Closing Time (Catch-22 2)

Claire Rabinowitz felt herself in pugnacious opposition to all her fellow passengers on the El Al flight transporting her to Israel to see for herself the seaside summer house outside Tel Aviv on which she had made a down payment in the form of an option to buy. There had been not much eye contact with anyone in the first-class lounge or in the waiting area at the gate, to which, out of aggressive curiosity, she had also wandered to kill time. There was not a man aboard of any age, traveling with family or without, who came even close to what she considered with pride her standards. There wasn't one who could hold a candle to her Lew. Sammy Singer, in California or on his way to Hawaii or Australia, had predicted that might happen, and she had taken his warning as a compliment. When she spoke of Lew to anyone, to her children or Sammy, she never spoke of him as hers. When she thought of him, he was still her Lew. She was conquering slowly her reluctance to concede that it would forever be impossible for her to recreate what had been. She took for granted that all of the others on the flight were Jewish too, even those, like herself, who looked American and agnostic.

Crossing the Mediterranean while the day was breaking, there was no signal of any new disaster portending. There was a sketchy news report that an oil tanker had collided with a cruise ship somewhere below. Her mood was surly, and she did not care that her expression might show it. Another dimension to her latent disappointments was that she did not feel yet as she had hoped she might, that in going to Israel, she was going home.

Shortly after the alarm went off, Mr. George C. Tilyou felt his world shudder. In his Steeplechase Park, he saw the power fail on his El Dorado carousel and the elegant rotating platforms coast to a standstill with the emperor on board. He saw, strangely, that his two World War II airplane pilots were gone, as though called away. His Coney Island acquaintance Mr. Rabinowitz was staring at the mechanism from a distance, as though analyzing a malfunction he might have it in his means to correct. Frowning, Mr. Tilyou walked back into his office. He dusted his derby with his sleeve while restoring it to its peg on the coatrack. He felt his anger melt away. His depression returned.

His appointment with the higher authorities, with Lucifer and perhaps Satan himself, to demand an explanation for the peculiar behavior of his house, would be postponed again. There was no longer doubt it was sinking gradually, without his blessing and beyond his control. Careful measurements betrayed subversive disappearance. As he glanced at it now from his rolltop desk, it went down suddenly before his eyes. Almost before he could understand what was happening, the entire bottom floor was gone. His house of three stories was now one of two stories. From overhead, while he was still staring, widening showers of dirt came spilling down, and then great rough clumps of earth, stones, and other debris began to fall in too. Something new he had not planned on was coming through from outside with a crunching roar. He saw torn electrical connections dangling. He saw ducts of bolted sheet metal. He saw tubes. He recognized a bulky underside with a dense configuration of ponderous dripping refrigeration pipes encased in a crystalline jacket of melting frost.

His mood of depression lifted.

He saw in a red jacket a Japanese man with ice skates holding on to a corner of the floor for dear life.

It was the skating rink from Rockefeller Center!

He had to smile. He saw Mr. Rockefeller turn pale, quiver, and flee in panic. Mr. Morgan slumped naked to the ground with bowed head, weeping, and began to pray. The emperor had no clothes either.

Mr. Tilyou had to laugh. There was nothing new under the sun? He was seeing something new, learning a lesson he had never dreamed possible. Even hell was not forever.

Yossarian could not believe his ears. Where in the world had the chaplain learned to say "Fuck you!" so well? By the time Yossarian reached bottom, the chaplain was over the top and gone from view. Gaffney had started to tell him they had better return to the elevators to get down to McBride and the others when the Strangelove voice returned to announce that they had nothing to fear but a shortage of tailors.

"That is something else we forgot, and some of us at headquarters look sloppy. We have irons but nobody who knows how to use them. We have cloth and thread and sewing machines. But we need someone who sews. Does anyone hear me? Come in if you sew."

"Haagen-Dazs. I can do laundry and iron. My weapons officer is the son of a tailor."

"Turn back immediately and join us here."

"Right, sir. How can we get there?"

"We forgot that too!"

"Gaffney," said Yossarian, when they had ten miles more to go. "How long will we be here?"

"My future may lie here," replied Gaffney. "When we're down and have time, there's something I want to show you. It's on an acre and a halt on a lake under Vermont, near an underground golf course and good skiing in Ben & Jerry territory, in case you're planning to buy."

"Now? You think I'm planning to buy now?"

"One must always look ahead, says the good Senor Gaffney. It's waterfront property, Yo-Yo. You can triple your money in a couple of months. You have to see it."

"I won't have time. I have an appointment for lunch."

"Your appointment might be canceled."

"I might want to keep it."

"All plans are off if it's really a war."

"The wedding too?"

"With bombs coming in? We don't really need the wedding anymore, now that we have it on tape."

"Are there bombs coming in?"

Gaffney shrugged. McBride didn't know either, they found out, when they rode the long escalator down to the bottom from the final stop on the elevator. Neither did the disparate pair of intelligence agents, who had no idea what to do with themselves next.

Strangelove had an answer when he came back on. "No, no bombs are sighted yet coming this way. This has us confused. But those of us here have nothing to fear. Only one air force in the world has bombs that can penetrate this deeply before exploding, and they all belong to us. We have overlooked nothing, except some barbers. While we wait to see if anyone strikes back, we need some barbers, even one. Any barber who hears this, respond at once. We have overlooked nothing. All our facilities will be operational in two or three weeks if you abide by my rules. If any of you anticipate trouble following my instructions, please follow this instruction and leave today. General Bingam will now send all our B-Wares and Shhhhh!s out on a second-strike attack, after we confirm there are no tailors or barbers on board."

Raul scowled and said, "Merde." Gangly, orange-haired, freckle-faced Bob looked much less happy than usual. Both had families they worried about.

McBride worried too. "If there's a war outside, I'm not sure I want to be down here."