“Please,” he threw out, forcing a smile as his hand swept the space between them like a courtier’s ushering in a duchess. “I pushed the foyer button by mistake. I’m going up too.”
No sooner were the words out than William realized that if the woman had been watching the indicator arrow, as seemed probable, she’d be aware he’d just descended. But she returned his smile without wrinkling her forehead or knitting her brows questioningly, then tottered into the car.
“Would you mind pushing number seven?” The womam’s voice sounded like a small piece of rusty machinery. William pushed 7, and they ascended in their customary silence.
When the car had passed floor 5, which William knew the woman was aware was his floor, she rasped, “You’re so much the gentleman,” and flashed him a ghoulish smile. Never before had he offered this little gallantry. As the doors at floor 7 closed themselves behind the shambling woman, William pushed button 5. When the car stopped and the doors opened themselves, he was expecting to be met by Al and Max. The hallway in front of the elevator shafts was empty. As was the the corridor all the way to his apartment.
#
A certain Ole Andreson, whom Ernest Hemingway has the narrator in his story “The Killers” call “the Swede,” is the person Al and Max have been sent to Summit to meet. The Swede finally shows up toward the end of the story. By this time Al and Max have been disappeared by Ernest Hemingway. Since the story’s not about Al and Max, it doesn’t matter that they’ve vanished. In fact, you might make the case that it’s altogether proper that Ernest Hemingway has got them off the page. After the way they treat Sam the cook and George the counterman and Nick Adams in Henry’s lunchroom and the way they intend to treat the Swede if he’d have bopped in for dinner, they deserve to be disappeared from the story.
The first and last we see of Ole Andreson he’s lying in bed with all his clothes on, facing the wall in an upstairs bedroom at the back end of a corridor in Mrs. Hirsch’s rooming house. These are not good signs. A Mrs. Bell—like Henry, who presumably owns Henry’s lunchroom, Mrs. Hirsch never puts in an appearance in the story—looks after the rooming house for Mrs. Hirsch. Mrs. Bell’s name is what’s rung to signify the end of a round in a prize fight, making a sound that Ole Andreson, who according to what Mrs. Bell tells Nick Adams— “He was in the ring, you know”—must have heard on a number of occasions.
Mrs. Bell, apparently doesn’t connect her name with the the sound Ole Andreson probably remembers hearing as he lies in bed, facing a wall he has been talking to. She believes Ole Andreson, whom she characterizes as “an awfully nice man,” ought “to go out and take a walk on a nice fall day like this,” and perhaps meet someone, which Ole Andreson “didn’t feel like” doing. Mrs. Bell feels sorry for Ole Andreson. For the wrong reason. Since Ernest Hemingway ends the story with the Swede’s never having been met by Al and Max, Ole Andreson will always be waiting to be met by Al and Max.
What kind of a note Ernest Hemingway ends the story on for Ole Andreson isn’t the point of it, though, unless you’re a kind and sympathetic soul like Mrs. Bell. Or squeamish. If you are, you can thank goodness Ernest Hemingway ended the story when and where he did or we’d have blood all over the page. But Ernest Hemingway’s story isn’t any more about what happens or doesn’t happen to Ole Andreson than it is about what Al and Max do or don’t do. Ole Andreson is in the story much less than Al and Max are, only from about ten-thirteenths to their twelve-thirteenths. That amounts to just about two-thirteenths for Ole.
Ole Andreson’s being in just two-thirteenths of the story, though, isn’t the reason “The Killers’ isn’t about him. To have a story be about you, you have to have some choices. Ole Andreson doesn’t have any more choices than Al and Max have. Like them, he’s done all his choosing in Ernest Hemingway’s head, before the story begins. Unless you call deciding not to do anything but lie in bed with all your clothes on facing a wall in an upstairs room at the back end of a corridor in a rooming house is a choice. Which I guess it really is if you know a couple of torpedoes you have no desire to collide with have come to town to zero in on you. Ole Andreson’s choosing to lie in bed with all his clothes on does have a good side to it—it saves the undertaker the trouble of dressing a corpse, surely one of the most uninviting duties of an unappealing occupation. That kind of choosing, however, isn’t the kind that would make Ole Andreson the character Ernest Hemingway’s “The Killers” is about.
