Alas, Babylon

“I think you ought to go to New York or Chicago or San Francisco or any city with character and vitality. You should go to work. This place is no good for you, Randy. The air is like soup and the people are like noodles. You’re vegetating. I don’t want a vegetable. I want a man.”

He was instantly angry, and then he told himself that for a number of reasons, including the fact that her diagnosis was probably the truth, it was silly to be angry. He said, “If I went away and left you here, wouldn’t you turn into a noodle?”

“I’ve thought it all out. As soon as you get a job, I’ll follow you. If you want, we can live together for a while. If it’s good, we can get married.”

He examined her face. Her mouth, usually agile and humorous, was drawn into a taut, colorless line. Her eyes, which reflected her moods as the river reflected the sky, were gray and opaque. Under the soft tan painted by winter’s sun her skin was pale. She was serious. She meant it. “Too late,” he said.

“What do you mean, `too late’?”

Yesterday, there might have been sense and logic to her estimate, and he might have accepted this challenge, invitation, and proposal. But since morning, they had lived in diverging worlds. It was necessary that he lead her down into his world, yet not too abruptly, lest sight and apprehension of the future imperil her capacity to think clearly and act intelligently. “My sister-in-law and her two children are coming to stay with me,” he began. “They get in tonight-in the morning, really. Three thirty.”

“Fine,” she said. “Meet them, turn the house over to them, and then pick yourself a city-a nice, big, live city. They can have this place all to themselves and while they’re here you won’t have to worry about the house. How long are they staying?”

“I don’t know,” Randy said. Maybe forever, he almost added, but didn’t.

“It won’t matter, really, will it? When they leave you can rent the house. If they leave soon you ought to get a good price for it for the rest of the season. What’s your sister-in-law like?”

“I haven’t told you the reason they’re coming.” He reached out and covered her hands. Her fingers, long, round, strong, matched her throat. Her nails were tinted copper, and carefully groomed. He tried to frame the right words. “My brother believes-”

Graf, lying near Randy’s stool, rolled to his feet, hair bristling like a razorback pig, tail and ears at attention, and then raced into the hallway and down the stairs, barking wildly.

“That’s the loudest dog I’ve ever met!” Lib said. “What’s eating him now?”

“He’s got radar ears. Nothing can get close to the house without him knowing.” Randy went downstairs. It was Dan Gunn at the door. An angular, towering man, sad-faced and saturnine, wearing heavy-framed glasses, awkward in movement and sparing of speech, he stepped into the hallway, not bothering to glance at Graf. Dan said, “You got a woman upstairs, Randy? I know you have because her car is in the driveway.” He removed his pipe from his mouth and almost smiled. “I’d like to talk to her. About her mother. Her father, too.”

“Go on up to the apartment, Dan,” Randy said. “I’ll just wander around in the yard.” He guessed that Dan had just come from a professional visit to the McGoverns. Lib’s mother had diabetes. He didn’t know what her father had, but if Dan was going to discuss family illnesses with Lib, he would politely vanish.

“I don’t think Elizabeth will mind if you sit in on this,” Dan said. “Practically one of the family by now, aren’t you?”

Going upstairs Randy decided that Dan, too, should know of Mark’s warning. If anybody ought to know, it was a doctor. And at the same time Randy realized he had not included drugs in his list, and the medicine cabinet held little except aspirin, nasal sprays, and mouthwash. With two children coming, he should’ve planned better than that. Anyway, Dan was the man to tell him what to get, and write the prescriptions.

Randy mixed Dan a drink and said, “Our medic is here to see you, Lib, not me. When he’s finished talking, I’ve got something to say to both of you.”

Dan looked at him oddly. “Sounds like you’re about to make a pronouncement.”

“I am. But you go first.”

“It’s nothing urgent or terribly important. I was just making the placebo circuit and dropped in to see Elizabeth’s mother.” “The what?” Lib asked. Randy had heard Dan use the phrase before.

“Placebo, or psychosomatic circuit-the middle-aged retirees and geriatrics who have nothing to do but get lonely and worry about their health. The only person they can call who can’t avoid visiting them is their doctor. So they call me and I let them bend my ear with symptoms. I give them sugar pills or tranquilizers-one seems about as good as the other. I tell them they’re going to live. This makes them happy. I don’t know why.”