Comfort Station Read online

  It’s almost a cliché of course, but her better idea was to place wagers on horse races. “We’ll win a bundle,” she promised Herbert. “Then we’ll pay off your bosses and hit out for Acapulco, whadaya say?”

  And so Herbert was sucked deeper into the maelstrom, and in less than a lustrum he was not only much deeper into his boss’s pocket, but he was also deeply in debt to a certain bookmaker known as One-Eye Fishface.

  Troubles, as the old cliché would have it, tend to come in bunches. And so they did for Herbert. On the very same day—yesterday it was, to be exact—that he received word at the office that a special audit was going to be made of the books, some glimmering of his malefactions having finally been noticed (though of course no one yet suspected good old Herbert Q. Luminous), on that very same day One-Eye Fishface phoned him at the office and gave him forty-eight hours to pay off the twenty grand he owed. Or else.

  Herbert at once phoned Floozey. “The jig’s up!” she cried, when he explained the situation. Then, “I tell you whatcha do,” she went on. “You don’t come to see me tonight, too dangerous, One-Eye will be watching us both to make sure we don’t take a powder outa town.”

  “How can One-Eye watch us both?”

  “Never mind. He can. Here’s what you do. Today, before you leave the office, you hit your boss for every dime you can wangle. You got me?”

  “What good will that do?” Herbert protested. “I’ll pay off One-Eye, but the firm will surely have me arrested.”

  “You don’t pay off nobody,” Floozey told him, with the quaintness of language that he found so endearing. “You get cash, in a satchel, all you can get. You take it home with you tonight. You take it to the office with you tomorrow. But you don’t go to the office.”

  “I don’t?”

  “You don’t. You make sure you aren’t followed, and if you ain’t, what you do is, you go to the men’s room behind the public library on Forty-second Street. You know the place I mean?”

  “I think I do, yes.”

  “You go there tomorrow morning, and you wait till I get word to you.”

  “Then what?” he asked.

  “Then the two of us hit out for Acapulco,” she told him.

  “Floozey,” he said, emotion welling up within him, “I know it’s a cliché thing to say, but I love you.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” she said, in her modest way, and hung up.

  So here he was. In the satchel he was clutching tightly in his other hand was thirty-seven thousand nine hundred forty-two dollars and twenty-five cents, the absolute maximum amount he could embezzle in one day from his employer.

  And in front of him, gray and grim in the pouring rain drenching an already-drenched city, was the Bryant Park Comfort Station.

  “It’s almost a cliché to think it,” Herbert muttered to himself. “But here I am, a man on the run.”

  He walked slowly into the Comfort Station.

  10:00 A.M.

  CAROLINA WEISS, ONETIME RUSSIAN countess now A & E mechanic, boarded the 42nd Street Crosstown bus, westbound, at Second Avenue, the southern threshold of the fashionable Upper East Side, where every terrace is haunted by reminders of the past. Nervously she extended a one-dollar bill toward the driver, who by sheerest coincidence just happened to be Fred Dingbat, who not very long before had turned the face of his giant GM city bus from eastward to westward, and who, having left the mighty United Nations Building, where men from one hundred twenty-six nations pace the corridors and worry about their own personal problems, had set out upon the crosstown trek across mighty 42nd Street, where (•/• backwards from 6:00 A.M. chapter).

  Fred gazed upon the bill which had just been extended toward his right ear by Carolina Weiss, onetime Russian countess now A & E mechanic. Six and one-eighth inches long by two and five-eighths inches wide, the bill in question was a medium green in color on the back and a much darker green on the face. The face, dominated by the face of George Washington, also contained across the top the legend FEDERAL RESERVE NOTE, and beneath that THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. With a numeral “1” in each corner, the bill was clearly a one-dollar bill, or in common parlance a “single.” Beneath the wording THE UNITED appeared the warning “This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private” and beneath the word AMERICA appeared, in bright green, the serial number: D70570627C. The serial number also appeared on the lower left, along with an indecipherable signature, that of the Treasurer of the United States. On the lower right was the information “Series 1963 A” and the perfectly legible signature “Henry H. Fowler,” that being the name of the far-seeing then-Secretary of the Treasury. The numeral “4” appeared for no apparent reason four times on the face of the bill, possibly a further hint that Paul McCartney of the Beatles died in 1966 and was quietly replaced by the winner of a look-alike contest.