The only person who’s in thirteen-thirteenths of the story is Nick Adams. That’s the whole story. Then, too, Nick Adams is met by Al and Max and therefore he has to make choices that matter. Most importantly, he has to choose whether to go from Henry’s lunchroom to Mrs. Hirsch’s rooming house and see Ole Andreson as he lies in bed with all his clothes on staring at the wall in an upstairs room at the back end of the corridor. Of course Nick Adams could choose not to go. Which would also be making a choice.
Although Ernest Hemingway doesn’t have his narrator tell us so, we can imagine that as Nick Adams goes to see, “see” being rather different from “meet,” Ole Andreson, he has an ache in his gut and a foul taste in his mouth. Since he’s a very young man, he might also feel that he’s going to pee his pants. In one way it’s too bad that Nick Adams doesn’t know there’s no reason for him to be all clutched up. He’s perfectly safe. Ernest Hemingway, who’s strong on endings, is going to have “The Killers” end without Al and Max ever finding out that Nick Adams has gone to see Ole Andreson.
This is ironic. It’s also ironic that, although it’s very hard and very brave for Nick Adams to go see Ole Andreson, he doesn’t tell him anything important that Ole Andreson doesn’t already know. All that Ole Andreson doesn’t know is something that Nick Adams and George the counterman and Sam the cook got to know—the names of those who came to meet Ole Andreson are Al and Max. You and I know it too. Knowing or not knowing this doesn’t mean beans to Ole Andreson. Ernest Hemingway is also strong on irony.
#
Will was expecting to be met by Al and Max. Well, not exactly to be met by. In his mind it was to meet. As I count on you remembering, “to be met” and “to meet” are not the same. Also at this point you ought to know that getting it as close to right as you can come with words is an important part of the story. Will could be quite certain about much time Al and Max would allow themselves between arriving at the parking lot and meeting him, as they’d believe, in the bar of the terminal at fifteen past five. They never just killed time. So to provide himself a safe margin, he intended to reach the airport well before they would. He’d park appropriately in short-term parking, choosing the closest empty stall to the terminal. In the sulfurous fog that would be hanging over the airport in early evening, the lights on the tall stanchions on the parking lot would glow like cats’ eyes. Will would sit in his sapphire-blue Jaguar until Al and Max would come driving in.
When the black Cadillac sedan would also pull into short-term parking, Will would have to hope that between the time he’d parked and the arrival of Al and Max no stalls between the one he was occupying and the terminal would be vacated. He would want to be facing Al and Max, not to come up behind them, as they would be proceeding to the terminal. At that hour, when commuter traffic was heavy, it would probably be as Will hoped. If not, he’d be forced to improvise. Improvisation makes for uncer- tainty. Time and space contingencies have to be allowed for. Will wanted the meeting to go as he’d planned, with every movement thought through in advance.
When he’d see the black Cadillac sedan cut into an empty parking stall, Will would begin to get out of his Jaguar. As the Cadillac braked to a stop, Will would start toward it, walking slowly, giving Al and Max time. As they emerged from their car, Al from the driver’s side, Max from the passenger’s (or would it be Max who was driving?), Will would pick up his pace. Al and Max, after strutting down the length of the Cadillac on their different sides, would swagger should
er to shoulder through the pale yellow light thrown by the glowing cat eyes, across the macadam parking lot toward the terminal. Al and Max would be expecting to meet Will inside, at the bar.
At this juncture Will would be able to see that Al and Max, shadowy forms in the dusk, would be wearing black homburgs and tight-fitting black chesterfields, into the pockets of which both had plunged their hands. Glancing at them, you might take them for twins their mother had dressed identically. Which would be absurd for two middle-aged men. Were you to draw close, you would discover that their features were quite different. Both faces, though, would be pinched expressionless, making them seem similar. Will would have on a Burberry gabardine raincoat, tan, and a pearl-gray fedora. Inside the deep pocket of the raincoat, Will’s right hand would be clutching the butt of a Smith and Wesson .45, inherited from his paternal grandfather. His forefinger would be inside the guard, hooked on the crescent-shaped trigger. His hand would feel clammy.
