The Avram Davidson Treasury (28 page)

In the buzzing coolness of the barroom Bob Rosen tried to catch hold of a thought which was coyly hiding behind a corner in his mind. His mind otherwise, he felt, was lucid as never before. But somehow he lost the thought, found he was telling himself a funny story in French and—although he had never got more than an 80 in the course, back in high school—marvelled at the purity of his accent and then chuckled at the punch-line.

“‘Never mind about black neglijays,’” the stout blonde was saying. “‘If you want to keep your husband’s affections,’ I said to her, ‘then listen to me—”

The errant thought came trotting back for reasons of its own, and jumped into Bob’s lap. “‘Spill the beans’?” he quoted, questioningly. “Spill
what
beans? To Shadwell, I mean.”

“Most despicable of living men,” said old Martens, mechanically. Then a most curious expression washed over his antique countenance: proud, cunning, fearful …

“Would you like to know the sources of the Nile?” he asked. “Would you?”

“‘Let him
go
to Maine,’ I said. ‘Let him paint rocks all day,’ I said. ‘Only for Heaven’s sake, keep him the Hell off of Fire Island,’ I said. And was I right, Harold?” demanded the large blonde.

Pete Martens was whispering something, Bob realized. By the look on his face it must have been important, so the young man tried to hear the words over the buzzing, and thought to himself in a fuddled fashion that they ought to be taken down on a steno pad, or something of that sort…
want to know, really know, where it begins and how, and how often?
But no; what do I know? For years I’ve been Clara the rotten step-mother, and now I’m Clara the rotten mother-in-law.
Are there such in every generation? Must be…known for years…known for years…only, Who?—and Where?—searched and sought, like Livingston and all the others searching and seeking, enduring privation, looking for the sources of the Nile …

Someone, it must have been Clara, gave a long, shuddering cry; and then for a while there was nothing but the buzzing, buzzing, buzzing, in Bob Rosen’s head; while old Martens lolled back in the chair, regarding him silently and sardonically with his blood-red eye, over which the lid slowly, slowly drooped: but old Martens never said a word more.

It was one genuine horror of a hangover, subsiding slowly under (or perhaps despite) every remedy Bob’s aching brain could think of: black coffee, strong tea, chocolate milk, raw-egg-red-pepper-worcestershire sauce. At least, he thought gratefully after a while, he was spared the dry heaves. At least he had all the fixings in his apartment and didn’t have to go out. It was a pivotal neighborhood, and he lived right in the pivot, a block where lox and bagels beat a slow retreat before the advance of hog maw and chitterlings on the one hand and
bodegas, comidas criollas,
on the other; swarms of noisy kids running between the trucks and buses, the jackhammers forever wounding the streets.

It took him a moment to realize that the noise he was hearing now was not the muffled echo of the drills, but a tapping on his door. Unsteadily, he tottered over and opened it. He would have been not in the least surprised to find a raven there, but instead it was a tall man, rather stooping, with a tiny head, hands folded mantis-like at his bosom.

After a few dry, futile clickings, Bob’s throat essayed the name “Shadburn?”

“Shadwell,” he was corrected, softly. “T. Pettys Shadwell… I’m afraid you’re not well, Mr. Rosen …”

Bob clutched the doorpost, moaned softly. Shadwell’s hands unfolded, revealed—not a smaller man at whom he’d been nibbling, but a paper bag, soon opened.

“…so I thought I’d take the liberty of bringing you some hot chicken broth.”

It was gratefully warm, had both body and savor. Bob lapped at it, croaked his thanks. “Not at all, not-a-tall,” Shadwell waved. “Glad to be of some small help.” A silence fell, relieved only by weak, gulping noises. “Too bad about old Martens. Of course, he
was
old. Still, a shocking thing to happen to you. A stroke, I’m told. I, uh, trust the police gave you no trouble?”

A wave of mild strength seemed to flow into Bob from the hot broth. “No, they were very nice,” he said. “The sergeant called me, ‘Son.’ They brought me back here.”

“Ah.” Shadwell was reflective. “He had no family. I know that for a fact.”

“Mmm.”

“But—assume he left a few dollars. Unlikely, but—And assume he’d willed the few dollars to someone or some charity, perhaps. Never mind. Doesn’t concern us. He wouldn’t bother to will his papers…scrapbooks of old copy he’d written, so forth. That’s of no interest to people in general. Just be thrown out or burned. But it would be of interest to
me.
I mean, I’ve been in advertising all my life, you know. Oh, yes. Used to distribute handbills when I was a boy. Fact.”

