Time Out of Joint Read Free Page A

high-pitched. Shrill.
    But he’ll get somewhere, he realized. The odd thing in this world is that an eager-beaver type, with no original ideas, who mimes those in authority above him right to the last twist of necktie and scrape of chin, always gets noticed. Gets selected. Rises. In the banks, in insurance companies, big electric companies, missile-building firms, universities. He had seen them as assistant professors teaching some recondite subject -survey of heretical Christian sects of the fifth century—and simultaneously inching their path up with all their might and main. Everything but sending their wives over to the administration building as bait...
    And yet, Ragle rather liked Bill Black. The man— he seemed young to him; Ragle was forty-six, Black no more than twenty-five-had a rational, viable outlook. He learned, took in new facts and assimilated them. He could be talked to; he had no fixed store of morals, no verities. He could be affected by what happened.
    For instance, Ragle thought, if TV should become acceptable in the top circles, Bill Black would have a color TV set the next morning. There’s something to be said for that. Let’s not call him "non-adaptive," just because he refuses to watch Sid Caesar. When the H-bombs start falling, conelrad won’t save us. We’ll all perish alike.
    "How’s it going, Ragle?" Black asked, seating himself handily on the edge of the couch. Margo had gone into the kitchen with Junie. At the TV set, Vic was scowling, resentful of the interruption, trying to catch the last of a scene between Caesar and Carl Reiner.
    "Glued to the idiot box," Ragle said to Black, meaning it as a parody of Black’s utterances. But Black chose to accept it on face value.
    "The great national pastime," he murmured, sitting so that he did not have to look at the screen. "I’d think it would bother you, in what you’re doing."
    "I get my work done," Ragle said. He had got his entry off by six.
    On the TV set, the scene ended; a commercial appeared. Vic shut off the set. Now his resentment turned toward advertisers. "Those miserable ads," he declared. "Why’s the volume level always higher on ads than on the program? You always have to turn it down."
    Ragle said, "The ads usually emanate locally. The program’s piped in over the co-ax, from the East."
    "There’s one solution to the problem," Black said.
    Ragle said, "Black, why do you wear those ridiculous-looking tight pants? Makes you look like a swabbie."
    Black smiled and said, "Don’t you ever dip into the New Yorker? I didn’t invent them, you know. I don’t control men’s fashions; don’t blame me. Men’s fashions have always been ludicrous."
    "But you don’t have to encourage them," Ragle said.
    "When you have to meet the public," Black said, "you’re not your own boss. You wear what’s being worn. Isn’t that right, Victor? You’re out where you meet people; you agree with me."
    Vic said, "I wear a plain white shirt as I have for ten years, and an ordinary pair of wool slacks. It’s good enough for the retail-produce business."
    "You also wear an apron," Black said.
    "Only when I’m stripping lettuce," Vic said.
    "Incidentally," Black said, "how’s the retail sales index this month? Business still off?"
    "Some," Vic said. "Not enough to matter, though. We expect it to pick up in another month or so. It’s cyclic. Seasonal."
    To Ragle, his brother-in-law’s change of tone was clear; as soon as business was involved—his business -he became professional, close-mouthed, tactical in his responses. Business was never really off, and always on the verge of improving. And no matter how low the national index dropped, a man’s personal individual business was unaffected. Like asking a man how he feels, Ragle thought. He has to say he feels fine. Ask him how business is, and he either automatically says terrible or improving. And neither means anything; it’s just a phrase.
    To Black, Ragle said, "How’s the retail