When he was certain that Al and Max were close enough to see him distinctly through their narrowed eyes, Will would draw the pistol from the pocket of his raincoat, would lift it shoulder-high, and with his arm stretched full-length and kept stiff at the elbow, he would point the mouth of the weapon at either Al or Max. Although he would have no way of knowing which was targeted, it would make no difference.
Seeing the barrel of a pistol in a hand on an outstretched arm pointing at one of them, both Al and Max, without consulting, would know what to do. They would not take time to draw their hands from the pockets of their chesterfields. Will would have no intention of squeezing the trigger of the Smith and Wesson he was aiming at either Al or Max. It would make no difference if he would have, because the chamber was empty.
At a few minutes past four Will had been sitting at the walnut desk in his spacious office, with ETAVIRP in gold letters on the door of the suite of Pemberly, Curtin, McSorley, Altshire, and Green, on the thirty-first floor of the Met-Plaza Building. Having reviewed the materials one last time, he lacked the courage to walk over to the window, which on a clear day offered a splendid view of the city and river below but which on this foggy afternoon was just am empty gray. Instead, Will removed a Smith and Wesson .45 from the middle drawer of his desk. Slowly he’d raised the pistol, then put its mouth into his mouth and hooked his forefinger on the quarter-moon trigger. On his feverish lips the metal felt icy. Broken in fortune and spirit, exposed, disgraced, with only a shred of pride remaining to cover his ugly nakedness, he knew he was already signed, sealed and delivered, as they say. Unfortunately, though, he had not yet become an inert piece of goods. Or bads.
Before Will could bring himself to squeeze the trigger, there came to him what might be called, were he a religious man, a vision. Had he been a writer of fiction, it might be called a scenario. Will saw Al and Max. Having been met by them three days before, he knew exactly what they looked like. Will also saw himself, not as if he were inside himself looking at himself in a mirror, but as if he were inside the mirror looking out at himself, sitting at his desk with the barrel of a pistol in his mouth.
Will saw himself remove the pistol from between his lips and lay it on the desk top, watched himself dial his telephone, heard the ring of a telephone in the receiver, then a grunt when it stopped ringing, listened to himself arrange to meet Al and Max in the bar of the airport terminal at 5:45. He beheld himself get up from his desk, push his Burgundy leather desk chair into the kneehole of his desk, remove the cartridges from the pistol, flick off his desk lamp, cross to the closet, put on his Burberry raincoat, stash the Smith and Wesson in the righthand pocket, leave the office, taking care not to lock the door. As he watched himself pass Cora at her desk, he heard himself tell her there was no need to stay and finish the Amtech report, which just as well could be done first thing in the morning.
Then Will watched himself descend in the elevator, stride into the underground garage, climb into the Jaguar, drive through the thickening late afternoon fog to the airport, park in the closest stall to the terminal in short-term parking, and sit and wait. As if time were compressed, almost immediately he spied the black Cadillac pull into a stall beyond where he was sitting and stop. He saw Al and Max get out, watched himself climb from the Jaguar and walk slowly toward his meeting with Al and Max. Watched the pistol come out of the pocket of his raincoat, watched himself raise the arm whose hand was grasping the pistol until it was leveled at Al or Max. At this critical moment the vision or scenario had dissolved into the blank grayness of the world beneath his office.
Before Bill had stirred in his desk chair, a confirming gratification hit him. Were his vision or scenario to be acted out, no one could say he had placed the mouth of the pistol into his mouth and pulled the trigger. No, the first horrified person or persons who happened on the spot where he would have just met Al and Max couldn’t say that. Nor could airport security, who would arrive on the scene with what seemed prescient promptness. Nor could the meticulous homicide investigator or the forensics expert or the hack obituary writer or the unctuous Reverend T. Newton Parkinson, rector of All Saints’ Episcopal Church. Nor could fork-tongued Al Green or that crooked son of a bitch Everett Altshire. Nor could Will’s doddering Uncle Nathaniel or his close sister Amanda or his distant sister Vanessa. Nor could his stonyhearted wife or troubled Will junior or, most important of all, wild, beautiful teenage Lizzie.
