The Broken Bubble Read online

  He said, “What else can I do? I have to go.”

  “You don’t have to go.”

  “I’m supposed to.” He was helpless.

  “You don’t have to do anything. Nobody can make you do anything. All these things they say, it’s just a lot of words. Grimmelman is as bad as the rest of them. Grimmelman is like a sign. Do you do what signs say? How about when you read something, do you do that? Do you believe it because it’s up there on the wall or somebody mails it to you in an envelope? You know it’s just words. Just talk.”

  He said, “I do some things they tell me.”

  “Don’t do anything they tell you.”

  “All of them?” Her hardness troubled him.

  “Remember all that stuff they taught us in school, all that junk. There never was anything in all of it.” With her long, accurate fingers she looped a thread that dangled from his shirt: she broke the thread and put it into an ashtray on the mantel.

  He placed his hands on her shoulders. Through the material of her blouse, his hands rested on her, and he felt that she was close to him, close to the surface.

  “I wish we could go somewhere,” she said. “Not just around here. I want to see different places. Maybe someday we could see the Rockies. We could drive up high; we could even live up there. They have towns up there right in the mountains.”

  “It’s hard to get a job there,” he said.

  “We could open a store,” Rachael said. “There’s always things people want. We could open a bakery.”

  “I’m not a baker,” he said.

  “Then we could put out a newspaper.”

  He kissed her again, and then he lifted her up, off the floor and against him. Then he set her down on the arm of the couch.

  “Tell your brother Nat,” she said, “to give us one of his cars so we can drive. Tell him we need a new one we can sell when we get there.”

  “You mean it?” he said.

  Of course she did, “But not yet,” she said. “We better wait until after I have the baby. Then we can go. In a couple of years, when we have some money. When you’re finished being an apprentice.”

  “You really want to get out of here?” After all, he thought, she had been born here; she had grown up here.

  She said, “Maybe we could even go up into Canada. I was thinking about that. To one of those towns where they trap animals and there’s a lot of snow.”

  “You wouldn’t like that,” he said. But, he thought maybe she would.

  The Horch was parked in a sheet-metal garage down in the flat industrial section of the city. Grimmelman, in his black wool greatcoat, paratrooper’s boots, and army shirt, unlocked the padlock and shoved aside the doors.

  The garage was clammy. The cement floor was wet with oil. To one side was a workbench. Joe Mantila put on the overhead light as Art Emmanual closed the doors behind them.

  “Nobody’s been here,” Ferde said. “Nobody’s got to it.”

  The Horch was dented from its encounters, but it was still impressive. It weighed almost six thousand pounds. This car had come up from Latin America; it had been built in 1937 by the Auto-Union, and this model, a five-passenger spoil convertible, had been the staff car of the Wehrmacht and S.S. Grimmelman had never told anyone how and where he had gotten hold of it or how much he had paid. The Horch was painted jet black, and with its remote-control system it was unique.

  Art got in behind the wheel and started up the engine. In the closed garage, the noise deafened them; exhaust fumes billowed up in clouds, and the smell of gasoline was sickening.

  “It’s missing a little,” Ferde Heinke said.

  Lifting the hood, Art began tinkering with the fuel mixture. “How come you decided to roll out tonight?” he said to Grimmelman. He had never seen Grimmelman so agitated, in such a state of anxiety.

  “The time has arrived,” Grimmelman said, pacing in a circle, his hands behind his back.

  “Is that why you’re jumping around?”

  Ferde Heinke said, “If we’re really going to do something tonight, we better get more to go; four isn’t enough. We ought to get the rest of the Organization.” The Organization faded off indistinctly, without particular edges; beyond the hard core were a number of members who came and went.

  “This is more in the nature of a warm-up,” Grimmelman said, attaching the relay board of the remote control unit. With a screwdriver, he cinched up the lugs to the terminals. Perspiration streaked his cheeks; his face shone under the light. “A dry run so we’ll know we’re ready to roll at an instant’s notice.”

  “Roll where?” Joe said.

