“Not on my income. And I don’t want to spend an evening or a weekend with some yacky broad trying to make small-talk. What I need is the silent type.”
“Maybe you could run an ad for a deaf-mute?”
“Knock it off! This thing really bugs me. I’m tired of being treated like a cross between a leper and the Invisible Man.”
“So what’s the answer?” I said. “There’s got to be a way—”
“Damn betcha!” Curtis stood up fast, which was a pretty good trick, considering the load he was carrying.
“Where you going?” I asked.
“Come along and see,” he said.
Five minutes later I’m watching Curtis use his night-key to unlock the back door of the department store.
Ten minutes later he has me sneaking around outside a storeroom in the dark, keeping an eye out for the security guard.
Fifteen minutes later I’m helping Curtis load a window dummy into the back seat of his rental car.
Like I said, it started out as a gag.
At least that’s what I thought it was when he stole Estelle. “That’s her name,” he told me. “Estelle.”
This was a week later, the night he invited me over to his place for dinner. I stopped by the bar for a few quickies beforehand and when I got to his apartment I was feeling no pain. Even so, I started to get uptight the minute I walked in.
Seeing the window dummy sitting at the dinette table gave me a jolt, but when he introduced her by name it really rattled my cage.
“Isn’t she pretty?” Curtis said.
I couldn’t fault him on that. The dummy was something special—blonde wig, baby-blue eyes, long lashes, and a face with a kind of what-are-you-waiting-for smile. The arms and legs were what you call articulated, and her figure was the kind you see in centerfolds. On top of that, Curtis had dressed it up in an evening gown, with plenty of cleavage.
When he noticed me eyeballing the outfit he went over to a wall closet and slid the door open. Damned if he didn’t have the rack full of women’s clothes—suits, dresses, sports outfits, even a couple of nighties.
“From the store?” I asked.
Curtis nodded. “They’ll never miss them until inventory, and I got tired of seeing her in the same old thing all the time. Besides, Estelle likes nice clothes.”
I had to hand it to him, putting me on like this without cracking a smile.
“Sit down and keep her company,” Curtis said. “I’ll have dinner on the table in a minute.”
I sat down. I mean, what the hell else was I going to do? But it gave me an antsy feeling to have a window dummy staring at me across the table in the candlelight. That’s right, he’d put candles on the table, and in the shadows you had to look twice to make sure this was only a mannequin or whatever you call it.
Curtis served up a couple of really good steaks and a nice tossed salad. He’d skipped the drinks-before-dinner routine; instead he poured a pretty fair Cabernet with the meal, raising his glass in a toast.
“To Estelle,” he said.
I raised my glass too, feeling like a wimp, but trying to go along with the gag. “How come she’s not drinking?” I asked.
“Estelle doesn’t drink.” He still didn’t smile. “That’s one of the things I like about her.”
It was the way he said it that got to me. I had to break up that straight face of his, so I gave him a grin. “I notice she isn’t eating very much either.”
Curtis nodded. “Estelle doesn’t believe in stuffing her face. She wants to keep her figure.”
He was still deadpanning, so I said, “If she doesn’t drink and she doesn’t eat, what happens when you take her to a restaurant?”
“We only went out once,” Curtis told me. “Tell me truth, it wasn’t the way I expected. They gave us a good table all right, but the waiter kept staring at us and the other customers started making wise-ass remarks under their breath, so now we eat at home. Estelle doesn’t need restaurants.”
The straighter he played it the more it burned me, so I gave it another shot. “Then I guess you won’t be taking her to Vegas after all?”
“We went there last weekend,” Curtis said. “I was right about the plane-fare. Not only did I save a bundle, but we got the red-carpet treatment. When they saw me carrying Estelle they must have figured her for an invalid—we got to board first and had our choice of seats upfront. The stewardess even brought her a blanket.”
Curtis was really on a roll now, and all I could do was go with it. “How’d you make out with the hotel?” I asked.
