Shatterday (12 page)

Lofty. Very lofty, and as far away from sex talk as he could get without going into withdrawal. "They must be quite valuable," she said again.

He nodded, munching. "As a matter of fact, they are. Twice I got real flat and decided to sell them, but when it got right down to the old nitty-gritty, I couldn't do it. Once I took a job selling shoes and the other time I hocked my tape recorder. I didn't realize how important they'd become to me till then. They were worth about fifteen hundred when he died, but by now I could probably trade the collection in on a Maserati if I wanted to."

She seemed appalled. "That's a terrible idea."

He chuckled. "I was only kidding. I wouldn't do it. They meant so much to Dad, I guess it's rubbed off. They're important to me now. That nickel in the upper left hand corner is worth about two hundred and fifty bucks alone. How's the omelet?"

"Good." She smiled at him. He had depth now, Substance. A past. A present, lying there on black velvet.

When they finished eating she took the plates to the sink and washed them, and used a Brillo pad on the gooey skillet. Arlo watched quick flashes of her through the doorway, as she moved back and forth from the sink, he sank down in the sofa and felt secure. When she was finished and had dried her hands on the little dish towel, he called in to her, "There's a bottle of hand lotion under the sink."

He heard her open the cabinet. A few minutes later she reentered the living room, dry-washing her hands. "I gather you often have ladies wash your dishes; that bottle of lotion is almost empty."

"Not too often."

"It's a kindness only a man with female companions would appreciate."

"I appreciate all sorts of things; like your
doing
the dishes. That was very nice. You looked at home in there." He extended his hands. She took them.

"The least a girl can do is pay for her supper." He drew her down beside him on the sofa, but she scrunched away. "Whoops. Let me rephrase that."

Arlo scrunched closer, tried for a kiss, aimed for her lips, landed on her cheek.

"I thought we had all that settled?" she reminded him.

He ran an all-seeing finger across her high cheekbone. "If you were scrawny like a Keane painting, you could be a model with a face like that."

"I'm part Indian. My grandfather on my mother's side. I could even—" she slapped his hand away from there, "—speak a little Sioux when I was a kid." She slapped his hand a second time. "Please, Arlo." She stood up suddenly. "I'd better check, make sure my things are dry by now."

"Stay. I'll be good. Word of honor."

"I know about your honor. Tarnished."

"I've never spoken to an Indian before. An
Amer
indian, as a matter of cold fact. Talk some Sioux to me."

She took a step toward the bathroom, he grabbed her hand and she let him. "I don't remember any."

"It's just like English, isn't it?" Nonsense syllables. He was gibbering, and they both knew what was happening. "I mean, you leave out a few of the small words and put 'um' at the end of the others? Me wantum you?"

She laughed. He stood up and tried to hold her, but she did a fast two-step.

"I have the feeling," she said, imbedding a restraining finger in his chest (the fingernail was long, painted, and hurt like hell), "that I'm being turned into a tease. And I'm not. Maybe I'm not as bright as I ought to be, but … oh hell, I refuse to defend myself." Her voice softened. "Thanks for the omelet. I've got to get dressed. If my roommate wakes up and I'm not back she'll call the safe and loft squad, or whoever it is they call when a girl's been broken and entered."

They looked at each other for a long moment, over a distance that she increased geometrically as the micro-instants elapsed. When she had attained a distance of several light-years, there in the dim living room, she turned away and went to the bathroom.

Consider now: all that firm girlstuff, busily hooking bra under breasts, pulling it around so the cups are in front, pulling it up, stuffing and handling gingerly; stepping into, putting on, pulling over, adjusting to, smoothing out, hooking on, slipping into. While over there, beyond lath and plaster, Arlo, Great White Hunter, coming to a rapid boil. Knowing now was the penultimate moment. And in some ways the best moment of all, for now was all anticipation without even the slightest disappointment. Now she was perfect, unflawed, and the best since Helen of Troy (and what's
she
doing now?).

She came out of the bathroom, gathered everything she needed, and as he made to rise, put out a palm against the air between them. He sank back. She smiled with genuine affection, nodded slightly as if to say it could never be, oh my Heathcliff, and went to the door.

