Shatterday

by Harlan Ellison

  Helluva sense of whimsy, Arlo mused, edging closer.

  “Stop edging closer,” she suggested violently.

  “Look!” Arlo said, “Here comes one.”

  The Boeing 707 came out of the night like Sinbad’s roc, screaming shrilly, and Anastasia screamed shriller.

  The great silvery bulk of it, totally obscuring the sky, sailed out of the blackness mere feet above them, all vastness and terror, like a flat stone two blocks long, skimmed over water, and shred their silences past them. The 707 touched down almost as soon as it passed over them, and an instant later was a half mile down the runway.

  Anastasia had pulled closer to Arlo. She was now wrapped in his arms.

  “Scary, isn’t it?” Arlo smiled.

  “I wet myself,” she said. She did not seem delighted with Arlo.

  He leaned across slightly and kissed her. “Easy,” she said, inserting an elbow into the conversation. “ And that’s an order, not a description.”

  Progress! thought Arlo. “We’d better be getting back.”

  He started the car and made a U-turn.

  “That was a helluva whimsical thing you said, when the plane passed over,” Arlo chuckled.

  “Which?”

  “About what you did when the plane—”

  “It was a statement of fact.”

  At Arlo’s apartment, after she had hung things up to dry, he offered her an omelet. “I can make seven different varieties, all delicious.”

  She aimed a finger at him. “You’re lucky I share an apartment with a light sleeper, because underwear or no underwear, I wouldn’t have let you con me into coming up here.”

  “Spanish, Viennese, Ranch-style, Albanian—”

  “You have an indomitable will. Nothing seems to get to you. Brick walls and your head have much in common.”

  “Corsican, Paraguayan—”

  “Look: I’m very hungry, mostly because you had the bad taste to remind me, and I’d like nothing better than a good omelet; but when I say nothing better, I mean exactly that. You are still a casual pick-up, even though for some nutty reason we have managed to travel along this far together and my bikini briefs are drying over your shower curtain. Does my message penetrate?”

  Arlo grinned infectiously. “Like a call from the spirit world. My father taught me. He was a master chef in New York hotels most of his life, except for a couple of years when he was captaining the kitchen of a luxury liner. Spanish, Corsican, Tibetan, German-Bavarian—”

  She sat down on the arm of an overstuffed Morris chair, courtesy of the landlord. She pulled his blue bathrobe closer around her. A flash of leg reminded him there was nothing between them but the robe. “You know, Arlo, I have to tell you, concisely, I think you are the bummest trip I have ever been on. Not only are you funny looking, but there is a perceptible animal cunning in your face, and very frankly, but nothing could get me to go to bed with you, so forget the whole idea right now. How the hell do you make an Albanian omelet?”

  Any second now, she’ll notice them, Arlo gloated.

  He moved in and kissed her. It was an act of humor on his part, an act of politeness on hers. “Now that we have that out of the way,” he smiled, “one Albanian omelet coming up.”

  He vanished into the utility kitchen, tiny for the white stucco unit (furniture courtesy of landlord and Thrift Shops; what might have been termed Early Impecunity) but more than sufficient for his needs. He proceeded to make a Spanish omelet, which was, in actuality, the only kind he could make, and that the result of endless hours following the recipe in Fanny Farmer’s Boston Cookbook. Escoffier had no trepidation about living in the same universe with Arlo. But this he had learned (Arlo, not Escoffier): one cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs. Arlo had broken dozens.

  He threw in a palmful of paprika and brown sugar and oregano.

  “You collect coins,” she called from the other room.

  Beachhead secured! he rejoiced.

  “My father did,” he answered, without turning from the stove. He had no need to go in the other room to see what she was doing. He could picture it perfectly. The picture was always the same, because it always happened just this way. She was standing before the flat, glass-covered case about the size of an opened newspaper. It stood on its own black wrought iron pedestal, a Herman Miller design that had been bolted to the underside of the case. The little Tensor lamp was turned in such a way that the beam fell directly on the arrangement of coins lying on their black velvet pad in the case.

