“New York: Three months ago Scott Carey, the ‘Shrinking Man’, so called because of the strange disease he had contracted, disappeared. Since then, no word about him has been received from any quarter.”
What’s the matter, you want more pictures? he thought. “Authorities at the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, where Carey was being treated, said they could make no comment as to his present whereabouts.”
They also can’t make antitoxin, he thought. One of the top medical centers in the country, and here I sit, shriveling away while they fumble.
He was going to shove the thermos bottle off the chair, but then he realized it would only be hurting himself. Compulsively he gripped one hand with the other and squeezed until the fingernails went bloodless, until his wrists began to ache. Then he let his hands flop on the arms of the chair and stared morosely at the orange wood between his spread fingers. Stupid color to paint lawn chairs, he thought. What an idiot the landlord must have been!
He wriggled off the chair and began pacing. He had to do something besides sit and stare. He didn’t feel like reading. His eyes moved restlessly about the cellar. Something to do, something to do . .
Impulsively he stepped over to a brush leaning against the wall and, grabbing it, began to sweep. The floor needed sweeping; there was dirt all over, stones, scraps of wood. He cleared all of them from the floor with quick, savage motions; he swept them into a pile beside the steps, and flung the brush against the refrigerator.
Now what?
He sat down and had another cup of coffee, kicking nervously at the chair leg.
While he was drinking, the back screen door opened and closed, and he heard Beth and Catherine. He didn’t get up, but his gaze moved to the window, and in a moment he saw their bare legs move past.
He couldn’t help it. He got up and went to the pile of boxes and climbed up.
They were standing by the cellar door in bathing suits, Beth’s red and frilly, Catherine’s pale blue and glossy, in two pieces. He looked at the round swell of her breasts in the tight, pulledup halter.
“Oh, your mother locked the door,” she said. “Why did she do that, Beth?”
“I don’t think I know,” Beth answered.
“I thought maybe we could play croquet,” said Catherine.
Beth shrugged ineffectually. “I don’t know,” she said.
“Is the key in the house?” asked Catherine.
Another shrug. “I don’t know,” said Beth.
“Oh,” said Catherine. “Well . . . let’s have a catch, then.”
Scott crouched on top of the boxes, watching Catherine as she caught the red ball and threw it back to Beth. It wasn’t until he’d been there five minutes that he realized he was rigidly tensed, waiting for Catherine to drop the ball and bend over to pick it up. When he realized that, he slid off the boxes with a disturbed clumsiness and went back to the chair.
He sat there breathing harshly, trying not to think about it. What in God’s name was happening to him? The girl was fourteen, maybe fifteen, short and chubby, and yet he’d been staring at her almost hungrily.
Well, is it my fault? he suddenly flared, letting fury take over. What am I supposed to do—become a monk?
He watched his hand shake as he poured water. He watched the water spill over the sides of the red plastic cup and dribble down his wrist. He felt the water like a trickling of ice down his hot, hot throat.
How old was she? he wondered.
Flesh pulsed over his jaws as he kept biting. He stared through the grimy window at Catherine, who was lying on her stomach, reading a magazine.
She lay sideways to him, stretched out on a blanket, her chin propped up by one hand, the other hand idly turning the pages.
His throat was dry but he didn’t notice it; not even when it tickled and he had to clear it. His small fingers pressed for balance against the rough surface of the wall.
No, she couldn’t be less than eighteen, he commented to himself. Her body was too well developed. That bulge of breast as she lay there, the breadth of her hips. Maybe she was only fifteen, but if so she was an awfully advanced fifteen.
His nostrils flared angrily and he shuddered. What the hell difference did it make? She was nothing to him. He took a deep breath and prepared to return to the floor but just then Catherine bent her right knee and the leg wavered lazily in the air.
