Earthbound

by Richard Matheson

  “Yes,” she answered, ‘Terry Lawrence.”

  “I see.” He was beginning to nod vacantly again. Dear God, but she was beautiful. He twitched a second time, struggling for poise. “Is he the one who did those paintings downstairs?” he asked, deliberately. “The one over the mantel; the miniatures on the stairwell?”

  The woman nodded. “Yes; aren’t they good?”

  “Very good. I was saying to my—” David hesitated for an instant, then, recognizing that it was reluctance to mention Ellen which motivated the pause, continued self-reprovingly, “—wife this afternoon how interesting they are.”

  The woman gazed at him fixedly, making him swallow. Finally, she said, “I’m sorry I keep staring at you. It’s just that you remind me so of Terry.”

  He could neither rationalize nor overcome the surge of pleasure he experienced at her words. Instantly, his mind was jumbled with a chaos of jejune replies and he found himself torn between the habit of shunning any lapse in personal taste and the compulsion to voice the phrases nonetheless.

  She spared him the necessity of decision by asking, “Don’t you want to know my name?”

  “Yes; of course.” Was that really his voice he heard; so throaty, so affected?

  The woman walked over to him, extending her right hand which, in the moonlight, looked almost opalescent. “I’m Marianna,” she said.

  As in a dream, David held the hand in his, so close to her now that he gave up trying to resist the urge to stare.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “You’re—”

  “—what?”

  He drew in halting breath. There seemed no way of avoiding the particular words. As near to him as she was, her skin and features were like flawless marble.

  “You’re very beautiful,” he said.

  Marianna’s grip tightened slowly and he had the sensation of his fingers coalescing with hers. She spoke but it was only incoherent sound to him. “What?” he murmured.

  “You haven’t told me your name,” she repeated.

  “Oh.” He winced embarrassedly. “I’m sorry. It’s David.” For some reason, it seemed extraneous to mention last names. David and Marianna were quite enough.

  He realized that he was still holding her hand and, with a diffident smile, released it, scouring his mind for some appropriate remark. “So you … thought Terry Lawrence was back,” he said.

  She nodded. “I’ve been waiting for him.”

  “You’re not in touch with him then,” he said, hoping that his curiosity was not as obvious as it seemed.

  Marianna shook her head.

  Good, he thought; it startled him to note how instantly. He smiled as though to mitigate the flash of unwarranted reaction. Her returned smile made him shiver, it illumined her face with such a radiance. “Would you like to see a painting he did of me?” she asked.

  He was just aware of nodding. “Yes,” he said.

  “Come along then.”

  He couldn’t take his gaze away from her as she took his hand and started guiding him across the studio. There are certain human beings, he thought whom nature has created so consummately that they have been accorded the status of art objects. Marianna was one of these.

  “Why do you look at me like that?” she asked.

  David flinched, realizing that, somehow, he had deluded himself into thinking her unaware of his scrutiny. Momentarily, he tried to think of some politic lie, then gave it up. “Don’t all men look at you like that?” he asked.

  Her reaction was an unexpected one. Stopping, she turned to face him, grasping his other hand as well. “Look then,” she said.

  For a moment, he resisted, some dormant inhibition cautioning him; then surrendering, he looked at her without restraint, moving a candid gaze across the separate elements of her face—her forehead and her eyes, her nose and ears, her cheeks, her lips, her chin—then relishing the perfection of their blend. As moments passed, he started to acquire an almost irresistible craving to lean forward and press his face against her ebony hair, to kiss her cheek, even take her lips with forceful greed. Abruptly, he drew his hands away, just able to murmur, “I guess I’d better stop now.”

  “Why?”

  “Because—” He blinked and shook himself. “Well, because—” The only phrase his mind could invoke was: Because I am a married man, and he rejected that as too baroquely corny even for consideration. “Just because,” he settled for. “Show me your painting.”

  Marianna gazed at him with childlike curiosity, then returned his smile, bewitching him again. “All right” she said and led him to a wall.