  “The situation is at a critical stage,” Grimmelman said. “I want the Horch filled with gas, ready for a long trip. If necessary we may have to move operations to a new area.” As he completed the wiring of the vital control unit, he added, “From now on I want the weapons kept here in the Horch.”

  “Where are we going tonight?” Ferde Heinke asked.

  “We’ll conduct practice maneuvers in the vicinity of Dodo’s. If possible we’ll engage a Bactrian vehicle.”

  “Fine,” Joe Mantila said, hating the Bactrians with their cashmere sweaters and slacks and argyle socks, their country club dances, and especially their late-model Detroit stock cars.

  “See if the coast is clear,” Grimmelman said, panting with eagerness.

  Ferde stepped outside and surveyed the street.

  “I’ll take the Plymouth,” Joe Mantila said, passing through the doorway and outside after Ferde. He carried with him the controls and a microphone and a roll of cable with a jack on the end. “Let’s see if I can back it out.”

  Seated in the Plymouth, he punched buttons, controlling the Horch. The power-assisted wheel of the Horch revolved as the car shifted gear and began to back. The original eight-speed manual transmission had been removed and an automatic Borg-Warner transmission installed. The overhead cam engine, with its immense crankshaft supported by ten bearings, was original equipment; nothing else was its match. The engine thundered, and the Horch backed from the garage into the street. Its headlights flashed on; it shifted into a forward gear, and the foot throttle eased. From the grill beneath the Auto-Union insignia, Joe Mantila’s voice boomed, “Okay? Let’s go.”

  “Great,” Grimmelman said, hurrying outside. Art closed the garage doors; the three of them hurried to the Plymouth to join Joe Mantila.

  Joe drove the Plymouth, while Grimmelman worked the controls for the Horch. The ponderous Horch started out ahead of them, and they followed closely; it was necessary for them to be near enough to see what lay ahead. In the beginning their control car had lagged, and the Horch had been permitted to crash against parked cars and curbs; now they had learned to keep it always in sight. Its headlights swept the pavement, and, over its open top, they studied the street.

  “Turn it right,” Ferde said.

  The Horch turned cautiously, as Grimmelman slowed it almost to a halt. “More traffic,” Grimmelman murmured; his face was tense with the strain of operating the controls.

  “That’s no lie,” Ferde Heinke said. “Hey, you want me to go take it manually until we’re at Dodo’s?”

  “No,” Grimmelman said. “It’s okay.”

  The open Horch, with no one inside, sailed down Fillmore Street among the buses and taxis and stock cars. As usual, its empty driver’s seat was unnoticed.

  “Am—” Grimmelman said, “—you operate the assault weapon.”

  Reaching around on the floor of the Plymouth—he was crowded in the back seat with Ferde Heinke and piles of equipment—he located the assault weapon: a spray gun filled with white enamel paint. But he did not feel in the mood. The spray gun was a dead weight, and he handed it to Ferde.

  “You get them,” he said.

  “What’s the matter?” Grimmelman demanded. “I told you to do it.” He shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t feel like it.”

  Ahead of them was Dodo’s. At the curb, a sparkling new Detroit bomb
was parked; its occupants were inside the drive-in, at the counter. “Bactrians,” Grimmelman said.

  The car was a ’56 Buick, dark green and white.

  “Park the Horch,” Joe said excitedly.

  Grimmelman caused the Horch to glide to the curb at the end of the block. There, with its motor idling, it parked and waited.

  “Now,” Grimmelman said.

  Ferde Heinke, leaning from the window of the Plymouth, sprayed paint on the green fender of the Buick, spelling out:

  FUCK YOU

  “Okay,” he said, finishing. “Let’s go.”

  Art lay back against the seat as the Plymouth shot forward. His heart was not in it, and he began to think about Rachael. Behind them, the Bactrians were rushing out of Dodo’s and into their Buick. But he did not care.

  “Stop,” Grimmelman ordered Joe. “Around the corner, like before.”

  The Plymouth screeched around the corner, passed the parked Horch, and came to a stop. At the drive-in, the Bactrians were starting up their Buick. As the Buick left the curb, Grimmelman propelled the Horch from its parking place out into traffic, into the path of the Buick.