His eyes were moving, endlessly moving over Catherine’s body—down her leg and across the hill of her buttock, up the slope of her back and around her white shoulder, down to the ground-pressing breast, back along the stomach to her leg, up her leg, down her—
He closed his eyes. He climbed down rigidly and went back to the chair. He sank back in it, ran a finger over his forehead, and drew it away dripping. His head fell back against the wooden chair.
He got up and went back to the boxes. He climbed up without a thought. Yes, that’s it, have another look at the back yard, mocked his alien mind.
At first he thought she had gone into the house. A betraying groan began in his throat. Then he saw that she was standing by the cellar door, lips pursed estimatingly, looking at the lock.
He swallowed. Does she know? he thought. For one wild instant he thought he would run to the door and scream, “Come down, come down here, pretty girl!” His lips shook as he fought the desire.
The girl walked past the window. His eyes drank her in thirstily, as if it were the final view for all time. Then she was gone and he sat down on the top of the boxes, back to the wall. He stared at his ankles, the thickness of a policeman’s club. He heard the back door shut and then the footsteps of the girl moving around overhead.
He felt drained. He felt that if he relaxed an iota more, his body would run down over the boxes like sirup on a hill of ice cream.
He didn’t know how long he’d been there when the back door whined open and slammed shut again. He twitched, startled, and rose up again.
Catherine walked past the window, a key chain dangling from her fingers. His breath caught. She’d been in the bureau drawers and found the extra keys!
He half slid, half jumped down the stacked boxes, wincing as he landed on his right ankle. He grabbed the sandwich bag and shoved the thermos bottles into it. He tossed the halffinished box of crackers on top of the refrigerator.
His eyes fled around. The paper! He darted to it and snatched it up, as he heard the girl experimenting with the keys at the door. He stuck the folded newspaper on the shelf of the wicker table, then grabbed his book and the bag and ran for the dark, sunken room where the tank and water pump were. He’d decided beforehand that if Catherine ever came down again, that was where he’d hide.
He jumped down the step to the damp cement floor. At the door, the lock clicked open and was pulled out of the metal loop. He stepped gingerly over the network of pipes and slid in behind the high, cold-walled tank. He set down the bag and book and stood there panting as the door was pulled up and Catherine came down in the cellar.
“Locking the cellar,” he heard her say in slow disgust. “Think I was gonna steal somethin’ or somethin’.”
His lips drew back in a teeth-clenched, soundless snarl. Stupid bitch, he thought.
“Hmmph,” said Catherine. He heard her loafers clicking over the floor. She kicked the chair again. She kicked the oil burner and it resounded hollowly. Keep your goddam feet to yourself! his brain exploded.
“Croquet,” she said. He heard a mallet being slid out of the rack. “Hmmph,” she said again, a little more amusedly. “Fore!” The mallet clicked loudly on the cement.
Scott edged cautiously to the right. His shirt back scratched over the rough cement wall and he froze. The girl hadn’t heard. “Uh-huh,” she was saying. “Hoops, clubs, balls, stakes. Yowza.”
He stood looking at her.
She was bending over the croquet rack. She’d loosened her halter while she’d been lying in the sun, and it hung down almost off her breasts as she leaned over. Even in the dim l
ight, he could see the distinct line of demarcation where tanned flesh became milk-white.
No, he heard someone begging in his mind. No, get back. She’ll see you.
Catherine leaned over a little more, reaching for a ball, and the halter slipped.
“Oops,” said Catherine, putting things to order. Scott’s head fell back against the wall. It was damply cool in there, but wings of heat were buffeting his cheeks.
When Catherine had gone and locked the door behind her, Scott came out. He put the bag and book on the chair and stood there feeling as if every joint and muscle were swollen and hot.
“I can’t,” he muttered, shaking his head slowly. “I can’t. I can’t.” He didn’t know what he meant exactly, but he knew it was something important.
“How old’s that girl?” he asked that evening, not even glancing up from his book, as though the question had just, idly and unimportantly, occurred to him.
“Sixteen, I think,” Lou answered.
“Oh,” he said, as if he had already forgotten why he asked.
