Selected Stories

by Theodore Sturgeon

  It was that night, after he had fallen into that heavy first sleep on his return from the store, that he felt the warm firm length of her tight up against him on the cot. He lay still for a moment, somnolent, uncomprehending, while quick fingers plucked at the buttons of his long Johns. He brought his hands up and trapped her wrists. She was immediately still, though her breath came swift and her heart pounded his chest like an angry little knuckle. He made a labored, inquisitive syllable, “Wh-wha …?” and she moved against him and then stopped, trembling. He held her wrists for more than a minute, trying to think this out, and at last sat up. He put one arm around her shoulders and the other under her knees. He stood up. She clung to him and the breath hissed in her nostrils. He moved to the side of her bed and bent slowly and put her down. He had to reach back and detach her arms from around his neck before he could straighten up. “You sleep,” he said. He fumbled for the sheet and pulled it over her and tucked it around her. She lay absolutely motionless, and he touched her hair and went back to his cot. He lay down and after a long time fell into a troubled sleep. But something woke him; he lay and listened, hearing nothing. He remembered suddenly and vividly the night she had balanced between life and death, and he had awakened to the echo of a sob which was not repeated; in sudden fright he jumped up and went to her, bent down and touched her head. She was lying face down. “You cry?” he whispered, and she shook her head rapidly. He grunted and went back to bed.

  It was the ninth week and it was raining; he plodded homeward through the black, shining streets, and when he turned into his own block and saw the dead, slick river stretching between him and the streetlight in front of his house, he experienced a moment of fantasy, of dreamlike disorientation; it seemed to him for a second that none of this had happened, that in a moment the car would flash by him and dip toward the curb momentarily while a limp body tumbled out, and he must run to it and take it indoors, and it would bleed, it would bleed, it might die. … He shook himself like a big dog and put his head down against the rain, saying Stupid! to his inner self. Nothing could be wrong, now. He had found a way to live, and live that way he would, and he would abide no change in it.

  But there was a change, and he knew it before he entered the house; his window, facing the street, had a dull orange glow which could not have been given it by the street light alone. But maybe she was reading one of those paperback novels he had inherited with the apartment; maybe she had to use the bedpan or was just looking at the clock … but the thoughts did not comfort him; he was sick with an unaccountable fear as he unlocked the hall door. His own entrance showed light through the crack at the bottom; he dropped his keys as he fumbled with them, and at last opened the door.

  He gasped as if he had been struck in the solar plexus. The bed was made, flat, neat, and she was not in it. He spun around; his frantic gaze saw her and passed her before he could believe his eyes. Tall, queenly in her red housecoat, she stood at the other end of the room, by the sink.

  He stared at her in amazement. She came to him, and as he filled his lungs for one of his grating yells, she put a finger on her lips and, lightly, her other hand across his mouth. Neither of these gestures, both even, would have been enough to quiet him ordinarily, but there was something else about her, something which did not wait for what he might do and would not quail before him if he did it. He was instantly confused, and silent. He stared after her as, without breaking stride, she passed him and gently closed the door. She took his hand, but the keys were in the way; she drew them from his fingers and tossed them on the table and then took his hand again, firmly. She was sure, decisive; she was one who had thought things out and weighed and discarded, and now knew what to do. But she was triumphant in some way, too; she had the poise of a victor and the radiance of the witness to a miracle. He could cope with her helplessness, of any kind, to any degree, but this—he had to think, and she gave him no time to think.

  She led him to the bed and put her hands on his shoulders, turning him and making him sit down. She sat close to him, her face alight, and when again he filled his lungs, “Shh!” she hissed, sharply, and smiling covered his mouth with her hand. She took his shoulders again and looked straight into his eyes, and said clearly, “I can talk now, I can talk!”

  Numbly, he gaped at her.

  “Three days already, it was a secret, it was a surprise.” Her voice was husky, hoarse even, but very clear and deeper than her slight body indicated. “I been practicing, to be sure. I’m all right again, I’m all right. You fix everything!” she said, and laughed.

  Hearing that laugh, seeing the pride and joy in her face, he could take nothing away from her. “Ahh …” he said, wonderingly.

  She laughed again. “I can go, I can go!” she sang. She leaped up suddenly and pirouetted, and leaned over him laughing. He gazed up at her and her flying hair, and squinted his eyes as he would looking into the sun. “Go?” he blared, the pressure of his confusion forcing the syllable out as an explosive shout.

  She sobered immediately, and sat down again close to him. “Oh, honey, don’t, don’t look as if you was knifed or something. You know I can’t camp on you, live off you, just forever!”

  “No, no you stay,” he blurted, anguish in his face.

  “Now look,” she said, speaking simply and slowly as to a child. “I’m all well again, I can talk now. It wouldn’t be right, me staying, locked up here, that bedpan and all. Now wait, wait,” she said quickly before he could form a word, “I don’t mean I’m not grateful, you been … you been, well I just can’t tell you. Look, nobody in my life ever did anything like this, I mean, I had to run away when I was thirteen, I done all sorts of bad things. And I got treated … I mean, nobody else … look, here’s what I mean, up to now I’d steal, I’d rob anybody, what the hell. What I mean, why not, you see?” She shook him gently to make him see; then, recognizing the blankness and misery of his expression, she wet her lips and started over. “What I’m trying to say is, you been so kind, all this—” She waved her hand at the blue rabbit, the turtle tank, everything in the room—“I can’t take any more. I mean, not a thing, not a breakfast. If I could pay you back some way, no matter what, I would, you know I would.” There was a tinge of bitterness in her husky voice. “Nobody can pay you anything. You don’t need anything or anybody. I can’t give you anything you need, or do anything for you that needs doing, you do it all yourself. If there was something you wanted from me—” She curled her hands inward and placed her fingertips between her breasts, inclining her head with a strange submissiveness that made him ache. “But no, you fix everything,” she mimicked. There was no mockery in it.

