The Ultimate Egoist

by Theodore Sturgeon

  When he had a little time to relive that unforgettable evening, he reasoned and analyzed and discarded until he had isolated the fact that it was her perfume which had done the trick. But its name escaped him. It was a familiar odor, but it was familiar in a way that cloaked it. Like your front stairs. How many steps do you climb when you come home? You climb them each night, and yet you can’t name the number of them. Louise’s perfume was like that; everyday and indefinable. But it seemed like the essence of all the good things in the universe, and gave Louise the status of No. 1 woman in Carl’s life. And when he saw her again, so haunted and enchanted was he by that scent that he demanded in the same breath as his “Hello, darling,

  “What kind of perfume is that?”

  She looked up at him and smiled a warm mysterious smile. “Guess,” she said, “But it’s my secret.”

  He took her by the shoulders and inhaled the telling whiff of her sorcery. “I’ll find out what it is,” he said softly, “if I have to marry you to do it.”

  “Oh, Carl!” Soft arms around his neck, soft lips inches from his own … Oh, well—they were married in due time.

  She stuck to her word. It wasn’t until they were on their honeymoon that she showed him the bottle of vanilla extract. And they call women the weaker sex!

  East Is East

  LAURA WAS DELIGHTED. She had come here in a spirit of adventurous defiance, and the one thing that could possibly have spoiled the evening would have been loneliness in this noisy crowd. Rebelling at her mother’s insistence that she kowtow to the conventions, that she confine her dancing to the Greek interpretative, that she learn the gracious arts of being hostess and mistress of ceremonies at afternoon teas, and that she express her youthful exuberance in masterly playing of Chopin on her mother’s concert grand, she had flown in the face of fate, flung herself into the great unknown. She had come to the Jitterclub on East Beaufort Street, which club should have been dignified by the term “joint.”

  Well, that’s East Beaufort Street for you. At one end, on the west side of town, it is lined by great mansions and exclusive apartment houses. These grade down in quality until West Beaufort Street, in the business section, undergoes its transition to East Beaufort Street. From that point on it descends the social scale. Its windup is a waterfront—a colorful, noisy, malodorous waterfront. And the center of the odors—hemp, copra, fish, stagnant water; and the noise—trucks and drays and a spur line of the central R.R.; and the color—shawled immigrant women, turbaned lascars from Limey ships and the ships themselves—in the center of all this, then, was the Jitterclub.

  Some joints are loud and some funny, but the “Jitter” was by all counts the loudest and funniest. And Laura had fled to it. She was supposed to be at a meeting of the Cultural Society for Poetry and Orphan Dogs, and the prospect had been too deadly. It was simply a choice between breaking up a meeting of the CSPOD with violence, or letting off steam with equal violence where it would not be noticed. The way she felt, the Jitterclub was the only place that would do.

  And here she was, with jam and jive washing over her in great waves; and now she was delighted, because she wanted someone to talk to, and this incredibly handsome young man was saying, “Look, sister, I’m lonely too.”

  Knowing the value of protective coloration (as long as she acted like an habitué, she felt safe) she carefully popped her huge cud of chewing gum at him before she said (very East Side!), “That makes two of us, all right. Somp’n’ oughta be done.”

  Somp’n’ was done—plenty. He was delightful. He acted just as a flashy East Sider should act. She knew. Hadn’t she been to the movies? His name was Sam Reynolds but he said, “Call me Sooky.”

  He could dance. She giggled as she thought of the hours spent in Mme. Kokkinakski’s studio—“Ant-a-wan, ant-a-two, ant-a-t’ree, ant-a-vour, naow, you air a wave. You move like a swan—so!” Sooky whirled and shagged and hopped; carried her into a land far away, a land made of sharps and flats and blue crescendos and crazy heartbeat syncopation.

  He knew the lingo, and he knew the gags and comebacks. He called her “Toots” and she liked it. Why not? Tomorrow she’d be back in her right little, tight little luxurious boring world; but now—the music’s playing, let’s dance.

