Offbeat

by Richard Matheson

  Once when Miss Land was seven her dog had been crushed by a truck. She felt the same way now. That identical sense of frozen disbelief. That almost angry conviction that there was no place in life for such an occurrence.

  Five times that day Miss Land took the postcard out of the sack and read it. At last she dropped it for the last time and watched it flutter down onto the pile of mail.

  Tuesday nights she and her mother usually went to the movies in Port Franklin but that night Miss Land told her mother she had a nagging headache and went to bed early. Her mother stayed home and watched television instead. Miss Land could hear the programs from her room as she lay there in the darkness, her pale blue eyes staring at the ceiling.

  At ten-seventeen p.m. her lips pressed together. So Vera Beach wasn’t good enough for him. Well, that was just too bad. Miss Land turned over and beat her pillow into submission.

  Later, in the very still of night, she bit the pillow till her jaws ached and her body shuddered on the bed. I hate him! someone screamed.

  When the doorbell tinkled in the morning Miss Land glanced over her shoulder, then went back to sorting.

  Mr. Smalley said nothing for a moment. She stood there sliding letters into their proper shelves.

  “Anything for Smalley?” he finally asked.

  “I’ll be finished in a moment,” said Miss Land.

  She heard him exhale slowly. She picked up another bundle of letters she just hadn’t had time to get to that morning.

  “Can you tell me if there’s anything?” asked Mr. Smalley.

  “I really don’t know,” she said. “I’ll be finished in a moment.” She felt a cold, drawing sensation in her stomach. Her throat was dry.

  Finally she was done.

  “Smalley,” she said and pulled out the packet of mail on the S shelf. She looked through them slowly.

  “No, nothing today, Mr. Smalley,” she said.

  She felt his eyes hold on her an extra moment before he turned and left. She shuddered once as she watched him cross the square. There!—she thought suddenly. There! She drew in a quick breath and went over to her desk. She sat there with her eyes shut, hands trembling in her lap.

  The next morning she glanced over from her desk and said, “No, nothing.”

  The next morning she came back late from having coffee and found him waiting at the door. When she handed him the magazine with postage due she said, curtly, “I think you’d better tell them your new address again.”

  The next morning she handed him his mail without a word and turned away.

  On Monday she said lightly, “Nothing,” and she didn’t even turn to look at him.

  That night she got severe stomach cramps and had to stay in bed for three days and nights. She phoned the office once each day to remind her replacement to be very sure she collected on all postage due items. Like things that were forwarded from other cities. Like Los Angeles for instance.

  When the letter in the blue envelope arrived Miss Land only glanced at it before sliding it onto the S shelf.

  Later, when she returned from Meldick’s she drew the letter out again. Even if there were no return address on it she could have told from the delicate curve of the handwriting. As it was the name printed on the flap was Marjorie Kelton.

  Miss Land sat at her desk holding the letter in her hands. She could feel her heart beating in heavy labored pulsings that seemed to strike the wall of her chest. Marjorie Kelton. She read the name over and over, the letters dark blue on blue. She read it until the letters blurred. Marjorie Kelton. Personal stationery. The air seemed close. Miss Land seemed to feel the chair rocking slowly under her. Her head felt numb. Marjorie Kelton’s personal stationery. Miniature pearls of sweat hung from Miss Land’s brow. Marjorie Kelton.

  When the doorbell tinkled and Mr. Smalley appeared at the general delivery window Miss Land said, “Nothing.”

  Aghast, she twitched on the chair. She began to cry, “Wait!” but only made a faintly hollow sound in her throat. The doorbell tinkled again. Miss Land raked back her chair and hurried to the window.

  “Wait,” she said.

  She watched him walking brusquely to his car.

  “I made a mistake,” she said. Mr. Smalley got into his car and drove away without answering.

  Miss Land turned from the window with a shudder. I made a mistake, she repeated in her mind. A mistake, you see. I didn’t put your letter on the right shelf.

