The Followed Man by Thomas Williams Page B

A voice seemed to answer him, but he could neither
identify the voice nor understand its words. He did believe that the
voice came from his own mind, some­where from within that
labyrinth of inefficiencies. A statement or question needed an
answer, even a ghost answer.
    Now, at least, he was back in a
hotel room in New York City, with this article to write, some theme
or other to pursue—perhaps that the queen was dead or dying or
demented and the workers— good troupers, most of them—went
on building, building. Seen from a distance they were mad, and took
on the hateful attributes of whatever forces exploited them, but when
you got them alone they could be, some of them at least, sensitive,
kind, transcending it all, which made it worse. Now, if he were the
proper monster he could write it easily, brilliantly, because the
truth would never constrain syntax, which would then be free,
unalloyed, and could make all sorts entertaining discoveries. That
those discoveries might be wrong, unfair, destructive, pure vanity,
wouldn't matter, because Artifice was all, was it not? He should
explain to Martin Troup that this whole idea of sending writers
around interview­ing people was wrong, even criminal, because the
results were credible lies and people would never learn not to
believe the lies, especially the liars who wrote the lies.
    This was depression, fear and
booze talking in his head. He would go out, now, and eat.
    On the way down in the big
elevator he lost any desire to eat and it seemed worse than that
because, alone in the plushy old ele­vator, descending to where
the people were, it was all desire, de­sire for anything in the
world, that he seemed to have lost. And so again he went to the dark
steak and chop place off the lobby and ordered a steak, a salad and a
beer. He felt full and dull, his taste dull. He put A-l sauce on his
meat, something he never did, and the meat tasted like something out
of a can. The salad was too sweet, the beer bulk liquid sloshing in
his stomach.
    In the elevator again, this time
accompanied by a young black woman in some sort of hotel uniform who
carried a small vacuum cleaner and a clipboard, the whole column of
the elevator shaft began to lean to the left. He held on to the
handrail as the eleva­tor, its cables and pulleys unaware of the
lean, rose at an increas­ing angle to the surface of the earth.
The hotel was falling over and he was helpless, emptied of breath by
vertigo. The young black woman, her straightened hair glossy, her
plum-colored lips in profile more protrusive than her nose, stood at
that angle with no support and of course he knew that the imbalance
of the world was in his head. He would hold on, hoping that her floor
was first, or that he would find level again before he had to get off
on the tenth floor. Vision, or his inner ear, or some lower, more
primary system of control had gone astray and the muscles of his legs
were not getting the proper messages. It seemed he supported his
whole weight with his right arm. The low call of nausea had be­gun,
a silent warble deep in his throat.
    The young woman got off at the
eighth floor, not having looked at him, and he waited for the
elevator to close its doors, hesitate, and then, with worn mechanical
suddenness, rise.
    His eyes insisted that they knew
what was vertical, but before he reached his room his shoulder hit
the corridor wall several times. After the business of the key and
lock he got into the room and nearly missed the bed he chose to fall
upon, holding himself upon its canted surface with a desperate swing
of his arm. The damask texture of the bedspread against his cheek was
the only normal, almost reassuring, signal from outside his head.
    The room tilted slowly to the
left until it was nearly on its side and then, with no apparent
return or change, was vertical and as remorselessly tilting to the
left again. Nausea came precisely at the impossible return, then
subsided as the tilt progressed, only to