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She thought a moment. She was wearing a sweatshirt with a portrait of Emily Dickinson on it. She said, “Maybe you ought to have this guy decide not to hassle it any longer. Maybe you could make him content with his portion in life.”
I must have sagged a little farther down the door frame.
“I mean, maybe what you should say is that other worlds are pretty much identical when you get down to the nitty-gritty. Like, if one's screwed up, it could be they all are. That's what science fiction's all about, isn't it?”
I was rather mute for a minute.
She threw some bleached hair off her forehead. “Maybe you should ask the kid. Intergalactic stuff makes me cross-eyed.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe I'll do that.”
I tramped up the stairs to the kid's room, opened the door, and stood over his breathing, brushing his bangs away. They're trying to teach him to float. The girl instructor stands beside him in the pool, he flops forward and sinks like a stone. “Bravo!” she yells. “Just like a jellyfish!” The kid bursts to the surface wiping his eyes and coughing.
“Kid,” I whispered. “Kid.”
“Mister Sand Man?” he asked.
I switched on the clown light.
“Oh.”
I sat with him slumped and drowsing under my arm.
I told him I was writing a story about an astronaut trapped on a planet in outer space. (I shook the kid awake.) The astronaut didn't like the planet he came from very much (I pinched the kid) but doubted he'd like anyplace else much better. I told him it seemed to me I had a lot of options for my hero but couldn't decide on which.
The kid groggily told me he'd seen a movie like that. The guy eventually leads an attack on his former planet but gets zapped by a laser beam aimed by a girlfriend he'd jilted. There was also a TV show once in which the guy went through all those troubles only to find out that it was just another in a series of preflight tests; the scientists wanted to study his reactions to various stimuli. The kid said a similar story had the Earthling become king of a planet where he ruled magnificently for eons, then foreign robots attacked and by mistake took the top man as a specimen of the culture. The hook is, when he's on board the transport, he asks where he's going and one of the robots answers, “Earth.” In still another, the guy finds out this is his punishment for a crime he thought he'd gotten away with. The kid went on describing other versions. It was apparently a common theme.
“Thanks, kid,” I said. “You've been a lot of help.”
I tucked him in.
“Dad?”
“Yes, kid?”
“I think you should make it happy.”
I patted him on the head.
I went to the room where my wife was biting her pillow. I brushed my teeth, unbuttoned my natty shirt, and washed in cold water, whistling something catchy. My watch glowed in the dark. It was midnight. If she asked what time it was, I'd say, “Tomorrow.” That always sounds terrific. Tomorrow I'll make my hero content with his portion in life. I'll give him two chairs, two pillows, a double bed, two van Goghs on the wall. Then maybe I'll give him somebody to love. Maybe I'll give him Mutt. Tomorrow I'll make it happy.
Susannah, don't you cry.
Can I Just Sit Here for a While?
He was called a traveler, and that was another thing he loved about the job. If you wanted the hairy truth, Rick Bozack couldn't put his finger on any one thing that made his job such a clincher. It might have been his expense account or the showroom smell of his leased Oldsmobile or the motel rooms—God, the motel rooms: twin double beds, a stainless-steel Kleenex dispenser, and a bolted-down color TV topped with cellophane-wrapped peppermints that the maid left after she cleaned. He loved the coffee thermos the waitress banged down on his table at breakfast, he loved the sweat on his ice-water glass, he loved the spill stains blotting through the turned-over check, and he loved leaving tips of twenty percent even when the girl was slow and sullen and splashed coffee on his newspaper. His sales, his work, his vocation, that was all bonus. The waiting, the handshakes, the lunches, The Close, jeepers, that was just icing.
If you asked Rick Bozack what he did for a living, he wouldn't come out with a song and dance about selling expensive incubators and heart and kidney machines for Doctor's Service Supply Company, Indianapolis. Not off the top of his head he wouldn't. Instead he'd flash on a motel lobby with all the salesmen in their sharp, tailored suits, chewing sugarless gum, while the sweet thing behind the counter rammed a roller over a plastic credit card and after-shaves mixed in the air. It was goofy when he thought about it, but walking out through those fingerprinted glass doors, throwing his briefcase onto the red bucket seat, scraping the ice off the windshield, and seeing all those other guys out there in the parking lot with him, scowling, chipping away at their wipers, blowing on their fingers, sliding their heater control to defrost, Rick felt like a team player again, like he was part of a fighter squadron.
What was this Death of a Salesman crap? he'd say. What were they feeding everybody about the hard life on the road? You'd have to be zonkers not to love it.
Then Rick had a real turnaround. A college buddy said something that really clobbered him. Rick and his wife, Jane, had returned to South Bend, his home, for the Notre Dame alumni picnic, where they collided with people they hadn't even thought of in years. They sat all night at a green picnic table with baked beans and hot dogs and beer, laughing so much that their sides hurt, having a whale of a time. They swapped pictures of their kids, and Rick drew a diagram of an invention he might go ahead and get patented, a device that would rinse out messy diapers for daddies right there in the toilet bowl. He told all comers that he was thirty-four years old and happily married, the father of two girls, and he woke up every morning with a sapsucker grin on his face. Then Mickey Hogan, this terrific buddy in advertising who had just started up his own firm, said you don't know the thrill of business until it's your own, until every sale you make goes directly into your pocket and not to some slob back in the home office.
This guy Hogan wasn't speaking de profundis or anything, but Rick was really blown away by what he said. It was one of those fuzzy notions you carry with you for years, and then it's suddenly there, it's got shape and bulk and annoying little edges that give you a twinge whenever you sit down. That's how it was. He and Jane talked about it all the way back to their three-bedroom apartment on Rue Monet in Indianapolis. “How much of what I earn actually makes my wallet any fatter? What do I have besides a measly income? When am I going to get off my duff and get something going on my own?”
Jane was great about it. She said she loved him and she'd go along with whatever his choice was, but she had watched him waste himself at Doctor's Service Supply Company. She knew he was a great salesman, but he had all the earmarks of being a fantastic manager too. She had been hoping he'd come up with something like this but didn't want to influence Rick one way or the other. “I don't want to push” were her words.
Jane's enthusiasm put a fire under Rick, and he began checking things out on the sly: inventory costs, car leases and office-space rentals, government withholding tax and social-security regulations, and though it seemed dopey and juvenile, the couple decided that they'd both stop smoking, watch their caloric intake, avoid between-meal treats, and exercise regularly. Sure, they were mainly concerned with hashing out this new business venture, but how far afield was it to take stock of yourself, your physical condition, to discipline yourself and set goals? That was Rick's thinking, and Jane thought he was “right on the money.”