“No sweat. Double-occupancy rate, just like the ads said, plus complimentary cocktails and twenty dollars in free chips for the casino.”
I tried one more time. “Did Estelle win any money?”
“Oh no—she doesn’t gamble.” Curtis shook his head. “We ended up spending the whole weekend right there in our room, phoning room service for meals and watching closed-circuit TV. Most of the time we never even got out of bed.”
That shook me. “You were in bed with her?”
“Don’t worry, it was king-size, plenty of room. And I found out another nice thing about Estelle. She doesn’t snore.”
I squeezed-off another grin. “Then just what does she do when you go to bed with her?”
“Sleep, of course.” Curtis gave me a double-take. “Don’t go getting any ideas. If I wanted the other thing I could have picked up one of those inflatable rubber floozies from a sex-shop. But there’s no hanky-panky with Estelle. She’s a real lady.”
“A real lady,” I said. “Now I’ve heard everything.”
“Not from her.” Curtis nodded at the dummy. “Haven’t you noticed? I’ve been doing all the talking and she hasn’t said a word. You don’t know how great it is to have someone around who believes in keeping her mouth shut. Sure, I do the cooking and the housework, but it’s no more of a hassle than when I was living here alone.”
“You don’t feel alone anymore, is that it?”
“How could I? Now when I come home nights I’ve got somebody waiting for me. No nagging, no curlers in the hair—just the way she is now, neat and clean and well-dressed. She even uses that perfume I gave her. Can’t you smell it?”
Damned if he wasn’t right. I could smell perfume.
I sneaked another peek at Estelle. Sitting in the shadows with the candlelight soft on her hair and face, she almost had me fooled for a minute. Almost, but not quite.
“Just look at her,” Curtis said. “Beautiful! Look at that smile!”
Now, for the first time, he smiled too. And it was his smile I looked at, not hers.
“Okay,” I said. “You win. If you’re trying to tell me Estelle is better company than most women, it’s no contest.”
“I figured you’d understand.” Curtis hadn’t changed his expression, but there was something wrong about that smile of his, something that got to me.
So I had to say it. “I don’t want to be a party-pooper, but the way you come on, maybe there’s such a thing as carrying a gag too far.”
He wasn’t smiling now. “Who said anything about a gag? Are you trying to insult Estelle?”
“I’m not trying to insult anybody,” I told him. “Just remember, she’s only a dummy.”
“Dummy?” All of a sudden he was on his feet and coming around the table, waving those big fists of his. “You’re the one who’s a dummy! Get the hell out of here before I—”
I got out, before.
Then I went over to the bar, had three fast doubles, and headed for home to hit the sack. I went out like a light but it didn’t keep the dreams away, and all night long I kept staring at the smiles—the smile on his face and the smile on the dummy’s—and I don’t know which one spooked me the most.
Come to think of it, they both looked the same.
That night was the last night I went to the bar for a long time. I didn’t want to run into Curtis there, but I was still seeing him in those dreams.
I di
d my drinking at home now, but the dreams kept coming, and it loused me up at work when I was hungover. Pretty soon I started pouring a shot at breakfast instead of orange juice.
So I went to see Dr. Mannerheim.
That shows how rough things were getting, because I don’t like doctors and I’ve always had a thing about shrinks. This business of lying on a couch and spilling your guts to a stranger always bugged me. But it had got to where I started calling in sick and just sat home staring at the walls. Next thing you know, I’d start climbing them.
I told Mannerheim that when I saw him.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t ask you to lay on a couch or take ink-blot tests. The physical shows you’re a little rundown, but this can be corrected by proper diet and a vitamin supplement. Chances are you may not even need therapy at all.”
“Then what am I here for?” I said.
“Because you have a problem. Suppose we talk about it.”
Dr. Mannerheim was just a little baldheaded guy with glasses; he looked a lot like an uncle of mine who used to take me to ballgames when I was a kid. So it wasn’t as hard to talk as I’d expected.
