“You’re trying to figure how to get some new clothes for the wife?”
“Yes. I need at least $1500. We don’t quite have that much. The retrieval service charged $500 for getting our landcar back.”
“You finally decided to let them fetch it back, eh?” Bock shrugged. “Wellsir, you take this present situation. You could maybe take your time and buy Nancy a new wardrobe a little at a time.”
Ted shook his head, saying, “No, that way’ll take too long. I don’t care what she’s up to, I feel I owe her this. She’s not exactly happy on Murdstone. She expected we’d be living in some quiet rural part of Barnum by now, with me teaching. Fenomeno Territory is not what she anticipated at all and it’s taking her quite a long time to get oriented. What with nergs and zibelinas and the like. I have to get her an entire new run of clothes right now.”
“Bout the way I see it,” said the lizard man. “I tell you what. Borrow the whole $1500 from somebody you know who has lots of money. Who’d that be? I got it. Your newscasting mother. Sure enough, there’s the thing to do for certain. Go right smack over to her station and catch her between newscasts.”
“You think so?”
“Wasn’t she instrumental in persuading you to come take this here job?”
“Well, in a way. Though I was a little uncertain about the teaching myself.”
“She throws you a kiss two or three times a night. I seen that myself ever and again. She pulls down a mighty nice salary from the territorial government, I hear. Ask her for a loan.”
“I guess you’re right,” said Ted.
* * * *
When Lazlo Woolson looked into his office Ted gave a start. “Still twitchy from the accident?” the scaly executive asked.
Ted swung around in his new gabardine desk chair, favoring his broken leg. “No, it’s just I’m used to seeing you on the phone screen. You look enormous in person.”
“I probably am a touch overweight,” admitted the lizard man. “Too many state dinners.” He rubbed scaly fingers together, rattling the fax memos in his hand. “President Hummerford has some ideas about livening up our soap opera, Ted.”
“What is he president of, the territory or the network?”
“The territory,” replied the lizard executive. “I saw you on your mother’s news show the other night and I jumped to the conclusion you were keeping up with events.”
“I was part of events.”
“How’s the leg? Would you like some of the station celebrities to sign your cast?”
“No.”
“You were courageous in accompanying your mother to the food riot,” said Woolson as he eased across the sharkskin rug and let the memos flutter down toward the desk top. “You planning to help her regularly? Not that we object. With governmental control of communications we don’t have the kind of station rivalries you’re accustomed to back on Barnum.”
“I had to talk to my mother on a personal matter,” said Ted. “She doesn’t have much free time and unless I drove her out to the riot I couldn’t have talked to her at all.”
“Fortunate for you they shot out the tires first and then turned the flame guns on you,” said the lizard man. “Gave you time to leap free and then tug your mother from the landcar. What was that I saw you rescue before you helped the dear lady get clear?”
“Her purse.” Ted picked up the top memo from the new pile. “What’s this one mean? ‘Migrant workers attack and ravage Alice in the tomato patch.’ “
“President Hummerford thinks the migrant workers in our territory don’t need a pay raise right now, nor indoor plumbing in their huts.”
“I figured that part,” said Ted. “But Alice died two weeks ago while Dr. Tanner was operating on her after she was ravaged by the monorail porters.”
“President Hummerford must have missed a few episodes while he was preoccupied with his coup,” said the lizard executive. “Okay, the migrants will have to ravage someone else in the tomato patch. How about Nurse Jane?”
Ted frowned. “I don’t know, Lazlo. Nurse Jane is still blind as a result of the student demonstration at the medical school.”
“Perfect. We get sex, a lot of nice anti-migrant feeling and a warm wave of sympathy for the handicapped.”
Folding the memo in half, Ted asked, “Are tomatoes still in season?”
“I’ll have to check. Lettuce will do as well.”
Ted’s third screen flashed on, showing a friend of his from his neighborhood. “I have a call, Lazlo. Let me ponder this and get back to you.”
“Sure, Ted. The migrant problem is the most important one.” The lizard executive moved for the door. “The rest of those memos aren’t as urgent. As far as having Dr. Tanner seduce Nurse Jane in the stock room above the besieged welfare store . . . maybe you’d better postpone, since the migrants are going to take a crack at her.”
Woolson left and Ted turned to the pixphone screen.
* * * *
Ted declined Bock’s offer of a celery stalk. “Something else has come up,” he said.
The lizard man actor began shrugging out of his doctor’s smock. “Wellsir now, Ted, I got the feeling my last couple pieces of advice didn’t work out letter perfect for you.”
Ted hesitated, then dropped slowly into a velvet chair. “Nobody can bat a thousand.”
“Eh?”
“A baseball idiom. Baseball is a game they play back on Barnum, with a bat.”