Bob tried to visualize T. Pettys Shadwell as a boy, failed, drank soup. “Good soup” he said. “Thanks. Very kind of you.”

Shadwell urged him strongly not to mention it. He chuckled. “Old Pete used to lug around some of the darndest stuff in that portfolio of his,” he said. “In fact, some of it referred to a scheme we were once trying to work out together. Nothing came of it, however, and the old fellow was inclined to be a bit testy about that, still—I believe you’d find it interesting. May I show you?”

Bob still felt rotten, but the death wish had departed. “Sure,” he said. Shadwell looked around the room, then at Bob, expectantly. After a minute he said, “Where is it?” “Where is what?” “The portfolio. Old Martens’.”

They stared at each other. The phone rang. With a wince and a groan, Bob answered. It was Noreen, a girl with pretensions to stagecraft and literature, with whom he had been furtively lecherous on an off-and-on basis, the off periods’ commencements being signaled by the presence in Noreen’s apartment of Noreen’s mother, (knitting, middleclass morality and all) when Bob came, intent on venery.

“I’ve got a terrible hangover,” he said, answering her first (guarded and conventional) question; “and the place is a mess.”

“See what happens if I turn my back on you for a minute?” Noreen clucked, happily. “Luckily, I have neither work nor social obligations planned for the day, so I’ll be right over.”

Bob said, “Crazy!”, hung up, and turned to face Shadwell, who had been nibbling the tips of his prehensile fingers. “Thanks for the soup,” he said, in tones of some finality.

“But the portfolio?” “I haven’t got it.” “It was leaning against the old man’s chair when I saw the two of you in the bar.” “Then maybe it’s still
in
the bar. Or in the hospital. Or maybe the cops have it. But—” “It isn’t. They don’t.” “But
I
haven’t got it. Honest, Mr. Shadwell, I appreciate the soup, but I don’t know where the Hell—”

Shadwell rubbed his tiny, sharp mustache, like a Δ-mark pointing to his tiny, sharp nose. He rose. “This is really too bad. Those papers referring to the business old Peter and I had been mutually engaged in—really, I have as much right to them as… But look here. Perhaps he may have spoken to you about it. He always did when he’d been drinking and usually did even when he wasn’t. What he liked to refer to as, ‘The sources of the Nile’? Hmm?” The phrase climbed the belfry and rang bells audible, or at least apparent, to Shadwell. He seemed to leap forward, long fingers resting on Bob’s shoulders.

“You do know what I mean. Look. You: Are a writer. The old man’s ideas aren’t in your line. I: Am an advertising man. They are in my line. For the contents of his portfolio—as I’ve explained, they are rightfully mine—I will give: One thousand: Dollars. In fact: For the opportunity of merely
looking
through it: I will give: One
hundred.
Dollars.”

As Bob reflected that his last check had been for $17.72 (Monegasque rights to a detective story), and as he heard these vasty sums bandied about, his eyes grew large, and he strove hard to recall what the Hell
had
happened to the portfolio—but in vain.

Shadwell’s dry, whispery voice took on a pleading note. “I’m even willing to pay you for the privilege of discussing your conversation with the old f—the old gentleman. Here—” And he reached into his pocket. Bob wavered. Then he recalled that Noreen was even now on her way uptown and crosstown, doubtless bearing with her, as usual, in addition to her own taut charms, various tokens of exotic victualry to which she—turning her back on the veal chops and green peas of childhood and suburbia—was given: such as Shashlik makings,
lokoumi
, wines of the warm south,
baklava
,
provalone,
and other living witnesses to the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome.

Various hungers, thus stimulated, began to rise and clamor, and he steeled himself against Shadwell’s possibly unethical and certainly inconveniently timed offers.

“Not now,” he said. Then, throwing delicacy to the winds, “I’m expecting a girl friend. Beat it. Another time.”

Annoyance and chagrin on Shadwell’s small face, succeeded by an exceedingly disgusting leer. “Why, of
course
,” he said. “Another time? Certainly. My card—” He hauled out the perforated pack. “I already got one,” Bob said. “Goodbye.”

