Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories

THE MATCHMAKER

“YOU DON’T LOOK like the head of a dating service,” said Carl, nervously licking his lips.

The large woman behind the desk smiled and fingered a lock of greasy brown hair that dangled over her glasses. “You were expecting someone more like a game-show hostess, Mr., er…” She consulted the manila folder in front of her. “Mr. Wallin.”

Just as she said this, the woman looked up from Carl’s file, and Carl had to pretend that he hadn’t been wiping his sweaty palms on his slacks. “Did I expect glamour?” He shrugged. “I guess so. I’ve never been to one of these dating places before.”

“Naturally not, Mr. Wallin,” said the director blandly. Her expression suggested that all the clients said that, and that nothing could interest her less. “Please sit down. I am Ms. Erinyes.”

Carl blinked. “Is that Spanish?” His dating preferences tended more toward northern European ancestry.

“It is Greek. Ancient Greek, as a matter of fact.” Her jowls creased into a smile. “Now let’s talk about you.”

“I thought you people matched couples up by computer,” said Carl, frowning.

Another smile. “And so we do, Mr. Wallin, which is why I don’t look like a centerfold. I started this company with personality-matching software of my own design. So, you see, my specialty is not romance or even the social niceties. I am a psychologist and an expert in computer technology.”

Carl nodded his understanding. That made sense. Now that he thought about it, this Ms. Erinyes reminded him of a couple of people in his night class: the intellectual nerds. The ones whose whole lives revolved around computers. Even their friends were electronic pen pals. Of course Carl didn’t have any friends, either, but he still felt himself superior to the hackers. The one difference between Ms. Erinyes and his ungainly classmates was that she was female. There were no women in the class. Too bad; then he might not have needed a dating service. But, after all, the community college course was in electronics. Carl thought it was fitting that there were no women taking it.

With a condescending smile at the lard-assed misfit behind the desk, Carl flopped down in the chair and leaned back. “So how come you wanted to see me? I filled out the opscan form, just like the girl out there told me to, but I thought some of the questions were pretty off-the-wall. Like asking me to draw a woman. What was the point of that? Does it matter that I can’t draw?”

Ms. Erinyes had her nose back in the manila folder again. She was looking at Carl’s drawing: a stick figure with scrawled curls and a triangle for a skirt. The penciled woman had fingerless hands like catchers’ mitts, and no mouth. Her eyes were closed.

“The questions? Consider it quality control, Mr. Wallin,” she said without looking up. “Computers aren’t perfect, you know. Sometimes we like to check our results against good old human know-how. After all, love isn’t entirely logical, is it?”

Carl wanted to say, “No, but sex is,” but he thought this remark might count against him somehow, so he simply shrugged.

“Now, let’s see… Your medical form came back satisfactory, including the blood test. Good. Good. Can’t be too careful these days. I know you appreciate that.”

Carl nodded. The medical certification was one of the reasons he’d decided to come to Matchmakers.

“I see you had a head injury a few years ago. All well now, I hope?”

Carl nodded. “Fell off my motorcycle. Lucky I had a helmet on, or I’d have got worse than a bad concussion.”

“I expect you would have,” murmured Ms. Erinyes, dismissing motorcycles from the conversation. “Now, let’s see… You are five feet nine,” Ms. Erinyes was saying. “You weigh one hundred and fifty-eight pounds. You are twenty-eight years old, nominally Protestant, never married. You have brown hair and green eyes. Regular features. I’d say average-looking, would you?”

“I guess,” said Carl. It didn’t sound very complimentary.

“And do you have any pets?”

“No. I like things to be clean and neat. I never could see what the big deal was about animals.” He smiled, remembering. “My grandmother had a tomcat, though. We didn’t get along.”

Something in his voice made Ms. Erinyes look up, but all she said was, “I see that you were raised by your grandmother from the age of two.”

“What does it matter?” Carl Wallin was annoyed. “I thought women would be more interested in what kind of car I drive.”

“A 1977 AMC Concord?” Ms. Erinyes laughed merrily. “Well, some of them will be willing to overlook this, perhaps.”

Carl’s lips tightened. “Look, I don’t make a lot of money, okay? I work as a file clerk in an insurance office. But I’m going to night school to learn about these stinking computers, which is what you have to do to get a job anymore. I figure I’ll be doing a lot better someday. Besides, I don’t want a lousy gold digger.”