No exit lines.

She turned the knob and pulled the door inward.

Quietly now, Arlo: "Do me one small favor before you go?" She turned and looked at him, wide open now that safety was a mere threshold away. He got up and went to the bookshelf near the kitchen. He took down a large Royal Doulton toby jug of Dick Turpin the Highwayman, and shook a key out of it.

Anastasia didn't move from the doorway. She merely watched as be moved smoothly across the room to the coin case, inserted the key in the lock, turned it, opened the glass top and removed something. He closed the case, relocked it, returned the key to the toby jug, and came to her, there in the doorway.

"Everybody grows up sometime," he said. "I'm going to have to sell this collection some day, probably some day soon. My Healey's about ready for Medicare. So what I'd like you to do for me—"

He hesitated, beat beat beat, then offered his hand to her, opening the fist. The penny lay there against his palm, and she stopped breathing.

He was humble about it. Truly humble. "I remember Dad coming home with this one. He was like a kid with a new toy. A guest on shipboard had given it to him in exchange for some well-made
pêche flambée.
Turned out to be rare."

"I can't!" she said absolutely.

He went on swiftly. "Oh, it's not as expensive as—say, a 1909 'S' mint Indian Head, or some of the English pennies—but it's pretty rare. Something about they pulled it off the counters soon after it was minted. I want you to have it. Please."

"I
can't!
"

"Please." He put the penny in her hand. She held it as though it was stuck together of dust and spiderwebs, just looking at it down there, blazing and glowing in her palm. "It was my Dad's, then it was mine, and now it's yours. You can't refuse a gift someone gives you like that."

"But why? Why me?"

"Because," he shrugged as a little boy might shrug, "you're nice people. Make it into a pin or something."

He closed her fingers around it. "Now, good night. I'll be talking to you."

He walked away from her and switched on the television set. It was a test pattern. He sat down and watched it for a moment, and then he heard the door close. When he turned at the sound, he was all awareness at that instant, she was still in the room, leaning against the door, fist closed over the wonder that lay therein, watching him.

•

Arlo woke just after one o'clock the next day. The scent of her perfume still occupied the other side of the bed. He stretched, kicked the sheet off his naked legs, and said to the familiar ceiling, "My, that was nice."

He showered and put the coffee on.

Then, as he finished dressing, he opened the little drawer beneath his cufflink box—the drawer you might not realize was there unless you were specifically looking for a little drawer right there in that particular cufflink box—and in anticipation of the coming evening, removed one of the three remaining old pennies (the last of fourteen he had bought in the batch) and carried it into the living room. As he unlocked the coin case, he made a mental note to stop down at the coin shop and pick up another batch of old pennies. He was running low.

He relocked the case, and was returning the key to the toby jug, when the phone rang.

He picked it up and said, "Hi," and got venom poured right into his car.

"You bastard! You lying, low, thieving, seducing sonofabitch! You miserable con artist! You plague-bearer, you Typhoid Mary; you Communist fag ratfink bastard!"

"Hi."

"You low scum dog, you. You crud. Of all the low, rotten, ugly, really outright evil demeaning stinky things a creep fascist right-wing louse could pull,
that
was the most vile, nauseating, despicable, hideous—"

"Hi, Anastasia. What's new?"

"What's new, you shit? I'll
tell
you what's new! Among other things, that coin of your dear old Daddy's is new. New enough to be worth exactly one lousy cent. Not a rare! Not a valuable! Not a nothing,
that's
what's new!"

Horror coursed through Arlo's strangled words. "Wh—what?" He coughed, choked, swallowed hard. "What're you talking about? Whaddaya mean? Tell me …
tell me
, dammit!"

Her voice was less steamy. There was an edge of doubt now. "I took it down today, there's a numismatist in the office building where I work—"

Affront
lived
in his shock. "You
what?!?
You had my
father's
penny appraised? You did that? What kind of a person—"

"Listen, don't try to make me the heavy, Jim! It wasn't valuable at all. It was just a miserable old penny like a million others, and you got me into bed with it, that's what! You lied to me!"

