Breakfast Tea. Tillinghast picked up her broad vowels and karate-chop consonants at Vassar. She's very sensitive about coming from Nevada. The writers, of course, are another story-foreigners and other unclubbables among them -but they come and go from their thirtieth-floor cubbyholes at strange hours. They pass manuscripts under the doors at night, and duck into empty offices if they spot you coming at them down the hallway. One mystery man up there – the Ghost – has been working on an article for seven years.

The editorial offices cover two floors. Sales and advertising are several floors below, the division emphasizing the strict independence of art and commerce in the institution. They wear suits on twenty-five, speak a different language and have carpeting on the floors, lithographs on the walls. You are not supposed to talk to them. Up here, the air is too rarefied to support broadloom, the style a down-at-the-heels hauteur. A shoeshine or an overly insistent trouser press is suspect, quite possibly Italian. The layout suggests a condo for high-rise gophers: the private offices are rodent-sized, the halls just wide enough for two-way pedestrianism.

You navigate the linoleum to the Department of Factual Verification. Directly across the hall is Clara's office, the door of which is almost always open so that all who come and go from the kingdom of facts must pass her scrutiny. She is torn between her desire for privacy, with all the honors, privileges, et cetera, appertaining to her post, and her desire to keep a sharp eye on her domain.

The door is wide open this morning and you can do nothing but make the sign of the cross and walk past. You sneak a glance over your shoulder as you enter the department and see that she's not at her desk. Your colleagues are all in place, except for Phoebe Hubbard, who is in Woods Hole researching a three-part piece on lobster-ranching.

"Good morning, fellow proles," you say, slipping into your seat. The Department of Factual Verification is the largest room in the magazine. If chess teams had locker rooms they might look like this. There are six desks-one reserved for visiting writers-and thousands of reference books on the walls. Gray linoleum desktops, brown linoleum floors. An absolute hierarchy is reflected in the desk assignments, with the desk farthest from Clara's office and closest to the windows reserved for the senior verificationist, and so on down to your own desk against the bookshelves next to the door-but in general the department is a clubhouse of democratic fellowship. The fanatic loyalty to the magazine which rules elsewhere is compromised here by a sense of departmental loyalty: us against them. If an error slips into the magazine, it is one of you, and not the writer, who will be crucified. Not fired, but scolded, perhaps even demoted to the messenger room or the typing pool.

Rittenhouse, who has served notice to falsehoods and commended facts for over fourteen years, nods and says good morning. He looks worried. You assume that Cling-fast has been looking for you, that the notion of last straws has been aired.

"Has the Clinger been around yet," you ask. He nods and blushes down to his bow tie. Rittenhouse enjoys a touch of irreverence but can't help feeling guilty about it.

"She's rather perturbed," he says. "At least it seemed so to me," he adds, demonstrating the scruples of his profession. For half of his life this man has been reading some of the better literature and journalism of his time with the sole aim of sorting out matters of fact from matters of opinion, disregarding the latter, and tracking the alleged facts through dusty volumes, along skeins of microfilm, across transcontinental telephone cables, till they prove good or are exposed as error. He is a world-class detective, but his dedication makes him wary of speech, as if a fiery Clara Tillinghast stood guard on his larynx, ready to pounce on the unqualified assertion.

Your nearest neighbor, Yasu Wade, is checking a science piece. This is a mark of favor-Clingfast usually reserving the science articles, the factual verification of which is so urgent and satisfying, for herself. Wade is on the phone. "Okay now,".he says, "where does the neutrino fit into all of this?" Wade grew up on Air Force bases until he escaped to Bennington and New York. His speech is Sunbelt Swish- a lisp on a twang, occasionally supplemented by feigned R and L confusion, particularly when he has a chance to use the phrase "President-elect." His mother is Japanese, his father an Air Force Captain out of Houston. They married in Tokyo during the Occupation, and Yasu Wade is the unlikely result. He calls himself the Yellow Nonpareil. Wade is irreverent in every direction, yet somehow manages to amuse where you offend. He is Clara's favorite, not counting Rittenhouse, who is so naturally adapted to his environment as to be invisible.