  Fortunately, Fred Dingbat didn’t see the back of the bill, which is much more complicated even than the front and would take much longer to describe. But if he had …

  No. Carolina Weiss, nervously, extended the bill face-side facing Fred’s face only.

  To which Fred replied, “Lady, we don’t give change, lady. Don’t you read the outside of the bus?”

  Disconcerted, but nevertheless pleased that the driver had somehow been aware of her former noble status—else why call her “lady”?—Carolina said, in pretty confusion, “Oh, I didn’t know. I’m sorry, I don’t usually travel by this means of conveyance.”

  “If you people are going to go on slumming expeditions,” Fred announced savagely, “you’re going to have to expect to take the rough with the smooth. Now, I have a schedule to maintain—are you coming along on this voyage into the unknown or aren’t you?”

  “Oh, yes!” Carolina cried. “I must! I must!”

  “Well, I don’t give change. You need coins or token.”

  “You see,” Carolina explained, “for the first seven years of my marriage, I thought everything was—”

  “If you don’t mind, lady,” Fred declaimed imperviously, “I’d appreciate it if you’d limit your reminiscences to internal monologue. You’re not supposed to talk to the driver while the vehicle is in motion, and as of now this vehicle is in motion.” Then he winked and said, “I won this bus in a crap game with Vincent Impelliteri, far-seeing then-Mayor of this mighty metropolis. Interested?”

  “You can keep your reminiscences buttoned up too, young man,” Carolina replied, with the kind of haughty grandeur that goes a long way toward explaining the Russian Revolution.

  Annoyed, Fred operated the mighty omnibus in a forward manner in a way so abrupt as to cause Carolina to lose her balance and totter backwards three tottering steps into a green plastic seat, which fortunately happened at the time to be unoccupied. Sitting there, shaken by her experience, Carolina paused a moment to catch her breath and reorganize her shattered thoughts.

  “You haven’t paid your fare yet,” Fred reminded her, not unkindly, having now regretted the impetuosity which had produced his impetuous behavior of a moment before.

  “Just a minute,” Carolina said. She was still clutching the handle of the valpack containing all of that portion of her worldly goods which she had chosen to take with her on this Grand Adventure, this break with the past, the endless round of misunderstandings, jealousy, petty bickering, which her marriage had at last come down to. If only …

  No. This was no time for reminiscence, not even in the form of internal monologue. This was a time for action.

  Opening the valpack and spreading it out along the central aisle of the bus was a matter of a few seconds’ furious activity. Then, shielding her actions from the gaze of curious passengers all about her, Carolina knelt upon the opened valpack and delved into the pocket containing all the money she possessed in the world: two hundred sixty-two thousand eighty dollars, plus her childhood piggybank. Not much, but it would have to be enough, enough for the fresh start with Roland.

  It was to the piggybank that Carolina instinctively
turned now, in her moment of need. The piggybank was the last reminder of Imperial Russia, the Russia of her childhood: happy days on the Volga, etc. Holding the artifact in her two hands as she knelt there on the spread-eagle valpack in the bus aisle, Carolina thought back to those halcyon years, and a trace of a tear appeared in the corner of one eye. The right one. Speak, Memory! Carolina thought, and clutched the piggybank—named Rosebud, because of its curly tail—to her bosom.

  The bus, meantime, had stopped at Third Avenue, where several passengers disembarked and several soon-to-be passengers stepped aboard. It was necessary for all of them to walk the length of the open valpack, and one of the new arrivals commented to his friend, an internationally famous plastic surgeon, “I see they’re finally carpeting the buses.”

  “Lumpy, though,” commented the friend.

  “What can you expect from a fusion administration?” riposted the first, and both fell to irrepressible giggling.