  “They’re very handsome,” she called.

  “Yes, they were Dad’s pride and joy,” he said, not turning from the stove.

  “They must be valuable,” she said.

  He turned from the stove, smiling a secret smile. Then he turned back to the stove, and scraped the ruined omelet into the sink disposal, started over again with gritted teeth, and knew he shouldn’t have turned from the stove.

  When he brought out their plates, and set them on the coffee table, she was still leaning over the case, mesmerized, hands behind her back, not wanting to put fingerprints on the carefully polished glass. Arlo smiled his own Spanish omelet of a secret smile.

  She looked at the omelet uneasily as he went back to get the quart of milk from the refrigerator. She was back at the coin case when he returned with it. “Your omelet’ll get cold,” and she came over to the sofa, sat down and addressed herself to the egg without realizing Arlo was looking at the exposed left thigh.

  “You keep them out where anyone could steal them?”

  Arlo shrugged and ate a bite of omelet. It was awful. She wasn’t saying anything about hers, however. “I seldom have people over,” he explained. And mused that while he had just lied outrageously, the usual modus operandi had not been like this evening’s. Underwear. He’d have to examine the ramifications of that ploy, at his leisure.

  “It took Dad over thirty years to find all those. Myself, I could never understand the kick he got out of it. They never meant much to me—until he died…”

  He choked up. She paused with a forkful on her way to mouth. The appraisal she gave him was the crucial one: if he could pass the sincerity test, the rest was downhill.

  “But when he died… ?” she prompted him.

  Arlo plunged on. “It was all he left me. All those years he worked so damned hard, and he had so little to show for it. Just those coins. He left them to me, and well, it may have seemed a dumb way to spend time, collecting coins, when I was younger and he was around. But when he was gone, they became very important. It was like keeping a little bit of him with me. He was a good guy—never really understood me, but I suppose that’s typical with the parents of our generation.”

  Lofty. Very lofty, and as far away from sex talk as he could get without going into withdrawal. “They must be quite valuable,” she said again.

  He nodded, munching. “ As a matter of fact, they are. Twice I got real flat and decided to sell them, but when it got right down to the old nitty-gritty, I couldn’t do it. Once I took a job selling shoes and the other time I hocked my tape recorder. I didn’t realize how important they’d become to me till then. They were worth about fifteen hundred when he died, but by now I could probably trade the collection in on a Maserati if I wanted to.”

  She seemed appalled. “That’s a terrible idea.”

  He chuckled. “I was only kidding. I wouldn’t do it. They meant so much to Dad, I guess it’s rubbed off. They’re important to me now. That nickel in the upper left hand corner is worth about two hundred and fifty bucks alone. How’s the omelet?”

  “Good.” She smiled at him. He had depth now. Substance. A past. A present, lying there on black velvet.

  When they finished eating she took the plates to the sink and washed them, and used a Brillo pad on the gooey skillet. Arlo watched quick flashes of her through the doorway, as she moved back and forth from the sink. He sank down in the sofa and felt secure. When she was finished and had dried her hands on the litt
le dish towel, he called in to her, “There’s a bottle of hand lotion under the sink.”

  He heard her open the cabinet. A few minutes later she reentered the living room, dry-washing her hands. “I gather you often have ladies wash your dishes; that bottle of lotion is almost empty.”

  “Not too often.”

  “It’s a kindness only a man with female companions would appreciate.”

  “I appreciate all sorts of things; like your doing the dishes. That was very nice. You looked at home in there.” He extended his hands. She took them.

  “The least a girl can do is pay for her supper.” He drew her down beside him on the sofa, but she scrunched away. “Whoops. Let me rephrase that.”

  Arlo scrunched closer, tried for a kiss, aimed for her lips, landed on her cheek.

  “I thought we had all that settled?” she reminded him.

  He ran an all-seeing finger across her high cheekbone. “If you were scrawny like a Keane painting, you could be a model with a face like that.”