'Tardy, very tardy," Wade says to you when he hangs up the phone. 'This won't do. Facts wait for no man. Tardiness is a species of error with regard to Greenwich Mean Time. Greenwich Mean Time is now fifteen-fifteen hours, which means that Eastern Daylight Saving Time, which many of us observe hereabouts, is eleven-fifteen. Starting time here at the office is ten A.M.-hence an error in your disfavor of one hour and fifteen minutes."

In fact, things are more casual than Wade would have it: Clingfast likes to assert her prerogatives by coming in somewhere between ten-fifteen and ten-thirty. As long as one is at one's desk by ten-thirty, one is relatively safe. Somehow you manage to miss this banker's deadline at least once a week.

"Is she pissed," you ask.

"I wouldn't put it that way," Wade says. "I like that word better the way the British use it-colloquial for intoxicated: e.g., Malcolm Lowry's consul getting pissed on mescal in Quauhnahuac, if I remember the name of the town correctly."

"Can you spell it," you ask.

"Of course. But to return to your original question- yes, Clara is a tad peeved. She is not pleased with you. Or perhaps she is pleased to see you confirming her worst expectations. I think she's got the scent of blood. If I were you… " Wade looks toward the door and raises his eyebrows. "If I were you, I'd turn around."

Clingfast is in the door, looking like a good candidate for a Walker Evans Depression-era photo; flinty faced and suspicious. The guardian of the apertures, the priestess of Webster's Second Edition Unabridged Dictionary, eagle eyes and beagle nose. She gives you a look that could break glass, and then steps out. She's going to let you suffer for a while.

You dig into your desk and pull out a Vicks inhaler. Try to plow a path through some of the crusted snow in your head.

"Still got that nasty sinus problem, I see." Wade gives you a knowing look. Though he prides himself on being hip, he is too fastidious to do anything dangerous or dirty. You suspect that his sexual orientation is largely theoretical. He'd take a hot piece of gossip over a warm piece of ass any day of the week. He's always telling you who's sleeping with whom. Not that you mind. Last week it was David Bowie and Prince Rainier.

You try to settle down to an article about the French elections. It is your job to make sure that there are no errors of fact or spelling. In this case the facts are so confused as to suck you deep into vast regions of interpretation. The writer, a former restaurant critic, lavishes all his care on adjectives and disdains nouns. He describes an aging cabinet minister as "nubbly" and a rising socialist as "lightly browned." You believe that Clingfast gave you this piece in order to see you hang yourself. She knew the piece was a mess. She probably also knew that the claim of fluency in French on your resume was something of a whopper, and that you are too proud to admit it now. Running down the facts requires numerous phone calls to France, and you made a fool of yourself last week doing your je ne comprends pas with various sub-ministers and their assistants. Plus you have your own personal reasons for not wanting to call Paris or speak French or be reminded of the goddamned place. Reasons that have to do with your wife.

There is no way you will be able to get everything in this article verified, and there is also no graceful way to admit failure. You are going to have to hope that the writer got some of it straight the first time, and that Clingfast doesn't go through the proofs with her usual razor-tooth comb.

Why does she hate you? She hired you, after all. When did things start to go wrong? It's not your fault that she never married. Since your own marital Pearl Harbor, you have understood that sleeping alone goes a long way toward explaining nastiness and erratic behavior. Sometimes you have wanted to tell her: Hey, I know what it's like. You have seen her at that little piano bar off Columbus, clutching her drink and waiting for somebody to come up and say hello. When she's bitching you out, you have wanted to say: Why don't you just admit you hurt? But by the time you understood this it was too late. She wanted your hide. Maybe it all began with the John Donlevy deal. You had been at the magazine only a few weeks and Clara took a week off. Donlevy was doing a book review for the magazine, flexing his synapses after his second Pulitzer prize. Book reviews were considered walk-throughs in the department, and Clara left the piece in your hands. In your innocence you not only fixed up the occasional citation error; you went on to suggest some improvements in the prose and to register questions regarding interpretation of the book. You handed in the proofs and went home well pleased. Something happened in Collating; your proofs were sent to Donlevy in place of the editor's proofs. The editor, a youngish woman fresh from the Yale alumni magazine, was in awe of her sudden proximity to Donlevy, and was horrified when she learned what had happened and looked over your proofs. You were summoned to her office and upbraided for your unprecedented presumption. To tamper with the prose of John Donlevy! Horrible. Un-thinkable. You, a mere stripling of a verificationist. If you had gone to Yale, you might have learned some manners. She was trying to decide how best to explain the outrage to Donlevy when he called to say that he appreciated the suggestions and that he was taking several of the changes.

