The Broken Bubble

by Philip K. Dick

  “Guy Lombardo?” Jim said.

  Hubble laughed. “Why not? A lot of people like that sweet stuff look at Liberace. You’ll draw a bigger audience with that. Rock-and-roll is on its way out. They’ve got Presley’s number, in another six months, nobody’ll remember him.”

  Jim got up and walked across the room to the phonograph. An LP of Bessie Smith had come to an end; he turned the record over. The old ladies, he thought, the same old ladies who had supported his classical music. They would be writing in; they would start the pressure.

  By the door of the apartment the bell rang.

  “Who’s that?” Pat said. “Did you ask anybody else over?” She was still in her jeans and cotton shirt.

  Opening the door, Jim looked down the hall. Two shapes appeared. They were Ferde Heinke and Joe Mantila.

  “Hey, Mr. Briskin,” Ferde said, “the police picked up Art Emmanual.”

  “What?” he said. The words did not make sense; he tried to get at their meaning.

  Ferde said, “They got Grimmelman—you don’t know him—and they picked up Art because of this crap somebody threw off a hotel roof on Fillmore Street, and they claim it was some kind of plot the Organization had.”

  “A gang,” Joe Mantila said. “But we don’t know nothing about this junk off the roof.”

  Jim said, “What are they holding him on?”

  “I don’t know,” Ferde said. “Rachael’s down there trying to whim. They say he isn’t of age, he’s a minor, and his parents have to get him out. And his parents don’t care. So he’s in juvenile hall or something. And they won’t let her put up bail because she’s a minor too, but she says she’s his guardian because they’re married.”

  “It’s all fouled up,” Joe Mantila said.

  “So maybe if you could lend us some dough,” Ferde said, “we could take it down and give it to her. And maybe she can get a lawyer or something and get him out. Because they’re married, so she ought to be able to get him out, don’t you think?”

  He gave them the money he had in the apartment. Joe counted it while Pat searched her purses for more.

  “Forty bucks,” Joe said. “I don’t know if that’s enough.”

  Going to the phone, Jim called the station. Bob Posin answered from his office. “If I send two kids around,” he said to Posin, “do me a favor and give them some money. It’s an emergency.”

  “How much?” Posin said. “I don’t see why I should—”

  “Fifty or sixty bucks. I’m good for it.”

  “You’re sure it’s an emergency?” Posin said.

  “It is,” he said. He hung up. “Go over to the station,” he said to Ferde and Joe. “She can get a lawyer with a hundred-dollar retainer. I’ll get out and try to cash a check.”

  They thanked him and hurried off.

  In the bedroom Pat was changing her clothes. “I want to go with you,” she said.

  Hubble, his wine glass in his hand, said, “What’s this all about?”

  “Friends,” Jim said. “I’m not going yet,” he said to Pat. “What’s the name of that lawyer that handled the divorce for us?”

  “Toreckey,” she said. “I have his number. Here.”

  He picked up the phone and called Toreckey.

  “It might be they could keep him there,” Toreckey said. Pat, coming out of the bedroom, stood beside him with her ear to the receiver, listening. “If there’s some gang he’s been running with, they’ll really throw it at him; Chief Ahern is cracking down on those juvenile gangs. This sort of vandalism is exactly what the San Francisco police department is trying to stamp out. Of course, I’m not much involved with these things.”

  Jim said, “This is out of your line?”

  “I don’t usually handle cases of this sort. But I can give you—”

  He thanked Toreckey and hung up.

  “We can get somebody else,” Pat said.

  “No,” he said. His head ached, but he was able to think; his thoughts were lucid enough. “She should be doing this, not us. Let’s scare up the money.”

  “Maybe so,” Pat said.

  The time was eleven-thirty. The streets were deserted. The good people, he thought to himself, were in bed where they belonged.

  They have him, he thought, but I can get him away because I have enough money. Or at least I can raise enough money. I can sell my car. I can borrow. Pat can borrow. I can go out and beg if I have to. Sooner or later I’ll have enough. So eventually he’ll be out.

  “I’ll go down there,” he said to Pat. “To the Kearny Street jail.”

  “Can’t I come?” She followed after him as he got his coat. She had on a blue skirt and bolero, and her face was dark with concern. “Isn’t there something I can do?”

  He said, “It might be better if I went alone.”

  “Whatever you say,” Pat said. “But—I feel it’s my fault.”

  “Why?” he said, pausing at the door to the hall.

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s not your fault,” he said.

  “This time,” she said, “it isn’t my fault this time.”

  “What’s this about?” Hubble said. “Some kids steal a car or something?”

  Jim left the apartment and went downstairs to his car. While he was warming the engine, Pat appeared beside the window.

  “If you won’t take me,” she said, “I’ll drive along after you in my own car.”

  “Get in,” he said, with rage.

  She got in next to him, and without waiting for the engine to warm or the windshield to clear, he drove the car forward into traffic.

  “Can you see?” Pat said. “Maybe you should wipe off the windows.”

  A car, a nebulous shape, honked at him. Lights flashed and dazzled; he brought out his handkerchief and scoured the windshield before him. Cold water dripped onto his fingers and wrist.

  “Be careful,” Pat said.

  “Yes,” he said, still angry, still shaking. A car materialized in front of him; he tramped down on the brake, and his tires screeched. For an instant the side of the other car rose in the windshield and confronted him, and then it disappeared; the car had got out of his path. Somebody yelled. He had driven through a red light. Slowing down, he pulled over to the side of the street. For a time neither of them spoke.

  “If you want,” Pat said, “I can drive.”