He made haste to throw off the noisome clothes in which he had been first hot, then drunk, then comatose; to take a shower, comb his mouse-colored hair, shave the pink bristles whose odious tint alone prevented him from growing a beard, to spray and anoint himself with various nostra which T. Pettys Shadwell’s more successful colleagues in advertising had convinced him (by a thousand ways, both blunt and subtle) were essential to his acceptance by good society; then to dress and await with unconcealed anticipation the advent of the unchaste Noreen.

She came, she kissed him, she prepared food for him: ancient duties of women, any neglect of which is a sure and certain sign of cultural decadence and retrogression. Then she read everything he had written since their last juncture, and here she had some fault to find.

“You waste too much time at the beginning, in description,” she said, with the certainty possible to those who have never sold a single manuscript. “You’ve got to make your characters come
alive
—in the very first sentence.”

“‘Marley was dead, to begin with,’” muttered Bob.

“What?” murmured Noreen, vaguely, feigning not to hear. Her eye, avoiding lover boy, lit on something else. “What’s this?” she asked. “You have so much money you just leave it lying around? I thought you said you were broke.” And Bob followed her pointing and encarnadined fingertip to where lay two crisp twenty-dollar bills, folded lengthwise, on the table next the door.

“Shadwell!” he said, instantly. And, in response to her arched brows (which would have looked much better unplucked, but who can what will away?), he said, “A real rat of a guy—a louse, a boor—who had some crumby proposal.”

“And who also has,” said Noreen, going straight to the heart of the matter, “money.” Bob resolved never to introduce the two of them, if he could help it. “Anyway,” she continued, laying aside Bob’s manuscript, “now you can take me out somewhere.” Feebly he argued the food then cooking; she turned off the gas and thrust the pots incontinently into the ice-box, rose, and indicated she was now ready to leave. He had other objections to leaving just then, which it would have been impolitic to mention, for in Noreen’s scheme of morality each episode of passion was a sealed incident once it was over, and constituted no promise of any other yet to come.

With resignation tempered by the reflection that Shadwell’s four sawbucks couldn’t last forever, and that there was never so long-drawn-out an evening but would wind up eventually back in his apartment, Bob accompanied her out the door.

And so it was. The next day, following Noreen’s departure in mid-morning, found Bob in excellent spirits but flat-broke. He was reviewing the possibilities of getting an advance from his agent, Stuart Emmanuel, a tiny, dapper man whose eyes behind double lenses were like great black shoebuttons, when the phone rang. ESP or no ESP, it was Stuart himself, with an invitation to lunch.

“I’m glad
some
of your clients are making money,” said Bob, most ungraciously.

“Oh, it’s not my money,” said Stuart. “It’s J. Oscar Rutherford’s. One of his top men—no, it’s not Joe Tressling, I know you saw him the day before yesterday, yes, I know nothing came of it, this is a different fellow altogether. Phillips Anhalt. I want you to come.”

So Bob left yesterday’s half-cooked chow in the ice-box and, very little loath, set out to meet Stuart and Phillips Anhalt, of whom he had never heard before. The first rendezvous was for a drink at a bar whose name also meant nothing to him, though as soon as he walked in he recognized it as the one where he had been the day before yesterday, and this made him uneasy—doubly so, for he had callously almost forgotten what had had happened there. The bartender, it was at once evident, had not. His wary glance at the three of them must have convinced him that they were reasonably good insurance risks, however, for he made no comment.

Anhalt was a middle-sized man with a rather sweet and slightly baffled face and iron-gray haircut
en brosse
. “I enjoyed your story very much,” he told Bob—thus breaking in at once upon the shallow slumber of the little scold who boarded in Bob’s Writer’s Consciousness. Of
course
(it shrilled) I know
exactly
the one you mean, after all, I’ve written only
one
story in my entire
life
so “
your story
” is the only identification it needs. I liked your novel, Mr. Hemingway. I enjoyed your play, Mr. Kaufman.

Stuart Emmanuel, who knew the labyrinthine ways of writers’ mind as he knew the figures in his bank statement, said smoothly, “I expect Mr. Anhalt refers to
Unvexed to the Sea
.”

With firm politeness Mr. Anhalt disappointed this expectation. “I know that’s the prize-winner,” he said, “and I mean to read it, but the one I referred to was
The Green Wall.
” Now, as it happened this very short little story had been bounced thirteen times before its purchase for a negligible sum by a low-grade salvage market of a magazine; but it was one of Bob’s favorites. He smiled at Phillips Anhalt, Anhalt smiled at him, Stuart beamed and ordered drinks.