I filled him in on my setup—the divorce and all—and he picked up on it right away. Said it was getting to be a common thing nowadays with so many couples splitting. There’s always a hassle working out a new life-style afterwards and sometimes a kind of guilty feeling; you keep wondering if it was your fault and that maybe something’s wrong with you.
We got into the sex bit and the drinking, and then he asked me about my dreams.
That’s when I told him about Curtis.
Before I knew it I’d laid out the whole thing—getting smashed in the bar, stealing the dummy, going to Curtis’s place for dinner, and what happened there.
“Just exactly what did happen?” Mannerheim said. “You say you had a few drinks before you went to his apartment—maybe three or four—and you drank wine with your dinner.”
“I wasn’t bombed, if that’s what you mean.”
“But your perceptions were dulled,” he told me. “Perhaps he intended to put you on for a few laughs, but when he saw your condition he got carried away.”
“If you’d seen the way he looked when he told me to get out you’d know it wasn’t a gag,” I said. “The guy is a nut-case.” Something else hit me all of a sudden, and I sat up straight in my chair. “I remember a movie I saw once. There’s this ventriloquist who gets to thinking his dummy is alive. Pretty soon he starts talking to it, then he gets jealous of it, and next thing you know—”
Mannerheim held up his hand. “Spare me the details. There must be a dozen films like that. But in all my years of practice I’ve never read, let alone run across, a single case where such a situation actually existed. It all goes back to the old Greek legend about Pygmalion, the sculptor who made a statue of a beautiful woman that came to life.
“But you’ve got to face facts.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “Your friend Curtis has a mannequin, not a ventriloquist’s dummy. He doesn’t try to create the illusion that it speaks, or use his hand to make it move. And he didn’t create the figure, he’s not a sculptor. So what does that leave us with?”
“Just one thing,” I said. “He’s treating this dummy like a real person.”
Mannerheim shook his head. “A man who’s capable of carrying a window dummy into a restaurant and a hotel—or who claims to have done so in order to impress you—may still just have taken advantage of your condition to play out an elaborate practical joke.”
“Wrong.” I stood up. “I tell you he believes the dummy is alive.”
“Maybe and maybe not. It isn’t important.” Mannerheim took off his glasses and stared at me. “What’s important is that you believe the dummy is alive.”
It hit me like a sock in the gut. I had to sit down again and catch my breath before I could answer him.
“You’re right,” I said. “That’s why I really wanted out of there. That’s why I keep having those damned dreams. That’s why there’s a drinking problem. Maybe I was juiced-up when I saw her, maybe Curtis hypnotized me, how the hell do I know? But whatever happened or didn’t happen, it worked. And I’ve been running scared ever since.”
“Then stop running.” Dr. Mannerheim put his glasses on again. “The only way to fight fear is to face it.”
“You mean go back there?”
He nodded at me. “If you want to get rid of the dreams, get rid of the dependency on alcohol, the first step is to separate fantasy from reality. Go to Curtis, and go sober. Examine the actual circumstances with a clear head. I’m satisfied that you’ll see things differently. Then, if you still think you need further help, get in touch.”
We both stood up, and Dr. Mannerheim walked me to the door. “Have a good day,” he said.
I didn’t.
It took all that weekend just to go over what he’d said, and another two days before I could buy his advice. But it made sense. Maybe Curtis had been setting me up like the shrink said; if not, then he was definitely a flake. But one way or another I had to find out.
So Wednesday night I went up to his apartment. I wasn’t on the sauce, and I didn’t call Curtis in advance. That way, if he didn’t know I was coming, he wouldn’t plan on pulling another rib—if it was a rib.
It must have been close to nine o’clock when I walked down the hall and knocked on his door. There was no answer; maybe he was gone for the evening. But I kept banging away, just in case, and finally the door opened.
“Come on in,” Curtis said.
I stared at him. He was wearing a pair of dirty, wrinkled-up pajamas, but he looked like he hadn’t slept for a week—his face was grey, big circles under his eyes, and he needed a shave. When we shook hands I felt like I was holding a sack of ice-cubes.