  “Lily-whiters!” the Horch’s speaker boomed at the Buick as the Buick swerved past it, trying to get around it. Now the Horch blocked the side street and prevented the Buick from turning; the Buick went on past with the Horch following.

  Joe Mantila backed the Plymouth onto Fillmore and followed after the Horch; ahead of the Horch the Buick snaked from side to side as the Bactrians stuck their heads out and peered back, bewildered.

  “Lily-whiters!” the Horch’s speaker thundered, a gross and magnified voice directly behind them. They could easily see that nobody was at the wheel; the Horch was frighteningly empty.

  “Speed it up,” Ferde said to Grimmelman.

  The Horch gained on the Buick and slammed against its rear bumper. The Bactrians, in panic, spun around a corner and vanished; they had given up. The encounter was over.

  “Okay,” Grimmelman said, “That’s enough.”

  Joe Mantila halted the Plymouth in a driveway as Grimmelman turned the Horch in a ponderous U-turn. Presently they were following it back in the direction they had come.

  “What’s the matter?” Ferde Heinke said to Art, digging him in the ribs.

  “Nothing.” He felt glum. For the first time he had failed to enjoy an encounter.

  Grimmelman said, “He wants to go home.”

  “That’s right,” he said.

  An uncomfortable silence fell over them.

  “Maybe next time,” Art said. “I got a lot of worries this week.”

  Both Joe Mantila and Ferde Heinke were glancing at him apprehensively. But Grimmelman ignored him; he concentrated on the task of directing the Horch.

  “Christ,” Art said, “It’s not my fault; I got a lot of responsibilities.”

  His apology went unanswered.

  8

  That Saturday night Jim Briskin was across the Bay in Berkeley, at his mother’s home on Spruce Street. With his key—he still kept a key to the white concrete house in which he had been born—he unlocked the basement door and began sorting among the stacks of boxes piled by the pipes of the furnace. The cement floor under his feet was cold. Spiderwebs had spread over the jars and bottles along the window sills. At the far end of the basement was a combination washer-drier, and that was new; he did not remember that.

  Among the clothes and magazines and furniture, he found the camping equipment. First he carried the Coleman stove and lamp to his car, parked in the driveway, and then he gathered up the tent and took that, too. While he was inspecting the air mattresses, the door at the top of the stairs opened, and the stairs lights came on.

  “It’s me,” he said, as his mother appeared.

  “I saw your car,” Mrs. Briskin said. “What a surprise. Weren’t you going to say hello? Were you just going to come and pick up what you wanted and then leave?” With her hand on the stair railing, she descended, a short gray-haired woman, wearing a housecoat and slippers. He had not seen his mother in two or three years, and as far as be could tell she looked exactly the same; she was no more infirm or stooped or halting. She was as vigilant as always.

  He said, “I thought I’d take a camping trip.”

  “Come upstairs and say hello while you’re here. There’s some rolled roast left over from dinner. I read in the newspaper about your, quitting your job at the station. Does that mean you’ll be moving back here again to this side of the Bay?”

  “I didn’t quit my job,” he said. He loaded the tent and the air mattresses and sleeping bags into the back of his car.

  “Is she still working there?” his mother asked. “If you want my opinion, you’re a whole lot better off away from there, if for no other reason than because of her. As long as you’re both working around each other, you’re not really free of her.”

  After he had closed up the car, he went upstairs with his mother and had a cup of coffee in the long living room with its carpeted floors and picture window overlooking the Bay, its lamps and piano and prints on the walls. The living room was the same, except that the fir trees by the window had grown taller. In the evening darkness the trees blew and rustled.

  Seeing the living room again reminded him of his first year of marriage, the year in which he had tried to get Patricia and his mother to come to some kind of terms. Pat, with her preoccupations, had been unaware of Mrs. Briskin, and his mother had responded with hostility. His mother could never accept a daughter-in-law who was not “respectful.” As far as he could tell, Patricia had no opinions about his mother; she enjoyed the house, its size and sturdiness, the large rooms and the view of the Bay, and especially the garden. Patricia entered the house as if she were alone in it. The house was “where he had grown up,” and during the summer she liked to spend time out in the backyard, in one of the canvas lawn chairs, sunbathing and listening to the radio and reading and drinking beer.