  David looked at her. ‘This is it?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  A fragmentary dread oppressed him; that she wasn’t quite as rational as she seemed. Her teasing smile assuaged the doubt. David repressed his own smile and said, “I see a wall.”

  “Yes, so do I,” she said. Looking at him with the impish smile, she felt along the paneling until something clicked and, where the wall had been unbroken, a door now stood ajar. “There,” she said.

  David peered inside. “What’s in there?”

  Marianna moved into the darkness. “Come and see,” her voice invited.

  Something in her tone reacted on his body like an excitant and, suddenly, he felt desire coursing through him like a fuming wine. He began to speak, realized that his throat was parched and swallowed, clearing it. “All right” he answered, following her.

  Silence. Blackness pulsing at his eyes. David squinted, trying, in vain, to pick out Marianna’s silhouette.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  She didn’t answer. David reached out with both his hands, groping for her like a blind man. “Marianna?”

  “Here,” she said.

  David tightened as the words I want you flared across his mind. Watch it he thought; he was allowing himself to be misled by this quasi-romantic atmosphere. “Where?” he asked, a tinge of self-willed impatience in his voice.

  Suddenly, her hand was grasping his, her presence engulfing him again, drawing at him with a magnetism he could, almost, feel. Part of him shrank from it in prudent apprehension but another part wanted to pull her to himself in savage wantonness, embrace her violently, take her lips, demand—

  “What is it?” Marianna asked, as he shuddered.

  He drew in stifled breath. “Where’s the painting?” he asked.

  “You really want to see it?”

  It was, the way she said it, practically an invitation. He could see no other possible interpretation. Closing his eyes, David tried to disengage his hand from hers, appalled at the erratic flutter of his breathing. “Yes,” he said. “Where is it?”

  Marianna’s hand let go and the all but viable current ceased to flow between them; a tide of coldness seemed to cover David. “Right over here,” she told him.

  “I’d better light a match,” he said.

  “Is your wife angry with you?”

  David started. “What?”

  “When you thought I was her, you said: Aren’t you even going to talk to me?”

  He blinked, remembering. “Oh.”

  “Have you been arguing?”

  “Well …” He felt inclined to snap: What business is it of yours? but couldn’t bring himself to do so. He stood in hapless silence.

  “Never mind,” Marianna told him in a subdued voice, “you don’t have to tell me.”

  Instinctively, he reached out in the dark to take her hand and reassure her, then, stiffening with reaction, checked the movement, pulled out the book of matches he’d found on the bedroom mantel and struck one. It didn’t work and he had to use a second one. Marianna averted her face from the leap of flame, her expression one of momentary pain.

  When she looked back at him, David felt the drawing tingle in his flesh again, stronger than ever now. It was almost unbelievable that any woman could be so lovely. He stared at her, imprisoned by her beauty.

  “There’s the painting,�
� Marianna said, pointing. From the way she smiled, it was obvious that she knew his feeling and he turned away, resentful, yet, at the same time, reluctant to remove his eyes from her.

  From what he could see in the imperfect light, the painting had not captured all her grace; but the essence was there, the—he stumbled briefly for the word—spirit David nodded slowly, unaware that he was doing so. He raised the match to see better. For an instant the singularity of it all struck him—standing in a musty storage room with this woman in the middle of the night gazing at her portrait by the flickering glow of a match flame—then, the notion vanished and, once more, he was isolated in wordless homage to her beauty.

  “Do you like it?” Marianna asked.

  “It’s very good,” he said. “When did he paint it?”

  “Last summer.”

  He lit another match and kept looking at the portrait nodding. It showed only Marianna’s head and shoulders. Did he ever paint you in the nude? the question sprang to mind. He restrained it, loathe to consider the thought; why, he had no idea. It was implausible that he should feel possessive toward a woman he had known no longer than ten to fifteen minutes. It was her beauty, of course, he realized then. To view it was to covet it.

