The New Black Mask Quarterly (No 2)

Jim Thompson’s admirers tout his twenty-nine novels, published in paperback between 1942 and 1973 as unequaled in postwar American fiction. His work has become popular among French cinéma noir directors fascinated by existential American violence. The Ripoff, a work in progress at the time of Thompson’s death, is published in NBMQ for the first time. This installment is the second of four.

The story thus far: Britton Rainstar, the impecunious son of a disgraced American Indian professor, lives in the rundown mansion that formerly belonged to his family, on the edge of an encroaching garbage dump. He is recruited to write for the PXA Holding Company by Manuela Aloe, who becomes his lover. Then inexplicable — and frightening — things begin to happen.

8

More than a month went by before I met Patrick Xavier Aloe. It was at a party at his house, and Manny and I went to it together.

Judging by his voice, the one telephone conversation I had had with him, I supposed him to be a towering giant of a man. But while he was broad-shouldered and powerful looking, he was little taller than Manny.

“Glad to finally meet up with you, Britt, baby.” He beamed at me out of his broad, darkly Irish face. “What have you got under your arm there? One of Manny’s pizzas?”

“He has the complete manuscript of a pamphlet,” Manny said proudly. “And it’s darned good, too!”

“It is, huh? What d’ya say, Britt? Is she telling the truth or not?”

“Well...” I hesitated modestly. “I’m sure there’s room for improvement, but—”

“We’ll see, we’ll see,” he broke in, laughing. “You two grab a drink and come on.”

We followed him through the small crowd of guests, all polite and respectable-appearing, but perhaps a little on the watchful side. We went into the library, and Pat Aloe waved us to chairs, then sat down behind the desk, carefully removed my manuscript from its envelope, and began to read.

He read rapidly but intently, with no skimming or skipping. I could tell that by his occasional questions. In fact, he was so long in reading that Manny asked crossly if he was trying to memorize the script, adding that we didn’t have the whole goddamned evening to spend at his stupid house. Pat Aloe told her mildly to shut her goddamned mouth and went back to his reading.

I had long since become used to Manny’s occasionally salty talk and learned that I was not privileged to respond in kind. But Pat clearly was not taking orders from her. Despite his air of easygoing geniality, he was very much in command of Aloe activities. And, I was to find, he tolerated no violation of his authority.

When he had finished the last page of my manuscript, he put it with the others and returned them all to their envelope. Then he removed his reading glasses, thoughtfully massaged the bridge of his nose, and at last turned to me with a sober nod.

“You’re a good man, Britt. It’s a good job.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you, very much.”

Manny said words were cheap. How about a bonus for me? But Pat winked at her and waved her to silence.

“Y’know, Britt, I thought this deal would turn out the same kind of frammis that Manny’s husband pulled. Banging the bejesus out of her and pissing off on the work. But I’m glad to admit I was wrong. You’re A-OK, baby, and I’ll swear to it on a stack of Bibles!”

Fortunately, I didn’t have to acknowledge the compliment — such as it was — since Manny had begun cursing him luridly after his overripe appraisal of her late husband. Pat’s booming laugh drowned out her protest.

“Ain’t she a terror though, Britt? Just like the rest of her family, when she had a family. Her folks didn’t speak to mine for years, just because my pop married an Irisher.”

“Just don’t you forget that bonus,” Manny said. “You do and it’ll be your big red ass.”

“Hell, take care of it yourself,” Pat said. “Make her come across heavy, Britt, baby. Hear me?”

I mumbled that I would do it. Grinning stiffly, feeling awkward and embarrassed to a degree I had never known before. He walked out of the library between the two us, a hand on each of our shoulders. Then, when we were at the door and had said our goodnight, he laughingly roared that he expected me to collect heavy loot from Manny.

“Make her mind, Britt. ’S only kind of wife to have. Tell her you won’t marry her until she comes through with your bonus!”

Marry her?

Marry her!

Well, what did I expect?

I tottered out of the house with Manny clinging possessively to my arm. And there was a coldish lump in my throat, a numbing chill in my spine.

We got in the car, and I drove away. Manny looked at me speculatively and asked why I was so quiet. And I said I wasn’t being quiet, and then I said. What was wrong with being quiet? Did I have to talk every damned minute to keep her happy?

Ordinarily, popping off to her like that would have gotten me a chewing out or maybe a sharp slap. But tonight she said soothingly that of course I could be silent whenever I chose, because whatever I chose was also her choice.

“After all, we’re a team, darling. Not two people, but a couple. Maybe we have our little spats, but there can’t be any serious division between us.”

I groaned. I said, “Oh, my God, Manny! Oh, Mary and Jesus and his brother, James!”

“What’s the matter, Britt? Isn’t that the way you feel?”

What I felt was that I was about to do something wholly irrelevant and unconstructive. Like soiling my clothes. For I was being edged closer and closer to the impossible. I mumbled something indistinguishable — something noncommittally agreeable. Because I knew now that I had to keep talking. Only in talk, light talk, lay safety.

Luckily, Manny indirectly threw me a cue by pushing the stole back from her shoulders and stretching her legs out in front of her. An action that tantalizingly exhibited her gold lamé evening gown; very short, very low-cut, very tight-seeming on her small, ultrafull body.

“It looks like it was painted on you,” I said. “How in the world did you get into it?”

“Maybe you’ll find out” — giving me a look. “After all, you have to take it off of me.”

“We shall see,” I said, desperate for words. For any kind of light talk. “We shall certainly see about this.”

“Well, hurry up, for gosh sake! I’ve got to pee.”

“Oh, my God,” I said. “Why didn’t you go before we left the house?”

“Because I needed help with my dress, darn it!”

I got her to the place. The place that had become our place.

I got her up the room and out of her clothes and onto the sink.

With no time to spare, either.

She cut loose and continued to let go at length. Sighing happily with the simple pleasure of relieving herself. She was such an earthy little thing, and I suppose few things are as good as a good leak when one has held in to the bursting point.

Talking, talking. Even after we were in bed and she was pressed tightly against me in orgasmic surgings.

9

I was physically ill by the time I got home that night. Sick with fear that the subject of marriage would be raised again, that it would be tossed to me like a ball, and that I would not be allowed to bat it aside or let it drop.

Repeatedly, I staggered out of my bed and went to the bathroom. Over and over, I went down on my knees and vomited into the bowl. Gagging up the bile of fear, I shivered and sweated with its burning chill. I tried to blame it on an overactive imagination, but I couldn’t lie to myself. I’d lied once too often when I lied to Manny — about the one thing I should never have lied about. And the fact that the lie was one of omission, rather than commission, and that lying was more or less a way of life with me would not lift me off the hook a fraction of an inch. Not with Manuela Aloe. She would regard my lie as inexcusable — as, of course, it was.

In saying that I was unmarried on my PXA loan application, I hadn’t meant to harm anyone. (I have never meant to harm anyone with what I did and didn’t do.) It was just a way of avoiding troublesome questions re the status of my marriage: were my wife and I living together; and if not, why not; and so on.

But I knew that Manny depended on that application for her information about me. And I could have and should have set her straight. For I knew — must have known — that I was not being treated with such extravagant generosity to buy Manny a passing relationship. She wanted a husband. One with good looks, good breeding, and a good name — the kind not easily found in her world or any world. Then she had found me and oh so clearly demonstrated the advantages of marriage to her, and I, tacitly, had agreed to the marriage. She had been completely honest with me, and I had been just as completely dishonest with her. And, now, by God—!

Now?...

But a man can be afraid just so much. (I say that as an expert on being afraid.) When he reaches that limit, he can fear no more. And so, at last, my pajamas wet with cold sweat, I returned to bed and fell into restless sleep.

In the morning, Mrs. Olmstead brought me toast and coffee and asked suspiciously if I had mailed a letter she had given me yesterday. I said that I had, for she was always giving me letters to mail, and I always remembered to mail. Or almost always. She nagged me, with increasing vehemence, about the imminent peril of rats. And I swore I would do something about them, too; and, mumbling and grumbling, she at last left me alone.

I lay back down and closed my eyes... and Manny came into my room, a deceptive smile on her lovely face. For naturally, although she had learned that I was married, she showed no sign of displeasure.

“But it’s all right, darling, and I understand perfectly. You needed the money, and you were dying to sleep with me. And — here, have a drink of this nice coffee I fixed for you.”

“No! It’s poisoned, and — yahh!”

“Oh, I’m so sorry, dear! I wouldn’t have spilled it on you for the world. Let me just wipe it off—”

“Yeow! You’re scratching my eyes out! Get away, go away...!”

My eyes snapped open.

I sat up with a start.

Mrs. Olmstead was bent over me. “My goodness, goodness me!” she exclaimed. “What’s the matter, Mr. Rainstar?”

“Nothing; must’ve been having a nightmare,” I said sheepishly. “Was I making a lot of racket?”

“Were you ever! Sounded like you was scared to death.” Shaking her head grumpily, she turned toward the door. “Oh, yeah, your girlfriend wants you.”

“What?” I said.

“Reckon she’s your girlfriend, the way you’re always pawing at each other.”

“But — you mean Miss Aloe?” I stammered. “She’s here?”

“Course she’s not here. Don’t see her, do you?” She gestured exasperatedly. “Answer the phone, afore she hangs up!”

I threw on a robe and ran downstairs.

I grabbed up the phone and said hello.

“Boo, you pretty man!” Manny laughed teasingly. “What’s the matter with you, anyway?”

“Matter?” I said. “Uh, what makes you think anything’s the matter?”

“I thought you sounded rather gruff and strained. But never mind. I want to see you. Be at our place in about an hour, okay?”