You got that part of the story from the switchboard operator, who listened in on the conversation. The editor never spoke to you again. After Clara returned, there was another lecture, much the same, with the addition of the idea that you had embarrassed her and the entire department. When the issue came out, you noted with some satisfaction that your best stuff was incorporated in the review. But it was the end of Clara's warm maternal act.

To give Clara her due, lately.you have not been impeccable in the performance of your duties. It's a matter of temperaments. You try and you try, but you can't see this as God's work, or even Man's work. Aren't computers supposed to free us from this kind of drudgery?

In fact, you don't want to be in Fact. You'd much rather be in Fiction. You have cautiously expressed this preference several times, but there hasn't been an opening in Fiction in years. The people in the Verification Department tend to look down on fiction, in which words masquerade as flesh without the backbone of fact. There is a general sense that if fiction isn't dead, it is at least beside the point. But you'll take a new story by Bellow over a six-part article on the Republican convention at the drop of a hat. All the magazine fiction passes through the department, and since no one else wants it you take it upon yourself to do the routine checking-make sure that if a story set in San Francisco contains a psycho named Phil Doaks, there is no Phil Doaks in the San Francisco phone book who might turn around and sue. It's the opposite of verifying a factual piece. To confirm that the story doesn't unintentionally coincide at any point with real people and events. A cursory process, it does give you a shot at some decent reading.

At first Clingfast seemed pleased that you were taking on a job no one else wanted, but now she accuses you of spending too much time on the fiction. You are an idler in the kingdom of facts. Meanwhile, the Fiction people are none too thrilled when you inform them that a story which contains a fly-fishing scene incorrectly has a hatch of Sulfur Duns occurring on a stream in Oregon where, in fact, no Sulfur Duns have ever hatched. You are an unwilling emissary from the land of pedantry. "So what the hell does hatch in goddamned Oregon?" the editor asks. "Salmon-flies, for one," you say. You want to say: It's my job-I don't like it either.

Megan Avery comes over to your desk. She picks up the framed needlepoint sampler Wade embroidered for your last birthday, which reads:

Facts all come with points of view

Facts don't do what I want them to.

– TALKING HEADS

When Wade gave it to you you weren't sure whether to be grateful for his time and effort or insulted by the implied comment on your professional incapacities. Megan asks, "How's everything going with you?" You say you can't complain. "Are you sure?" Megan makes honesty seem like a viable alternative. She is a person who could give lessons in sanity. Why have you never confided in her before? She's older and wiser. You're not sure how old; she doesn't seem to have a particular age. You would describe her as striking, or attractive, but she has such an earnest, practical nature that it is hard for you to envision her as a sexual being. Although married once, she seems the West Village type meant to run her own life and help her friends through their many disasters. You admire her. You don't know many sensible people. Maybe you could have lunch sometime.

"I'm okay, really," you say.

"Need any help with the French piece? I'm not real busy just now."

"I think I can manage. Thanks."

The Clinger appears in the doorway. She nods at you. "We've decided to move the French thing up an issue. That means I need it on my desk before you leave today. We're closing tomorrow afternoon." She pauses. "Can you handle it?"

There is not a snowball's chance in hell and you suspect she knows it. "I could just give it directly to Collating tonight and save you the trouble."

"My desk," she says. "Tell me now if you're going to need help."

You shake your head. If she sees the shape the page proofs are in at the moment, you're screwed. You have not followed procedure. You have used pen where you should have used pencil, red pencil where you should have used blue. Phone numbers written in the margins, coffee rings in the columns. You have done all the things that the "Manual of Factual Verification" tells you not to do. You've got to try and find a clean copy of the proofs to work from. The Clinger is large on procedure.

