by Ellen Datlow
“So you pushed his cholesterol over the top, and he died of a massive coronary.”
“Slugs can’t overeat. It was the beer. He. drank and drank and drank some more, and then he passed out on the patio lounge chair. That was my chance.”
“A steak through the heart?”
“Salt. I’d bought dozens of bags of rock salt for this. Once Casper was snoring away, I carried them out of my station wagon and ripped them open. Then, before he could awaken, I quickly dumped the whole lot over Casper.”
“I’ll bet Casper didn’t enjoy that.”
“He didn’t. At first I was afraid he’d break away, but I kept pouring the rock salt over him. He never said a word. He just writhed all about on the lounge chair, flinging his little arms and legs all about, trying to fend off the salt.”
Keenan paused and swallowed the last of the gin. He wiped his face and shuddered. “And then he began to shrivel up.”
“Shrivel up?”
“The way slugs do when you pour salt on them. Don’t you remember? Remember doing it when you were a kid? He just started to shrivel and shrink. And shrink and shrink. Until there was nothing much left. Just a dried-out twist of slime. No bones. Just dried slime.”
“I see.”
“But the worst part was the look in his eyes, just before they withered on the ends of their stalks. He stared right into my eyes, and I could sense the terrible rage as he died.”
“Stalks?”
“Yes. Casper Crowley sort of changed as he shriveled away.”
“Well. What did you do then?”
“Very little to clean up. Just dried slime and some clothes. I waited through the night, and this morning I burned it all on the barbecue grill. Wasn’t much left, but it sure stank.”
Keenan looked at his empty glass, then glanced hopefully at the empty bottle. “So now it’s over. I’m free.”
“Well,” said Martine, ignoring his imploring gaze, “I can certainly see that you’ve regained your imagination.”
“Best be motivating on home now, I guess.” Keenan stood up, with rather less stumbling than Martine had anticipated. “Thanks for listening to my strange little story. Guess I didn’t expect you to believe it all, but I had to talk to someone.”
“Why not drive carefully home and get some sleep,” Martine advised, ushering him to the door. “This has certainly been an interesting morning.” Keenan hung on to the door. “Thanks again, Martine. I’ll do just that. Hey, what do you say I treat you to Chinese tomorrow for lunch? I really feel a whole lot better after talking to you.”
Martine felt panic, then remorse. “Well, I am awfully busy just now, but I guess I can take a break for lunch.”
Martine sat back down after Keenan had left. She was seriously troubled, wondering whether she ought to phone Casper Crowley. Clearly Keenan was drinking far too heavily; he might well be harboring some resentment. But harm anyone … No way. Just some unfunny attempt at a shaggy dog story. Keenan never could tell jokes.
When she finally did phone Casper Crowley, all she got was his answering machine.
Martine felt strangely lethargic—her morning derailed by Keenan’s bursting in with his inane patter. Still, she thought she really should get some work done on her sculpture.
She paused before the almost finished marble, hammer and chisel at ready, her mind utterly devoid of inspiration. She was working on a bust of a young woman—the proverbial artist’s self-portrait. Martine squared her shoulders and set chisel to the base of the marble throat.
As the hammer struck, the marble cracked through to the base.
Not much need be said, actually. Every writer—every creative person—lives in dread of those nagging and inane interruptions that break the creative flow. A sentence perfectly crystallized, shattered by a stupid phone call, never regained. A morning filled with inspiration and energy, clogged by an uninvited guest, the day lost. The imaginative is the choice prey of the banal, and uncounted works of excellence have died stillborn thanks to junk phone calls and visits from bored associates.
After all, a writer doesn’t have a real job. Feel free to crash in at any time. Probably wants some company.
Nothing in this story is in any way a reflection upon this one writer’s various friends, nor does it in any way resemble any given actual person or composite of any persons known to the author. It is entirely a fictitious work and purely the product of the author’s imagination.
It has taken me five days to scribble out this afterword.
There’s the door….
Karl Edward Wagner
WARM MAN
Robert Silverberg
This story, the first of many that Robert Silverberg sold to Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine, juxtaposes Aickmanesque tone and subtlety with a satire of suburban manners. In it, he explores the dangerous addiction of an empath.