I swallowed heavily. Had she decided that something was wrong? That I was hiding something?

“Britt?...”

“Why?” I said. “What did you want to see me about?”

“What?” I could almost see her frown. “What did I want to see you about?”

I apologized hastily. I said I’d just gone to sleep after tossing and turning all night, and I seemed to be coming down with the flu. “I’d love to see you, Manny, child, but I think it would be bad for you. The way I’m feeling, the farther you keep away from me the better.”

She said “Oh” disappointedly but agreed that it was probably best not to see me. She was leaving town for a couple of weeks — some business for Uncle Pat. Naturally, she would have liked a session with me before departing. But since I seemed to be coming down with something, and it wouldn’t do for her to catch it...

“You just take care of yourself, Britt. Get to feeling hale and hearty again, because you’ll have to be when I get back.”

“I’ll look forward to it,” I said. “Have a good trip, baby.”

“And, Britt. I put a two-thousand-dollar bonus check in the mail to you.”

“Oh, that’s too much,” I said. “I’m really overpaid as it is, and—”

“You just shut up!” she said sternly, then laughed. “Bye, now, darling. I gotta run.”

“Bye to you,” I said. And we hung up.

I had sent Connie three thousand dollars out of my first PXA check and another three out of the second, explaining that I’d gotten on to something good, though probably temporary, and that I’d send her all I could as long as it lasted. After all, I hadn’t sent much before, lacking much to send, and it was a sort of conscience salve for my affair with Manny.

When my bonus arrived, I mailed Connie a check for the full two thousand. Then, after waiting a few days, until I was sure she had got it, I called her.

Britt Rainstar, stupe deluxe, figured that getting so much scratch — eight grand in less than two months — would put her in a fine mood. Bonehead Britt, sometimes known as the Peabrain Pollyanna, reasoned that all that loot would buy reasonableness and tolerance from Connie. Which just goes to show you. Yessir, that shows you, and it shows something about him, too. (And please stop laughing, dammit!)

For she was verbally leaping all over me, almost before I had asked her how she was feeling.

“I want to know where you got that money, Britt. I want to know how much more you got — a full and complete accounting, as Daddy says. And don’t tell me that you got it from Hemisphere, because we’ve already talked to them and they said that you didn’t. They said that you had severed your association with them. So you tell me where you’re getting the money and exactly how much you’re getting. Or, by golly, you’ll wish you had.”

“I see,” I said numbly, surprised, though God knows I should not have been. I was always surprised, when being stupid, that people thought I was stupid. “I think I really see for the first time, namely that you and your daddy are a couple of miserable piles of shit.”

“Who from and how much? I either find out from you. Mister Britton Rainstar, or— What? What did you say to me?”

“Never mind,” I said. “I tell you the source of the money, and you check to see if I’m telling the truth — as to the quantity, that is. That’s your plan, isn’t it?”

“Well...” She hesitated. “But I have a right to know! I’m your wife.”

“Do you and are you?” I said. “A wife usually trusts her husband when he treats her as generously as I’ve been treating you.”

That made her hesitate again, brought her to a still-longer pause.

“Well, all right,” she said at last, grudgingly defensive. “I certainly don’t want to make you lose your job, and... and... well. Hemisphere had no right to get huffy about it! Anyway, just look at what you did to me!”

“I didn’t do anything to you, Connie. It was an accident.”

“Well, anyway,” she said. “Just the same!”

I didn’t say anything. Simply waited. After a long silence, I heard her take a deep breath, and she spoke with an incipient sob.

“I s-suppose you want a divorce now. You wouldn’t talk to me this way if you didn’t.”

“Divorce makes sense, Connie. You’ll get just as much money, as if we were married, and I know you can’t feel any great love for me.”

“Then you do want a divorce?”

“Yes. It’s the best thing for both of us, and—”

“WELL, YOU JUST TRY AND GET ONE!” she yelled. “I’ll have you in jail for attempted murder so fast, it’ll make your head swim! You arranged that accident that almost killed me, and the case isn’t closed yet! They’re ready to reopen it anytime Daddy and I say the word. And, golly, you try and get a divorce, and, by gosh—!”

“Connie,” I said. “You surely can’t mean that!”

“You’ll see! You’ll see if I don’t. Just let me hear one more word out of you about a divorce, and... and... I’ll show you who’s a pile of shit!”

She slammed the phone down, completing any damage to my eardrum that had not been accomplished by her banshee scream. Of course, I’d hardly expected her to bedeck me with a crown of olive leaves or to release a covey of white doves to flutter about my head. But a threat to have me prosecuted for attempted murder was considerably more than I had expected.

At any rate, a divorce was impossible unless she agreed to it. Which meant that it was impossible period. Which meant that I could not marry Manny.

Which meant?...

10

She, Manny, was back in town two weeks later, and she called me immediately upon her arrival. She suggested that I pick her up at the airport and go immediately to our place. I suggested that we have dinner and a talk before we did anything else. So, a little puzzled and reluctant, she agreed to that.

The restaurant was near the city waterworks lake. There was only a handful of patrons in it, this early-evening hour, and they gradually drifted out as I talked to Manny, apologizing and explaining. Explaining the inexplicable and apologizing for the inexcusable.

Manny said not a word throughout my recital — merely stared at me expressionlessly over her untouched dinner.

At last, I had nothing more to say, if I had ever had anything to say. And then, finally, she spoke, pulling a fringed silk shawl around her shoulders and rising to her feet.

“Pay the check and get out of here.”

“What? Oh, well, sure,” I said, dropping bills on the table as I also stood up. “And, Manny, I want you to know that—”

“Get! March yourself out to the car!”

We got out of the restaurant, with Manny clinging to my arm, virtually propelling me by it. She helped me into the car, instead of vice versa. Then she got in, into the rear, sitting immediately behind me.

I heard her purse snap open. She said, “I’ve got a gun on you, Britt. So you get out of line just a little bit and you won’t like what happens to you.”

“M-Manny,” I quavered. “P-please don’t—”

“Do you know where I went while I was out of town?”

“N-no.”

“Do you want to know what I did?”

“Uh, n-no,” I said. “I don’t think I do.”

“Start driving. You know where.”

“But — you mean our place? W-why do you want to—”

“Drive!”

I drove.

We reached the place. She made me walk ahead of her, inside and up the stairs and into our room.

I heard the click of the door lock. And then Manny asked if I’d heard a woman being slapped on the first day I went to her office.

I said that I had — or, rather, a recording of same; I had grown calmer by now, with a sense of fatalism.

“You heard her, Britt. She left the office by my private elevator.”

I nodded, without turning around. “You wanted me to hear her. It was arranged, like the scene with Albert after you’d left that night. I was being warned that I’d better fly straight or else.”

“You admit you were warned, then?”

“Yes. I tried to kid myself that it was all an unfortunate accident. But I knew better.”

“But you went right ahead and deceived and cheated me. Did you really think I’d let you get away with it?”

I shook my head miserably, said I wanted to make things right insofar as I could. I’d give the car back and what little money I had left. And I’d sell everything I owned — clothes, typewriter, books, everything — to raise the rest. Anything she or PXA had given me, I’d give back, and... and—

“What about all the screwing I gave you? I suppose you’ll give that back, too!”

“No,” I said. “I’m afraid I can’t do anything about that.”

“Oh, sure you can,” she said. “You can give me a good one right now.”

And I whirled around, and she collapsed in my arms, laughing.

“Ahhh, Britt, darling! If you could have seen your face! You were really frightened, weren’t you? You really thought I was angry with you, didn’t you?”

“Of course I thought it!” I said, and, hugging her, kissing her, I swatted her bottom. “My God! The way you were talking and waving that gun around—!”

“Gun? Look, no gun!” She held her purse open for examination. “I couldn’t be angry with you, Britt. What reason would I have? You were married, and you couldn’t get unmarried. But you just about had to have the job, and you wanted me. So you did the only thing you could. I understand perfectly, and don’t you give it another thought, because nothing is changed. We’ll go on just like we were; and everything’s all right.”

It was hard to believe that things would be all right. Knowing her as well as I did, I didn’t see how they could be. As the weeks passed, however, my suspicions were lulled — almost, almost leaving me — for there was nothing whatsoever to justify them. I even found the courage to criticize her about her language, pointing out that it was hardly suitable to one with two college degrees. I can’t say that it changed anything, but she acknowledged the criticism with seeming humility and solemnly promised to mend her ways.

So everything was all right — ostensibly. The work went on and went well. Ditto for my relationship with Manny. No one could have been more loving or understanding. Certainly no one, no other woman, had ever been as exciting. Over and over, I told myself how lucky I was to have such a woman. A wildly sensuous, highly intelligent woman who also had money and was generous with it, thus freeing me from the niggling and nagging guilt feelings that had heretofore hindered and inhibited me.

It is a fallacy that people who do not obtain the finer things in life have no appreciation for them. Actually, no one likes good things more than a bum — and I say this, knowing whereof I speak. I truly appreciated Manny after all the sorry b-axes that had previously been my lot. I truly appreciated everything she gave me, all the creature comforts she made possible for me, in addition to herself.

Everything wasn’t just all right, as she had promised. Hell, everything was beautiful.

Until today.

The Day of the Dog...

I lay on my back, bracing myself against any movement that would cause him to attack.

I ached hideously, then grew numb from lack of movement; and shadows fell on the blinded windows. It was late afternoon. The sun was going down, and now — my legs jerked convulsively. They jerked again, even as I was trying to brace them. And now I heard a faint rustling sound: the dog tensing himself, getting ready to spring.

“D-don’t! Please don’t!”