  Carolina, recalled to the present by the people walking on her valpack—and on her ankles, if the truth be known—returned from her reverie and briskly shook some change out of the piggybank, then reverently replaced the latter in its valpack pocket, briskly zippered the valpack shut again, briskly got to her feet, and marched briskly to Fred Dingbat’s side, where she asked, “How much to the Bryant Park Comfort Station?”

  Fred gazed upon her. “That’s for men only,” he informed her.

  “Let me worry about that, Yarmulka,” she said, employing a Russian term of contemptuous endearment usually reserved for pet mice. “Just tell me how much.” She jingled coins in her hand. “I can pay,” she said. “Whatever it is.”

  11:00 A.M.

  THROUGH A WINDOW HIGH in the United Nations Building overlooking the throbbing megalopolitan core of the Bos-Wash megalopolis complex, General Ramon San Martinez Tortilla, right-wing dictator of the tiny South American nation of Guacamole, watched the traffic far below on East 42nd Street, and most particularly the impressive length of the gleaming top of the 42nd Street Crosstown bus. How many of the riders of that bus, he wondered, really understood the changes that were to be brought into their lives by the new megalopolitan construct in city planning and most particularly in the area of high-speed interurban and intraurban mass transit? Very few, he supposed. Although city planners and other concerned individuals in municipal and state and federal governments were undertaking at this very moment a massive effort to educate the general public, the man in the street by and large remained blissfully unaware of the incredible complexity of the changes being wrought with incredible speed in his everyday life by the steady swift advance of incredible technology.

  If these seem like unusual reflections for the dictator of an obscure South American nation to be reflecting, let it be pointed out at once that General Ramon San Martinez Tortilla, a gross little man with a pencil moustache and an arrogant demeanor, was on the threshold of being the former dictator of Guacamole, that obscure South American nation, partly as a result of the yearning of Guacamolians everywhere to be free, but also as a result of a minor error on the part of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the United States’ super-hush-hush espionage organization, little known outside the innermost circles of deeply disturbed Washington, which had for the last three years been supplying arms, funds, and mimeograph paper to the insurgents in Guacamole instead of to the Federales Government.

  General Tortilla had learned of the upcoming palace revolt just barely in time to make quick arrangements to get out of the country, first converting all his assets within Guacamole into cash, buying diamonds with the cash, and traveling to New York with the diamonds cleverly concealed as decorations spread out on the chest of his red and gold and blue and green and yellow uniform. Most of the money he had bled from his native land over the years now resided, of course, in numbered Swiss bank accounts, but the diamonds swathing his chest accounted for upwards of half a million dollars in addition to the unnumbered millions in the numbered accounts.

  He had gotten out of the country by arranging an urgent meeting here at the United Nations Building in New York City, crossroads of a million private lives. The meeting, of course, would not take place. But the revolutionaries back home didn’t know that. They were still there, in green and lovely Guacamole, waiting for him to return so they could lop off his head with their machismos.

  New York was to be his new home, at least temporarily, so naturally he was concerning himself now with local problems, of which the knotty one of mass transportation was naturally at the forefront of his mind. So much depends on the quick delivery of people and goods from one spot to another within the growing complexity of the new megalopolis concept. The Boston-Washington complex—familiarly known as Bos-Wash to the city planners struggling to keep up with the dizzy pace of modern technology—was in the forefront of that urban battlefield.

  A sound recalled General Tortilla to the present. Turning, he saw entering the room, pistols drawn, three men he knew to be a part of the conspiracy against him, three men he had thought to be safely in South America!

  “So,” the three said, as one man. “You thought you would escape the justice of an aroused people, General Tortilla.”

  “You got me wrong,” General Tortilla protested, and abruptly flung himself through the connecting door to the next office. Locking the connecting door behind him, he headed for the hallway, pausing only to grab up a black London Fog raincoat hanging on an old friend of his, a research biochemist, standing in the corner. Not only would the raincoat conceal the diamonds winking and sparkling on his chest, there was the further consideration that it was, in fact, raining out, and the raincoat—if the London Fog people could be counted on—would go far toward keeping him dry, should his travels take him outside.