“Good to see you,” he told me, closing the door after I got inside. “I was hoping you’d come by so’s I could apologize for the way I acted the other night.”
“No hard feelings,” I said.”
“I knew you wouldn’t hold it against me,” he went on. “That’s what I told Estelle.”
Curtis turned and nodded across the living room, and in the dim light I saw the dummy sitting there on the sofa, facing the TV screen. The set was turned on to some old western movie, but the sound was way down and I could scarcely hear the dialogue.
It didn’t matter, because I was looking at the dummy. She wore some kind of fancy cocktail dress, which figured, because I could see the bottle on the coffee table and smell the whisky on Curtis’s breath. What grabbed me was the other stuff she was wearing—the earrings, and the bracelet with the big stones that sparkled and gleamed. They had to be costume jewelry, but they looked real in the light from the TV tube. And the way the dummy sat, sort of leaning forward, you’d swear it was watching the screen.
Only I knew better. Seeing the dummy cold sober this way, it was just a wooden figure, like the others I saw in the storeroom where Curtis stole it. Dr. Mannerheim was right; now that I got a good look the dummy didn’t spook me anymore.
Curtis went over to the coffee table and picked up the bottle. “Care for a drink?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No, thanks, not now.”
But he kept holding the bottle when he bent down and kissed the dummy on the side of its head. “How can you hear anything with the sound so low?” he said. “Let me turn up the volume for you.”
And so help me, that’s what he did. Then he smiled at the dummy. “I don’t want to interrupt while you’re watching, honey. So if it’s okay with you, we’ll go in the bedroom and talk there.” He moved back across the living room and started down the hall. I followed him into the bedroom at the far end and he closed the door. It shut off the sound from the TV set but now I heard another noise, a kind of chirping.
Looking over at the far corner I saw the bird-cage on a stand, with a canary hopping around inside.
“Estelle likes canaries,” Curtis said. “Same as my
ex. She always had a thing for pets.” He tilted the bottle.
I just stood there, staring at the room. It was a real disaster area—bed not made, heaped-up clothes lying on the floor, empty fifths and glasses everywhere. The place smelled like a zoo.
The bottle stopped gurgling and then I heard the whisper. “Thank God you came.”
I glanced up at Curtis. He wasn’t smiling now. “You’ve got to help me,” he said.”
“What’s the problem?” I asked.”
“Keep your voice down,” he whispered. “I don’t want her to hear us.”
“Don’t start that again,” I told him. “I only stopped in because I figured you’d be straightened out by now.”
“How can I? She doesn’t let me out of her sight for a minute—the last time I got away from here was three days ago, when I turned in the rental car and bought her the Mercedes.” That threw me. “Mercedes? You’re putting me on.”
Curtis shook his head. “It’s downstairs in the garage right now—brand new 280-SL, hasn’t been driven since I brought it home. Estelle doesn’t like me to go out alone and she doesn’t want to go out either. I keep hoping she’ll change her mind because I’m sick of being cooped-up here, eating those frozen TV dinners. You’d think she’d at least go for a drive with me after getting her the car and all.”
“I thought you told me you were broke,” I said. “Where’d you get the money for a Mercedes?”
He wouldn’t look at me. “Never mind. That’s my business.”
“What about your business?” I asked. “How come you haven’t been showing up at work?”
“I quit my job,” he whispered. “Estelle told me to.”
“Told you? Make sense, man. Window dummies don’t talk.” He gave me a glassy-eyed stare. “Who said anything about window dummies? Don’t you remember how it was the night we got her—how she was standing there in the storage room waiting for me? The others were dummies all right, I know that. But Estelle knew I was coming, so she just stood there pretending to be like all the rest because she didn’t want you to catch on.
“She fooled you, right? I’m the only one who knew Estelle was different. There were all kinds of dummies there, some real beauties, too. But the minute I laid eyes on her I knew she was the one.
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