“Nobody does. Or they think they don’t. We have to wonder, though, when sixty-year-old gentlemen come in again and again asking for ninety-eight-pound blondes younger than twenty-eight.” She grinned. “We tell them to skip the question about hobbies and substitute a list of their assets.”

“I don’t need a movie star.”

“Well, that brings us to the big question. Just what kind of companion are you looking for?”

“Like it says on the form. A nice girl. She doesn’t have to be Miss America, but I don’t want anyone who-” He groped for a polite phrase, eyeing Ms. Erinyes with alarm.

“No, you don’t want somebody like me,” said Ms. Erinyes smoothly, as if there had been no offense taken. “I assure you that I don’t play this game, Mr. Wallin. I just watch. You want someone slender.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want one of those arty types either. You know, the kind with dyed black hair and claws for fingernails. The foreign-film-and-white-wine type. They make me puke.”

“We are not shocked to hear it,” said Ms. Erinyes solemnly.

Carl suspected that she was teasing him, but he saw no trace of a smile. “She should be clean and neat, and, you know, feminine. Not too much makeup. Not flashy. And not one of those career types, either. It’s okay if she works. Who doesn’t, these days? But I don’t want her thinking she’s more important than me. I hate that.”

For the first time, Ms. Erinyes looked completely solemn. “I think we can find the woman you are looking for,” she said. “There’s a rather special girl. We haven’t succeeded in matching her before, but this time… Yes, I think you’ve told me enough. One last question: have you always lived in this city?”

Carl looked puzzled. “Yes, I have. Why?”

“You didn’t go off to college-no, I see here that you didn’t attend college. No stint in the armed forces?”

“Nope. Straight out of high school into the rat race,” said Carl. “But why do you ask? Does it matter?”

“Not to the young lady, perhaps,” said Ms. Erinyes carefully. “But I like to have a clear picture of our clients before proceeding. Well, I think I have everything. It will take a day or two to process the information, and after that we’ll send you a card in the mail with the young lady’s name and phone number. It will be up to you to take it from there.”

Carl reached for his wallet, but the director shook her head. “You pay on your way out, Mr. Wallin. It’s our policy.”

He stared at the numbers on the apartment door, trying to swallow his rage. Being nervous always made him angry for some reason. But what was there to be anxious about? His shirt was clean; his shoes were shined; he had cash. He looked fine. A proper little gentleman, as Granny used to say when she slicked his hair down for church. But he didn’t want to think about Granny just now.

Who did this woman think she was, this Patricia Bissel, making him dress up for her inspection, and dangling rejection over his head? That’s all dating was. It was like some kind of lousy job interview: getting all dressed up and going to meet a total stranger who judges you without knowing you at all. He clenched his teeth at the thought of Patricia Bissel, who was probably sneering at him right now from behind her nice safe apartment door with the little peephole. His palms were sweating.

Carl leaned against the wall and took a few steadying breaths. Take it easy, he told himself. He had never even seen Patricia Bissel. She was just a name on a card from the dating service. He had thought that they were supposed to send you a couple of choices, maybe some background information about the person, but all that was on the card was just the name: Patricia Bissel.

It had taken him two days to get up the nerve to call her, and then her line had been busy. Playing hard to get, he thought. Damned little tease. Women liked making you sweat. When he had finally got through, he’d talked for less than a minute. Just long enough to tell her that the dating service had sent him, and to let her hem and haw and then suggest a meeting on Friday night at eight. Her place. It had taken her three tries to give the directions correctly.

She hadn’t asked anything about him, and he couldn’t think of anything about her that he wanted to know. Nothing that she could tell him anyway. He’d decide for himself when he saw her.

He was one minute early. He liked to be precise. That way she would have no excuse for keeping him waiting when he rang the bell, because they had agreed on eight o’clock. She couldn’t pretend not to be ready and keep him hanging around in the hall like a kid waiting to be let out of the closet. Like a poor, shaking kid waiting for his granny to let him out of the closet, and trying so hard not to cry, because if she heard him, she’d make him stay in there another half hour, and he had to go to the bathroom so bad… She had to let him out-in.

The door opened. He saw his fist still upraised, and he wondered how long he had pounded on it, or if she had just happened to open it in time. He tried to smile, mostly out of relief that the waiting was over. The woman smiled back.

