Free 334 by Thomas M. Disch Page A

For the first month the pain in his shoulder had become so magnificently more awful that he had almost been unable to do his work at Bellevue. Then, slowly, in the person of young Dr. Landry, he began to rediscover the elements of his own identity.
    It was at 2:45, during a commercial for Carnation Eggies, that Ab came pounding and hollering at Chapel’s door. Maud had just come to visit her sister-in-law’s child at the observation center to which the court had committed him. She didn’t know yet that Dr. Landry was in charge of the boy’s case.
    “Chapel,” Ab screamed, “I know you’re in there, so open up, goddammit. I’ll knock this door down.”
    The next scene opened in Landry’s office. He was trying to make Mrs. Hanson, from last week, understand how a large part of her daughter’s problem sprang from her own selfish attitudes. But Mrs. Hanson was black, and Chapel’s sympathy was qualified for blacks, whose special dramatic function was to remind the audience of the other world, the one that they inhabited and were unhappy in.
    Maud knocked on Landry’s door: a closeup of gloved ringers thrumming on the paper panel.
    Chapel got up and let Ab in. By three o’clock Chapel had agreed, albeit sullenly, to help Ab find a replacement for the body he had lost.

3
    Martinez had been at the desk when the call came from Macy’s saying to hold the Newman body till their driver got there. Though he knew that the vaults contained nothing but three male geriatric numbers, he made mild yes-sounds and started filling out both forms. He left a message for Ab at his emergency number, then (on the principle that if there was going to be shit it should be Ab who either cleaned it up or ate it, as God willed) got word to his cousin to call in sick for the second (two to ten) shift. When Ab phoned back, Martinez was brief and ominous: “Get here and bring you know what. Or you know what.”
    Macy’s driver arrived before Ab. Martinez was feeling almost off-balance enough to tell him there was nothing in storage by the name of Newman, Bobbi.
    But it was not like Martinez to be honest when a lie might serve, especially in a case like this, where his own livelihood, and his cousin’s, were jeopardized. So, making a mental sign of the cross, he’d wheeled one of the geriatric numbers out from the faults, and the driver, with a healthy indifference to bureaucratic good form, carted it out to his van without looking under the sheet or checking the name on the file: NORRIS, THOMAS.
    It was an inspired improvisation. Since their driver had been as culpable as the morgue, Macy’s wasn’t likely to make a stink about the resulting delay. Fast post mortem freezing was the rule in the cryonic industry and it didn’t pay to advertise the exceptions.
    Ab arrived a bit before four. First off he checked out the log book. The page for April 14 was blank. A miracle of bad luck, but he wasn’t surprised.
    “Anything waiting?”
    “Nothing.”
    “That’s incredible,” Ab said, wishing it were.
    The phone rang. “That’ll be Macy’s,” Martinez said equably, stripping down to street clothes.
    “Aren’t you going to answer it?”
    “It’s your baby now.” Martinez flashed a big winner’s smile. They’d both gambled but Ab had lost. He explained, as the phone rang on, the stopgap by which he’d saved Ab’s life.
    When Ab picked it up, it was the director, no less, of Macy’s Clinic, and so high in the sky of his just wrath it would have been impossible for Ab to have made out what he was screaming if he hadn’t already known. Ab was suitably abject and incredulous, explaining that the attendant who had made the mistake (and how it could have happened he still did not understand) was gone for the day. He assured the director that the man would not get off lightly, would probably be canned or worse. On the other hand, he saw no reason to call the matter to the attention of Administration, who might try to shift some of