  As he was convinced they would. Already a hammering had started at the door he had just locked, and which he had no intention of unlocking and opening. Instead, he hurried to the other door, which led to the hall, and then down the hall to the elevators.

  He was just boarding an elevator when he saw the three maddened pursuers in maddened pursuit. They would, he knew, be following him on the very next elevator. Given the Bos-Wash response generally to the mass transit problems within its borders, he doubted that next elevator would be very long in coming.

  At ground level, he raced through the opulent surroundings, described in detail in a pamphlet that can be ordered direct from the United Nations, U.N. Plaza, New York, N.Y. Outside into the rain drenching an already-drenched city he raced, looking frantically about for some means of escape.

  What was that ahead of him?

  The 42nd Street Crosstown bus.

  General Tortilla started to run.

  12:00 NOON

  EVERYBODY WENT TO LUNCH.

  1:00 P.M.

  MO MOWGLI SAT AT the tiny desk in his tiny office just off the main operating area of the Bryant Park Comfort Station, crossroads of a million private lives, and counted paper towels. The detail work in this job was a hundred times more than any layman would ever understand.

  Actually, Mo’s “office” was the area designated on all official whiteprints as the “storage closet,” but several months ago Mo had attached a two-by-four to the rear wall of the closet to serve as a desk, and it was here, ever since, that he had made all his executive decisions.

  It sometimes seemed to Mo that middle management didn’t fully comprehend the problems of the men in the field. Otherwise, surely they would have given him some enclosed area of his own here at the Comfort Station, and not expect him to merely stand around out in the operating area all the time, leaning against the wall.

  For, consider: Not only was Mo more productive when he had an executive area of his own, not only were his decisions more certain, more rapid, and more likely to be accurate, but inside the storage closet here he could avoid those embarrassing incidents with individuals who come to the Comfort Station to meet new friends and who frequently mistook the motivation in Mo’s seemi
ngly aimless hanging around. Mo had been invited to join many festive occasions as a result of this mis-apprehension, and had found the social whirl around him, while not exactly tempting, nevertheless disruptive of orderly executive thought. He was better off, he decided, in the closet.

  The sort of swinging, amoral social activity which centered on the men’s room behind the main branch of the New York Public Library, also known as the Bryant Park Comfort Station, was in no essential way different from the kind of swinging, amoral social activity centering on other kinds of watering spots throughout the city: singles bars, for instance. The only essential difference was that in the Comfort Station virtually all the participants were men.

  There were good reasons for this. Airline stewardesses in New York City tend to cluster in apartments on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, on and around West End Avenue, three and four girls sharing each apartment, the apartments familiarly known to those in the know as Airline Stewardesses’ Apartments. Secretaries, on the other hand, who tend to live in Queens and Brooklyn and other places outside the city, do their metropolitan carousing in the aforementioned singles bars, on and around Third Avenue in the Upper East Side. Which, as is obvious after only a cursory glance at a city map, leaves the center of the island—42nd Street—to men.

  Now, quickly scanning his wrist chronometer, which announced to him a time of seven minutes past the hour of one post meridiem, Mo Mowgli decided the moment had arrived for another of his periodic checks throughout the entire operational area. First carefully putting everything on his desk in order, as was his invariable habit, he got to his feet, left his office, and proceeded across the main floor in the direction of the stalls.

  Stalls 1, 2, and 5, Mo saw, were at the moment employed in their primary function. Entering the unoccupied stalls, one after another down the straight rank along one wall, he checked swiftly for a sufficiency of paper, for a maintenance of sanitary standards, and for a continued proper functioning of all equipment. Finding all in order, he turned to the stand-up equipment on the opposite wall, familiarly known to the crew at Plumbing Supplies as “urinals.” These, too, passed muster, Mo was pleased to see, their silent white porcelain perfection a mute testimony to his continued dedication to the task life had given him in lieu of the responsibility he craved.