Sixteen. Age of pristine possibility. Where had he heard that phrase?
He shook it off, crouching on the boxes, a delicately limbed dwarf in corduroy rompers, looking out bleakly at the rain, watching the drops spatter on the ground, splashing freckles of mud on the windowpanes. His face was a mask of expressionless defeat. It shouldn’t have precipitated, thought his mind. Oh, it shouldn’t have.
He hiccuped. Then, with a tired sigh, he climbed down the pile and walked unsteadily to the chair. O orange chair beloved! he saluted the chair. He jolted back in it and—whoops!—he caught the whisky bottle as it almost toppled off the arm. O bottle of booze beloved! He snickered.
The cellar was a haze of gelatine around his bobbing head. He tilted back the bottle and let the whisky trickle hot in his throat, burning in his stomach.
His eyes watered. I am drinking Catherine! his mind cried fiercely. I have distilled her, synthesizing loins and breasts and stomach and sixteen years of them into a conflagrating liquor, which I drink—so. His throat moved convulsively as the whisky gurgled down. Drink, drink! And it shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey.
Drunk I am and drunk I mean to stay, he thought. He wondered why it had never occurred to him before. This bottle that he held before him now had stood in the cupboard for three months and, before that, two months in the old apartment. Five months of suffering neglect. He patted the brown glass bottle; he kissed it fervently. I kiss thee, Catherine liquefied. I buss the distillation of thy warm, sugared lips.
Simple, came the thought, because she is so much smaller than Lou, that’s why I feel like this.
He sighed. He swung the empty bottle over his lap. Catherine gone. Down the hatch with Catherine. Sweet girl, you swim now in my veins, a dizzying potion.
He jumped up suddenly and flung the bottle with all his might against the wall. It exploded sharply and a hundred whisky-fragrant scraps of glass danced across the cool cement. Good-by, Catherine.
He stared at the window. Why’d it have to rain? he thought. Oh, why’d it? Why couldn’t it be sunny so the pretty girl could lie outside in her bathing suit and he could stare at her and lust in secret, sick vicariousness?
No, it had to rain; it was in the stars.
He sat on the edge of the chair swinging his legs. Upstairs there were no footsteps. What was she doing? What was the pretty girl doing? Not pretty—ugly. What was the ugly girl doing? Who cared whether she was pretty or ugly? What was the girl doing?
He watched his feet swinging in the air. He kicked out. Take that, air; and that.
He groaned. He got up and paced around. He stared at the rain and the mud-spattered windows. What time was it? Couldn’t be more than noon. He couldn’t take this much longer.
He went up the steps and pushed at the door. It was locked, of course, and Louise had taken all the keys this time. “Fire her!” he’d yelled that morning. “She’s dishonest!” and Lou had answered, “We can’t, Scott. We simply can’t. I’ll take the keys. It’ll be all right.”
He braced his back against the door and reared up. It hurt his back. He gasped angrily at the air and butted his head against the door. He fell down on the step, dizziness clouding his brain.
He sat there mumbling, hands pressing at his skull. He knew why he wanted the girl discharged. It was because he couldn’t stand to look at her, and it was far beyond his ability to tell Lou about it. The most she could do would be to make one more insulting offer. He wouldn’t take that.
He straightened up, smiling in the shadows.
Well, I fooled her, he said. I fooled her and sneaked a whisky bottle down, and she never knew.
He sat there, breathing heavily, thinking about Catherine leaning over the croquet rack, about her halter slipping.
He stood abruptly, banging his head again. He jumped down the steps, ignoring the pain. And I’ll fool her again!
He managed to feel grimly justified as he climbed the box pile clumsily. A drunken, crooked grin on his face, he knocked up the hook on the window and shoved at the bottom of its frame. It stuck. His face got red as he pushed at it. Get out, goddam your stupid bones!
“Son-of-a—”
The window flew out and he flopped across the ledge. The window flew back in and banged the top of his head. The hell with it! His teeth were gritted. Now, he dizzily told the world. Now we’ll see. He crawled out into the rain, not fighting at all against the vicious dredging of heat in him.
