Read Online You Live Once by John D. MacDonald - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: John D. MacDonald
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I could not see Dodd, ambitious and intelligent, premeditating something that could so easily have gone wrong. Had I constituted a serious threat to his career, it might be plausible. On the other hand ambition was a disease that could distort facts. Maybe he believed I was a threat to his career.
His worry about Mary had seemed genuine. Yet what Ray and Tory had told me seemed to indicate he was a good actor. Of course the affair itself had been a potential threat to his career. But ambitious men have been blinded by flesh before.
Like so many guessing games, this one came to a dead end. He could have, and he couldn’t have. I could carry it right up to the final moment, and then my mindrebelled at the picture of Dodd bringing her into the apartment, selecting the belt, drawing the makeshift noose tightly around her throat.
When I took my pajamas from the closet, a drifting memory of her musky perfume remained there. I went to bed emotionally exhausted. In the faint light that came into the room I could see the open closet door, and I could imagine she was still there.
I slept and dreamed. I dreamed we all sat around a coffin. Mary sat up in the coffin, naked, the belt around her neck. Everyone looked at me. I explained that it was just a muscle reflex that made her sit up. She got out of the coffin and came to me. We danced. All the others kept time with a slow sad clapping of their hands, watching us as we danced. I kept whispering to Mary that she should get back into the coffin.
I looked down at her bare breast as we danced. Above the nipple was marked C.P.P. It was not tattooed, it was in black, in raised, shiny ornate letters, like the engraving on an expensive calling card. She said Dodd had done it, and the hideous mouth grinned. I said she had to get back into the coffin. She danced me to the coffin and I looked into it and saw why she could not. Nancy Raymond lay in the coffin, naked, her body gilded. On her body crouched a monstrous hairy spider with iridescent eyes. I awoke in cold sweating childhood terror and knew I had cried out because the echo of my cry seemed to be in the room. It was a long time before I slept again.
At eight-twenty-five the next morning, a grey gusty Monday, I parked with my front bumper under the little white sign that said MR. SEWELL . With such small conveniences are the souls of executives purchased. My office, along with the space assigned to Engineering and to Research, is on what you could call a mezzanine looking out over the main production floor. My secretary is in the room with me, along with filing cases forblueprints, a pair of drafting tables, my desk, sundry straight chairs. The office wall nearest the production area is duo-therm glass from waist-height up. Beyond that wall is a railed catwalk that extends the length of the building, with a circular iron staircase at either end.
To get a piece of work out you need men, machines and materials at the right place at the right time. To facilitate this I have four production chasers, a production record clerk. I keep a beady eye on inventory, on quotas, on equipment maintenance, on absenteeism. With the system we have, it should run like watches. But it never does. If it isn’t an industrial accident, then it’s some storeroom monkey counting an empty box as being a hundred available items necessary for assembly. Next some setup man blunders and an automatic milling machine works busily all day turning out scrap. When things start to roll, a cancellation and change order comes in from on high. Then maintenance fumbles and we tear the gearing out of a turret lathe. You get behind and try to jolly the boys into doing a little back busting to catch up and the union steward comes around talking darkly about speedups. Then I have to go down on the floor with my time and motion study man and quack with the steward.
Half the time it is like working in a madhouse, and the rest of the time you are merely a one-armed juggler. I
His worry about Mary had seemed genuine. Yet what Ray and Tory had told me seemed to indicate he was a good actor. Of course the affair itself had been a potential threat to his career. But ambitious men have been blinded by flesh before.
Like so many guessing games, this one came to a dead end. He could have, and he couldn’t have. I could carry it right up to the final moment, and then my mindrebelled at the picture of Dodd bringing her into the apartment, selecting the belt, drawing the makeshift noose tightly around her throat.
When I took my pajamas from the closet, a drifting memory of her musky perfume remained there. I went to bed emotionally exhausted. In the faint light that came into the room I could see the open closet door, and I could imagine she was still there.
I slept and dreamed. I dreamed we all sat around a coffin. Mary sat up in the coffin, naked, the belt around her neck. Everyone looked at me. I explained that it was just a muscle reflex that made her sit up. She got out of the coffin and came to me. We danced. All the others kept time with a slow sad clapping of their hands, watching us as we danced. I kept whispering to Mary that she should get back into the coffin.
I looked down at her bare breast as we danced. Above the nipple was marked C.P.P. It was not tattooed, it was in black, in raised, shiny ornate letters, like the engraving on an expensive calling card. She said Dodd had done it, and the hideous mouth grinned. I said she had to get back into the coffin. She danced me to the coffin and I looked into it and saw why she could not. Nancy Raymond lay in the coffin, naked, her body gilded. On her body crouched a monstrous hairy spider with iridescent eyes. I awoke in cold sweating childhood terror and knew I had cried out because the echo of my cry seemed to be in the room. It was a long time before I slept again.
At eight-twenty-five the next morning, a grey gusty Monday, I parked with my front bumper under the little white sign that said MR. SEWELL . With such small conveniences are the souls of executives purchased. My office, along with the space assigned to Engineering and to Research, is on what you could call a mezzanine looking out over the main production floor. My secretary is in the room with me, along with filing cases forblueprints, a pair of drafting tables, my desk, sundry straight chairs. The office wall nearest the production area is duo-therm glass from waist-height up. Beyond that wall is a railed catwalk that extends the length of the building, with a circular iron staircase at either end.
To get a piece of work out you need men, machines and materials at the right place at the right time. To facilitate this I have four production chasers, a production record clerk. I keep a beady eye on inventory, on quotas, on equipment maintenance, on absenteeism. With the system we have, it should run like watches. But it never does. If it isn’t an industrial accident, then it’s some storeroom monkey counting an empty box as being a hundred available items necessary for assembly. Next some setup man blunders and an automatic milling machine works busily all day turning out scrap. When things start to roll, a cancellation and change order comes in from on high. Then maintenance fumbles and we tear the gearing out of a turret lathe. You get behind and try to jolly the boys into doing a little back busting to catch up and the union steward comes around talking darkly about speedups. Then I have to go down on the floor with my time and motion study man and quack with the steward.
Half the time it is like working in a madhouse, and the rest of the time you are merely a one-armed juggler. I
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