No one was ever quite sure just when Mr. Hallinan came to live in New Brewster. Lonny Dewitt, who ought to know, testified that Mr. Hallinan died on December 3, at 3:30 in the afternoon, but as for the day of his arrival no one could be nearly so precise.
It was simply that one day there was no one living in the unoccupied split-level on Melon Hill, and then the next he was there, seemingly having grown out of the woodwork during the night, ready and willing to spread his cheer and warmth throughout the whole of the small suburban community.
Daisy Moncrieff, New Brewster’s ineffable hostess, was responsible for making the first overtures toward Mr. Hallinan. It was two days after she had first observed lights on in the Melon Hill place that she decided the time had come to scrutinize the newcomers, to determine their place in New Brewster society. Donning a light wrap, for it was a coolish October day, she left her house in the early forenoon and went on foot down Copperbeech Road to the Melon Hill turnoff, and then climbed the sloping hill till she reached the split-level.
The name was already on the mailbox: DAVID HALLINAN. That probably meant they’d been living there a good deal longer than just two days, thought Mrs. Moncrieff; perhaps they’d be insulted by the tardiness of the invitation? She shrugged and used the doorknocker.
A tall man in early middle age appeared, smiling benignly. Mrs. Moncrieff was thus the first recipient of the uncanny warmth that David Hallinan was to radiate throughout New Brewster before his strange death. His eyes were deep and solemn, with warm lights shining in them; his hair was a dignified gray-white mane.
“Good morning,” he said. His voice was deep, mellow.
“Good morning. I’m Mrs. Moncrieff—Daisy Moncrieff, from the big house on Copperbeech Road. You must be Mr. Hallinan. May I come in?”
“Ah—please, no, Mrs. Moncrieff. The place is still a chaos. Would you mind staying on the porch?”
He closed the door behind him—Mrs. Moncrieff later claimed that she had a fleeting view of the interior and saw unpainted walls and dust-covered bare floors—and drew one of the rusty porch chairs for her.
“Is your wife at home, Mr. Hallinan?”
“There’s just me, I’m afraid. I live alone.”
“Oh.” Mrs. Moncrieff, discomforted, managed a grin nonetheless. In New Brewster everyone was married; the idea of a bachelor or a widower coming to settle there was strange, disconcerting … and just a little pleasant, she added, surprised at herself.
“My purpose in coming was to invite you to meet some of your new neighbors tonight—if you’re free, that is. I’m having a cocktail party at my place about six, with dinner at seven. We’d be so happy if you came!”
His eyes twinkled gaily. “Certainly, Mrs. Moncrieff. I’m looking forward to it already.”
The ne plus ultra of New Brewster society was impatiently assembled at the Moncrieff home shortly after 6, waiting to meet Mr. Hallinan, but it was not until 6:15 that he arrived. By then, thanks to Daisy Moncrieff’s fearsome skill as a hostess, everyone present was equipped with a drink and a set of speculations about the mysterious bachelor on the hill.
; “I’m sure he must be a writer,” said Martha Weede to liverish Dudley Heyer. “Daisy says he’s tall and distinguished and just radiates personality. He’s probably here only for a few months—just long enough to get to know us all, and then he’ll write a novel about us.”
“Hmm. Yes,” Heyer said. He was an advertising executive who commuted to Madison Avenue every morning; he had an ulcer, and was acutely aware of his role as a stereotype. “Yes, then he’ll write a sizzling novel exposing suburban decadence, or a series of acid sketches for The New Yorker. I know the type.”
Lys Erwin, looking desirable and just a bit disheveled after her third martini in thirty minutes, drifted by in time to overhear that. “You’re always conscious of types, aren’t you darling? You and your gray flannel suit?”
Heyer fixed her with a baleful stare but found himself, as usual, unable to make an appropriate retort. He turned away, smiled hello at quiet little Harold and Jane Dewitt, whom he pitied somewhat (their son Lonny, age 9, was a shy, sensitive child, a total misfit among his playmates), and confronted the bar, weighing the probability of a night of acute agony against the immediate desirability of a Manhattan.