The prospect of the work in front of you resurrects the unspeakable headache with which you woke. You're already exhausted. You're so tired. Eight days of sleep would put you right. A boatload of Marching Powder might get you through this ordeal. But simply to face it seems like more than you can do. You should protest the change in scheduling. Why the hell didn't someone ask you if it was almost ready to go? Even if you could speak French, it would take several more days. If you were not afraid of having Clara or the Druid examine your proofs as they stand, you would protest.

If you were Japanese, this would be the time to commit seppuku. Pen a farewell poem about the transience of cherry blossoms and the fleet transit of youth, wrap the sword blade in white silk, plunge it home and pull upward, right-ward through your intestines. And no whimpering or sour expressions, please. You learned all about the ritual while checking an article on Japan. But you lack that samurai resolution. You are the kind of guy who always hopes for a miracle at the last minute. Manhattan does not lie in an earthquake zone, but there is always the possibility of nuclear war. Short of that, nothing you can imagine would alter the publishing schedule.

At a little after noon the Druid tiptoes past the office on his way to lunch. Because you happen to be staring out the door at nothing in particular you catch his eyes, famously nearsighted. He bows formally. The Druid is elusive; one has to look very closely, and know what to look for, to see him at all. While you have never actually seen a Victorian clerk, you believe this is what one would look like. At the magazine, his temperamental reticence has been elevated to a principle. Fourth in a dynastic succession, he has run the show for twenty years. Trying to discover what he is thinking is the preoccupation of the entire staff. Nothing passes into the magazine without his enthusiastic approval and his own final edit. There is no arbitration and no explanation. It pains him that he requires a staff to assist him, but he is invariably polite. There is officially no second-in-command, because that would imply an eventual changing of the guard, and the Druid cannot imagine the magazine without himself. The Kremlin must be a lot like this. Perhaps because he suspects he is mortal, fiction that deals too directly with death is unwelcome here; most references to myopia are edited out. No detail is too minute for his attention.

The only direct contact you have had with the Druid was when he called you up one day to worry about the English usage of the President of the United States. You were checking a piece in which the President warned against precipitous action. The Druid felt that precipitate was the word the President was looking for. He asked you to call the White House and get approval for the change. You dutifully called the White House and tried to explain the importance of this distinction. You spent several hours on hold. Those who actually believed you were serious would not commit themselves. Others just cussed you out. Meanwhile, the magazine was going to press. The Druid called three times and encouraged you to keep trying. Finally, with the composing room screaming for the final pages, an accommodation of sorts was reached, unknown to the President and his staff. While Webster's Second distinguished the meanings of the two words, the racier Third Edition listed them as synonyms. The Druid gave you a final call to explain this and to approve-not without trepidation- the original quote. The magazine went to press. Government continued apace.

At one o'clock you go out for a sandwich. Megan asks you to bring her a Tab. Downstairs, you semi-revolve through the doors and think about how nice it would be not to have to return at all, ever. You also think about how nice it would be to hole up in the nearest bar. The glare from the sidewalk stuns you; you fumble in your jacket pocket for your shades. Sensitive eyes, you tell people.

You shuffle off to the deli and pick up a pastrami-on-rye and an egg cream. The bald man behind the counter whistles cheerfully as he slices the meat. "Nice and lean today," he says. "And now for a little mustard-just how your mom used to make it."

"What do you know about it," you ask.

"Just passing the time, pal," he says, wrapping it all up. All of this, the dead meat on ice behind glass, everything, puts you off your meal.

Outside, waiting for a light, you are accosted by a man leaning up against a bank.

"My man, check it out here. Genuine Carder watches. Forty dollars. Wear the watch that'll make 'em watch you. The genuine article. Only forty bucks."

The man stands beside the torso of a mannequin, the arms of which are covered with watches. He holds one out to you. "Check it out." If you take it, you'll feel committed. But you don't want to be rude. You take the watch and examine it.

"How do I know it's real?"

"How do you know anything's real? Says Carrier right there on the face, right? Looks real. Feels real. So what's to know? Forty bucks. How can you lose?"