  Later they went to Antonio’s Spaghetti Emporium and ate tagliatelli and costoletti and it was delicious. They talked, and they sang to each other the lyrics of the popular songs that poured out of the brass throat of Antonio’s radio. They laughed a great deal—and it was in the middle of a peal of laughter that Laura suddenly stopped, put her hand to her mouth and stared with frightened eyes at Sam (Sooky) Reynolds.

  “ ’S’matter, Laura?”

  She couldn’t tell him. She wanted to—oh, yes! She wanted to tell him that, as if a light had been turned on, she realized that she didn’t want to say good-bye to this beautiful, vulgar young man. Not ever. “Nothing,” she said tiredly. Nothing? This filled up, choked feeling? This wild beating of her heart?

  Antonio twisted the dial of the radio, and music poured forth—rich, glorious, emotional symphonic music. It was too much. Laura cried. Sooky came around the table, put his arm around her, thrust a spotless handkerchief in her hands. “Take it easy, kid,” he said softly. “I know how it is … Brahms’ Fourth Symphony gets me that way too.”

  Laura sniffed and sat up stiffly. “Brahms’ Fourth? What would a jitterbug know about Brahms’ Fourth? Besides, it’s Tchaikovsky’s Fourth.”

  “Brahms!” he said sharply to get her angry, make her forget her tears.

  “Tchaikovsky!” she insisted. “I know. I have to listen to it almost every day.”

  “You—how come?”

  She laid her cards on the table. “I’m not what you think, Sooky. I’m terribly sorry. I live on the west side. I wanted fun. I’ve had fun. I … I’d better go.” She was crying again.

  “Fun,” he said. “I had fun too. I’ll go with you, Laura. It’s the same with me. I live next door to you. I followed you here tonight. Something might have happened to you. I had a chance—my mother went to the meeting of the CSPOD.” Laura sank back in her chair. He thought she was laughing, and then that she was crying. Then he saw that she was doing both.

  The announcer said that they had been listening to Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony. They weren’t interested.

  Three People

  THEY WERE SCARED, those three. Mrs. Mulligan, as magnificently poised as ever, stood between Benny and Betsy, with a firm and inexorable grip on the back of each moist neck. George stood in front of them, his grubby face revealing the conflict between loyalty and self-preservation going on within him. They were caught red-handed, those three. It had been George’s idea, of course. All of his ideas were good, and most of them wound up this way. Set a couple of cannon crackers in front of Mrs. Mulligan’s door, light the fuses, ring the bell and beat it. Why Mrs. Mulligan? Because she was the terror of every child on the block. Not, certainly, because she ever did anything to anyone. But she was so mysterious. She never spoke to anyone, and she always dressed in black. An ignorant mother had once told her disobedient son that if he were not good, Mrs. Mulligan would get him. This little story had spread and grown with the telling. Mrs. Mulligan ate little boys and girls. She hid in dark corners and jumped out atcha. She—well, now she had neatly caught Benny and Betsy and George. They had set their cannon crackers and had rung the bell. They had stampeded around the corner of the house—right into the capable arms of Mrs. Mulligan. Like lightning, and yet with no apparent effort, she had captured the napes of Benny and Betsy, and fixed George with a baleful eye.

  They held the tableau for a long painful moment. George could have fled, but the enemy had the two younger children in her power. And it was George’s fault. George stayed where he was, with his mouth open alarmingly.

  “Come with me,” Mrs. Mulligan said quietly. Three scared pairs of eyes searched her face and found it inscrutable. And as she turned and went up the steps, three small pair
s of legs followed obediently, without enthusiasm. And so they passed through that fearsome portal, into the unknown beyond.

  But it wasn’t so fearsome, after all. There were bright chintz curtains and neatly contrasting upholsteries. There were deep rugs, and there was a canary and a big aquarium. Mrs. Mulligan lined the three up in front of a huge divan and pushed them gently but firmly onto it. They were so frightened that they stayed where they were put, like dolls. Mrs. Mulligan laughed and went out of the room.

  Betsy said, “I’m scared, George.”