But at that moment Daisy Moncrieff reappeared with Mr. Hallinan in tow, and conversation ceased abruptly throughout the parlor while the assembled guests stared at the newcomer. An instant later, conscious of their collective faux pas, the group began to chat again, and Daisy moved among her guests, introducing her prize.
“Dudley, this is Mr. Davis Hallinan. Mr. Hallinan, I want you to meet Dudley Heyer, one of the most talented men in New Brewster.”
“Indeed? What do you do, Mr. Heyer?”
“I’m in advertising. But don’t let them fool you; it doesn’t take any talent at all. Just brass, nothing else. The desire to delude the public, and delude “em good. But how about you? What line are you in?”
Mr. Hallinan ignored the question. “I’ve always thought advertising was a richly creative field, Mr. Heyer. But, of course, I’ve never really known at firsthand—”
“Well, I have. And it’s everything they say it is.” Heyer felt his face reddening, as if he had had a drink or two. He was becoming talkative, and found Hallinan’s presence oddly soothing. Leaning close to the newcomer, Heyer said, “Just between you and me, Hallinan, I’d give my whole bank account for a chance to stay home and write. Just write. I want to do a novel. But I don’t have the guts; that’s my trouble. I know that come Friday there’s a $350 check waiting on my desk, and I don’t dare give that up. So I keep writing my novel up here in my head, and it keeps eating me away down here in my gut. Eating.” He paused, conscious that he had said too much and that his eyes were glittering beadily.
Hallinan wore a benign smile. “It’s always sad to see talent hidden, Mr. Heyer. I wish you well.”
Daisy Moncrieff appeared then, hooked an arm through Hallinan’s, and led him away. Heyer, alone, stared down at the textured gray broadloom.
Now why did I tell him all that? he wondered. A minute after meeting Hallinan, he had unburdened his deepest woe to him—something he had not confided in anyone else in New Brewster, including his wife.
And yet—it had been a sort of catharsis, Heyer thought. Hallinan had calmly soaked up all his grief and inner agony, and left Heyer feeling drained and purified and warm.
Catharsis? Or a blood-letting? Heyer shrugged, then grinned and made his way to the bar to pour himself a Manhattan.
As usual, Lys and Leslie Erwin were at opposite ends of the parlor. Mrs. Moncrieff found Lys more easily, and introduced her to Mr. Hallinan.
Lys faced him unsteadily, and on a sudden impulse hitched her neckline higher. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Hallinan. I’d like you to meet my husband, Leslie. Leslie! Come here, please?”
Leslie Erwin approached. He was twenty years older than his wife, and was generally known to wear the finest pair of horns in New Brewster—a magnificent spread of antlers that grew a new point or two almost every week.
“Les, this is Mr. Hallinan. Mr. Hallinan, meet my husband, Leslie.”
Mr. Hallinan bowed courteously to both of them. “Happy to make your acquaintance.”
“The same,” Erwin said. “If you’ll excuse me, now—”
“The louse,” said Lys Erwin when her husband had returned to his station at the bar. “He’d sooner cut his throat than spend two minutes next to me in public.” She glared bitterly at Hallinan. “I don’t deserve that kind of thing, do I?”
Mr. Hallinan frowned sympathetically. “Have you any children, Mrs. Erwin?”
“Hah! He’d never give me any—not with my reputation! You’ll have to pardon me; I’m a little drunk.”
“I understand, Mrs. Erwin.”
“I know. Funny, but I hardly know you and I like you. You seem to understand. Really, I mean.” She took his cuff hesitantly. “Just from looking at you, I can tell you’re not judging me like all the others. I’m not really bad, am I? It’s just that I get so bored, Mr. Hallinan.”
“Boredom is a great curse,” Mr. Hallinan observed.
“Damn right it is! And Leslie’s no help—always reading his newspapers and talking to his brokers! But I can’t help myself, believe me.” She looked around wildly. “They’re going to start talking about us in a minute, Mr. Hallinan. Every time I talk to someone new they start whispering. But promise me something—”
“If I can.”
“Someday—someday soon—let’s get together? I want to talk to you. God, I want to talk to someone—someone who understands why I’m the way I am. Will you?”