  “I’m part Indian. My grandfather on my mother’s side. I could even—” she slapped his hand away from there, “—speak a little Sioux when I was a kid.” She slapped his hand a second time. “Please, Arlo.” She stood up suddenly. “I’d better check, make sure my things are dry by now.”

  “Stay. I’ll be good. Word of honor.”

  “I know about your honor. Tarnished.”

  “I’ve never spoken to an Indian before. An Amerindian, as a matter of cold fact. Talk some Sioux to me.”

  She took a step toward the bathroom, he grabbed her hand and she let him. “I don’t remember any.”

  “It’s just like English, isn’t it?” Nonsense syllables. He was gibbering, and they both knew what was happening. “I mean, you leave out a few of the small words and put ‘um’ at the end of the others? Me wantum you?”

  She laughed. He stood up and tried to hold her, but she did a fast two-step.

  “I have the feeling,” she said, imbedding a restraining finger in his chest (the fingernail was long, painted, and hurt like hell), “that I’m being turned into a tease. And I’m not. Maybe I’m not as bright as I ought to be, but… oh hell, I refuse to defend myself.” Her voice softened. “Thanks for the omelet, I’ve got to get dressed. If my roommate wakes up and I’m not back she’ll call the safe and loft squad, or whoever it is they call when a girl’s been broken and entered.”

  They looked at each other for a long moment, over a distance that she increased geometrically as the micro-instants elapsed. When she had attained a distance of several light-years, there in the dim living room, she turned away and went to the bathroom.

  Consider now: all that firm girlstuff, busily hooking bra under breasts, pulling it around so the cups are in front, pulling it up, stuffing and handling gingerly; stepping into, putting on, pulling over, adjusting to, smoothing out, hooking on, slipping into. While over there, beyond lath and plaster, Arlo, Great White Hunter, coming to a rapid boil. Knowing now was the penultimate moment. And in some ways the best moment of all, for now was all anticipation without even the slightest disappointment. Now she was perfect, unflawed, and the best since Helen of Troy (and what’s she doing now?).

  She came out of the bathroom, gathered everything she needed, and as he made to rise, put out a palm against the air between them. He sank back. She smiled with genuine affection, nodded slightly as if to say it could never be, oh my Heathcliff, and went to the door.

  No exit lines.

  She turned the knob and pulled the door inward.

  Quietly now, Arlo: “Do me one small favor before you go?” She turned and looked at him, wide open now that safety was a mere threshold away. He got up and went to the bookshelf near the kitchen. He took down a large Royal Doulton toby jug of Dick Turpin the Highwayman, and shook a key out of it.

  Anastasia didn’t move from the doorway. She merely watched as he moved smoothly across the room to the coin case, inserted the key in the lock, turned it, opened the glass top and removed something. He closed the case, relocked it, returned the key to the toby jug, and came to her, there in the doorway.

  “Everybody grows up sometime,” he said. “I’m going to have to sell this collection some day, probably some day soon. My Healey’s about ready for Medicare. So what I’d like you to do for me—”

  He hesitated, beat beat beat, then offered his hand to her, opening the fist. The penny lay there against his palm, and she stopped breathing.

  He was humble about it. Truly humble. “I remember Dad coming home with this one. He was like a kid with a new toy. A guest on shipboard had given it to him in exchange for some well-made pêche flambée. Turned out to be rare.”

  “I can’t!” she said absolutely.

  He went on swiftly. “Oh, it’s not as expensive as—say, a 1909 ‘S’ mint Indian Head, or some of the English pennies—but it’s pretty rare. Something about they pulled it off the counters soon after it was minted. I want you to have it. Please.”

  “I can’t!”

  “Please.” He put the penny in her hand. She held it as though it was stuck together of dust and spiderwebs, just looking at it down there, blazing and glowing in her palm. “It was my Dad’s, then it was mine, and now it’s yours. You can’t refuse a gift someone gives you like that.”

  “But why? Why me?”

  “Because,” he shrugged as a little boy might shrug, “you’re nice people. Make it into a pin or something.”

  He closed her fingers around it. “Now, good night. I’ll be talking to you.”