  A stage smile drew artificially at her thin features. She laughed as she related to Mr. Smalley the humorous incident. I put it on the M shelf, you see. I guess I just wasn’t thinking. Wasn’t that silly?

  The scene dissolved. Miss Land had the phone in her hand. She dropped it back on its cradle. No, not so soon. That would be suspicious. Her eyes fluttered up to the wall clock. In an hour. An hour would be appropriate. Mr. Mel­dick came in for his mail you see and I ran across your letter. I’d put it on the M shelf by mistake. Wasn’t that—

  She went about her work.

  At ten-thirty she looked through the telephone directory and a terrible cold stone lay on her stomach when she saw that Mr. Smalley’s name wasn’t listed.

  “Oh.” Miss Land shook her head in self-reproachment. Mr. Smalley had just moved in. How could he be listed?

  But what if he had no phone? Terror scraped at Miss Land’s heart. Hastily, she laughed it away. Oh, for heaven’s sake, why wasn’t she thinking? Mr. Smalley would be in around noon for his second delivery. She’d give him the letter then. That was all.

  Mr. Smalley didn’t come in again that day. At two o’clock Miss Land called information and requested the number of his newly installed phone.

  She sat there five minutes listening to the buzz-click of his unanswered line. Then, almost soundlessly, she slipped the receiver back in place and stared at the blue letter on her desk. Well, it’s not my fault, she thought. Well, what am I worrying about? she thought. Mr. Smalley would get it tomorrow.

  Tomorrow.

  “You haven’t eaten a thing,” her mother said, threatening with a spoonful of mashed potato.

  “I’m not hungry, Mother,” said Miss Land.

  “You had something in Meldick’s this afternoon,” said her mother.

  “No, Mother. Please. I’m just not hungry.”

  Her mother grunted. Then there was the sound of her mother’s fork clicking from dinner plate to dental plate, the sound of water being swallowed, the wheezing breath that passed her mother’s nostrils. Miss Land drew tiny roads through her untouched mound of potato. She stared at the plate and there was a sharp gnawing at her stomach.

  “Finish the meat,” her mother said.

  “I’m—” Miss Land cleared her throat. “I told you I’m not hungry, Mother.”

  “You’ve been drinking too much coffee,” said her mother. “It stunts the appetite. I always said it.”

  “Excuse me, Mother,” said Miss Land, getting up.

  “You haven’t eaten a thing,” her mother said as Miss Land left the room.

  Quietly, she locked her door and went over to her bed. She sat there kneading white fingers together, trying to catch her breath. Every time she drew in air it seemed to drain from her instantly.

  Five minutes. Abruptly, Miss Land slid her hand under the pillow and drew out the blue envelope.

  She turned it over and over as if it had endless sides and she must find the right one. The woman’s name flared in her mind and disappeared, it flared and disappeared like an automatic sign. She looked at his name and his address written in Marjorie Kelton’s exact feminine hand. She visualized her sitting at her desk and writing down that name: Mr. Louis Smalley, surely and casually in the quiet of her room.

  Suddenly she tore the envelope open and thought her heart had stopped. The letter fell from her hands and Miss Land sat there trembling, staring down at it, her body rocked with giant heartbeats. She dug her teeth into her lower lip and began to cry softly. It was an accident, her mind fled through t
he explanation. I thought it was for me, you see, and—

  Her eyes pressed shut and she felt two warm tears run down her face. He would never believe that.

  “No,” she whimpered. “No, no, no.”

  In a little while she picked the letter up and read it, her face set stiffly, a mask of regal justification.

  Lou, Darling! I just heard from Chuck that you were back east! Why in God’s name didn’t you phone? You know I never meant what I said. Never meant it for a second, damn your luscious bones!

  It went on like that. Miss Land sat woodenly, a dull heat licking up through her body as she read. Twice she crumpled up the letter and flung it away and twice retrieved it, pressing out the wrinkles with her fingers. She read it seven times completely and then in sections.