  He turned back. “Well, it certainly—”

  He broke off, seeing that he was alone. Startled, he moved to the doorway in the wall and back into the studio. Marianna stood at the windows, looking out. David shook out the match. “Shall I close the door?” he asked.

  “I guess,” she answered, sounding vague and apathetic. David felt a pang of concern. Without knowing why, he was conscious of a need to please her. Keeping his gaze on her face, he reached back and pushed the wall door shut, then moved over to where she stood. She did not acknowledge his presence. David winced unconsciously. Her remoteness was unsettling to him. Several minutes ago, their rapport had been complete. Now she seemed withdrawn beyond reach. Impotently, he searched his mind for something which might bring her back. “That’s a—pretty locket you’re wearing,” he said, finally.

  She turned to face him and, although he strained to curb the reaction, her affectionate smile sent renewed pleasure through him. “Would you like to look at it?” she asked.

  “Very much.” Momentarily, he saw himself, a character in some improbable television drama, mouthing lines bestowed upon him by some unseen—and highly unaccomplished—writer. The vision was eclipsed as Marianna reached behind her neck with both hands and he noted, almost with a start, the imposing swell of her breasts. Swallowing, he took the circular locket from her hand and looked at it. In the moonlight, he could see that it was gold, with a jewel in its center. He looked at her. “Diamond?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Terry gave it to me.”

  He nodded, smiling, doing it, he sensed, as he had described in far too many scripts: bravely. “He must love you very much,” he said.

  Marianna turned from him abruptly. “He doesn’t love me at all,” she said. “If he did, he wouldn’t have left.”

  David stared at her, as pleased as he was caught off balance; he’d expected anything but this. He started then as Marianna turned and headed for the door. “I have to leave,” she said.

  “But—” David broke off, strickenly, realizing that he had no right to voice the words which filled his mind: When will I see you again?

  “Goodbye,” she said.

  Right hand raised impulsively, David started after her, then, once more, checked himself. He had no justification whatever to follow Marianna. The knowledge filled him with a sense of crippling loss as he watched her leave the studio and turn left to go down the staircase. In a while, still listening, motionless, he heard the front door shut and drew in sudden breath. Turning, he moved back to the windows, hoping to catch sight of her outside.

  There was nothing. Time passed and there was only empty, moonlit beach before him. David’s shoulders slumped. He stood there several minutes longer, then, with a weary sigh, trudged across the studio, closing the door behind him as he left. He felt depleted. The ascent to the bedroom seemed as arduous a labor as he’d ever undertaken.

  It was not until he’d sat down heavily on the bed that he felt the locket in his hand. He stared at it a few minutes, dismally, then, on impulse, began to pry his thumbnail in between the halves, thinking that they might be separate; he flinched as they sprang ajar. Lighting another match, he looked at the right-hand photograph. He frowned. He didn’t look, at all, like Terry. His gaze shifted to Marianna’s face.

  The sound he made appalled him. It was such a sound as youth might make when suffering the unexpected onslaught of love.

  FRIDAY

  David opened his eyes and gazed up drowsily at the ceiling. For a while, he lay immobile, listening to the muffled detonations of the surf; then he turned his head to look at Ellen. Immediately, he started up in troubled surprise. She wasn’t there. It looked as if she hadn’t slept there either.

  Stripping back the bed clothes, he dropped his legs across the mattress edge and, standing, hurried to the nearest dormer window. The car was gone. David stared down blankly at its tire tracks, feeling the throb of a vein at his temple. Abruptly, he turned and started for the hall. Halfway there, he saw a scrap of paper leaned against the bedside table lamp and moved to get it.

  Didn’t want to wake you up. Have gone to Port Jefferson to check on gas and electricity and purchase goodies for the tum. Start fire, have faith and look for the return of—yr. obt. Ellen.

  David smiled affectionately at the note, then, a second later, shivered in reaction. For a moment there,. he’d actually been afraid that she’d left him. Thus the measure of my confidence, he thought, grimacing.