Laughter. Vicious, maliciously amused laughter.

I rubbed my eyes with a trembling hand, brushed the blinding sweat from them.

The dog was gone. The manager of the place, the mulatto woman, stood at the foot of the bed. She jerked a thumb over her shoulder in a contemptuous gesture of dismissal.

“All right, prick. Beat it!”

“W-what?” I sat up shakily. “What did you say?”

“Get out. Grab your rags and drag ass!”

“Now, listen, you — you can’t—”

“I can’t what?”

“Nothing,” I said. “If you’ll just leave, so that I can get dressed...”

She said I’d get dressed while she was there, by God, because she wanted to look at the bed before I left. She figured a yellow bastard like me had probably shit in it. (And where had I heard such talk before — the unnerving, ego-smashing talk of terror?)

“Jus’ so damned scared,” she jeered. “Prob’ly shit the bed like a fucking baby. You did, I’m gonna make you clean it up.”

I got dressed, with her watching.

I waited, head hanging like a whipped animal, while she jerked the sheets back, examined them, and then sniffed them.

“Okay,” she said at last. “Reckon you got all your shit in you. Still full of it, like always.”

I turned and started for the door.

“Don’t you never come back, hear? I see your skinny ass again, I lays a belt on it!”

I got out of the place — so fast that I fell rather than walked down the stairs, almost crashed through the street door in attempting to open it the wrong way.

After the dog, I had thought nothing more could be done to me, that I was as demoralized as a man could get. But I was wrong. The vicious abuse of the mulatto woman had shaken me in a way that fear could not. Or perhaps it was the fear and the abuse together.

I drove blindly for several minutes, oblivious to the hysterical horn blasts of other cars, the outraged shouts of their drivers, and the squealing of brakes. Finally, however, when I barely escaped a head-on collision with a truck, I managed to pull myself together sufficiently to turn in to the curb and park.

I was on an unfamiliar street, one that I could not remember. I was stopped in front of a small cocktail lounge. Wiping my face and hands dry of sweat, I combed my hair and went inside.

“Yes, sir?” The bartender beamed in greeting, pushing a bowl of pretzels toward me. “What’ll it be, sir?”

“I think I’ll have a—”

I broke off at the sudden insistent jangling from a rear telephone booth. The bartender nodded toward it apologetically and said, “If you’ll excuse me, sir?...” And I told him to go ahead.

He hurried from behind the bar and back to the booth. He entered and closed the door. He remained inside for two or three minutes. Then he came back, again stood in front of me.

“Yes, sir?”

“A martini,” I said. “Very dry. Twist instead of olive.”

He mixed the drink, poured it with a flourish. He punched numbers on the tabulating cash register, extended a check as he placed the glass before me.

“One fifty, sir. You pay now.”

“Well—” I hesitated, shrugged. “Why not?”

I handed him two dollar bills. He said, “Exact change, sir.”

And he picked up the drink and threw it in my face.

11

He was a lucky man. As I have said, my general easygoing and ah-to-hell-with-it attitude is marred by an occasional brief but violent flare-up. And if I had not been so completely beaten down by the dog and the mulatto woman, he would have gotten a broken arm.

But, of course, he had known I had nothing to strike back with. Manny, or the person who had made the call for her, had convinced him of the fact. Convinced him that he could pick up a nice piece of change without the slightest danger to himself.

I ran a sleeve across my face. I got up from my stool, turned, and started to leave. Then I stopped and turned back around, gave the bartender a long, hard stare. I wasn’t capable of punching him, but there was something that I could do. I could make sure that there was a connection between the thrown drink and the afternoon’s other unpleasantries — that, briefly, his action was motivated and not mere coincidence.

“Well?” His eyes flickered nervously. “Want somethin’?”

“People shouldn’t tell you to do things,” I said, “that they’re afraid to do themselves.”

“Huh? What’re you drivin’ at?”

“You mean, that was your own idea? You weren’t paid to do it?”

“Do what? I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”

“All right,” I said. “I’ll tell some friends of mine what a nice guy you are.”

I nodded coldly, again turned toward the door.

“Wait!” he said. “Wait a minute... uh... sir? It was a joke, see? Just a joke. I wasn’t s’posed t’ tell ya, an’ — I can’t tell ya nothin’ else! I just can’t! But... but—”

“It’s all right,” I said. “You don’t need to.”

I left the bar.

I drove home.

I parked in the driveway near the porch. Another car wheeled up behind mine, and Manny got out, smiling gaily as she came trotting up to me and hooked an arm through mine.

“Guess what I’ve got for you, darling. Give you three guesses!”

“A cobra,” I said, “and two stink bombs.”

“Silly! Let’s go inside, and I’ll show you.”

“Let’s,” I said grimly, “and I’ll show you.”

We went up the steps and across the porch, Manny hugging my arm, smiling up into my face. The very picture of a woman with her love. Mrs. Olmstead heard us enter the house and hurried in from the kitchen.

“My, my!” She chortled, beaming at Manny. “I swear you get prettier every day, Miss Aloe.”

“Oh, now.” Manny laughed. “I couldn’t look half as nice as your dinner smells. Were you inviting me to stay — I hope?”

“Course I’m inviting you! You betcha!” Mrs. Olmstead nodded vigorously. “You an’ Mr. Rainstar just set yourself right down, an’—”

“I’m not sure I’ll be here for dinner,” I said. “I suspect that Miss Aloe won’t be, either. Please come upstairs, Manuela.”

“But looky here, now!” Mrs. Olmstead protested. “How come you ain’t eatin’ dinner? How come you let me go to all the trouble o’ fixin’ it if you wasn’t going to eat?”

“I’ll explain later. Kindly get up those stairs, Manuela.”

I pointed sternly. Manny preceded me up the stairs, and I stood aside, waving her into my bedroom ahead of me. Then I closed and locked the door.

I was trembling a little — shaking with the day’s pent-up fear and frustration, its fury and worry. Inwardly, I screamed to strike out at something, the most tempting target being Manny’s plump little bottom.

So I wheeled around, my palm literally itching to connect with her flesh. But instead, Manny’s soft mouth connected with mine. She had been waiting on tiptoe, waiting for me to turn. And now, having kissed me soundly, she urged me down on the bed and sat down at my side.

“I don’t blame you for being miffed with me, honey. But I really couldn’t help it. I honestly couldn’t, Britt!”

“You couldn’t, hmm?” I said. “You own the place, and that orange-colored bitch works for you, but you couldn’t—”

“Wh-aat?” She stared at me incredulously. “Own it — our place, you mean? Why, that’s crazy! Of course I don’t own it, and that woman certainly does not work for me!”

“But, dammit to hell—! Wait a minute,” I said. “What did you mean when you said you didn’t blame me for being miffed with you?”

“Well... I thought that was why you were angry. Because I didn’t come back from the bathroom.”

“Oh,” I said. “Oh, yeah. Why didn’t you, anyway?”

“Because I couldn’t, that’s why. I had a little problem, one of those girl things, and it had to be taken care of in a hurry...” So she’d hailed a cab and headed for the nearest drugstore. But it didn’t have what she needed, and she’d had to visit two other stores before she found one that did. And by the time she’d returned to our place and taken care of the problem...

“You might have waited, Britt. If you’d only waited and given me a chance to explain — but never mind.” She took a three-thousand-dollar check from her purse and handed it to me. “Another bonus for you, dear.” She smiled placatingly. “Isn’t that nice?”

“Very,” I said, folding it and tucking it in my pocket. “I’m going to keep it.”

“Keep it? Why, of course you are. I—”

“I’m keeping the car, too,” I said.

“Why not? It’s your car.”

“But my employment with PXA is finished as of right now. And if you want to know why — as if you didn’t already know! — I’ll tell you,” I said. “And if I catch any more crap like I caught today, I’ll tell you what I’ll do about that, too!”

I told her in detail — the why and the what — with suitable embellishments and flourishes. I told her in more detail than I had planned and with considerable ornamentation. For while she heard me out in silence and without change of expression, I had a strong hunch that she was laughing at me.

When I had at last finished, out of breath and vituperation, she looked at me silently for several moments. Then she shrugged and stood up.

“I’ll run along now. Goodbye and good luck.”

I hadn’t expected that. I don’t know what I had expected, but not that.

“Well, look,” I said. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

“I said good-bye and good luck. I see no point in saying anything else.”

“But — dammit—! Well, all right!” I said. “Goodbye and good luck to you. And take your stinking bonus check with you!”

I thrust it on her — shoved it into her hand and folded her fingers around it. She left the room, and I hesitated, feeling foolish and helpless, that I had made a botch of everything. Then I started after her, stopping short as I heard her talking with Mrs. Olmstead.

“...loved to have dinner with you, Mrs. Olmstead. But in view of Mr. Rainstar’s attitude...”

“...just mean, he is! Accused me of bein’ sloppy. Says I’m always sprinklin’ rat poison on everything. O’ course, I don’t do nothin’ of the kind...”

“He should be grateful to you! Most women would leave at the sight of a rat.”

“Well... just a minute, Miss Aloe. I’ll walk you to your car!”

It was several minutes before Mrs. Olmstead came back into the house. I waited until I heard her banging around in the kitchen, then went cautiously down the stairs and moved on tiptoe toward the front door.

“Uh-hah!” Her voice arrested me. “Whatcha sneakin’ out for? Ashamed because you was so nasty to Miss Aloe?”

She had been lurking at the side of the staircase, out of sight from the upstairs. Apparently she had rushed in and hidden there after making the racket in the kitchen.

“Well?” She grinned at me with mocking accusation, hands on her skinny old hips. “Whatcha got to say for yourself?”