“A thousand would be perfect?” Bock put his big green hands behind him and began a slow semi-circular pacing of his dressing room. “What’s the latest thing bothering at you?”
“Ever heard of some migratory fowl called sujo birds?”
“Yep, large green-feathered critters.”
“Green? My neighbor thought they were sea blue,” said Ted. “Though he only saw them for a few minutes while they were eating the windows out of our house.”
“They’re eccentric rascals sure enough, those sujo birds. They have a real craving, specially during migratory dashes, for glass and nearglass. When they’re really famished they’ll stop long enough to gobble up blinds, shades, curtains and drapes or even a lamp shade sitting too close to a window.”
“They did that this morning. Ate all our windows and drapes on the sunny side of the house.”
“Your insurance probably don’t cover that either. And I reckon as how, what with having to replace your exploded car and paying your doctor bills and buying them clothes for Nancy, you ain’t got much left out of the $1500 you borrowed from your mother. A darn shame.”
Ted said, “The sujo birds ate the windows and drapes off the master bedroom.”
“No reason they’d spare the master bedroom.”
“Which is how my neighbor noticed Nancy in bed with a diplomat named Bryson Jiggs.”
Bock inflated his green scaly cheeks and then made a wooshing exhalation. “Little dark bandy-legged feller, ain’t he? Keeps showing up at our station cocktail parties.”
“You met him at one. I met him at one. Nancy met him at one.”
“Wellsir, little bandy-legged Bryson Jiggs,” said the lizard. “Right neighborly of your neighbor to give you the lowdown.”
“The sujo birds even ate Bryson Jiggs’ striped pants,” said Ted. “He apparently had them hanging over a chair next to the window.
“Your neighbor’s got himself a nice eye for detail.”
“He’s a freelance muralist.”
Bock tapped one small yellow eye. “Yep, artists always see more than plain everyday folks. Now, I tell you what you ought to do about this bandy-legged feller.”
“I think I’ll simply tell Nancy I know,” said Ted. “She’s bound to call in and tell me about the birds any time now.”
Bock shook one big green hand negatively. “Nope, nope, Ted. Leave her out of the deal. No use trying to be reasonable with a woman. Nossir. Thing for you to do, as I see it, is go right straight over to this Bryson Jiggs at his embassy. Walk smackdab up and
give him a good punch in the snoot or a swift kick in the fanny, depending on which way he’s facing. After that tell him, real angry-like, ‘Don’t come fooling around my wife no more, you little bandy-legged runt!’ That’s my advice.”
“I’m not as convinced of the effectiveness of the action approach as I used to be,” said Ted.
“Is that so?” Bock picked up a celery stalk and tapped his chin with it.
* * * *
The day before he left the planet Ted went down to say goodbye to Bock. “I haven’t been taking your advice lately,” he told the lizard man.
Rocking gently in his plaid rocker, Bock replied, “Noticed as much.”
“Been very interesting,” said Ted. “Instead of rushing off last month and punching Bryson Jiggs as you suggested, I took the day off and went home to talk to Nancy. She finally admitted she didn’t like Murdstone any better than I do and didn’t like what I’ve been doing to earn a living. She didn’t like my continually letting my mother and Lazlo and you tell me what to do. She didn’t want to sound like any of you so she kept quiet about everything and got upset and finally looked up Jiggs. I don’t know if this makes any sense to you.”
“Yep, women are like that.”
“Now we’re talking, things over more,” said Ted. “I’m breaking the habit of listening to everybody but myself.”
“Wellsir, you’ll most likely do well teaching back on Barnum now.”
“I expect so, yes.” He stood watching the lizard man. “I’ve been thinking about all the advice you’ve given me over the past year. Most of it was completely opposite to what I should really have done. It took me a while to see that, but I finally did.”
The lizard man waited a long second and then said, “Just like I figured.”
<
* * * *
* * * *
Edward Bryant’s second contribution to this volume is nothing at all like his first,Jade Blue. If you have a little trouble figuring out in advance whether the title is meant to be humorous or grim . . . well, you may have the same trouble after you’ve read the story. Not that there’s anything equivocal about it; Bryant makes his point, all right. Oh yes.
THE HUMAN SIDE OF THE VILLAGE MONSTER
Edward Bryant
Across the street in Tompkins Square Park, the animals were tearing one another apart.
In the apartment the fan had burned out again. “I’ll fix it tomorrow,” David said petulantly. His skin felt grainy. “It’s too hot now.”
“Come to bed,” Terri said.
He kicked the useless fan with the side of his foot. “Born in Philadelphia,” he mumbled. “Raised in Passaic. I’ll die in New York. What a hell of an epitaph.”
“Come to bed.”