  Later in the darkness she lay, holding the crumpled letter in her hand and staring, dry-eyed, at the ceiling, breath a faltering trickle from her lips. She watched Marjorie Kelton and Marjorie Kelton was beautiful and desirable. Miss Land’s lips pressed together. Any woman who would write a letter like that . . .

  Around midnight Miss Land sat up and slapped around in rabid fury until she’d found the letter and then she tore it up with savage jerkings of her arms and flung the ragged shards into the darkness with a choking sob. There!

  In the morning she burned the pieces. Mr. Smalley got two letters and a postcard and when Miss Land handed them to him he smiled and said thank you. It doesn’t matter, Miss Land decided at lunch. It was only one letter and anything could have happened to it. That was the end of it. She certainly wasn’t going to make a fool of herself again.

  The following Monday morning the letter from the upstate realtor came for Mr. Smalley and Miss Land put it in her desk drawer. When Mr. Smalley came in she gave him his Saturday Review and his notice from the Book Find Club. What amazed her the most was the absence of fright she felt. On the contrary there was a feeling of rich satisfaction in her as she put the letter in her handbag and took it home at lunchtime.

  After lunch she retired to her room and, after locking the door, took the letter from her bag. For a long time she lay quietly, touching the envelope, rubbing it experimentally between her fingertips, pressing it against her cheek. Once, suddenly, she kissed it and felt a strange hot pouring sensation in her like a sun-baked river. It made her shiver.

  It’s really, she thought hastily, a delicious conspiracy against Mr. Smalley. It wasn’t doing him any harm. After all it was only a letter from a realtor, nothing important. Miss Land writhed her hips a little on the bed and read the letter. There were rentals available. Miss Land shrugged.

  “So what?” she murmured and had to giggle over that.

  In a few minutes she tore the letter into pieces and held the scraps high above her and laughed softly and contentedly as they filtered through her spread fingers and fluttered down on her like dry snow.

  There, she thought. Her teeth clenched together and anger came again. Oh, there.

  She fell into a sleep so heavy that her mother had to pound on the door for three minutes straight before she heard it.

  She took one of Mr. Smalley’s Saturday Reviews home and put it under her pillow. Now that’s all, she told herself. No more. This much was all right because it was nothing important but that was all. After all there was no point to it really. It was just a silly game.

  Two days later she took a postcard from a men’s shop in Port Franklin. It wasn’t very satisfactory. The next day she took a letter from his agent and tore it up without even reading it.

  That’s all, Miss Land told herself. After all there’s no point in going on with such a silly game.

  When he wrote to the realtor again Miss Land tore up the letter with her teeth and hands and threw the pieces all over her room.

  On the Wednesday morning of June 22nd Miss Land was sorting mail when she heard the door opened. The beginning of a smile twisted playfully on her lips, then was gone. She kept sliding letters and postcards onto the general delivery shelves.

  “Pardon me,” said an unfamiliar voice.

  Miss Land looked over her shoulder and saw a man wearing a dark blue suit and a panama hat. There were palm trees on his tie.

  The man pressed his hat brim between two fingers and Miss Land came forward. “Yes?” she said.

  The man drew a billfold from his inside coat pocket and opened it. Miss Land looked down at the card he showed her.

  “I’d like to talk to you, Miss Land,” he said.

  “Oh?” she said. Her fingers were rigid on the bundle of mail. “What about?”

  “May I come in back?”

  “It’s against the rules,” said Miss Land.

  The man held out his card again.

  “I know what’s against the rules,” he said.

  Miss Land swallowed once. It made a dry clicking sound in her throat.

  “I’m so busy,” she said. “I have so much mail to sort.”

  The man looked at her without any expression on his face.

  “The door, Miss Land,” he said.

  Miss Land put down the bundle of mail on the table. She pushed in at the edges to even them. Then she walked over to the door. The man’s footsteps stopped there. Miss Land stood a moment looking through the frosted glass at the dark outline of the man. Then she unlocked the door.

  “Come in,” she said, cheerfully. “You won’t mind if I continue with my work while we talk.”

  She turned before the man could answer. From the corners of her eyes she saw him walk in, hat in hand, and heard the click as the door was closed again. A shudder laced down her back.

