Well, that’s better, isn’t it? said the businessman. Now we’ll have no more of this useless prevarication.
They both returned their attention to their stews. After a moment the man, deciding to take the offensive, said, And you? What brings you here?
Business, said the businessman. Money. Nothing else could possibly get me above the sixtieth parallel.
What kind of business?
Oh, the crudest kind. Oil. The Russians want to buy the rig and refinery here from the Finns and I’m putting it all together. Or not. More likely not. Have you ever tried to do business with Russians and Finns?
No, said the man.
Well, count your blessings. They’re both mad. But mad in extremely different ways. And now the Japs are up here too, trying to buy it out from under us.
And who do you work for? The Russians or the Finns?
Neither. I’m just the man in the middle. The punching bag.
The businessman laid down his fork and lifted both his fists. He took a few jabs at the man. Pow! Pow! he said.
Although the man knew that the businessman did not intend to punch him, he flinched. This amused the businessman. Relax, baby, he said. We’re all friends here. He leaned forward and patted the man’s cheek, then quickly withdrew his hand. Oh! he said. Pardon me. I forgot that touching was verboten. Nevertheless he touched the man’s cheek again before picking up his utensils and attacking his stew.
The man felt ashamed that he had flinched at the businessman’s playful sparring. He looked down at his own meat stew. The sauce was congealing, and the chunks of meat were looking oddly slick and somewhat purple. He realized he was beginning to feel sick. At first just a little sick and then, suddenly, very sick. He stood up and said, Do you know where the toilet is? I think I’m going to be sick.
It’s downstairs, said the businessman, pointing to an open doorway beyond which a flight of stairs descended into the basement.
The man pushed himself away from the table and hurried down the steps into the basement, where he found himself in what was obviously a storeroom, with huge glass jars filled with what looked like pickled fruits and vegetables and perhaps, disquietingly, meat, stacked on the metal shelves. The man was almost sick on the floor because these glass jars filled with floating organic matter reminded him of a jar he had once seen that contained a human fetus with an abnormally large head similarly floating in dirty brine. There were two doors on the other side of the room, and the man raced toward the closest one and opened it. In the dark he could discern the toilet at the far end of the long narrow room, gleaming faintly, and he rushed toward it and arrived just in time to lean into it and allow his sickness to erupt. It came out of him in several almost crippling gushes, a violence he did not know his body was capable of manifesting. After the third great wave of sickness he was able to lay his head on the rim of the toilet and close his eyes.
He felt so much better, relieved to have such calamity behind him, and he thought, It isn’t really so bad kneeling here with my head on the toilet. It’s nice and peaceful. He kept his eyes closed and quietly allowed himself to sink into a place that was nearer to his true self.
And then he felt, suddenly, on his eyelids, the push of light, and he opened them see that the light in the bathroom had been turned on. He sat up and turned his head but before he could see anything the light was shut off. In his haste to reach the toilet he had left the door open. Now the door was closed and it was utterly dark. He could sense a presence just inside the door, hear someone breathing. He began to stand up but then thought better of it and tried to press himself back into the corner of the room alongside the toilet, but there wasn’t enough room for him to fit between the toilet and the wall, so he thought he might be able to crawl past whoever had entered the bathroom if he kept low enough to the floor. He pressed himself against the nearest wall and began to slide forward on his belly, trying to keep his body parallel with