They lay naked on the double mattress and listened for the telltale sounds of prowlers on the fire escape, the roof, or the stairs. Eventually they slept. She dreamed of making love and it was all the roses and cool wine and rushing falls she had ever wanted.
Wakening came first from someone’s clock radio three flights down; WABC echoing between brick walls. Then they heard the toll of bells from the Russian Orthodox Church a block away.
“I’m so sleepy,” she whispered, features soft and slack in the gray light. They made love. When she climaxed, it was a nadir of feeling.
* * * *
Breakfast also was minimal. The powdered eggs were chewed silently, the ersatz coffee sipped as soon as it cooled. David didn’t seem inclined to talk this morning. Terri kept his cup full. She watched him stare at the chipped plastic plate. He seemed so much taller then, she thought. On a rainy morning a year before, she had found him sleeping under the rusting cube sculpture in Cooper Square. A silent chiding: don’t carp.
“So what did I do wrong?” David said.
Terri pretended preoccupation with her broken nails. “Not a thing. Why?”
“You aren’t talking this morning.”
We’re so young, thought Terri. Med Program will keep us alive for such a long time. The thought was horrifying.
“You should be used to that by now.” She smiled ruefully. “I’m planning out my day,” she lied.
“So what’s today?”
“Yesterday was Friday the thirteenth. Mrs. Constantine mentioned it in the hall. That makes today the fourteenth. My day to pick up the pills.”
“Your goddamned pills,” said David.
She hesitated, wondering how to make it a joke. “They keep the babies away.”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes!”
“Mrs. Constantine cornered me for an hour yesterday. All the gossip about everyone in the building. You know.”
David scowled silently.
“Except for one weird thing. Someone scared her, I think.”
“Mrs. Constantine?” He forced a smile. “Nothing upsets her. Remember when she took on the guy with the knife near the mail boxes?”
“Something happened this time. It was Mr. Jaindl.”
“Old freaky Gregor on the second floor? What did he do, proposition her to do something disgusting?”
“That’s the word she used. Disgusting. Only it wasn’t some sex thing. For once Mrs. Constantine wouldn’t talk about it. Just said it was the most disgusting thing she’d ever heard.”
“That’s weird. Usually she’d blow anything into attempted rape and sodomy.”
“She trailed off into some old-country words I couldn’t understand and then walked away.”
“So we’ve all got our problems.” They sat in uncomfortable silence for a few moments and he said, “Listen, I’ll walk uptown with you. Okay?”
“You’re not working today?”
“Not today.” Usually he left in the mornings with sack and shovel, a knife sheathed at his belt. David was a river rat. He dug the crust over the East River for aluminum cans. With what Terri earned tailoring, the salvage money paid the apartment’s rent.
“Okay. I’m getting afraid to go out alone any more, even in daylight.”
“I’ll get the respirators,” he said. “Just in case.” He coughed; the lung-ache that never left him began to gnaw.
* * * *
There was a ritual to leaving the apartment: Despite the heat, close and lock all windows. Leave the kitchen light on. Conceal the toaster on a pantry shelf, behind a large welfare bag of cornmeal. Turn the radio on and tune to a rock station. Close the door and key the two police latches snug. Keep an eye on the stairwell up to the roof—watch for shadows that move. Now start down the steps.
They met Gregor Jaindl on the second-floor landing. One arm cradled a grease-spotted paper bag full of garbage. With his other hand he was fumbling in a pocket for his key.
“Good morning—Miss Bruckner, isn’t it? The young lady who makes the bright clothes?”
“Yes,” said Terri. “Good morning, Mr. Jaindl.”
“Please,” said the old man. “I am Gregor.” He took his hand from the pocket. Loose keys jangled to the floor.
“Then I’m Terri.” The girl dropped to her knees and began to pick up the keys. She looked up. “This is David.” She stood and put the keys into Jaindl’s palm.
“Young lady,” he said, “you’re very kind.” The words were barely accented, spoken with a stiff Continental courtesy. Jaindl bowed slightly. David looked startled.
“I think we’d better get started,” he said, steering Terri by one elbow toward the stairs.
The old man cleared his throat peremptorily. The couple paused, two steps down. “I would be honored,” said Jaindl, “if you both could join me in my apartment tonight for supper.”
David started to answer automatically: “Thanks, but I don’t-”
“There will be meat,” said the old man.
“We’d be delighted,” said Terri.
“Seven, then. Promptly.” Jaindl turned and disappeared into the darkness of the hall.
David took her arm angrily. “Are you crazy?”
She looked at him obliquely. “
We should spend one more evening in that apartment than we have to? Fighting over the powdered eggs?”
“Better that than eating with a twisto.”
“He isn’t.”
Two flights in silence. Then she said, “He reminds me a lot of my father.” Her beloved father, who had vanished in the food riots eight years before.
Universe 1 - [Anthology] Page 17