“What am I sneaking out for?” I said. “What have I got to say for myself? Why, goddammit—!” I stormed toward the door, cursing and fuming, ashamed and more furious with myself than I was with her. “And another thing!” I yelled. “Another thing, Mrs. Olmstead! You’d better remember what your position is in this house if you want to keep it!”

“Now you’re threatenin’ me.” She began to sob noisily. “Threatenin’ a poor old woman! Just as mean as you can be, that’s what you are!”

“I’m not either mean!” I said. “I don’t know how to be mean, and I wouldn’t be if I did know how. I don’t like mean people, and — goddammit, will you stop that goddam bawling?”

“If you wasn’t mean, you wouldn’t always forget to mail my letters! I found another one this mornin’ when I was sending your clothes to the cleaners! I told you it was real important, an’—!”

“Oh, God, I am sorry,” I said. “Please forgive me, Mrs. Olmstead.”

I ran out the door and down the steps. But she was calling to me before I could get out of earshot.

“Your dinner, Mr. Rainstar. It’s all ready and waiting.”

“Thank you very much,” I said. “I’m not hungry now, but I’ll eat some later.”

“It’ll be all cold. You better eat now.”

“I’m not hungry now. I’ve had a bad day, and I want to take a walk before I eat.”

There was more argument, much more, but she finally slammed the door.

Not that I ever felt much like eating Mrs. Olmstead’s cooking, but I certainly had no appetite for it tonight. And, of course, I felt guilty for not wanting to eat and having to tell her that I didn’t. Regardless of whether something is my fault — and why should I have to eat if I didn’t want to? — I always feel that I am in the wrong.

Along with feeling guilty, I was worried. About what Manny had done or had arranged to have done, its implications of shrewdness and power. And the fact that I had figuratively flung three thousand dollars in her face, as well as cutting myself off from all further income. At the time, I had felt that I had to do it. But what about the other categorical imperative that faced me? What about the absolute necessity to send money to Connie? To do it or else?

Well, balls to it, I thought, mentally throwing up my hands. I had told Mrs. Olmstead that I wanted to take a walk, so I had better be doing it.

I took a stroll up and down the road, a matter of a hundred yards or so. Then I walked around to the rear of the house and the weed-grown disarray of the backyard.

A couple of uprights of the gazebo had rotted away, allowing the roof to topple until it was standing almost on edge. The striped awning of the lawn swing hung in faded tatters, and the seats of the swing lay splintered in the weeds where the wind had tossed them. The statuary — the little that hadn’t been sold — was now merely fragmented trash, gleaming whitely in the night.

The fountain, at the extreme rear of the yard, had long since ceased to spout. But in the days when water poured from it, the ever-thirsting weeds and other rank growths had flourished into a minuscule jungle. And the jungle still endured, all but obscuring the elaborate masonry and piping of the fountain.

I walked toward it absently, somehow reminded of Goldsmith’s “Deserted Village.”

Reaching the periphery of the ugly overgrowth, I thought I heard the gurgling trickle of water. And, curious, I parted the dank and dying tangle with my hands and peered through the opening.

Inches from my face, eyeless eyes peered back at me. The bleached skull of a skeleton.

We stared at each other, each seemingly frozen in shock.

Then the skeleton raised a bony hand and leveled a gun at me.

12

I suddenly came alive. I let out a yell and flung myself to one side.

With my letting go of it, the overgrowth closed in front of the skeleton. And as he pawed through it, I scrambled around to the rear of the fountain. There was cover that way, a shield from my frightful pursuer. But that way was also a trap.

The skeleton was between me and the house. Looming behind me, in the moonlit dimness, was the labyrinthine mass, the twisting hills and valleys, of the garbage dump.

I raced toward it, knowing that it was a bad move, that I was running away from possible help. But I continued to run. Running — fleeing — was a way of life with me. Buying temporary safety, regardless of its long-term cost.

Nearing the immediate environs of the garbage mounds, I began to trip and stumble over discarded bottles and cans and other refuse. Once my foot came down hard on a huge rat. And he leaped at me, screaming with pain and rage. Once, when I fell, a rat scampered inside of my coat, clawing and scratching as he raced over my chest and back. And I screamed and beat at myself long after I was rid of him.

There was a deafening roar in my ears: the thunder of my overexerted heart and lungs. I began to sob wildly in fear-crazed hysteria, but the sound of it was lost to me.

I crawled-clawed-climbed up a small mountain of refuse and fell tumbling and stumbling down the other side. Broken bottles and rotting newspapers and stinking globs of food came down on top of me, along with the hideously bloated body of a dead rat. And I swarmed up out of the mess and continued my staggering, wobble-legged run.

I ran down the littered lanes between the garbage hillocks. I ran back up the lanes. Up, down, down, up. Zigzagging, repeatedly falling and getting to my feet. And going on and on and on. Fleeing through this lonely stinking planet, this lost world of garbage.

I dared not stop. For I was pursued, and my pursuer was gaining on me. Getting closer and closer with every passing moment.

Thoroughly in the thrall of hysteria, I couldn’t actually see or hear him. Not in the literal meaning of the words. It was more a matter of being made aware of certain things, of having them thrust upon my consciousness: a discarded bottle rolling down a garbage heap, or a heavy shadow falling over my own, or hurrying footsteps splashing up a spray of filth.

At last I tottered to the top of a long hummock and down the other side.

And there he... it... was. Grabbing me from behind. Wrapping strong arms around me and holding me helpless.

I screamed, screams that I could not hear.

I struggled violently, fear giving me superhuman strength. And I managed to break free.

But for only a split second.

Then an arm went around my head, holding it motionless — a target. And then a heavy fist came up — swung in a short, swift arc — and collided numbingly with my chin.

And I went down, down, down.

Into darkness.

13

At the time of the accident, Connie and I had been married about six months. I had been at work all day on an article for a teachers’ magazine, and I came down into the kitchen that evening, tired and hungry, to find Connie clearing away the dirty dishes.

She said she and her father had already eaten, and he’d gone back to his office. She said there were some people in this world who had to work for a living, even if I didn’t know it.

“I’ve been working,” I said. “I’ve almost finished my article.”

“Never mind,” she said. “Do you want some pancakes or something? There isn’t any of the stew left.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t hear you call me for dinner. I would have been glad to join you.”

“Will you kindly tell me whether you want something to eat?” she yelled. “I’m worn out, and I don’t feel like arguing. It’s just been work, work, work, from the time I got up this morning. Cooking and sewing and cleaning, and — and I even washed the car on top of everything else!”

I said that she should never wash a car on top of anything, let alone everything. Then, I said, “Sorry, I would have washed the car. I told you I would.”

She said oh, sure, a lot I would do. “Just look at you! You can’t even shine your shoes. You don’t see my daddy going around without his shoes shined, and he works.”

I looked at her. The spitefully glaring eyes, the shrewish thrust of her chin. And I thought, What the hell gives here, anyway? She and her papa had been increasingly nasty to me almost from the day we were married. But tonight’s performance beat anything I had previously been subjected to.

“You and your daddy,” I said, “are very, very lovely people. Strange as it may seem, however, your unfailing courtesy and consideration have not made a diet of pancakes and table scraps palatable to me. So I’ll go into town and get something to eat, and you and your daddy can go burp in your bibs!”

I was heading for the door as I spoke, for Connie had a vile temper and was not above throwing things at me or striking me with them.

I flung the door open, and — and there was a sickening thud and a pained scream from Connie, a scream that ended almost as soon as it began. I turned around, suddenly numb with fear.

Connie lay crumpled on the floor. A deep crease, oozing slow drops of blackish blood, stretched jaggedly across her forehead.

She had been hit by the sharp edge of the door when I threw it open. She was very still, as pale as death.

I grabbed her up and raced out to the car with her. I placed her on the backseat and slid under the wheel. And I sent the car roaring down the lane from the house and into the road that ran in front of it. Or, rather, across the road, for I was going too fast to make the turn.

The turn was sharp, one that was dangerous even at relatively low speeds. I knew it was, as did everyone else in the area. And I could never satisfactorily explain why I was traveling as fast as I was.

I was unnerved, of course. And, of course, I had lost my head, as I habitually did when confronted with an emergency. But, still...

Kind of strange for a man to do something when he danged well knew he shouldn’t. Kind of suspicious.

The road skirted a steep cliff. It was almost three hundred feet from the top of the cliff to the bottom. The car went over it and down it.

I don’t know why I didn’t go over with it — as Connie did.

I couldn’t explain. Nor could I explain why I was speeding when I hit the turn. Nor could I prove that I had hit Connie with the door accidentally instead of deliberately.

I was an outsider in a clannish little community, and it was known that I constantly bickered with my wife. And I was the beneficiary of her hundred-thousand-dollar life-insurance policy — two-hundred-thousand with the double indemnity.

If Connie’s father hadn’t stoutly proclaimed me innocent — Connie also defending me as soon as she was able — I suspect that I would have been convicted of attempted murder.

As I still might be — unless I myself was murdered.

14

The night of the skeleton, of my chase through the garbage dump...

I was kept under sedation for the rest of that night and much of the next day and night. I had to be, so great was the damage to my nervous system. Early the following afternoon, after I had gotten some thirty-six hours of rest and treatment, Detective Sergeant Jeff Claggett was admitted to my hospital room.

It was Jeff who had followed me into the garbage dump, subsequently knocking me out when I could not be reasoned with. He had taken up the chase after hearing my yell and seeing my flight from the house. But he had seen no one pursuing me.

“I suppose no one was,” I admitted, a little sheepishly. “I know he started around the fountain after me. But I was so damned sure that he was right on my tail that I didn’t turn around to see if he was.”

