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All of those books that tell you how to make a million dollars and win friends and manipulate people and become head of your company and be the richest kid on your block, all of those terrible books seem to contain the same little formula for solving problems. When you’ve got a hundred impossible things to do, what you do is write them all down. Then you number them in order of importance, and then you drop everything and concentrate on problem number one, and you break your neck until it’s done, and then you go on to problem number two, and you persevere in this fashion, problem by problem, until you either solve all of your problems or die of a coronary, which actually does tend to wipe the slate clean.
I had made lists of this sort before out of the same general sort of multifaceted desperation. I couldn’t remember that they had ever done any demonstrable good, but maybe that was due to my failure to follow through all the way. What usually happened was this – I got everything listed, and I read through the list a few times to see just how many impossible and unpleasant things I had to do, and then I tore up the list and went out and got drunk. Then the next day I would just do whatever I could, in whatever order suggested itself, and in my usual haphazard fashion I would somehow blunder through.
Maybe the present situation demanded closer allegiance to the formula. I wasn’t sure. In any case, I opened a notebook and picked up a pencil and wrote Mi
I looked at her name for a while and pondered worlds of unanswerable questions. Where was she? How had she gotten there? What did they intend to do with her?
Then I wrote down Assassination. And, on the same line, Sunday 8 P.M. Maybe there was a way after all, I thought I could tip off the authorities anonymously, and then I could get word to Emile that the authorities knew about it, and he and the others from MNQ would be able to abort the entire operation. If the police were already on the spot-
Of course Claude and the Bertons might be hot-headed enough to try going ahead with it anyway. But at least it would save the Queen and might even keep everybody in the clear. I beamed momentarily; maybe the list-making had something to be said for it after all.
Of course De Gaulle’s remark had been a godsend, and of course it was time for martyrdom, for the grand act, and if only there were some way short of assassination-
I turned my mind back to my list. I was by no means through with it. On the next line down I wrote Heroin.
Now there was another one to conjure with. What the hell was I going to do with the heroin? I didn’t even want to think about its value, but it had to be truly enormous. There seemed no question but that the world would be considerably better off if I flushed it all down the toilet, but I wasn’t entirely certain that I would be. Even if possession were nine points of the law, the heroin remained one-tenth the property of the Union Corse, and I had the feeling they would consider that tenth the most important part of the question.
If they knew I had the heroin – and my fingerprints on the damned murder gun would surely put that unpleasant idea in their heads – then they would want it back and would feel unkindly toward me for having it. It is not inordinately wise to have someone like the Union Corse mad at you.
So I would have gladly given it back to them, no questions asked. But how was I to go about doing that? I looked at my list, and I stared myopically at the word Heroin, and then I took a breath and moved on to the next line and licked the tip of my pencil and wrote Cops.
Because it did look as though I had established myself now and forever as Public Enemy Number One on both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border. The murder charge was the final straw. Sooner or later someone was going to catch me, and when that happened, I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do. The Chief might decide to come to my aid, and then again he might not; meanwhile, there was no way for me to get in touch with him. I didn’t even know the bastard’s name. And even if he did try to help, he would have to fight the police of two countries for me, and I was by no means certain that he swung enough weight. As things stood, I could not remain in Canada, nor could I go back to the States.
I looked at the list, drawing some comfort from the fact that the word Cops was at the bottom of it. That meant I wasn’t supposed to worry about it for the time being. I was supposed to put it clear out of my mind, along with Heroin and Assassination. Meanwhile, I would devote one hundred percent of my time and effort to Item One: Mi
Which meant-
Which meant, I decided, that I was precisely back where I had started. If I had made any progress, I was damned if I could see what it was. I had a few words written in a notebook, and I had let the clock go ticking onward, and that was about the size of it. It looked as though I were never going to make a million dollars or win friends or manipulate people or become head of my firm or be the richest kid on my block. Or rescue Mi
This was as far as I had ever gotten with the list-making process. Now, according to the rules, it was time for me to go out and get drunk. I would have liked to, but I didn’t dare go out, for one thing, and I couldn’t dismiss the feeling that getting drunk right about now might be a bad idea.
And so, on the theory that action is better than inaction, I did the only thing I could think of at the time. I tore up the list.
By the time Arlette came back with the microphone and receiver, our twenty-eight hours were down to twenty-seven. By the time I left her apartment and headed for the Cuban dungeon, they had been further reduced to seventeen. The intervening ten hours were awful.
For openers, Arlette’s mood was one of incautious optimism, a mood I found myself wholly incapable of sharing. I suppose she felt better in part because she had gone out and done something while I sat making idiot lists. Whatever the explanation, she was bubbling like a percolator. We had the microphone, therefore we were on the right track, therefore we would save Mi
She wanted to celebrate horizontally.
Well, I didn’t.
I’m perfectly aware that this was the wrong attitude for me to take. It wasn’t as though I were busy doing something else, because I couldn’t do anything until the fair closed for the day. So we certainly had time to make love, and she certainly had the inclination, and I didn’t, and that’s not the way red-blooded men are supposed to act. James Bond, for example, would have unhesitatingly bounced her into bed the moment she came through the door. He would not even have waited for the triumphal presentation of microphone and receiver. If he had been given to list-making, Ball Arlette would have been right up there at the top, and until it was done and done well, he would not even have given a thought to the other dilemmas.
In case you have not yet doped it out, I am not in his league.
Nor, however, am I an utter cad. When Arlette began hinting at the idea of bed, I tried to pretend that I was just too thickheaded to follow her lead. She responded by throwing subtlety to the winds and her clothes to the floor, and I joined her on the bed and kissed her and cuddled her, quietly determined to play out my part properly whether I felt like it or not.
My heart was in the right place, but that was the only thing that was. Arlette did everything she could think of, along with a few things that I don’t suppose I could have thought of. She worked desperately to demonstrate her loyalty to French culture, but nothing worked. When she realized that nothing would do any good, she dashed from the bed to the bathroom and stood inside crying her eyes out. The little room must have acted as an echo chamber; I think they could have heard her crying ten miles away.