  “I’m not,” Benny quavered. George flashed a look around the room. “Let’s make a break for it!”

  “No!” said Benny. “My father said if a bee flies around you and you don’t move, he’ll go away.”

  “Snakes, too,” whispered Betsy absently. Mrs. Mulligan came back bearing a huge tray. She set it in front of them. It was loaded down with ice cream and cake and mints and chocolates. Three pairs of eyes tore themselves from the sight and looked again at that soft, quizzical face. It was smiling now, and suddenly they were not afraid any more, just very, very puzzled. Betsy sobbed twice, and tears came, and then she smiled at Mrs. Mulligan. “Go ahead,” said Mrs. Mulligan. “The cream will get soft.”

  They needed no second invitation. And as they stuffed themselves Mrs. Mulligan sat opposite in a big chair and looked at them and laughed softly. It sounded like cool water running down a flight of thin glass steps. Benny suddenly looked up at her with his mouth crammed, and laughed with her, spraying crumbs on the carpet. Betsy and George laughed too, and after that they were all friends.

  Their rather frantic munching began to slow, and all at once they realized that their hostess was telling them a story. It dawned on them slowly, like music in the background that gradually fills a room. It was a story, beautifully and simply told, about boys and girls, and how they sometimes do things without knowing why. “Why are you shooting off firecrackers today?” she asked. Benny said promptly, “It’s the Fourth. Everybody does.” “Why?” and they looked at each other and at her.

  Then she asked them their names, and they told her. She thought a minute, and then told them three stories.

  One was about a girl named Betsy. Betsy was very clever with her hands, and she loved her country. If she had been a man, she would have been a soldier. But she thought and thought, and finally decided that the best thing she could do would be to make a flag for her country.

  And one was about a boy named Benny—Benjamin. When he grew up he was a very great man. He was a scientist, and he discovered that lightning was electricity. He was a great statesman and a diplomat. That’s what he did for his country.

  And then she turned to George and told a story about a boy named George who grew up to be a general—the kind of general who would fight like a private and suffer with his men when they suffered. Valley Forge—Trenton—and a man named Cornwallis.

  Three stories about three people—patriotism, brains, and force. Three stories about a country and a Day of Independence, and what it meant.

  And then she led them out into the back garden. There were piles of punk and torpedoes and crackers there, and big tin cans to make them loud. The three ran out laughing, and Mrs. Mulligan stayed at the door and laughed too. She may not live in your neighborhood, or in yours. But remember, on the Fourth, what she told those three. So many never think …

  Eyes of Blue

  SHE WAS A deb and he was a taxi driver and they met in the big city where things like this happen.

  She was Estelle Rudd and she had seven million dollars and some odd cents in her own name and a dollar or two coming to her, which would be in two years now, so you can see that she was only nineteen. And because she was only nineteen, and in spite of her gilt edge pedigree a very normal girl, she was doing something crazy. She was riding in a taxicab and the taxicab was going downtown, farther and farther away from the deluxe suburb where she had been incarcerated in Mrs. Van Kurp’s Finishing School. She figured she was finished but not what Mrs. Van Kurp meant by “finished.” Estelle was finished with being finished, if you see what I mean, which is that she was rebelling because she did not like it out there.

  She had thrown her thesies and thosies into a suitcase and had dropped silently out her window. She had $300 and lots of mistaken ideas about making a career for herself and laughing in the faces of her relatives, who really knew what was best for her. She was going to do the kind of disappearing act known as a blackout, which was very selfish of her. But she had cried and pleaded because she did not like Mrs. Van Kurp’s Finishing School, and nobody had paid any attention and so she was convinced that nobody loved her, which was not true, but which gave her a good excuse to do something violent.

  So, here she was, bumping comfortably toward her newer and freer life in a great big taxicab, feeling very small and brave and admirable because she was nineteen and thought she was very clever. But after a half hour of that she began to feel lonesome. She needed someone to tell her that she was small and brave and admirable, and there was no one around but the taxi driver. She began to talk to him.