“Of course, Mrs. Erwin. Soon.” Gently he detached her hand from his sleeve, held it tenderly for a moment, and released it. She smiled hopefully at him. He nodded.
“And now I must meet some of the other guests. A pleasure, Mrs. Erwin.”
He drifted away, leaving Lys weaving shakily in the middle of the parlor. She drew in a deep breath and lowered her décolletage again.
At least there’s one decent man in this town now, she thought. There was something good about Hallinan—good, and kind, and understanding.
Understanding. That’s what I need. She wondered if she could manage to pay a visit to the house on Melon Hill tomorrow afternoon without arousing too much scandal.
Lys turned and saw thin-faced Aiken Muir staring at her slyly, with a clear-cut invitation on his face. She met his glance with a frigid, wordless go to hell.
Mr. Hallinan moved on, on through the party. And, gradually, the pattern of the party began to form. It took shape like a fine mosaic. By the time the cocktail hour was over and dinner was ready, an intricate, complex structure of interacting thoughts and responses had been built.
Mr. Hallinan, always drinkless, glided deftly from one New Brewsterite to the next, engaging each in conversation, drawing a few basic facts about the other’s personality, smiling politely, moving on. Not until after he moved on did the person come to a dual realization: that Mr. Hallinan had said quite little, really, and that he had instilled a feeling of warmth and security in the other during their brief talk.
And thus while Mr. Hallinan learned from Martha Weede of her paralyzing envy of her husband’s intelligence and of her fear of his scorn, Lys Erwin was able to remark to Dudley Heyer that Mr. Hallinan was a remarkably kind and understanding person. And Heyer, who had never been known to speak a kind word of anyone, for once agreed.
And later, while Mr. Hallinan was extracting from Leslie Erwin some of the pain his wife’s manifold infidelities caused him, Martha Weede could tell Lys Erwin, “He’s so gentle—why, he’s almost like a saint!”
And while little Harold Dewitt poured out his fear that his silent 9-year-old son Lonny was in some way subnormal, Leslie Erwin, with a jaunty grin, remarked to Daisy Moncrieff, “That man must be a psychiatrist. Lord, he knows how to talk to a person. Inside of two minutes he had me telling him all my troubles. I feel better for it, too.”
Mrs. Moncrieff nodded. “I know what you mean. Th
is morning, when I went up to his place to invite him here, we talked a little while on his porch.”
“Well,” Erwin said, “if he’s a psychiatrist he’ll find plenty of business here. There isn’t a person here riding around without a private monkey on his back. Take Heyer, over there—he didn’t get that ulcer from happiness. That scatterbrain Martha Weede, too—married to a Columbia professor who can’t imagine what to talk to her about. And my wife Lys is a very confused person, too, of course.”
“We all have our problems,” Mrs. Moncrieff sighed. “But I feel much better since I spoke with Mr. Hallinan. Yes: much better.”
Mr. Hallinan was now talking with Paul Jambell, the architect. Jambell, whose pretty young wife was in Springfield Hospital slowly dying of cancer. Mrs. Moncrieff could well imagine what Jambell and Mr. Hallinan were talking about.
Or rather, what Jambell was talking about—for Mr. Hallinan, she realized, did very little talking himself. But he was such a wonderful listener! She felt a pleasant glow, not entirely due to the cocktails. It was good to have someone like Mr. Hallinan in New Brewster, she thought. A man of his tact and dignity and warmth would be a definite asset.
When Lys Erwin woke—alone, for a change—the following morning, some of the past night’s curious calmness had deserted her.
I have to talk to Mr. Hallinan, she thought.
She had resisted two implied, and one overt, attempts at seduction the night before, had come home, had managed even to be polite to her husband. And Leslie had been polite to her. It was most unusual.
“That Hallinan,” he had said. “He’s quite a guy.”
“You talked to him, too?”
“Yeah. Told him a lot. Too much, maybe. But I feel better for it.”
“Odd,” she had said. “So do I. He’s a strange one, isn’t he? Wandering around that party, soaking up everyone’s aches. He must have had half the neuroses in New Brewster unloaded on his back last night.”
“Didn’t seem to depress him, though. More he talked to people, more cheerful and affable he got. And us, too. You look more relaxed than you’ve been in a month, Lys.”