“Can’t say that I blame you,” Claggett said with a nod. “Must’ve given you a hell of a shock to come up against something like that pointing a gun at you. Any idea who it was?”

“No way of telling.” I shook my head. “Just someone in a skeleton costume. You’ve probably seen them — a luminous skeleton painted on black cloth.”

“Not much of a lead. Could’ve been picked up anywhere in the country,” Claggett said. “Tell me, Britt. Do you walk around in your backyard as a regular thing? I mean, could the guy have known you’d be there at about such and such a time?”

“No way,” I said. “I haven’t been in the backyard in the last five years.”

“Then he was just hiding there in the weeds, don’t you suppose? Keeping out of sight, say, until he could safely come into the house.”

“Come into the house?” I laughed shakily. “Why would he want to do that?”

“Well...” Jeff Claggett gave me a deadpan look. “Possibly he was after your money and valuables. After all, everyone knows you’re a very wealthy man.”

“You’re kidding!” I said. “Anyone who knows anything about me knows that I don’t have a pot to—”

“Right.” He cut me off. “So what the guy was after was you. He’d have you pinned down in the house. You’d probably wake up — he’d wake you, of course — to find him bending over your bed. A skeleton grinning at you in the dark. You couldn’t get away from him, and — yes? Something wrong, Britt?”

“Something wrong!” I shuddered. “What are you trying to do to me, Jeff?”

“Who hates you that much, Britt? And don’t tell me you don’t know!”

“But... but I don’t,” I stammered. “I’ve probably rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, but...”

I broke off, for he was holding something in front of me, then dropping it on the bed with a grimace. A pamphlet bylined by me, with a line attributing sponsorship to PXA.

“That’s why I came out to see you the other night, Britt. I ran across it in the library, and I was sure the use of your name was unauthorized. But I guess I was wrong, wasn’t I?”

I hesitated, unable to meet his straightforward blue eyes, their uncompromising honesty. I took a sip of water through a glass straw, mumbled a kind of defiant apology for my employment with PXA.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Jeff. It was a public-service thing. Nothing to do with the company’s other activities.”

“No?” Claggett said wryly. “Those activities paid for your work, didn’t they? A lot more than it was worth, too, unless my information is all wrong. Three thousand dollars a month, plus bonuses, plus a car, plus an expense account, plus — let’s see. What else was included in the deal? A very juicy — and willing — young widow?”

“Look,” I said, red-faced. “What’s this got to do with what happened to me?”

“Don’t kid me, Britt. I’ve talked to her — her and her uncle both. It’s normal procedure to inform a man’s employers when he’s had a mishap. So I had a nice little chat with them, and you know what I think?”

“I think you’re going to tell me what you think.”

“I think that Patrick Xavier Aloe had been expecting Manuela to visit some unpleasantness upon you and is now sure that she did. I think he gave her plenty of hell as soon as I left the office.”

I thought the same, although I didn’t say so. Claggett went on to reveal that he had talked with Mrs. Olmstead, learning, of course, that we were much more than employer and employee.

“She put out a lot of money for you, my friend. Or arranged to have it put out. She also put out something far more important to a girl like that. I imagine she only did it in the belief that you were going to marry her...”

He waited, studying me. I nodded reluctantly.

“I should have known what was expected of me,” I said. “Hell, maybe I did know but wouldn’t admit it. At any rate, it was a lousy thing to do, and I probably deserve whatever she hands out.”

“Oh, well.” Claggett shrugged. “You weren’t very nice to your wife, either.”

“Probably not, but she’s an entirely different case. Manny was good to me. I never got anything from Connie and her old man but a hard time.”

“You say so, and I believe you,” said Claggett warmly. “Any damage you do, I imagine, is the result of not doing — just letting things slide. You don’t have the initiative to deliberately hurt anyone.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I guess.”

He chuckled good-naturedly. “Tell me about Connie and her father. Tell me how you happened to marry her, since it obviously wasn’t a love match.”

I gave him a brief history of my meeting and association with the Bannermans. Then, since he seemed genuinely interested, I gave him a quick rundown on Britton Rainstar, after fortune had ceased to smile upon him and he had become, lo, the Poor Indian.

Jeff Claggett listened attentively — by turns laughing, frowning, exclaiming, wincing, and shaking his head. When I had finished, he said that I was obviously much tougher than he had supposed. I must be to survive the many messes I had gotten myself into.

“Just one damned thing after another!” he swore. “I don’t know how the hell you could do it!”

“Join the crowd,” I said. “Nobody has ever known how I did it. Including me.”

“Well, getting back to the present. Miss Aloe expected you to marry her. How did she take the news that you couldn’t?”

“A lot better than I had any right to expect,” I said. “She was just too good about it to be true, if you know what I mean. Everything was beautiful for around six weeks, just as nice as it had been from the beginning. Then a couple of days ago, the day of the evening I jumped this character in the skeleton suit—”

“Hold it a minute. I want to write this down.”

He took a notebook and pencil from his pocket, then nodded for me to proceed. I did so, telling him of the dog and the mulatto woman and the bartender who had thrown the drink in my face.

Jeff made a few additions to his notes when I had finished, then returned the book and pencil to his coat. Leaning back in his chair, he stared up at the ceiling meditatively, hands locked behind his head.

“Three separate acts,” he said, musingly. “Four, counting the skeleton routine. But there’s a connection between them. The tie-in is in the result of those acts. To give you a hard jolt when you least expect it.”

“Yes,” I said uneasily. “They certainly did that, all right.”

“I wonder. I just wonder if that’s how her husband died.”

“You know about him?” An icy rill tingled down my spine. “She told me he died very suddenly, but I just assumed it was from a heart attack.”

Claggett said that all deaths were ultimately attributable to heart failure, adding that he had no very sound arguments for regarding the death of Manny’s husband as murder.

“They were at this little seacoast resort when it was hit by a hurricane. Wiped out almost half the town. Her husband was one of the dead. Wait, now—” He held up his hand as I started to speak. “Naturally, she couldn’t have arranged the hurricane, but she could have used it to cover his murder. I’d say she had plenty of reason to want him out of the way.”

“I gather that he wasn’t much good,” I said. “But—”

“She dropped out of sight right after the funeral. Disappeared without a trace, and she didn’t show up again for about a year.”

“Well?” I said. “I still don’t see...”

“Well, neither do I,” Claggett said easily, his manner suddenly changing. “What are you going to do now, Britt, that you’ve quit the pamphlet writing?”

I said that I wished to God I knew. I wouldn’t have any money to live on, and none to send Connie, which would surely cause all hell to pop. I was beginning to regret that I’d quit the job, even though I’d had no choice in the matter.

Claggett said I didn’t have one now, either. I had to go back on the job. “You’ll be safer than if you didn’t, Britt. So far, Miss Aloe’s only given you a bad shaking up. But she might try for a knockout if she thinks you’re getting away from her.”

“We don’t actually know that she’s done anything,” I said. “We think she’s responsible, but we’re certainly not sure.”

“Right. And we never will be if you break completely with her. Not until it’s too late.”

“But I’ve already quit! And I made it pretty damned clear that I meant it!”

“But she didn’t tell her uncle, apparently. Probably afraid of catching more hell than he’s already given her.” He stood up, dusting at his trousers. “I’ll be having a little chat with both of them today, and I’ll tip her off privately first — let her know that you’re keeping the job. You can bet she’ll be tickled pink to hear it.”

The door opened and a bright-faced young nurse came in. She gave me a quick smile, then said something to Jeff that was too low for me to hear.

He nodded, dismissing her, and turned back to me. “Have to run, I guess,” he said. “Okay? Everything all right?”

“Absolutely perfect,” I said bitterly. “How else could it be for a guy with a schizoid wife and a paranoid girlfriend? If one of them can’t send me to prison or the electric chair, the other will put me in the nut-house or the morgue! Well, screw it.” I plopped back on the pillows. “What are you chatting with the Aloes about?”

“Oh, this and that,” he said with a shrug. “About you mainly, I suppose. They’re very concerned about you and anxious to see you, of course...”

“Of course!”

“So, if it’s all right with you, I’ll have them drop in around five.”

15

There is something utterly unnerving about an absolutely honest man, a man like Sergeant Jeff Claggett. You rationalize and lie to him until your supply of deceit is exhausted; and his questions and comments are never brutal or blunt. He simply persists, when you have already had your say, looking at you when you can no longer look at him. And, finally, though nothing has been admitted, you know you have been in the fight of your life.

So I don’t know what Jeff said that afternoon to Manuela and Patrick Xavier Aloe. It is likely that he was quite offhand and casual, that he said nothing at all of intrinsic significance. But they came into my room, a tinge of strain to their expressions, and Manny’s lips seemed a little stiff as she stooped to kiss me.

I shook hands with Pat and stated that I was fine, just fine. They stated that that was fine, just fine, and that I was looking fine, just fine.

There was an awkward moment of silence after that, while I smiled at them and was smiled back at. Manny shattered the tension by bursting into giggles. They made her very nice to look at, shaking and shivering her in all her shakable, shivery parts.

Pulse pounding, I tentatively joined in her laughter. But Pat saw no cause for amusement.

“What’s with you?” He glared at her. “We got a sick man here. He gets a damned stupid joke pulled on him, and it puts him in the hospital. You think that’s funny?”

“Now, Uncle Pat...” Manny gestured placatingly.

“Britt lands in the hospital, and we get cops nosing all around! Maybe you like that, huh? You think cops are funny?”

“There was only one, Pat. Just Sergeant Claggett, and he’s a family friend, isn’t he, Britt?”

