Something Happened

"In open school week this year," I begin to scheme with my wife, "I'm going to try to sneak away to speak to Forgione and the principal and find out all I can about him."

"He doesn't want you to come this year. And he doesn't want me to stay more than an hour."

"Why didn't he tell me?"

"He told me."

And my daughter stole the car with one of her friends by telling my wife I'd given them permission to take it and alibiing to me that my wife had misunderstood. She started to cry when we trapped her between us. She said we were always picking on her. She said I was nicer to my boy than I was to her. She said she couldn't wait to graduate from high school and go to college, just to get away from us. She said she could tell we didn't want her living there.

"If you'd buy me my own car," she said through her sniffles, "I wouldn't have to tell lies to get one."

I suppose I'll have to, sooner or later (for my sake more than hers). She'll wear me down. I'm glad the price of gasoline is going up so that poor working people won't have any and there'll be more than enough for people like my daughter and me.

"At least she's not seeing that boy anymore," my wife says. "And she doesn't take drugs."

"You think I believe her?"

"She drives with her friends. She's home early. She doesn't go out as much on weekends anymore. Haven't you noticed?" She lowers her head in dismay, hesitating sadly. "I wish she would. She has nothing to do."

I feel locked inside a hopeless struggle. Forecasts are coming true. I am better off these days at the office. I feel safer, even when at home (I don't feel safe at home. I feel things are going inexorably out of control. Things are not out of control at the company), if I can concentrate all my attention on the office, where the tasks are discernible, the obligations all cut and dried. I know what I must do: for the time being, I must be cordial and close to everyone here, even those who are disposable, and cool and distant to everyone under me in all the out-of-town offices. No one must feel secure. Everyone must be kept in suspense about new decisions that might emerge from meetings behind closed doors in which I am now a participant. (I am a kingmaker.) Plans for the convention are moving ahead efficiently because no one entrusted with executing any of them feels secure. I am regarded with envy, hope, fear, ambition, suspicion, and disappointment. My small secretary congratulates me and hopes I will take her with me. I won't. I tell her she is too valuable where she is. I'll have better safeguards with Kagle's girl, who's more persuasive at lying and more adroit at covering things up. In my former department, I have Schwofi the wise guy and Holloway the weak guy, a new, bright young fellow who isn't going to stay and an elderly plodder who isn't going to go, along with three other underlings who do what they're told to industriously enough, and I leave them all behind with pleasure on moving day. My new, temporary office is a windowless one across from Kagle's. Kagle's been told by Arthur Baron and Horace White that he'll be allowed to remain in his spacious executive office for as long as he stays. (He hasn't been told how short a time he'll be allowed to stay.) Green will have to replace me. I wonder with who (whom). I haven't decided yet how to handle Green. (He isn't as afraid of me yet as I feel he should be.)

"Have you anyone in mind you can recommend to take your place?" he asks me pleasantly enough on moving day, but with a taint in his ma

"You'll have to pay him much more," I joke.

"I'll be happy to," he scores. "He'll be worth it."

Green is not afraid of me at all yet, and I may have to handle him, for a while, by groveling.

"What about Kagle?" he inquires sweetly. "Do you think he'd be good enough to take your place?"

"He wouldn't want to. I'm afraid he'd interpret it as a big step down."

"Not from where you're pla

"Special projects?"

"For you?"

"Of course."

"After working for you he'd interpret it as a big step up."

"Jack," I entreat him in a conciliatory tone, "you're supposed to be afraid of me now. At least a little."

"You knew about this when I was threatening you last time. Didn't you?"

"It had to be quiet."

"And you were afraid of me anyway."

"I wasn't afraid."

"My judgment may be bad but my eye isn't. I couldn't be that wrong about you."

"You had the whammy on me then."

"There was all that sweat. And you're afraid of me now. Right now."

I grin submissively. "You've got the whammy on me still."

"And you always will be."

"I'm not sure about that. I won't have to go to meetings with you alone. I can criticize you to others. I can kill your projects and reject your work."

"Would you?"

"I'd rather not. I'd rather have your help. Just don't make a fool of me."

"It will be hard to resist, with someone like you."

"I know. You're tempted right now. Fly into somebody else's face if you want to be squashed. Try Lester Black. He'll do it quickly enough."

Green is not able to keep the flush of anger from climbing into his cheeks. "If I did," he retorts hotly, "I'd probably find you in the way, anointing his cheeks."

And for a moment, I am the one with superior poise. "You're starting," I chide gently.

"It's hard not to."

"Now you're starting again."

"It gets harder. How will you treat me?"

"With deference. Better than Kagle did. With fear — I don't want to fight with you yet, not this year. I'll be very nice to you with everyone, if you don't make me look ridiculous for being so."

"You'll be nice? That's a humiliation for me right there."

"That's a part I'll enjoy," I agree affably. "I'm smiling now because I know it's true. Not because I'm enjoying it yet. Jack, there's been a big change. I don't work for you anymore. You have to be afraid of me now," I remind him. "You know that."

"I'm afraid I can't be."

And Green still has the whammy on me! I can stomp all over him, spit in his eye, beat him down into nervous collapse, send him, clutching his bowels, into a hospital bed with his spastic colitis; I am younger, stronger, bigger, and in better health than he is and can punch him in the jaw as easily as Joh

The day before yesterday, I walked into a luncheonette for a rare roast beef sandwich on a seeded roll and thought I found my barber working behind the counter.

"What are you doing in a luncheonette?" I asked.

"I'm not your barber," he answered. I was afraid I was losing my mind. A week ago I looked out a taxi window and saw Jack Green begging in the street in the rain, dressed in a long wet overcoat and ragged shoes. He was a head taller, thi

I was afraid I was losing my wits. Yesterday I looked out the window of a bus and thought I saw Charlie Chaplin strolling along the avenue and believed I knew him. It wasn't Charlie Chaplin and I didn't know him.

My memory may be starting to fail me. I have trouble with names now and with keeping in correct order the digits of telephone numbers that have long been familiar to me. Pairs of digits from other telephone numbers push their way in. After all these years, I am not always certain anymore whether the seven-seven belongs in the first segment of Pe