  He walked away from her and switched on the television set. It was a test pattern. He sat down and watched it for a moment, and then he heard the door close. When he turned at the sound, he was all awareness at that instant, she was still in the room, leaning against the door, fist closed over the wonder that lay therein, watching him.

  Arlo woke just after one o’clock the next day. The scent of her perfume still occupied the other side of the bed. He stretched, kicked the sheet off his naked legs, and said to the familiar ceiling, “My, that was nice.”

  He showered and put the coffee on.

  Then, as he finished dressing, he opened the little drawer beneath his cufflink box—the drawer you might not realize was there unless you were specifically looking for a little drawer right there in that particular cufflink box—and in anticipation of the coming evening, removed one of the three remaining old pennies (the last of fourteen he had bought in the batch) and carried it into the living room. As he unlocked the coin case, he made a mental note to stop down at the coin shop and pick up another batch of old pennies. He was running low.

  He relocked the case, and was returning the key to the toby jug, when the phone rang.

  He picked it up and said, “Hi,” and got venom poured right into his ear.

  “You bastard! You lying, low, thieving, seducing sonofabitch! You miserable con artist! You plague-bearer, you Typhoid Mary; you Communist fag ratfink bastard!”

  “Hi.”

  “You low scum dog, you. You crud. Of all the low, rotten, ugly, really outright evil demeaning stinky things a creep fascist right-wing louse could pull, that was the most vile, nauseating, despicable, hideous—”

  “Hi, Anastasia. What’s new?”

  “What’s new, you shit? I’ll tell you what’s new! Among other things, that coin of your dear old Daddy’s is new. New enough to be worth exactly one lousy cent. Not a rare! Not a valuable! Not a nothing, that’s what’s new!”

  Horror coursed through Arlo’s strangled words. “Wh—what?” He coughed, choked, swallowed hard. “What’re you talking about? Whaddaya mean? Tell me… tell me, dammit!”

  Her voice was less steamy. There was an edge of doubt now. “I took it down today, there’s a numismatist in the office building where I work —”

  Affront lived in his shock. “You what?!? You had my father’s penny appraised? You did that? What kind of a person—”

  “Listen, don’t try to make me
the heavy, Arlo! It wasn’t valuable at all. It was just a miserable old penny like a million others, and you got me into bed with it, that’s what! You lied to me!”

  Softly, he crept in between her rebuilding attack. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Well, it’s true.”

  “No.”

  “Yes, yes, and yes! Worth a penny. Period.”

  “Oh my God,” he husked. “Dad never knew. He always thought… how cruel… how awfully cruel… that man who gave it to him on shipboard… I can’t believe it… oh Jeezus…”

  There was silence at the other end.

  “Oh, God…” he murmured. Then, after a while, gently, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know… listen, I don’t think I want to talk any more… excuse me…”

  She stopped him. “Arlo?”

  Silence.

  “Arlo?” Very gently from her.

  Silence again, then, almost a whisper: “Yeah… ?”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

  “Forget it.”

  “No, really. It was a rotten thing for me to do. I’d—I’d like to—”

  “It isn’t necessary.”

  “No, really, I mean it. I’d like to… are you busy tonight… could I come over and maybe—”

  Arlo held the phone with one hand, unlocked the case with the other. As he removed the penny, making a mental note to perhaps put off that trip to the coin shop for a week or so, he said with absolute sincerity into the mouthpiece, “I guess so. Yeah, okay. Why don’t you stop off at a deli and pick up some corned beef and pickles and we can…”

  The Man Who Was Heavily into Revenge

  Introduction

  This trip is mapped through a dark passage in my recent past. It deals with a mortal dread we all share: the madness that betides us when we have been fucked over once too often by the petty thugs and conscienceless pillagers who infest the world—from venal politicians who manipulate our lives for personal gain, down to the building contractors who promise decent craftsmanship and leave you with leaking roofs. At some point you go blind with rage. Why me? you wail! I don’t cheat people, I do my job honestly and with care… how can creeps like this be permitted to flourish?