“A very old friend,” I said. “Jeff — Sergeant Claggett, that is — would be concerned regardless of why I was in the hospital.”

“Well...” Pat Aloe was somewhat reassured. “Anything else happen to you recently, Britt? I mean, any little jokes like this last one?”

I hesitated, feeling Manny’s eyes on me. Wondering what Jeff would consider the best answer. Pat’s gaze moved from me to Manny, and she smiled at him sunnily.

“Of course nothing else has happened to him, Pat. This is his first time in the hospital, isn’t it?”

“That’s right,” I said, and then gave him the qualified truth. “There’s been nothing like this before.”

He relaxed at that, his map-of-Ireland face creasing in a grin. He said he was damned glad to hear it, because they’d been getting A-OK reactions to the pamphlets, and he’d hate to see them loused up.

“And we’d hate to lose the tax write-off,” Manny said. “Don’t forget that. Uncle Pat.”

“Shut up,” Pat said, and to me, “Then everything’s copacetic, right, Britt? You’re gonna go right on working for us?”

“I’d like to,” I said. “I understand that I’ll be under medical supervision for a while, have to take things kind of easy. But if that’s all right with you...”

He boomed that, of course, it was all right. “And don’t you worry about the hospital and doctor bills. We got kind of a private insurance plan that takes care of everything in the medical line.”

“That’s great,” I said. “I’m obliged to you.”

“Forget it. Whatever makes you happy, makes us happy, right, Manny? Anything that’s jake with Britt — Britt and his friend, Sergeant Claggett—”

“Is jake with us,” Manny said emphatically. “Right, Uncle Pat! Right on!”

And Pat shot her a warning look. “One more thing, Britt, baby. I was way out of line saying anything about you and Manny getting married. What the hell? That’s your business, not mine.”

“Right!” said Manny.

“You want a bat in the chops?” He half raised his hand. “Keep askin’, and you’re gonna get it.”

I broke in to say quite truthfully that I would have been glad to marry Manny if I had been free to do so. Pat said, sure, sure, so who was kicking? “It’s okay with me, and it’s okay with her. She don’t like it, she can shove it up her ass.”

“Right back at you, you sawed-off son of a bitch,” said Manny, and she made an upward jabbing motion with one finger.

Pat leaped. He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her so vigorously that her head seemed to oscillate, her hair flying out from it in a golden blur. He released her with a shove that slammed her into the wall. And the noise of his angry breathing almost filled the room.

I felt a little sick. Savagery like this was something I had never seen before. As for Manny...

Something indefinable happened to her face — a flickering of expressions that wiped it free of expression, then caused it to crinkle joyously, to wreathe itself in a cherubic smile.

Pat looked away, gruffly abashed. “Let’s go.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Get out of here, and let Britt get some rest.”

“You go ahead,” she said. “I want to kiss Britt goodnight.”

“Who’s stopping you? You kissed him in front of me before.”

“Huh-uh. Not this way I didn’t.”

He gave me an embarrassed glance, then shrugged and said he could stand it if I could. He told me to take it easy and left. And Manny crossed to the door, locked it, and come back to the bed. She looked down, then bent down so close that her breasts brushed against me.

“Go ahead,” she whispered. “Grab a handful.”

“Now, dammit, Manny!...” I tried to sit up. “Listen to me, Manny!”

“Look,” edging her blouse down, “look how nice they are.”

“I said listen to me!”

“Oh, all right,” she said poutingly. “I’m listening.”

“You’ve got to stop it,” I said. “We’ll forget what’s already happened. Just say I had it coming and call it quits. But there can’t be any more, understand? And don’t ask me any more what!”

“Any more what?”

“Please,” I said. “I’m trying to help you. If you’ll just stop now...”

“But I really don’t know what you mean, darling. If you’ll just tell me what you want me to stop, what else I shouldn’t do...”

“All right,” I said. “I’ve done my best.”

She studied me a moment, the tip of her finger in her mouth. Then she nodded, became pseudo-businesslike, declared that she knew just what I needed, and it so happened that she had brought a supply with her.

As I have noted previously, she moved very, very quickly when she chose. So she was on the bed, on top of me, before I knew what was happening, smothering me with softness, moving against me sensuously.

There was an abrupt metallic squeal from the bed, then a grating and a scraping and a crash. Instinctively, I jerked my head up, so it did not smash against the hard hospital floor. But my neck snapped, painfully, and Manny helped me to my feet, murmuring apologies.

Someone was pounding on the door, noisily working at the lock. It opened suddenly, and the nurse came in, almost at a run. It was the nurse I had seen earlier, the bright-faced young woman. None too gently she brushed Manny aside and seated me comfortably in a chair. She felt my pulse and forehead, gave me a few fussy little pats. Then she turned on Manny, who was casually adjusting her clothes.

“Just what happened here, miss? Why was that door locked?”

Manny grinned at her impudently. “A broken-down bed and a locked door, and you ask me what happened? How long have you been a woman, dear?”

The nurse turned brick red. Her arm shot out, the finger at its end pointing sternly toward the door. “I want you out of here, Miss! Right this minute!”

“Oh, all right,” Manny said. “Unless I can do something else for Britt...”

“No,” I said. “Please do as the nurse says, Manny.”

She did so, lushly compact hips swinging provocatively. The nurse looked after her, a little downcast, I thought, as though doing some comparative weighing and finding herself sadly wanting.

An orderly removed the collapsed bed and wheeled in another. I was put into it, and a doctor examined me and pronounced me indestructible.

“Just the same,” he said, winking at me lewdly, “you lay off the double sacking with types like that pocket Venus that was in here. I’d say she could spot you a tail wind and still beat you into port.”

“Oh, she could not,” the nurse said, reddening gloriously the moment the words were out of her mouth. “How would you know, anyway?”

“We-ll...” He gave her a wisely laconic grin. “How would you?”

He slapped unsuccessfully at her bottom on the way out. She jerked away, greatly flustered, and darted a glance at me. And, of course, she found nothing in my expression but earnest goodwill.

She was much prettier than I had thought at first glance. She had superb bone structure, and her hair, too austerely coiffed beneath her nurse’s cap, was deep auburn.

“I don’t believe I’ve seen you before today,” I said. “Are you new on this floor?”

“Well...” She hesitated. “I guess I’m new on all of them. I mean, I’m a substitute nurse.”

“I see,” I said. “Well, I think you’re a fine nurse, and I’m sure you’ll have regular duty before long.”

She twitched pleasurably, like a petted puppy. Then her scrubbed-clean face fell, and she sighed heavily.

“I thought I was going to have steady work starting tomorrow,” she said. “Steady for a while, anyway. But after what happened today — well, I’ll be held responsible. The bed wouldn’t have been broken down if I hadn’t allowed the door to be locked. You could have been seriously injured, and it’s all my fault, and—”

“Wait!” I held up a hand. “Hold it a minute. It wasn’t your fault, it was mine, and I won’t allow the hospital to blame you for it. You just have your supervisor talk to me, and I’ll straighten her out fast.”

“Thank you, Mr. Rainstar, but the supervisor has already reported the matter to Sergeant Claggett. She had to, you know. Her orders were to report anything unusual that happened to you. So...”

I was the regular duty the nurse had hoped to have. The doctors felt that for a time at least, when I returned home, I should have a full-time nurse available. And she had seemed a likely candidate for the job. But Jeff Claggett would never approve of her now.

“I really blew it,” she said, with unconscious humor. “I’ll bet the sergeant is really disgusted with me.”

I said loftily that she was to forget the sergeant. After all, I was the one who had to be satisfied, and she satisfied me in every respect, so she could consider herself hired.

“Oh, that’s wonderful, just wonderful!” She wriggled delightedly. “You’re sure Sergeant Claggett will approve?”

“If he doesn’t, he’ll have me to deal with,” I said. “But I’m sure it’ll be fine with him.”

But I wasn’t sure, of course. And, of course, it wasn’t fine with him.

16

He returned to the hospital shortly after I had finished my dinner that evening. He had been busy since leaving me, checking at the cocktail lounge where I had gotten a drink in my face and with the mulatto woman who managed the quiet little hotel. In neither case had his investigation come to aught but naught.

The bartender had quit his job and departed town for parts unknown to the lounge owner. Or so, at least, the latter said. The hotel had the same owners it had always had — a large eastern realty company, which was the absentee landlord for literally hundreds of properties. The manageress owned no dog, denied any knowledge of one, and also denied that she had done anything but rent me and my “wife” a room.

“So that’s that,” Claggett said. “If you like, I can put out a John Doe warrant on the bartender, but I don’t think it’s worth the trouble. Assuming we could run him down, which I doubt, throwing a drink on you wouldn’t add up to more than a misdemeanor.”

“By itself,” I said with a nod. “But when you add it on to the business with the dog, and—”

“How are you going to add it on? You’re a married man, but you register into this hotel with another woman as Mr. and Mrs. Phoneyname. And you tied your hands right there. The manageress was lying, sure. But try to prove it and you’ll look like a jerk.”

He seemed rather cross and out of sorts. I suggested as much, adding that I hoped I wasn’t the cause of same.

He gave me a look, seemed on the point of saying something intemperate. Then he sighed wearily and shook his head.

“I guess you just can’t help it,” he said tiredly. “You seem incapable of learning from experience. You know, or should know, that Miss Aloe is out to harm you. You don’t know how far she intends to go, which makes her all the more dangerous to you. But you let her get rid of Pat, you let her lock the door, you let her come back to the bed and make certain adjustments to it—”

“Look,” I protested. “She didn’t do all those things separately with a time lapse between them. She’s a very quick-moving little girl, and she did everything in a matter of seconds. Before I knew what was happening, she—” I broke off. “Uh, what do you mean, certain adjustments?” I said.

