While Mortals Sleep_ Unpublished Short Fiction - Kurt Vonnegut [57]
The loudspeaker was playing spring songs when Carmody and Sterling left the sixty-four-year-old Miss Daily in charge, and went out for morning coffee.
Both were lighthearted, unhaunted by ambition as they sauntered along the factory street to the main gate, outside of which was the Acme Grille. It had been made clear to both of them that they didn’t have the priceless stuff of which executives were made. So, unlike so many wide-eyed and hustling men all around them, they were free to dress comfortably and inexpensively, and go out for coffee as often as they pleased.
They also had a field of humor that was closed to those with big futures in the organization. They could make jokes about the American Forge and Foundry Company, its products, its executives, and its stockholders.
Carmody, who was forty-five, was theoretically in charge of the section, of young Sterling, Miss Daily, and the files. But he was spiritually an anarchist, and never gave orders. He was a tall, thin dreamer, who prided himself on being creative rather than domineering, and his energies went into stuffing the suggestion box, decorating the office for holidays, and collecting limericks, which he kept in a locked file in his desk.
Carmody had been lonely and a little sour, as wave after wave of enterprising young men passed him on the ladder of success. But then the twenty-eight-year-old Sterling, also tall, thin, and dreamy, had joined the section after unappreciated performances in other departments, and life in the section had become vibrant. Carmody and Sterling stimulated each other to new peaks in creativity—and out of the incredibly fruitful union of their talents had come many things, the richest being the myth of Bomar Fessenden III.
There really was a Bomar Fessenden III, and he was a stockholder of the company, but neither Carmody nor Sterling knew anything about him save the number of shares he owned, one hundred, and his home address, 5889 Seaview Terrace, Great Neck, Long Island, New York. But Bomar’s splendid name had caught Sterling’s fancy. He started talking knowingly about the debauched life Fessenden led with the dividends the section mailed to him, claiming Fessenden as an old friend, a fraternity brother who wrote regularly from fleshpots around the world—Acapulco, Palm Beach, Nice, Capri … Carmody had been charmed by the myth, and had contributed heavily to it.
“Some day!” said Carmody, as they walked through the main gate. “Too bad Bomar Fessenden III isn’t here to see it.”
“That’s one of the many reasons I would never trade places with Bomar,” said Sterling. “Not for all his wealth and comfort and beautiful women. He never gets to see the seasons come and go.”
“Cut off from life, that’s what Bomar is,” said Carmody. “He might as well be dead. When winter comes, what does he do?”
“Bomar runs away from it,” said Sterling. “Pathetic. He runs away from everything. I just got a card from him saying he’s pulling out of Buenos Aires because of the dampness.”
“And all the time, what Bomar is really running away from is himself, the futility of his whole existence,” said Carmody, sliding into a booth in the Acme Grille. “But his hollowness still pursues him as certainly as his dividend checks.”
“Two crumb-buns and draw two, black,” said Sterling to the waitress.
“By golly,” said Carmody, “I wonder what old Bomar wouldn’t give to be here with us right now, making plain, wholesome talk with plain, wholesome people over plain, wholesome food?”
“Plenty,” said Sterling. “I can read that between the lines in his letters. There Bomar is, wherever he is, spending a fortune every day on liquor and beautiful women and expensive playthings, when he could find peace of mind right here with