She wasn’t exactly pretty, this Patricia Bissel, but she was slender. To the dating service people, that probably counted for a lot; real beauties did not need to use such desperate means to meet someone. Neither did successful guys. Maybe she was a bargain, considering. She was several inches shorter than he, with dull brown hair, worn indifferently long, and mild brown eyes behind rimless granny glasses. She offered a fleeting smile and a movement of her lips that might have been hello, and he edged past her into the shabby apartment, muttering his name, in case she hadn’t guessed who he was. Women could be really dense.

Carl glanced around at the battered sofa beneath the unframed kitten poster and the drooping plants on the metal bookcase. He didn’t see any dust, though. He sat down in the vinyl armchair, nodding to himself. He didn’t take off his coat and gloves because she hadn’t offered to hang them up for him. She probably just threw things anywhere, the slut.

Patricia Bissel hunched down in the center of the sofa, twisting her hands. “You’re not the first,” she said in a small voice.

Carl looked as if he hadn’t heard.

“Not the first one the dating service has sent over, I mean. I just thought I’d try it, but I’m not sure it’ll do any good. I don’t meet many people where I work. I’m a bookkeeper, and the only other people in my office are two other women-both grandmothers.”

Carl tried to look interested. “Did your co-workers suggest the dating service to you?”

She blushed. “No. I didn’t tell them. I didn’t tell anybody. Did you?”

“No.” What a stupid question, he thought. As if a man would admit to anybody that he had to have help in finding a woman. Why, if a man let people know a thing like that, they’d think he was some kind of spineless bed-wetting wimp who ought to be locked in a dark closet somewhere, and…

She kept lacing her fingers and twisting them, and she would only glance at him, never meeting his eyes. She was so tiny and quiet, it was hard to tell how old she was.

“You live here with your folks?” he asked.

“No. Daddy died, and Mama got married again. I don’t see her much. But it’s okay. We weren’t ever what you call close. And I don’t mind being by myself. I know I could have a nicer place if I had a roommate to chip in, but this is all right for me. I don’t mind that it isn’t fancy. A kitten would be nice, though.” She sighed. “They don’t allow pets.”

“No,” said Carl. He thought animals were filthy, disease-ridden vermin. They were sly and hateful, too. His granny’s cat scratched him once and drew blood, just because he tried to pet it, but he had evened that score.

Patricia was still talking in her mousy little whine. “Would you like to see my postcards? I have three albums of postcards, mostly animals. Some of them are kind of old. I get postcards at yard sales sometimes…” The whine went on and on.

Carl shrugged. At least she wasn’t going to give him the third degree about himself, asking if he’d gone to college or what kind of job he had. As if it were any of her business. And she couldn’t very well sneer at his car, considering the dump she lived in. And so what if his clothes were Kmart polyester? She was no prize herself, with her skinny bird legs and those stupid old-lady glasses. Those granny glasses. What made her think she was so special, going on about her stupid hobbies and never asking one word about him? What made her think she was better than him?

“I have one album of old Christmas cards and valentines,” she was saying. “Would you like to see that one? I keep it here in the coat closet.”

She edged past him as she got up to get the postcard album. Her wool skirt brushed against him like the mangy fur of a cat, and he shuddered. Her whining voice went on and on, like the meowing of an old lady’s cat, and the closet door creaked when she pulled it open. Carl smelled the mothballs. He felt a wave of dizziness as he stood up.

She was standing on tiptoe, trying to reach the closet shelf when Carl’s hands closed around her throat. It was such a scrawny little neck that his hands overlapped, and he laced his fingers as he choked her. He left her there in the dark closet, propped up against the back wall, behind a drab brown winter coat.

Before he left the apartment, he wiped a paper towel over everything he had touched, and he found the dating service card with his name on it propped up on the bookcase, and he took that with him. His palms weren’t sweating now. He felt hungry.

Carl was not so nervous this time. It had been several days since his “date,” and there had been no repercussions. He had slept well for the first time in months. The old stifling tension had eased up now, and he smiled happily at Ms. Erinyes. He had been here before. He tilted the straight-backed chair, his mouth still creased into a semblance of a smile.

Ms. Erinyes did not smile back. She was concentrating on the open folder. “I see you are applying for another match from our dating service, Mr. Wallin. Didn’t the first one satisfy you?”