“The bed goes up and down, right? Depending on whether you want to sit up or sleep or whatever. And here, right here where I’m pointing—” He pointed. “Do you see it, that little lever?”

“I see it,” I said.

“Well, that’s the safety. It locks the bed into the position you put it in.”

“I know,” I said. “They explained that to me the first day I was here.”

“That’s good,” Claggett said grimly. “That’s real good. Well, if Miss Aloe was out to fracture your skull, she couldn’t have had a more cooperative subject. You let her flip the safety and use her weight to give you an extra-hard bang against the floor. You didn’t let her tie a rocket to you, but I imagine you would if she’d asked you.”

My mouth was suddenly very dry. I took a sip or two of water, then raised the glass and drained it.

“I thought it was just a silly accident,” I said. “It never occurred to me that she’d try anything here in the hospital.”

“Well, watch yourself from now on,” Claggett said. “You’re going to be thrown together a lot, I understand, in the course of doing these pamphlets. Or am I correct about that?”

“Well...” I shrugged. “That depends largely on Manny. She’s calling the turns. The amount of time we spend together depends on her.”

“Better count on more time with her than less, then,” he said. “This little stunt she pulled today — well, I doubt that it was really a try for a knockout. Whenever she’s ready for that, if she ever is ready, I think she’ll stay in the background and have someone else do it.”

I said yes, I supposed he was right. He made an impatient little gesture, as though I had said something annoying.

“But we can’t be sure, Britt! We can’t say what she might do since she probably doesn’t know herself. Look at what’s happened to you so far. She couldn’t have planned those things. They’ve just been spur of the moment — pulled out of her hat as she went along.”

I made no comment this time. He went on to say that he’d done some heavy thinking about Manny’s vanishing for a year after her husband’s death. And there was only one logical answer as to where she had been and why.

“A private sanitarium, Britt, a place where she could get psychiatric help. Her mind started bending with the trouble her husband gave her, and it finally broke when he died — or when she killed him. I’d say that your telling her you were married was more than she could take, and it’s started her on another mental breakdown.”

“Well,” I laughed nervously, “that’s not a very comforting thought.”

“You’ll be all right as long as you’re careful. Just watch yourself — and her. Think now. Everything that’s happened to you so far has been at least partly your own fault. In a sense, you’ve set yourself up.”

I gave that a moment’s thought, and then I said all right, he was right. I would be very, very careful from now on. Since I had but one life to live, I would do everything in my power to go on living it.

“You have my solemn promise, Jeff. I shall do everything in my power to keep myself alive and unmaimed. Now, just what are you doing along that line?”

“I’ve done certain things inside your house,” he said. “If there’s ever any trouble, just let out a yell and you’ll have help within a minute.”

“How?” I said. “You mean you have the place bugged?”

“Don’t try to find out,” he said. “If you didn’t know, Miss Aloe won’t, and if you did, she would. You’re really pretty transparent, Britt.”

“Oh, now, I don’t know about that,” I said. “I—”

“Well, I do know. You’re not only just about incapable of deceiving anyone for any length of time, but you’re also very easy to deceive. So take my word for it that you’ll be all right. Just yell and you’ll have help.”

“I don’t like it,” I said. “Suppose I couldn’t yell? That I didn’t have time or I wasn’t allowed to?”

Claggett laughed, shook his head chidingly. “Now, Britt, be reasonable. You’ll have a full-time nurse right in the house with you, and she’ll be checking on you periodically. It’s inconceivable that you could need help and be unable to get it.”

It wasn’t inconceivable to me. I could think of any number of situations in which I would need help and be unable to cry out for it. And, for the record, one of those situations did come about. It did happen, the spine-chilling, hair-raising occurrence I had most feared. And just when I was feeling safest and most secure. And I could see no way of hollering for help without hastening my already-imminent demise.

All I could do was lie quiet, as I was ordered to, and listen to my hair turn grayer still. Wondering, foolishly, if I could ever get an acceptable tint job on it, assuming that I lived long enough to need one.

But that is getting ahead of the story. It is something that was yet to happen. Tonight, the night of which I am writing, Claggett pointed out that he was only a detective sergeant and that as such there was a limit to what he could do for my protection.

“And I’m sure the arrangements I’ve made are enough, Britt. With you staying on the alert and with a good, reliable nurse on hand, I’m confident that—” He broke off, giving me a sudden sharp look. “Yes?” he said. “Something on your mind?”

“Well, uh, yes,” I said uncomfortably. “About the nurse. I’d like to have the one who’s on duty tonight. That kind of pretty reddish-haired one. I... I, uh... I mean, she needs the job, and...”

“Not a chance,” Claggett said flatly. “Not in a thousand years. I’ve got another nurse in mind, an older woman. Used to be a matron at the jail a few years back, I’ll have her come in right now, and you can be getting acquainted tonight.”

He got up and started toward the door. I said, “Wait a minute.”

He paused and turned around. “Well?”

“Well, I’d kind of like to have the reddish-haired girl. She wants the job, and I’m sure she’d be just fine.”

“Fine for what?” Claggett said. “No, don’t tell me. You just take care of golden-haired Miss Aloe and forget about your pretty little redhead.”

I said I didn’t have anything like that in mind at all — whatever it was he thought I had in mind. My God, with Connie and Manny to contend with, I’d be crazy to start anything up with another girl.

“So?” said Claggett, then cut me off with a knifing gesture of his hand as I began another protest. “I don’t care if you did promise her the job. You had no right to make such a promise, and she knows it as well as you do.”

He turned and stalked out of the room.

I expected him to be back almost immediately, bringing the ex-police matron with him. But he was gone for almost a half an hour, and he came back looking wearily resigned.

“You win,” he said, dropping heavily into a chair. “You get your red-haired nurse.”

“I do?” I said. “I mean, why?”

“Because she spread it all around that she had the job. She was so positive about it that even the nurse I had in mind was convinced, and she got sore and quit.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I really didn’t mean to upset your plans, Jeff.”

“I know,” he said with a shrug. “I just wish I could feel better about the redhead.”

“I’m sure she’ll work out fine,” I said. “She got off to a bad start today by letting Manny lock the door and pull the bed trick. But—”

“What?” said Claggett. “Oh, well, that didn’t bother me. That could have happened regardless of who was on duty. The thing that bothers me about Miss Redhead Scrubbed-Clean is that I can’t check her out.”

I said, “Oh,” not knowing quite why I said it. Or why the hair on the back of my neck had gone through the motions of attempting to rise.

“...raised on a farm,” Jeff Claggett was saying. “No neighbors for miles around. No friends. Her parents were ex-teachers, and they gave her schooling. They did a first-class job of it, too, judging by her entrance exams at nursing school. She scored an academic rating of high-school graduate plus two years of college. She was an honors graduate in nursing, and I can’t turn up anything but good about her since she made RN. Still—” He shook his head troubledly. “I don’t actually know anything about her for the first eighteen years of her life. There’s nothing I can check on, not even a birth certificate, from the time she was born until she entered nurses’ training.”

A linen cart creaked noisily down the hallway. From somewhere came the crash of a dinner tray. (Probably the redhead pounding on a patient.)

“Look, Jeff,” I said, “in view of what you’ve told me, and after much deliberation, I think I’d better have a different nurse.”

“Not possible.” Jeff shook his head firmly. “You promised her the job. I went along with your decision when I found that my matron friend wasn’t and wouldn’t be available. Try to back down on the deal now and we’d have the union on us.”

“I’ll tell you something,” I said. “I find that I’ve undergone a very dramatic recovery. My condition has improved at least a thousand percent, and I’m not going to need a nurse at all.”

Claggett complained that I hadn’t been listening to him. I’d already engaged a nurse — the redhead — and the doctors said I did need one.

“I’ve probably got the wind up over nothing, anyway, Britt. After all, the fact that I can’t check on her doesn’t mean that she’s hiding anything, now does it?”

“Yes,” I said. “I think it’s proof positive that she was up to no good during those lost years of her nonage and that she is planning more of same for me.”

Claggett chuckled that I was kidding, that I was always kidding. I said not so, that I only kidded when I was nervous or in mortal fear for my life, as in the present instance.

“It’s kind of a defense mechanism,” I explained. “I reason that I can’t be murdered or maimed while would-be evildoers are laughing.”

Claggett said brusquely to knock off the nonsense. He was confident that the nurse would work out fine. If he’d had any serious doubts about her, he’d’ve acted upon them.

“I’ll have to go now, Britt. Have a good night, and I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Wait!” I said. “What if I’m murdered in my sleep?”

“Then I won’t talk to you,” he said irritably.

And he left the room before I could say anything else.

I got up and went to the bathroom. The constant dryness of my mouth had caused me to drink an overabundance of water.

I came out of the bathroom and climbed back into bed.

The hall door opened silently, and the reddish-haired nurse came in.

17

She was wheeling a medicine cart in front of her, a cart covered with a chaos of bottles and vials and hypodermic needles. Having gotten the job as my regular full-time nurse seemed to have given her self-confidence. And she smiled at me brilliantly and introduced herself.

“I’m Miss Nolton, Mr. Rainstar. Full name, Kate Nolton, but I prefer to be called Kay.”

“Well, all right, Kay,” I said, smiling stiffly (and doubtless foolishly). “It seems like a logical preference.”

“What?” She frowned curiously. “I don’t understand.”

“I mean, it’s reasonable to call you Kay since your name is Kate. But it wouldn’t seem right to call you Kate if your name was Kay. I mean — oh, forget it,” I said with a groan. “My God! Do you play tennis, Kay?”