  He was used to it, because he didn’t do anything but grunt. She thought that a man who could only grunt could not have very much intelligence, so she began to expand her tale. She lay back in the cab and talked and talked and did not watch where the cab was going. The more she talked the prouder she grew, and before she knew it she had told him who she was and exactly what she was doing. She made it all very involved, and because he did not say anything she wound up asking, “And what do you think of me now?” She was a little hysterical.

  The cab stopped and the driver got out and took her bag and opened the door. “I think you’re a headstrong little brat,” he told her, and pulled her forcibly out of his cab. She was so astonished that she did not notice anything for a while except that the driver was young and had the bluest eyes on earth, and that the eyes were amused and a little angry but not at all disgusted, which was something.

  And then, as she caught her breath, she realized that the cab was standing beneath the pillared marquee of Mrs. Van Kurp’s Finishing School. Estelle was very angry, of course, but what good did it do her? The cab driver smiled a very nice smile and demanded his fare, which was a large one because Estelle had been talking a long time before the young man began listening and decided to take matters into his own hands. Estelle thrust a bill at him and hurried into the building without waiting for her change. The driver laughed and drove off, and Estelle went to bed where she should have been in the first place. She was surprised to find that she was glad to be back.

  Now I will jump two years in my story, because nothing much happened for two years except that Estelle was graduated and became a very wise and popular young lady. This was because she was tempted to do many foolish things, and every time she was tempted she would say to herself, “I think you’re a headstrong little brat,” and she would imagine the bluest eyes in the world smiling angrily down at her; and then she would not do what she was tempted to. It may seem odd, but it is true.

  Well, one night at a party two years later, she was standing at the window alone for the first time that evening, looking out the window at the boulevard and the taxicabs, and thinking. And all of a sudden she was swung around by a strong hand and there were the blue eyes again, just like that. Only this time the taxi driver was in a white tie and tails, and he was no waiter, either.

  “Hey,” he said, which is no way to talk to a lady, “I want to talk to you.” She was quite cold to him but he didn’t mind. He took her out on the floor and danced, and he danced beautifully. She did not say anything because her heart was beating so wildly. Then he said, “This belongs to you.” He took something out of his pocket and pressed it into her hand. It was a quarter. “Your change,” he explained. She laughed and then blushed very prettily.

  And so they were married. Not right away, but after they had been around some time together. The taxi driver? That was Raoul Bettered, t
he one the columnists call “the social author.” He had been driving a taxicab for local color—and boy, did he get it!

  Ether Breather

  IT WAS “The Seashell.” It would have to be “The Seashell.” I wrote it first as a short story, and it was turned down. Then I made a novelette out of it, and then a novel. Then a short short. Then a three-line gag. And it still wouldn’t sell. It got to be a fetish with me, rewriting that “Seashell.” After a while editors got so used to it that they turned it down on sight. I had enough rejection slips from that number alone to paper every room in the house of tomorrow. So when it sold—well, it was like the death of a friend. It hit me. I hated to see it go.

  It was a play by that time, but I hadn’t changed it much. Still the same pastel, froo-froo old “Seashell” story, about two children who grew up and met each other only three times as the years went on, and a little seashell that changed hands each time they met. The plot, if any, doesn’t matter. The dialogue was—well, pastel. Naive. Unsophisticated. Very pretty, and practically salesproof. But it just happened to ring the bell with an earnest young reader for Associated Television, Inc., who was looking for something about that length that could be dubbed “artistic”; something that would not require too much cerebration on the part of an audience, so that said audience could relax and appreciate the new polychrome technique of television transmission. You know: pastel.

  As I leaned back in my old relic of an armchair that night, and watched the streamlined version of my slow-moving brainchild, I had to admire the way they put it over. In spots it was almost good, that “Seashell.” Well suited for the occasion, too. It was a full-hour program given free to a perfume house by Associated, to try out the new color transmission as an advertising medium. I liked the first two acts, if I do say so as shouldn’t. It was at the half hour mark that I got my first kick on the chin. It was a two-minute skit for the advertising plug.