  He realized how cold his feet were getting and, sitting on the bed, donned his slippers. Checking his watch, he saw that it was just past nine o’clock. He must have gone to sleep the moment he’d hit the bed last night. He hadn’t meant to; not with such an intriguing—and ice-breaking—anecdote to tell.

  Then, again,—he frowned, attempting to remember—had he really meant to tell Ellen at that time? As he recalled, his attitude, on returning from the studio, had been one of somewhat glassy-eyed infatuation. Under such a circumstance, it was, perhaps, as well that he had toppled off before Ellen’s arrival. She might have discerned a sound of misguided rapture in his voice—which wouldn’t have helped a hell of a lot to alleviate their discord.

  While he dressed, his skin rippled with gooseflesh, David looked out through the dormer window. The morning was grey and sunless and the wind had risen again. Come to Romantic Logan Beach in the Frostbite Season, he thought. What an idiot he’d been to suggest this trip. A week in Palm Springs would have served as well.

  He was putting on his shirt when Marianna’s chain and locket spilled to the floor. As he picked it up, he realized that, until the second it had fallen, he had been rather inclined to appraise last night’s amourette as, at least, imagined, at most, hallucinated. Now, in an instant, he was obliged to face the fact that Marianna really did exist. But, surely, she could not be near as beautiful as—impulsively, he parted the locket halves and looked to verify his doubt.

  He shook his head dumbfoundedly. Dear God, she was; fully as beautiful as he remembered. For once, memory had not exaggerated. Only after a long while was he able to remove his gaze to look at Terry’s photograph. Here was the discrepancy. How Marianna could, possibly, say that he reminded her of this man was beyond understanding. He had darkish-blond hair whereas Terry’s was as black as Marianna’s. His face was ruddy and full, Terry’s sallow and lean and—he thought with uncharitable amusement—rather vulpine, to boot.

  Further, from the unfocalized cast of Terry’s eyes, he estimated that the painter wore corrective lenses—perhaps, exceptionally thick ones. David grunted, smiling. Terry was probably, also, five-foot two and scrawny whereas he was six-foot two and broad enough to pass for an active football player. All in all, a staggering resemblance, he thought; we’re practically the
Corsican Brothers.

  His smile faded, disappearing, and he dropped the chain and locket back into the pocket of his shirt He finished dressing, exited the bedroom and, following a bathroom stop, went downstairs to the living room.

  He stopped as he saw the blanket on the sofa; this was where she’d spent the night then. David winced. She must have been more distressed than he’d supposed. He wondered if she’d left the blanket there as an accusing reminder, then decided that such a suspicion was unworthy of him. Folding the blanket, he dropped it onto an armchair. Poor kid must have frozen even so, the thought occurred. His smile was rueful. Kid, he thought hope springs sappily eternal. Middle-aged men announce the advent of evenings out with “the boys”: middle-aged women schedule bridge sets with “the girls”. He shook his head. This is the forefront of the hottest battle, he thought: mankind vs. calendar.

  Once the fire was burning steadily, a sense of restlessness began oppressing him. He tried to deflect it by calculating the probable length of Ellen’s trip. Port Jefferson was twenty-seven slow miles away. That meant a total of fifty-four miles plus whatever time and mileage would be required to shop for food. David groaned, dejectedly. He might, as well, have foregone calculations; they only aggravated his unrest. Ellen might have left a few minutes before he’d woken up; she might be absent for hours.

  What was he to do? He could try fishing but it wouldn’t be very enjoyable on an empty stomach. Read? He made a disgruntled face. That had no appeal whatever. David sighed, capitulating; that left walking. So he’d walk.

  A minute later, he was in his jacket, trudging away from the house and sniffing at the air so vigorously it dizzied him. Air of such exhilarating purity was one feature the San Fernando Valley couldn’t match. Residing there, one, actually, forgot the smell of truly fresh air, one grew so accustomed to the caustic flavor of the smog. Now if only he had an ample breakfast tucked away, he could really look forward to an extended hike along the beach.