  “Maybe I can just sit,” he said, “for a second.”

  “The wind’s cold,” she said presently. She pressed her coat around her ankles. “It’s amazing that in July the weather could be so cold. It must be the fog.”

  “Okay,” he said, “you drive.” He got out of the car and came around. Pat slid behind the wheel, and she drove the rest of the trip to Kearny Street.

  “Thanks,” he said as she parked across the street from the jail.

  At the corner, several cars away, a blue prewar Plymouth was parked. Inside were three figures, one of them a girl.

  “I’ll stay here,” Pat said.

  He walked down the sidewalk, and the door of the Plymouth was opened for him. Joe Mantila and Ferde Heinke sat on each side of Rachael.

  “Hi,” Ferde said.

  “You went over to the station?” Jim said, getting into the car.

  “Yeah,” Joe Mantila said.

  “We’re waiting for her lawyer,” Ferde Heinke said. “He’s supposed to be on his way here; she called him.”

  Rachael said, “Thanks for the money.”

  “Was it enough?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “How do you feel?” he said.

  “She’ll be okay,” Joe Mantila said.

  Rachael said, “We’ll be able to get him out. The police say they won’t hold him. I was with him during the evening, and he didn’t go outside. So he couldn’t have had anything to do with the junk from the hotel roof. But I know they’ll get us sooner or later. If not now, then some other time.”

  “They’re going to put Grimmelman in prison,” Jo
e Mantila said. “A felony. Draft evasion. The FBI was after him.”

  “Did you know that?” Jim asked them.

  “No,” Ferde Heinke said, “he didn’t tell us. But we knew he was scared of something; he had the Horch all ready to go, so he could get away. But he didn’t get away.”

  “That sure was a cool car,” Joe Mantila said.

  Jim said to her, “What do you think? Was that a good idea?”

  “No,” she said. “You mean Grimmelman? No, it was a mistake. Because they did get him.”

  “But if they hadn’t.”

  She said, “They did.” Her face was colorless and thin with worry. Her hair hung unevenly against her cheeks and ears. What a little hungry-looking creature, he thought. And the lovely eyes. Black-violet and immense, and the long lashes. He thought: She was afraid, and now I’ve lived to see that.

  I will put whatever I have into this, he thought. I will do the best I can. When they come in and get at this family, then I will fight them. I am upright and full of anger.

  Rachael said, “It may be that they’re going to say we’re not married. We lied about our ages, so maybe they can say it’s void. I thought about that. They always have that there, hanging over our heads. When they feel like it, they can use it.”

  “But you are married,” he said.

  “Are we?”

  “Yes,” he said. “You are. You and Art are.”

  Her face, violently alive, filled out and lost its hollowness. He saw the colors and lines blur; he saw the warmth from inside her. The tremendous warmth. “You think we can get through this?” she said. “You do, don’t you?”

  He thought: They know you will win. They know they are doomed. You have repudiated their words, their culture and customs and refinement and taste. Their precious things.

  And, he thought, I have been forced to take sides. You are our enemy, they said to the kids. We will kill you. We will demolish you. And he said to them: If you are going to fight the kids, you are going to have to take me on, too. Because I am going to stand by them. I am going to see the kids survive you.

  In January, at two o’clock one morning, Jim Briskin woke with the telephone ringing. Beside him in the bed, Pat stirred and sat up as be reached for the receiver.

  “H-h-hey!” Art shouted as he put the receiver to his ear. “Hey, Jim?”

  “Is it time?” he muttered. The apartment was pitch—dark and cold. Pat snapped on the lamp. “Now?” he said, rubbing his eyes.

  “Yeah, I think so,” Art said. “Can you come around?”

  He dressed, got in the car, and drove to the house on Fillmore Street.

  At the door Art met him. “Yeah,” he said desperately, “It’s every five minutes.”

  Entering the apartment, he said, “Rachael?”

  She had put on a long, pink-wool robe; she was sitting on the edge of the bed, pushing at her hard pale temples with her hands.

  “Yes,” she said in a grating voice.

  “She’s in a lot of pain,” Art said, hurrying past him to his wife “Let’s go.”

  Jim picked her up, robe and all, and carried her out to the car. A few minutes later they were driving in the direction of the hospital.

  Later, as he and Art sat in the hospital waiting room, he thought to himself that this was the only time. He had never waited for this; he had never waited while a woman gave birth to a child. From the pay phone he called Pat to tell her how it was going.

  “I guess they give them something so they won’t feel it,” he said to Art, walking back to him.

  “Y-y-yeah,” Art said.

  “But that doesn’t help us,” he said. It did not take away his own concern. So this, he thought, was how it felt. After a while he said, “That’s a sweet wife you have.”

  Art nodded.

  “You’re lucky,” he said. “I’ve never seen anybody like her.”

  Beyond the doors of the hospital a few cars moved in the early, morning darkness. To ease his tension, Jim Briskin walked over and stood with his hands in his pockets.

  One of the cars towed behind it a huge white papier-mâché floatlike sign. The car moved inflexibly and the sign followed. On the sign were words, vast words for everyone to read.

  Words, he thought. Here, at four o’clock in the morning, with no one up to read, the words were still being towed by. Even here. Still circulating the streets.

  For a moment it seemed to him that the sign was a Looney Luke sign. But he was wrong. It was not. Even so, he thought, it might as well have been.

  He watched the sign. The words hovered; they remained as long as possible. No, he thought. You can’t come in here.

  The words began to leave.

  Leave, he said.

  Slowly the words were gone. He stood at the doors to be sure. And they did not come back. He watched and waited, and they did not come back.