“I love tennis! How about you?”

“Yeah, how about me?” I said.

“Well?”

“Not very,” I said.

“I mean, do you play tennis?”

“No,” I said.

She sort of smiled-frowned at me. She picked up my wrist and tested my pulse. “Very fast. I thought so,” she said. “Turn over on your side, please.”

She took a hypodermic needle from the sterilizer and began to draw liquid into it from a vial. Then she glanced at me, gestured with light impatience.

“I said to turn on your side, Mr. Rainstar.”

“I am on my side.”

“I mean the other side! Turn your back to me.”

“But that wouldn’t be polite.”

“Mr. Rainstar!” She almost stamped her foot. “If you don’t turn your back to me, right this minute...!”

I turned, as requested. She jerked the string on my pajamas and started to lower them.

“Wait a minute!” I said. “What are you doing, anyway?”

She told me what she was doing, adding that I was the silliest man she had ever seen in her life. I told her I couldn’t allow it. It was the complete reversal of the normal order of things.

“A girl doesn’t take a man’s pants down,” I said. “Everyone knows that. The correct procedure is for the man to take the girl’s — ooowtch! WHAT THE GODDAM HELL ARE YOU TRYING TO DO, WOMAN?”

“Shh, hush! The very idea making all that fuss over a teensy little hypo! Sergeant Claggett told me you were just a big old baby.”

“That’s why he’s only a sergeant,” I said. “An upper-echelon officer would have instructed you in the proper treatment of wounds, namely to kiss them and make them well.”

That got her. Her face turned as red as her hair. “Why you... you...! Are you suggesting that I kiss your a double s?”

I yawned prodigiously. “That’s exactly what I’m suggesting,” I said, and yawned again. “I might add that it’s probably the best o double f offer you’ll ever get in your career as an assassin.”

“All right,” she said. “I think I’ll just take you up on it. Just push it up here where I can get at it good, and—”

“Get away from me, goddammit!” I said. “Go scrub out a bedpan or something.”

“Let’s see now. Ahh, there it is! Kitchy-coo!”

“Get! Go away, you crazy broad!”

“Kitchy-kitchy-coo...”

“Dammit, if you don’t get away from me, I’m going to... going to... going—”

My eyes snapped shut. I drifted into sleep. Or, rather, half sleep.

I was asleep but aware that she had dropped into a chair, that she was shaking silently, hugging herself, then rocking back and forth helplessly and shrieking with laughter. I was aware when other people came into the room to investigate — other nurses and some orderlies and a couple of doctors.

The silly bastards were practically packed into my room. A couple of them even sat down on my bed, jouncing me up and down on it as they laughed.

I thought. Now, dammit—

My thought ended there.

I lost all awareness.

And I fell into deep, unknowing sleep.

I slept so soundly that I felt hung over and somewhat grouchy the next morning when Kay Nolton awakened me. She looked positively aseptic, all bright-eyed and clean-scrubbed. It depressed me to see anyone look that good in early morning, and it was particularly depressing in view of the way I looked, which, I’m sure, was ghastly. Or shitty, to use the polite term.

Kay secured the usual matchbook-size bar of hospital soap — one wholly adequate for lathering the ass of a sick gnat. She secured a tiny wedge of threadbare washcloth, suitable for scrubbing the aforementioned. She dumped soap and washcloth into one of those shiny hospital basins — which, I suspect, are used for puking in as well as sponge bathing — and she carried it into the bathroom to fill with water.

I jumped out of bed, flattened myself against the wall at one side of the bathroom door. When she came out, eyes fixed on the basin, I slipped into the bathroom and into the shower.

I heard her say, “Mr. Rainstar. Mr. Rainstar! Where in the world—”

Then I turned on the shower full, and I heard no more.

I came back into my room with a towel wrapped around me. Kay popped a thermometer into my mouth.

“Now why did you do that, anyway? I had everything all ready to — Don’t talk! You’ll drop the thermometer! — give you a sponge bath! You knew I did! So why in the world did you — I said don’t talk, Mr. Rainstar! I know you probably don’t feel well, and I appreciate your giving me a job. But is that any reason to — Mr. Rainstar!”

She relieved me of the thermometer at last, frowned slightly as she examined it, then shrugged, apparently finding its verdict acceptable. She checked my pulse, and ditto, ditto. She asked if I needed any help in dressing, and I said I didn’t. She said I should just go ahead, then, and she would bring in my breakfast. And I said I would, and I did, and she did.

Since she was now officially my employee, rather than the hospital’s, she brought coffee for herself on the breakfast tray and sat sipping it, chatting companionably, as I ate.

“You know what I’m going to do for you today, Mr. Rainstar? I mean, I will if you want me to.”

“All I want you to do,” I said, “is shoot me with a silver bullet. Only thus will my tortured heart be at rest.”

“Oh?” she said blankly. “I was going to say that I’d wash and tint your hair for you. If you wanted me to, that is.”

I grinned, then laughed out loud. Not at her, but myself. Because how could anyone have behaved as idiotically as I had? And with no real reason whatsoever. I had stepped on Jeff Claggett’s toes, making a commitment without first consulting him. He hadn’t liked that, naturally enough; I had already stretched his patience to the breaking point. So he had punished me — warned me against any further intrusions upon his authority — by expressing serious doubts about Kay Nolton. When I over-reacted to this, he had hastily backed-water, pointing out that he would not be leaving me in her care if he had had any reservations about her. But I was off and running by then, popping off every which way, carrying on like a damned nut, and getting wilder and wilder by the minute.

Kay was looking at me uncertainly, a lovely blush spreading over her face and neck and down into her cleavage. So I stopped laughing and said she must pay no attention to me, since I, sad to say, was a complete jackass.

“I’m sorry as hell about last night. I don’t know why I get that way, but if I do it again, give me an enema in the ear or something. Okay?”

“Now, you were perfectly all right, Mr. Rainstar,” she said stoutly. “I was pretty far out of line myself. I knew you were a highly nervous type, but I teased you and made jokes when I should have—”

“When you should have given me that enema,” I said. “How are you at ear enemas, anyway? The technique is practically the same as if you were doing it you-know-where. Just remember to start at the top instead of the bottom, and you’ll have it made.”

She had started giggling — rosy face glowing, eyes bright with mirth. I said I was giving her life tenure at the task of futzing with my hair. I said I would also give her a beating with a wet rope if she didn’t start calling me Britt instead of Mr. Rainstar.

“Now that we have that settled,” I said, “I want you to get up, back up, and bend over.”

“B-bend over — ah, ha, ha — w-why, Britt?”

“So that I can climb on your shoulders, of course. I assume you are carrying me out of this joint piggyback?”

She said, “Ooops!” and jumped up. “Be back in just a minute, Britt!”

She hurried out of the room, promptly hurrying back with a wheelchair. It was a rule, it seemed, that all patients, ambulatory or not, had to be wheeled out of the hospital. So I climbed into the conveyance, and Kay fastened the crossbar across my lap, locking me into it. Then she wheeled me down to and into the elevator and subsequently out of the elevator and into the lobby.

She parked me there at a point near the admitting desk, admitting also being the place where departing patients were checked out. While she crossed to the desk and conferred with the registrar — or unregistrar — I sat gazing out through the building’s main entrance, musing that the hospital’s charges could be reduced to a level the average patient could pay if so much money had not been spent on inexcusable nonsense.

A particularly execrable example of such nonsense was this so-called main entrance of the hospital, which was not so much an entrance — main or otherwise — as it was a purely decorative and downright silly part of the structure’s façade.

The interior consisted of four double doors, electronically activated. The exterior approach was via some thirty steep steps, each some forty feet in length, mounting to a gin-mill Gothic quadruple archway. (It looked like a series of half horseshoes doing a daisy chain.)

Hardly anyone used this multimillion-dollar monstrosity for entrance or egress. How the hell could they? People came and went by the completely plain, but absolutely utilitarian, side-entrance, which was flush with the abutting pavement and required neither stepping down from nor up to.

It was actually the only one the hospital needed. The other was not only extravagantly impractical, it also had a kind of vertigo-ish, acrophobic quality.

Staring out on its stupidly expensive expanse, one became a little dizzy, struck with the notion that one was being swept forward at a smoothly imperceptible, but swiftly increasing, speed. Even I, a levelheaded, unflappable guy like me, was beginning to feel that way.

I rubbed my eyes, looked away from the entrance toward Kay. But neither she nor the admitting desk were where I had left them. The desk was far, far behind me, and so was Kay. She was sprinting toward me as fast as her lovely, long legs could carry her, and yet she was receding, like a character in one of those old-timey silent movies.

I waved to her, exaggeratedly mouthing the words “What gives?”

She responded with a wild waving and flapping of both her arms, simultaneously up and down as though taken by a fit of hysterics.

Ah-ha! I thought shrewdly. Something exceeding strange is going on here!

There was a loud SWOOSH as one of the double doors launched open.

There was a loud “YIKE!” as I shot through it.

There were mingled moans and groans, yells and screams (also from me), as I sped across the terrazzo esplanade to the dizzying brink of those steep, seemingly endless stone steps.

I had the feeling that those steps were much higher than they looked and that they were even harder than they looked.

I had the feeling that I had no feeling.

Then I shot over the brink and went down the steps with the sound of a stuttering, off-key cannon — or a very large frog with laryngitis: BONK-BLONK-BRONK. And I rode the chair and the chair rode me, by turns.

About halfway down, one of the steps reared up, turned its sharp edge up, and whacked me unconscious. So only God knows whether I or the chair did the riding from then on.