He stood up and shivered. His eyes fled up to the diningroom window and the rain drizzled in his eyes and ran across his face and spattered on his cheeks. What now? he thought. The cold air and rain were cooling off the surface of impulsion.
Deliberately he walked around the house, staying close to the brick base until he’d reached the porch. Then he ran to the steps and up them. What are you doing? he asked. He didn’t know. His mind was not conducting the tour.
He stood on tiptoe and cautiously looked into the dining room. No one was there. He listened but didn’t hear anything. The door to Beth’s room was shut; she must be taking a nap. His gaze moved to the bathroom door. It was shut.
He sank back on his heels and sighed. He licked raindrops from his lips. Now what? he asked again.
Inside the house, the bathroom door opened.
With a start, Scott backed away from the window, hearing footsteps pad across the kitchen floor, then fade. He thought she’d gone into the living room and edged to the window again, pushed up on his toes.
His breath stopped. She was standing at the window looking out at the yard. She was holding a yellow bath towel in front of her.
He couldn’t feel the rain splattering off him, crisscrossing like cold, unrolling ribbons across his face. His mouth hung open. His gaze moved slowly down the smooth concavity of her back, the indentation of her spine a thin shadow that ran down and was lost between the muscular half-moons of her white buttocks.
He couldn’t take his eyes from her. His hands shook at his sides. She stirred and he saw the glitter of water drops on her, quivering like tiny blobs of gelatine. He sucked in a ragged, rain-wet breath.
Catherine dropped the towel.
She put her hands behind her head and drank in a heavy breath. Scott saw her left breast swing up and stand out tautly, the nipple like a dark spear point. Her arms moved out. She stretched and writhed.
When she turned he was still in the same tense, musclequivering pose. He shrank back, but she didn’t see him because the top of his head was barely higher than the window sill. He saw her bend over and pick up the towel, her breasts hanging down, white and heavy. She stood up and walked out of the room.
He sank down on his heels and had to clutch at the railing to keep his legs from going limp beneath him. He half hung there, shaking in the rain, a stark look on his face.
After a minute he stumbled weakly down the steps and around the house to the cellar window. He crawled th
rough and locked the window behind him. He climbed down the hill of boxes, still shuddering.
He sat on the lawn chair, an old sweater wrapped around himself. His teeth were chattering, and he shivered uncontrollably.
Later he took his clothes off and hung them on the oil burner to dry. He stood by the fuel tank in his brown, hightopped shoes, holding the sweater around his shoulders, staring up at the window. And finally, when he couldn’t bear the stillness or the pressure or the thoughts a second longer, he began to kick the cardboard carton. He kicked it until his leg ached and the cardboard side was split almost to the floor.
“But how did you get a cold?” Lou asked, her voice carrying a note of exasperation.
His voice was nasal and thick. “What do you expect when I’m stuck in that damn cellar all day!”
“I’m sorry, darling, but . . . well, shall I stay home tomorrow so you can stay in bed all day?”
“Don’t bother,” he said.
She didn’t mention that she’d noticed that the whisky bottle was gone from the kitchen cupboard.
If Lou had been able to lock the windows, too, it would have been all right. But knowing he could get out any time he wanted; knowing that he could spy on Catherine, made it an impossible situation.
Hours dragged in the cellar. He might manage to absorb himself in a book for an hour or two, but ultimately the vision of Catherine would flit across his mind and he would put down the book.
If Catherine had come out in the yard more often, it would have been all right. Then, at least, he could look at her through the window. But days were getting colder as September waned, and Catherine and Beth stayed in the house most of the time.
He had taken to bringing a small clock to the cellar. He’d told Lou he wanted to be able to keep track of the time, but what he really wanted was to be able to know when Beth was napping. Then he could go out and peer through the windows at Catherine.
American Science Fiction Four Classic Novels 1953-56 Page 78