  “Well, what is it?” she asked, picking up the mail. “Somebody complaining about me?” Her laugh was faint and hollow. “You can’t please all of the people all of the time. Or is it—?”

  “I think it would be better if we shut the windows for a while, don’t you?” interrupted the man.

  “No, that’s impossible,” said Miss Land with a fleeting smile. “The office is open, you see. People will be coming in for their mail. After all, that’s what I’m here for. I can’t just close—just like that.”

  She turned back to her bundle of letters and held one up with a shaking hand.

  “Mrs. Brandt,” she said and slid the letter onto the D shelf.

  “Miss Land,” started the man.

  “Close in here, isn’t it?” said Miss Land. “I’ve written the main office about it, oh, dozens of times. I guess I’ll just have to get a fan for myself.”

  The man walked to the stamp and postal order window and pulled it down.

  “Now wait a minute!” Miss Land said shrilly. “You can’t do that. This is a public—”

  Her voice broke off as the man looked at her. She stood there frozenly, the bundle of mail held against her chest, as the man went to the other window.

  “But you can’t do that,” said Miss Land. She watched him pull down the general delivery window. A giggle hovered starkly in her throat. “Well,” she said, “I guess you did it.” She shrugged and held the mail bundle out toward the table.

  “Oh!” she said as the letters and cards spilled all over the tile floor. She crouched down hastily. “Dear me,” she said. “I’m all thumbs to—”

  “Let them be, Miss Land,” the man said firmly. “We’ll pick them up later.”

  “Oh, that’s very nice of—”

  Miss Land stopped suddenly, realizing that the “we” he mentioned didn’t include her. She straightened up dizzily and knotted her hands together.

  “Well,” she said, “what is it you want to see me about?”

  “I think you already know, Miss Land.”

  “No,” she said, too loudly. “No, I have no idea. I—I haven’t been honored with a visit from a p-p—”

  Miss Land looked stunned. Her shudder was too visible to hide. She cleared her throat suddenly.

  “If it’s about—” she started, then broke off again.

  “Miss Land, we’ve been checking on th
is for almost a month. Twenty-one items have been reported undelivered by the party in—”

  “Oh, that would be Mr. Smalley,” Miss Land blurted. “Oh, he’s a strange man. Strange, Mr.—”

  The man didn’t say. Miss Land cleared her throat.

  “He’s a writer, you know,” she said. “You can’t—rely on that t-type of man. Why he wasn’t here more than two weeks before he started looking for another place to stay because he didn’t like—”

  “We have the evidence, Miss Land,” the man said. “I’d like you to come with me.”

  “Oh, but—” A terrified smile splashed across her lips. “No, that’s impossible. I have people here to serve, you see. You don’t understand, you simply don’t understand. I have people here.”

  “I have a replacement for you out in my car,” said the man.

  Miss Land stared at him blankly.

  “You—” She ran a shaking hand over her cheek. “But, that’s impossible,” she said.

  “Would you get your things,” said the man.

  “But a replacement wouldn’t know where everything is,” Miss Land told him cheerfully. “You don’t understand. I have my own system here. I call it the—”

  She bit her lower lip suddenly and drove back a sob.

  “No, no, I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s impossible. You don’t understand. A replacement would never be able to—”

  “Miss Land, get your things.”

  Miss Land was a statue except for the vein that pulsed on her neck.

  “But you don’t understand,” she murmured.

  Outside, the doorbell tinkled and Miss Land’s head turned. She stared at the general delivery window.

  “Miss Land,” said the man.

  Abruptly, Miss Land stepped over to the general delivery window and jerked it up.

  “Well, good morning,” she said. “Isn’t it a lovely morning?”

  Mr. Smalley looked at her in blank surprise.

  “Well, let’s see now,” said Miss Land, turning toward the shelves. Her trembling hand drew out the small packet and she put one, two, three, four, five letters on the table. She drew a magazine off the pile, then turned back to the window, smiling and flushed.