Carl wondered whether he ought to say he hadn’t found the woman to his liking, or whether he was expected to know that she was dead. The newspaper item on her death had been a small paragraph, tucked away on an inside page. Police apparently had no clues in the case. He smiled again, wondering if they’d ever show photos of the crime scene anywhere. He’d like to have one to keep, to look at sometimes when the nightmares came. He thought of mentioning it, but perhaps Ms. Erinyes had not seen the death notice.

Carl realized that there was complete silence in the room. He had been asked a question. What was it? Oh, yes, had he liked the previous match arranged for him? Finally, he said, “No, I suppose it didn’t work out. That’s why I’m back.”

The director set down the folder and stared across the desk with raised eyebrows and an unpleasant smile. “Didn’t work out. Oh, Mr. Wallin, you’re too modest. We think it did work out. Very well, indeed.”

Carl kept his face carefully blank, wondering if it would look suspicious if he just got up and walked out. Slowly, of course, as if he couldn’t be bothered with such an inefficient business.

Ms. Erinyes went on talking in her steady, slightly ironic voice. “Perhaps it’s time we revealed a little more about Matchmakers to you, Mr. Wallin. Most of the time, you see, we are just what we say we are: a dating service, matching up poor lonely souls who are too afraid of AIDS or con artists to pick up strangers on their own. People don’t want to risk their lives or their life savings in the search for love. So we provide a safe referral. Ninety-nine percent of the time that is all we do; ninety-nine percent of the time, that is quite sufficient. But sometimes it is not enough. Sometimes, Mr. Wallin, we get a wolf asking to be let loose among the sheep.”

“Con men?”

“Occasionally. We can usually spot them by their psychological profiles. And of course we do a criminal record check. I don’t believe I mentioned that to you.”

“So what? I’ve never been arrested.”

“Quite true. You are a different kind of danger to our little flock.” Carl shook his head, but Ms. Erinyes tapped his folder emphatically. “Oh, yes, you are, Mr. Wallin. Our questionnaires are carefully designed to screen out abnormal personalities, and we are very seldom mistaken.”

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” said Carl. He wanted to walk out, but something about the fat lady’s stare transfixed him. She was a tough old bird. Like his grandmother.

“There’s quite a bit wrong with you, I’m afraid. Not that we’re blaming you, necessarily, but on this particular scavenger hunt, you come up with every single item: abuse in childhood, alcoholism in the family, lower-middle-class background, illegitimacy, cruelty to animals. Oh dear, even a head injury. And the answers you gave on our test questions were chilling. I’m afraid that you are a psychopath with a dangerous hatred for women. There’s no cure for that, you know. It’s very sad indeed.”

“What are you talking about?” said Carl. “I never-”

“Just so,” said Ms. Erinyes, nodding. “You never had. We know that. We checked your criminal record quite thoroughly. But the tendency is there, and apparently it is only a matter of time before the rage in you builds up past all containment, and then-you strike. An unfortunate, unbeatable compulsion on your part, perhaps, but all the same, some poor innocent girl pays the price of your maladjustment. Usually quite a few innocent girls. Ted Bundy killed more than thirty before he was stopped. But how could we stop you? The deadly potential was there, but, as you pointed out, you had done nothing.”

Carl glanced at the closed door that led to the receptionist’s office. Was anyone listening behind that door, waiting for him to make a fatal confession? He had to stay calm. He hadn’t been accused of anything yet. Besides, what could they prove with all this crap about psychology? There were no witnesses, no fingerprints. He had made sure of that. The girl had no friends. It had taken two days to find her body, and the police had no clue. Carl’s palms were sweating.

The director had taken a piece of paper out of the manila folder labeled WALLIN, C. It was Carl’s drawing of the stick figure woman with no mouth. “Not a very attractive opinion of women, is it, Mr. Wallin? I’m afraid there’s no way to alter your mind-set, though. We could not cure you, but we had to stop you. That’s the dilemma: how do we prevent you from slaughtering a dozen trusting young women in your rage? That is always the difficult part-making the sacrifice, for the good of the majority. We don’t like doing it, but in cases like yours, there’s really no alternative. So, we found a match for you.”

Carl sneered. “Her? Miss Mousy? I’m supposed to be a dangerous guy, and you pick her as my ideal woman?”

“Precisely. It was not a love match, you understand. Far from it. Although, I suppose it was ‘till death do us part,’ wasn’t it?”