It appears authentic. Slim, rectangular face, regal roman numerals, sapphire-tipped winding knob. The band feels like good leather. But if it's real, it's probably hot. And if it isn't hot it can't be real.

"Thirty-five bucks to you. My cost."

"How come so cheap?"

"Low overhead."

You haven't owned a watch in years. Knowing the time at any given moment might be a good first step toward organizing the slippery flux of your life. You've never been able to see yourself as the digital kind of guy. But you could use a little Carder in your act. It looks real, even if it isn't, and it tells time. What the hell.

"Thirty dollars," the man says.

"I'll buy it."

"At that price you ain't buying it. You're stealing it."

You wind your new watch and admire it on your wrist. 1:25.

Once you reach the office you realize you have forgotten Megan's Tab. You apologize and tell her you'll go back for it. She says not to bother. While you were gone she took two messages, one from Monsieur Somebody at the Department of Something, and one from your brother Michael. You don't really want to talk to either of them.

By two o'clock it's eight in Paris and everyone has gone home for the day. For the rest of the afternoon you will try to fill in the holes with reference books and calls to the consulate in New York. Your eyelids feel as if they are being held open by taxidermy needles. You push on blindly.

Your new watch dies at three-fifteen. You shake it, then wind it. The winding knob falls off in your hand.

The editor of the piece calls to ask how it's going. You say it's going. He apologizes for the scheduling change; he wanted to save it till next month at the earliest. For no clear reason, the Druid moved it up. "I just wanted to warn you," he says. "Take nothing for granted."

"That's my job," you say.

"I mean especially in this case. He hasn't left Paris in twelve years, and spends most of his time in restaurants. He never double-checks anything."

Jesus wept.

Twice during the afternoon you call the writer to ask him where he picked up his facts. The first time you call you go through a list of errors and he concedes each point cheerfully.

"Where did you get this about the French government owning a controlling interest in Paramount Pictures?" you say.

"Don't they? Well, shit. Run a line through that."

"Your next three paragraphs depend on it."

"Damn. Who told me that?"

By the end of the second call he is annoyed, as if the errors were of your devising. This is the way it goes with the writers: they resent you to the degree that they depend on you.

Late in the afternoon a memo arrives addressed to "staff." It is signed by the Druid's assistant, which makes it gospel.

It has come to our attention that a Mr. Richard Fox is writing an article about the magazine. Some of you may already have been approached by Mr. Fox. We have reason to believe that the intentions of this reporter are not coincident with the best interests of the magazine. We would like to remind all staff members of the magazine's policy with regard to the press. All queries and requests for interviews should be referred to this office. Under no circumstances should any employee presume to speak for the magazine without prior clearance. We remind you that all magazine business is strictly confidential.

The memo occasions amusement in the Department of Factual Verification. The magazine has been involved in many freedom of press trials, but in this gag order there is not a glimmer of irony.

Wade says, "I wish Richard Fox would call me." Megan says, "Forget it, Yasu. I know for a fact that Richard Fox is straight."

"For a fact? I'd be very interested to hear about your verification procedure."

"I know you would," Megan says.

"At any rate," Wade says, "I only meant that I would be fantastically curious to know how many pieces of silver some of the institutional dirty laundry is worth. But don't get me wrong-it's not that I don't find Fox attractive."

Rittenhouse is tugging at his glasses, indicating that he wishes to speak. "I, for one, do not feel that Richard Fox is an objective reporter. He has a penchant for sensationalism."

"Of course," Wade says. "That's why we love him."

The possession of dangerous information excites a brief feeling of power here in the Department of Factual Verification. You wish Richard Fox or anyone else cared enough about Clara Tillinghast to perform a character assassination.

By seven everyone is gone. They all offered to help, and you waved them away. There is a shabby nobility in failing all by yourself.

Clara sticks her head in the door as she's leaving. "My desk," she says.

My ass, you think.

You nod and, in token of your earnestness, hunker down over the page proofs. From this point on it's a matter of covering your tracks, running pencil lines through anything that you have not been able to verify and hoping that nothing important slips through.