Lowering the pistol, Will emptied it, arose from his desk, turned off the desk lamp, walked to the closet beside his private john, opened the closet door, put on his raincoat, hanging like a suspended body, and the pearl-gray fedora, and slid the Smith and Wesson into the right-hand pocket. He’d closed the closet door. Then he’d stridden back to his desk, picked up the telephone and punched seven buttons.
Will was confident he’d soon be meeting Al and Max.
#
Al and Max, as you sure as shootin’ ought to know by now, are a pair of characters in a story called “The Killers.” Ernest Hemingway wrote the story, most likely, before you and I were born. In case you haven’t or have noticed, I might as well acknowledge I’m possessed by that story. I might as well also acknowledge that I stole Al and Max in the story you’re reading from Ernest Hemingway. You might say I thugnapped them.
As you also ought to know by now, in my story a Willie, a Billie, a Bill, a William, and a Will are anticipating a meeting with Al and Max. Although to give away the ending is, or used to be, considered bad form in story-writing, let me assure you that just as Ole Andreson in Ernest Hemingway’s story never meets or is met by Al and Max, in this story, Willie, Billie, Bill, William, and Will will also be forever waiting to meet or be met by Al and Max. Had I let the “ills” and Al and Max meet, my story would be over before it’s finished, a patent absurdity.
Although I stole Al and Max and cribbed the idea of not meeting from Ernest Hemingway, there are differences between his story “The Killers” and mine. As my title, which I concede is not subtle or devious, indicates, there is an I in my story. There is no I in Ernest Hemingway’s story. There is, though, a storyteller who although not Ernest Hemingway in the story of his life, stands in for Ernest Hemingway. Whereas in this story I am sometimes conspicuous, like right now, the narrator Ernest Hemingway is always inconspicuous.
There’s a flip side to this I/storyteller business, too. Just as there is an Ernest Hemingway in the story of his life, as well as an Ernest Hemingway narrator of his story “The Killers,” there is an I in the story of my life as well as an I in my story “B/Will/iam/ie and Al and Max and You and I.” The two I’s have some things in common but are not identical. Unlike Ernest Hemingway in the story of his life, I in the story of my life am pretty inconspicuous. I qualify “inconspicuous” because one thing about the I in the story of my life is self-evident: I am writing a story called “B/Will/iam/ie and Al and ”Max and You and I,” in which I’m telling a story that I am in. You get the self-reflecting ad infin
itum two-mirrors picture don’t you?
Were you to read Ernst Hemingway’s famous story “The Killers,” something I earnestly—don’t miss the fortuitous pun—recommend, or, if having read it, you remember it, you might notice another difference between it and my story. Because Ernest Hemingway must choose where to begin and end, what to put in and what not put in, whose story to make it, which words to use, which title of the few fitting titles is must subtle and devious, he as the storyteller does not go into a funk. While in all probability he wishes that necessity did not bear down on him so hard and while he can’t be altogether happy with the only choices open to him, he does what he must with a grudging sort of acquiescence. You might say he not altogether accidentally resembles the character in his story named Nick Adams. Although Nick Adams is not an Odysseus or an Aeneas or a Beowulf, he proves himself to be almost heroic in the choice he makes after having been met by Al and Max. While not a Homer or Virgil or an anonymous Anglo-Saxon scop, all of whom knew how to tell a whale of a tale—let’s not forget Herman Melville—Ernest Hemingway is almost heroic when it comes to writing stories.
As did Ernest Hemingway, the storyteller of “The Killers,” I, in writing my story “B/Will/iam/ie and Al and Max and You and I,” have had to make choices. Unless you’re a literary moron, you must have noticed that the I in my story is not a heroic character. To have called my story the “I-ey” or the “I-id”—forget about Freud right now—or just plain “I”, would have been pretentious as well as silly. The sad truth is that, when it comes to making choices in my story, I, unlike Ernest Hemingway, am anything but almost courageous. If you find the I in my story to be a klutzy coward, I certainly won’t disagree.