Softly, he crept in between her rebuilding attack. "I don't believe it."

"Well, it's true."

"No."

"Yes, yes, and yes! Worth a penny. Period."

"Oh my God," he husked. "Dad never knew. He always thought … how cruel … how awfully cruel … that man who gave it to him on shipboard . . . I can't believe it … oh Jeezus …"

There was silence at the other end.

"Oh, God …" he murmured. Then, after a while, gently, "I'm sorry, I didn't know … listen, I don't think I want to talk any more … excuse me …"

She stopped him. "Arlo?"

Silence.

"Arlo?" Very gently from her.

Silence again, then, almost a whisper: "Yeah?"

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to—"

"Forget it."

"No, really. It was a rotten thing for me to do. I'd—I'd like to—"

"It isn't necessary."

"No, really, I mean it. I'd like to… are you busy tonight… could I come over and maybe—"

Arlo held the phone with one hand, unlocked the case with the other. As he removed the penny, making a mental note to perhaps put off that trip to the coin shop for a week or so, he said with absolute sincerity into the mouthpiece, "I guess so. Yeah, okay. Why don't you stop off at a deli and pick up some corned beef and pickles and we can…"

|
Go to Table of Contents
|

This trip is mapped through a dark passage in my recent past. It deals with a mortal dread we all share: the madness that betides us when we have been fucked over once too often by the petty thugs and conscienceless pillagers who infest the world from venal politicians who manipulate our lives for personal gain, down to the building contractors who promise decent craftsmanship and leave you with leaking roofs. At some point you go blind with rage.
Why me
? you wail! I don't cheat people, I do my job honestly and with care …how can creeps like this be permitted to flourish?

Well, I offer you the words of the Polish poet Edward Yashinsky, who said, "Fear not your enemies, for they can only kill you; fear not your friends, for they can only betray you. Fear only the indifferent, who permit the killers and betrayers to walk safely on the earth."

When I was a kid there was a popular novel titled
Leave Her to Heaven
. Though the book has long since passed out of my memory, the title has stuck. I don't believe there is such a thing as "divine retribution." The universe is neither malign nor benign. It's
just there
, and it's too busy keeping itself together to balance the scales when some feep has jerked you around. I am a strong adherent of the philosophy that one must seek retribution oneself.

And if the courts of the land cannot deliver up these people to justice then don't form a lynch party, because that forces you to become what you have beheld, as vile as those who did you dirt. Instead, unleash primal forces against them. Force entry and take a trip through their lives in ways they will find most troublesome.

Write a story and let the power of the massmind git'm!

WILLIAM WEISEL pronounced his name why
-zell
, but many of the unfortunates for whom he had done remodeling and construction pronounced it
weasel
.

He had designed and built a new guest bathroom for Fred Tolliver, a man in his early sixties who had retired from the active life of a studio musician with the foolish belief that his fifteen-thousand-dollar-per-year annuity would sustain him in comfort. Weisel had snubbed the original specs on the job, had substituted inferior materials for those required by the codes, had used cheap Japanese pipe instead of galvanized or stressed plastic, had eschewed lath and plaster for wallboard that left lumpy seams, had skirted union wages by ferrying in green card workers from Tijuana every morning by dawn light, had—in short—done a spectacularly crummy job on Fred Tolliver's guest bathroom. That was the first mistake.

And for all of this ghastly workmanship, Weisel had overcharged Fred Tolliver by nine thousand dollars. That was the second mistake.

Fred Tolliver called William Weisel. His tone was soft and almost apologetic. Fred Tolliver was a gentle man, not given to fits of pique or demonstrations of anger. He politely asked Weisel to return and set matters to rights. William Weisel laughed at Fred Tolliver and told him that he had lived up to the letter of the original contract, that he would do nothing. That was the third mistake.

Putatively, what Weisel said was true. Building inspectors had been greased and the job had been signed off: legal according to the building codes. Legally, William Weisel was in the clear; no suit could be brought. Ethically it was a different matter. But even threats of revocation of license could not touch him.