Carl did not smile at this witticism. He thought of lunging across the desk, but Ms. Erinyes simply nodded toward the corner of the office, and he saw a video camera mounted near the ceiling. He had not noticed it before. Still, they had no evidence. Let the stupid woman talk.

“It was definitely a match,” Ms. Erinyes was saying. “Just as we get the occasional killer for a client, we also get from time to time his natural mate: the victim. Patricia Bissel was, as you say, a mouse. Shy, indifferent in looks and intelligence-and, most important, she was suicidal. Her childhood was quite sad, too. It is unfortunate that you could not have comforted each other, but I’m afraid you were both past that by the time you met. Patricia Bissel wanted to die, perhaps without even being aware of it herself. Did she mention any of her accidents to you?”

Carl shook his head.

“She fell down the stairs once and broke her ankle. She ran her mother’s car into a tree, when she was sober, in daylight on a dry, well-paved road. Twice she has been treated for an overdose of medication, because-she said-she had forgotten how much she’d taken.”

“She wanted to die?” said Carl.

“She was quite determined, I’m afraid, and through her own fatal blunders, she would have managed it, or-worse-she would have found someone else to do it for her. If not a psychotic blind date picked up in a bar, then an abusive husband or a drunken boyfriend. Since the accidents had failed, but the suicidal impulses were still strong, we concluded that cringing, whining little Patricia was going to make someone a murderer. Why not you?”

“Maybe she needed a doctor,” said Carl.

“She’d had them. Years of therapy, all financed by her long-suffering mother. Medicine can’t cure everybody, Mr. Wallin. Nice of you to care, though.”

Her sarcasm was evident now. Carl’s eyes narrowed. He was beginning to feel himself losing control of the interview. The tension was seeping back into his muscles, knotting his stomach, and making him sweat more profusely. “You can’t prove a thing, lady!”

Ms. Erinyes’s sigh seemed to convey her pity for anyone who could be so obtuse. “Did our brochure not assure you that we had years of experience, Mr. Wallin? Years.” She withdrew a half-letter-size envelope from his folder, and took out a stack of photographs. “We are not a shoestring operation, Mr. Wallin. You have been observed by a number of Matchmaker employees, who took care that you should not see them. Here is a nice telephoto shot of you entering Patricia Bissel’s apartment building. A concealed camera snapped this one of you knocking on the door of her apartment. Didn’t the number come out clearly? And there are the two of you in the doorway, together for the first and last time.”

Carl stuck out his hand, as if to make a grab for the pictures.

“Why, Mr. Wallin, how rude of me. Would you like this set of prints? The negatives and several other copies are, of course, elsewhere. You do look nice in this one. No? All right, then. Where was I? Oh, yes, the police. So far they have no leads in the Bissel case, but I think that if pointed in the right direction-your direction, that is-they could find some evidence to connect you to the murder.”

Carl had the closet feeling again. He knew that he must be a good boy and sit quietly, or else the feeling would never go away. “What are you going to do?” he asked in his most polite voice.

Ms. Erinyes put the pictures back in the envelope and slid it into Carl’s folder. “Ah, Mr. Wallin, there’s the question. What shall we do? We’ve spent the past week looking into your background, and there is no doubt that you have had a rough life. Your grandmother-well, let’s just say that some of your rage is entirely understandable. And it’s true that Patricia was self-programmed to die. So for now, we will do nothing.”

Carl exhaled in a long sigh of relief. He could feel his muscles relaxing.

The director shook her head. “It’s not that simple, Mr. Wallin. You understand, of course, that this cannot continue. You have no right to take the lives of people who don’t want to die. So we will keep the evidence, and we will watch you. If you ever strike again, I assure you that you will be caught immediately.”

Carl returned her stern gaze with an expressionless stare. The director seemed to understand. “Oh, no, Mr. Wallin, you won’t try to harm any of us here at the dating service. For you, it has to be passive, powerless women.”

She stood up to indicate that the interview was over. “Well, I think that’s all. You won’t be coming here again, but we will keep in touch. You were one of our greatest successes, Mr. Wallin.”

Carl blinked. “What do you mean?”

“You were going to be a serial killer, but we have stopped you. Oh-one last thing. We will keep your description in the active file of our computer. If anyone should come in with your particular problem-the urge to kill-and you happen to fit his or her victim profile…” She shrugged. “Who knows? You may find yourself matched up again.”