Free Live Free

Lonely Hearts

The lines at the post office were shorter than they had been. Barnes stood in one to buy a stamped envelope, then moved aside to address it. He put three completed order blanks inside, licked the flap, and dropped the envelope into a mail slot.

By the time he had done so, the line in front of the General Delivery window had disappeared. A clean-shaven fat man had replaced the bearded young clerk, and when Barnes asked for his mail, the fat man, after vanishing for some time, returned with a violet-coloured envelope. Barnes thanked him and retreated to the lobby, which was (however barren) far warmer than the street outside.

There he examined the letter with some curiosity. It was addressed to him, at Free’s, in a precise feminine hand and sealed with red wax. He could not recall having seen a letter sealed with wax before, though he had heard about them. The wax had been stamped with a heart. He slipped a finger under the flap of the envelope, and somewhat to his surprise the wax snapped. There was a letter and a snapshot of an oval-faced young woman with dark eyes and dark hair worn just off the shoulders. A strong face, as women’s faces go, Barnes decided. Calm and maybe smart.

That explained the letter-perfect typing, Barnes thought.

Barnes put the picture back into the envelope and put that in the breast pocket of his suit coat. An old woman was standing near the door looking at the gaudy posters advertising the Postal Service’s latest stamps: a dejected revolutionary soldier, General Wood, and Aaron Burr. Barnes edged past her.

“I don’t think they ought to have real people’s pictures on them,” she said. “Do you? It makes the rest of us feel like we’re not much.”

“Well, we aren’t,” Barnes said. As the big glass door shut behind him and the cold struck his cheeks, he added to himself, “Who cares about us?” Wind rattled the violet paper.

There was a telephone booth on the corner; he remembered going into it when he had left the post office earlier. He went again now, fishing for dimes in his pocket, but there were already coins in the return, and he used those instead.

“Bureau of Indian Affairs. Good Morning.”

It was a switchboard operator, of course. Barnes hesitated, then tried to sound like an old friend calling. “Let me talk to Robin.”

The telephone buzzed and clicked.

“Hello, this is Robin Valor.”

“Robin, this is Osgood—Ozzie—Barnes. You said it would be all right to call you at work. How about lunch?”

She gasped. “Mr. Barnes! I didn’t think you’d call.”

“Make it Ozzie, will you? A minute ago I called you Robin. I don’t want to have to go to Ms. Valor. It seems like a step backwards.”

“You really called! I can’t believe it.”

“After seeing that letter and that picture? Listen, Robin, any man on earth would have.”

“Tell me—No, I won’t ask. You said in your letter. If you’d lie in the letter, you’d lie right now.”

“Anything I put in my letter is true.”

“You’re not married?”

“I’m divorced. That was the truth when I wrote the letter, and it’s the truth now, okay? I’ve been divorced for two—hell, now it’s almost three years.”

“All right.”

She said nothing for a moment, but he sensed it was not the time to talk.

“Mr. Barnes—Ozzie—I’d love to have lunch with you, but I have some things I really absolutely have to do, and I only get forty-five minutes for lunch anyway.”

He laughed. “Would you believe I’ve already had lunch? A crazy business contact—he was going out of the city and wanted to get a bite before he left. I was planning just to drink coffee and look at you.”

“Is that true? You’ve already eaten lunch?”

“I swear.”

“You’re a salesman, aren’t you? That’s what you said when you wrote my friend.”

“That’s right.”

“You still live at that address? I suppose you must—you got my letter.”

“As a matter of fact, I’ve moved. I’m at the Consort temporarily. I had the post office hold my mail. Are you free tonight?”

“Yes … Mr. Barnes—Ozzie—I don’t want you to think I’m pushing you. But I live way out in the suburbs. Do you have a car?”

“I’ll get there, don’t worry. All you have to do is give me the address.”

“You don’t. I was afraid of that.”

“Not right now. I’m having it worked on. Transmission. I can rent one.”

“No. There’s no reason for you to drive way out there. I get off at five, but I’ll need a little time to pretty up. I’ll pick you up in front of your hotel at eight. We’ll have dinner someplace, then I’ll drop you off and drive myself home. You don’t mind?”

“Mind? It sounds fantastic!”

“That’s wonderful, Ozzie. I’m really looking forward to meeting you. Now, how will I know you? You’re medium height and have a mustache—isn’t that right?”

“Right. Tan topcoat, check suit.”

“I’ll be driving a gray Buick, Ozzie, and you’ve seen my picture. I think I’ll wear my red knit dress. See you at eight.”

She hung up, and after a moment so did he, rubbing his jaw. He picked up the handset again and dropped two dimes in the slot, then pushed buttons for the Consort. The telephone in Room 777 rang eight times, but no one answered it.

The wreck of Free’s house seemed unchanged. As on the previous night, a part of the facade still stood, though so much of it had been smashed that the whole structure looked like a huge dollhouse, both floors and the interiors of several rooms visible through the gaping hole. A little fresh snow had obscured the tracks the four of them had left. Barnes stared at it for a moment, then went into the ruined house, leaving his sample case in what had been the hall. For almost an hour he walked through the rooms and up and down the stair, often running his hands over the cold walls.

When at last he picked up his sample case and left, it was to walk diagonally across the street, where an old house of grimy stone, narrower and more decrepit even than Free’s, seemed to stand with shoulders hunched. A tarnished plate on the door read Dr. Makee. Barnes knocked.

There was no sound from inside and he looked for the bell, but the button was buried under layers of paint. From nowhere, it seemed, two small black boys had appeared to clamber over the long-necked yellow machine. Barnes knocked again.