  Patricia had one day come indoors in her bathing suit and thrown herself down to have a long talk with his mother. The marriage was already coming apart, and Pat had a lot to talk about. With her was a bottle of Riesling. Lying on the floor, on the rug, in her bathing suit, she drank and talked, while his mother—as the old woman related it—sat stiffly in a chair in the corner, disapproving and unsympathetic. Pat’s erratic sorrow had gone on and on until finally the afternoon was over, and still she lay on the floor, the Riesling was gone, and she was either sound asleep or had completely passed out. His mother had telephoned him, and he had come and gotten her, he found her still in her bathing suit, at seven o’clock in the evening, still on the living room floor. On the trip back across the Bay to their apartment in San Francisco, she had mumbled, and it had seemed funny to him; he could not work up the indignation his mother felt. The scene was the last between Patricia and his mother. As far as he could tell, Patricia remembered almost nothing of it. She thought that she had gone to sleep in the garden, by herself.

  “What about this camping trip?” his mother asked, seated across from him. “How long do you expect to be gone?”

  “I just want to get away,” he said.

  “You’re going by yourself? I noticed you took both the sleeping bags.” His mother went on to recall the camping trips he had made with his father, the excursions up to the Sierras. She did not mention the trips which he and Pat had made together.

  “I have to go somewhere,” he said, interrupting. “I have to do something.”

  His mother said, “I wish you could meet some nice girl.”

  He thanked his mother for the coffee and drove back across the Bay to San Francisco. Parked before his apartment house, he opened the glove compartment and brought out all the road maps. But he was not going on a camping trip; he had already given up the idea.

  Putting the maps away, he drove in the direction of the station.

  An hour later, in a back room at station KOIF, Jim Briskin sat sorting through the station’
s record library. On the floor was a carton half filled with albums he was taking; beside it was the carton he had brought back. On the table were his personal items, his bottle of Anacin, nose-drops, a hat he wore on rainy days, pencils and pens, letters he had saved that had arrived over the years, and odds and ends that he had stuck away in the desk at which he worked. Nothing, in all, of particular value.

  Frank Hubble kicked open the door from the broadcast studio. An LP of Gershwin tunes was on the turntable, twenty minutes of music. Hubble, lighting his pipe, said, “What are you doing?”

  “Taking home my stuff. Bringing station stuff back.”

  “Why don’t you leave it all here? You’ll be back in August.”

  “Maybe not,” he said.

  Tossing a dead match across the room to the wastebasket, Hubble said, “Patricia was in earlier.”

  “That’s why I’m in late,” he said. It was after ten o’clock.

  “I don’t mean during the day. I mean around fifteen minutes ago. She was supposed to meet Bob, but he’s out closing some deal. You know how he operates.”

  “More used car lots?” Jim said. He could imagine Bob Posin still out, still chasing down contacts.

  “No, this is for a food account. She was all dressed up. I guess they were going out for a good time.”

  Jim continued sorting the records from the cabinet. A Fats Wailer disc slipped from his fingers, and he seized it and stuffed it into the carton. It was not his, but the hell with it, he wanted to finish and get out of the station.

  “Take it easy,” Frank said. Puffing on his pipe, he strolled back into the studio and closed the door.

  While he was returning the station’s records to the cabinet, a woman’s voice said from behind him, “Hello, Jim.”

  “Hi,” he said, continuing to work.

  Pat entered the office. Her clothes, as always, were the best, he thought, noticing her shoes, her high heels, the straps at her ankles. She wore a rust-colored suit; a coat was over her arm, and on her hair was a small, simple hat. How red her lips are, he thought. Her figure was remarkable, but he was wise enough to recognize it from the bra ads; it was a professional figure, done with wire hoops and cones and straps. Too much pointing. Too much of an upward angle.