At seven-thirty Allagash calls. "What are you doing at the office?" he says. "We have plans for the evening. Monstrous events are scheduled."

Two of the things you like about Allagash are that he never asks you how you are and he never waits for you to answer his questions. You used to dislike this, but when the news is all bad it's a relief that someone doesn't want to hear it. Just now you want to stay at the surface of things, and Tad is a figure skater who never considers the sharks under the ice. You have friends who actually care about you and speak the language of the inner self. You have avoided them of late. Your soul is as disheveled as your apartment, and until you can clean it up a little you don't want to invite anyone inside.

Allagash tells you that Natalie and Inge are dying to meet you. Natalie's father runs an oil company and Inge is soon to be in a major television commercial. Moreover, the Deconstructionists are playing the Ritz, one of the modeling agencies is sponsoring a bash for Muscular Dystrophy at Magique and Natalie has cornered a chunk of the Gross National Product of Bolivia.

"I'm going to be working most of the night," you say. Actually, you are about to give up, but a night of Allagash is not the remedy for your blues. You're thinking of bed. You are so tired you could stretch out right here on the linoleum and slip into a long coma.

"Give me a time. I'll pick you up," Tad says.

The phrase "last-ditch effort" jumps out from the column of print in front of you. It makes you ashamed of yourself. You think of the Greeks at Thermopylae, the Texans at the Alamo, John Paul Jones in his leaky tub. You want to rally and whip hell out of falsehood and error.

You tell Tad you will call him back in half an hour. Later, when the phone rings, you ignore it.

At a little after ten you put the proofs on Clara's desk. It would at least be a relief if you could tell yourself that this was your best shot. You feel like a student who is handing in a term paper that is part plagiarism, part nonsense and half finished. You have scoped out and fixed a number of colossal blunders, which serves only to make you more aware of the suspect nature of everything you haven't verified. The writer was counting on the Verification Department to give authority to his sly observations and insidious generalizations. This is not cricket on his part, but it is your job to help him out and it is your job that is on the line. There has only been one printed retraction in the magazine's history and the verificationist responsible for the error was immediately farmed out to Advertising. Your only hope is that the Clinger won't read it. A fire of mysterious origin might sweep through the offices. Or Clara might get sloshed tonight, fall off a barstool and crack her head open. She might get picked up by a Sex Killer. Any Post reader will tell you it's possible. Happens every day.

There was a cartoon you used to watch, at least you think there was, with a time-traveling turtle and a benevolent wizard. The turtle would journey back to, say, the French Revolution, inevitably getting in way over his head. At the last minute, when he was stretched out under the guillotine, he would cry out, "Help, Mr. Wizard!" And the wizard, on the other end of the time warp, would wave his wand and rescue the hapless turtle.

Already you feel a sense of nostalgia as you walk down the narrow halls past all the closed doors. You remember how you felt when you passed this way for your first interview, how the bland seediness of the hallway only increased your apprehension of grandeur. You thought of all the names that had been made here. You thought of yourself in the third person: He arrived for his first interview in a navy-blue blazer. He was interviewed for a position in the Department of Factual Verification, a job which must have seemed even then to be singularly unsuited to his flamboyant temperament. But he was not to languish long among the facts.

Those first months seem now to have been filled with promise. You were convinced of the importance of your job and of the inevitability of rising above it. You met people you had admired half your life. You got married. The Druid himself sent a note of congratulations. It was only a matter of time before they realized your talents were being wasted in Fact.

Something changed. Somewhere along the line you stopped accelerating.

Mrs. Bender, the senior grammarian, is working late. You say good night. She asks you about the French piece and you tell her it's finished.

' "What a mess," she says. "It reads as if it was translated literally from the Chinese. These damn writers want us to do all their work for them."

You nod and smile. Her complaint is refreshing, like rain at the end of a muggy day. You linger in the doorway while she shakes her head and clicks her tongue.

"Going home soon?" you say. "Not soon enough."

"Can I get you something from downstairs?" She shakes her head. "I don't want to feel as if I'm settled in here."

"See you tomorrow."

She nods and returns to her proofs.

You walk to the elevator and press the Down button.