This time there was the sound of feet, and the doorknob moved. After a moment, the door itself opened a bit and a round, red face topped by a Panama hat showed at the crevice. “You a patient?” The speaker had a bad head cold.

Barnes nodded.

There was a pause. “Me too. Want to come in?”

Barnes nodded again.

“You got a appointment?”

Barnes was maneuvering the toe of his shoe into the door. “No,” he said. “But I have to see the doctor. It’s important.”

The red-faced man nodded. “Well, if you don’t have a appointment, I guess you can come in.” He opened the door.

Barnes stepped inside and found himself in a dreary little waiting room. Nine worn chairs of heavy wood dotted with senile magazines stood against its walls. The walls themselves were covered with dark paper and darker pictures: a little girl who stood by anxiously while an elderly man listened for the heartbeat of her doll, dogs shooting pool.

The red-faced man sneezed and looked doubtfully at Barnes’s sample case. “You’re a patient?”

Barnes nodded.

“You’re not a salesman?”

“I am a salesman,” Barnes said. “But I’m not here to sell the doctor anything. I was calling on customers, and I stopped off to see him.”

The red-faced man hesitated for a moment, then sat down in one of the chairs. In addition to his Panama, he was wearing an aloha shirt, Bermuda shorts, and sandals.

“How about you?” Barnes asked pointedly.

“A mental patient—that’s what you mean, isn’t it? No, I’m not crazy. I’ve got a cold.”

Barnes was diplomatic. “I just thought maybe you lived here. I mean, you wouldn’t go out dressed like that.”

“Like hell,” the red-faced man said. “You want to know how far away I’m parked? A block and a half.” He pushed two fingers into his shirt pocket and produced a card case from which he extracted a business card. “Sim Sheppard’s the name. I represent Sunshine Estates down in Florida. You got your retirement home picked out yet?”

“I certainly do,” Barnes told him. “The little lady and I are going to Arizona—we already own a house there. She’s got asthma bad. I took her to Florida once, and she damn near died. They make you dress like that?”

For a moment Sim Sheppard seemed to ponder the question. “I wouldn’t say they make me—I could always quit or something, and really there’s no rule about it. It’s just that everybody does it, and you sell so much more that way. They see you coming up the walk like this and freezing to death, and they say to themselves, hey, he could be there now and he’d be perfectly comfortable dressed like that. Hey, I could be there and go around like that all the time.” Sheppard paused to wipe his nose on his bare forearm. “Or maybe they haven’t filled in a coupon or anything and you’re just coming in cold. Practically anybody will let you in the house when you’re standing out on the front step in shorts and beach shoes in the snow.”

“I guess I shouldn’t put you down,” Barnes told him. “You probably make twice what I do. You don’t wear long-johns with the legs and sleeves cut off or anything?”

“Absolutely not.” Sheppard unbuttoned his shirt and parted the front to show an orange T-shirt reading SAND IN MY SHOES COME TO SUNSHINE. “This isn’t some kind of trick, especially warm T-shirt either. That’s what people think sometimes. No little wires, no batteries.” He wiped his nose again and snuffled. “Just plain cotton, the kind you’d be wearing now yourself if you had accepted one of our invitations to visit free of all charge except for your plane fare. Two free nights at Sunshine Manor—swimming, fishing, tennis, and badminton, all meals included.”

“If my wife ever gets over her asthma, I’ll take you up on that,” Barnes said.

“Hats are my biggest problem. You want to wear one because they do cut the wind a little and help keep your head warm, but they can’t take the snow. Up until yesterday I had a coconut straw I liked a hell of a lot, but when I put it on this morning, half the brim came off in my hand. I had to dig this Panama out of the closet. You have to buy hats and everything in advance, you know. You can’t get this kind of a thing in the winter, at least not before Valentine’s.” Sheppard coughed.

“You have many guys working out of your agency?”

“Only three now. We started with seven before the weather turned cold. Winter is the best time to sell because that’s when everybody wishes he was the hell out of here. That’s what the manager tells us, and it’s God’s own truth. ‘When the weather gets cold, the bold gets going and the gold gets flowing.’ But as soon as it drops below freezing we’ll lose somebody sure as hell, and when it gets below zero we always lose one or two more.” He pulled a dirty handkerchief from the hip pocket of his shorts and blew his nose.

“You don’t happen to know a lady called Mrs. Baker?” Barnes asked.

“Yeah, I think so. Old lady that owns a cat, lives across the street. I was in her place yesterday. Why do you want to know?”

“Just wondered.” Barnes glanced again at the card he had been given. “Salary plus commission?”

Sheppard shook his head. “Straight commission.”

“Oh.” Barnes stuck the card into a pocket.

“You?”

“Stock Novelties Incorporated,” Barnes said. “Straight commission.”

“Times are tough, good buddy.”

Barnes nodded, and for a while they sat without speaking, each locked in his own private hell. The mutter of the doctor’s voice came faintly from the examination room beyond, rising and falling as though he lectured to a class of one.

Barnes found a tattered National Geographic. He did not feel like reading (he never did any more), but he opened it and flipped through the pictures. They showed an Africa without the clutter of cities and the oppression of murder. Wide, unpeopled plains swept down to sullen brown lakes; there were elephants and rhino.

A shriveled, white-haired woman came out of the examination room, and Sheppard leaned over to whisper, “I ought to tell her about our Eternity Cottages—a durable home for all of life, an eternal resting place when life is gone. The beds convert, so your kids can move back in with you if they want to, when their time comes.”

The old doctor looked out, glancing from Barnes to Sheppard. He wore a white surgical coat and had a doughnut-shaped reflector strapped to his head. Sheppard rose and went in. After a time, Barnes heard him cough.