  “No, no, you don’t go,” he whispered harshly.

  She patted his cheek, and her eyes loved him. “I do go,” she said, smiling. Then the smile disappeared. “I got to explain to you, those hoods who cut me, I asked for that. I goofed. I was doing something real bad—well, I’ll tell you. I was a runner, know what I mean? I mean dope, I was selling it.”

  He looked at her blankly. He was not catching one word in ten; he was biting and biting only on emptiness and uselessness, aloneness, and the terrible truth of this room without her or the blue rabbit or anything else but what it had contained all these years—linoleum with the design scrubbed off, six novels he couldn’t read, a stove waiting for someone to cook for, grime and regularity and who needs you?

  She misunderstood his expression. “Honey, honey, don’t look at me like that, I’ll never do it again. I only did it because I didn’t care, I used to get glad when people hurt themselves; yeah, I mean that. I never knew someone could be kind, like you; I always thought that was sort of a lie, like the movies. Nice but not real, not for me.

  “But I have to tell you, I swiped a cache, my God, twenty, twenty-two G’s worth. I had it all of forty minutes, they caught up with me.” Her eyes widened and saw things not in the room. “With a razor, he went to hit me with it so hard he broke it on top of the car door. He hit me here down
and here up, I guess he was going to gut me but the razor was busted.” She expelled air from her nostrils, and her gaze came back into the room. “I guess I got the lump on the head when they threw me out of the car. I guess that’s why I couldn’t talk, I heard of that. Oh honey! Don’t look like that, you’re tearing me apart!”

  He looked at her dolefully and wagged his big head helplessly from side to side. She knelt before him suddenly and took both his hands. “Listen, you got to understand. I was going to slide out while you were working but I stayed just so I could make you understand. After all you done. … See, I’m well, I can’t stay cooped up in one room forever. If I could, I’d get work some place near here and see you all the time, honest I would. But my life isn’t worth a rubber dime in this town. I got to leave here and that means I got to leave town. I’ll be all right, honey. I’ll write to you; I’ll never forget you, how could I?”

  She was far ahead of him. He had grasped that she wanted to leave him; the next thing he understood was that she wanted to leave town too.

  “You don’t go,” he choked. “You need me.”

  “You don’t need me,” she said fondly, “and I don’t need you. It comes to that, honey; it’s the way you fixed it. It’s the right way; can’t you see that?”

  Right in there was the third thing he understood.

  He stood up slowly, feeling her hands slide from his, from his knees to the floor as he stepped away from her. “Oh God!” she cried from the floor where she knelt, “you’re killing me, taking it this way! Can’t you be happy for me?”

  He stumbled across the room and caught himself on the lower shelf of the china closet. He looked back and forward along the dark, echoing corridor of his years, stretching so far and drearily, and he looked at this short bright segment slipping away from him. … He heard her quick footsteps behind him and when he turned he had the flatiron in his hand. She never saw it. She came to him bright-faced, pleading, and he put out his arms and she ran inside, and the iron curved around and crashed into the back of her head.

  He lowered her gently down on the linoleum and stood for a long time over her, crying quietly.

  Then he put the iron away and filled the kettle and a saucepan with water, and in the saucepan he put needles and a clamp and thread and little slabs of sponge and a knife and pliers. From the gateleg table and from a drawer he got his two plastic tablecloths and began arranging them on the bed. “I fix everything,” he murmured as he worked. “Fix it right.”

  THE SEX OPPOSITE

  BUDGIE SLID INTO THE laboratory without knocking, as usual.

  She was flushed and breathless, her eyes bright with speed and eagerness. “Whatcha got, Muley?”

  Muhlenberg kicked the morgue door shut before Budgie could get in line with it. “Nothing,” he said flatly, “and of all the people I don’t want to see—and at the moment that means all the people there are—you head the list. Go away.”

  Budgie pulled off her gloves and stuffed them into an oversized shoulder-bag, which she hurled across the laboratory onto a work-surface. “Come on, Muley. I saw the meat-wagon outside. I know what it brought, too. That double murder in the park. Al told me.”

  “Al’s jaw is one that needs more tying up than any of the stiffs he taxis around,” said Muhlenberg bitterly. “Well, you’re not getting near this pair.”

  She came over to him, stood very close. In spite of his annoyance, he couldn’t help noticing how soft and full her lips were just then. Just then—and the sudden realization added to the annoyance. He had known for a long time that Budgie could turn on mechanisms that made every one of a man’s ductless glands purse up its lips and blow like a trumpet. Every time he felt it he hated himself. “Get away from me,” he growled. “It won’t work.”

  “What won’t, Muley?” she murmured.

  Muhlenberg looked her straight in the eye and said something about his preference for raw liver over Budgie-times-twelve.

  The softness went out of her lips, to be replaced by no particular hardness. She simply laughed good-naturedly. “All right, you’re immune. I’ll try logic.”

  “Nothing will work,” he said. “You will not get in there to see those two, and you’ll get no details from me for any of that couche-con-carne stew you call a newspaper story.”

  “Okay,” she said surprisingly. She crossed the lab and picked up her handbag. She found a glove and began to pull it on. “Sorry I interrupted you, Muley. I do get the idea. You want to be alone.”

  His jaw was too slack to enunciate an answer. He watched her go out, watched the door close, watched it open again, heard her say in a very hurt tone, “But I do think you could tell me why you won’t say anything about this murder.”

  He scratched his head. “As long as you behave yourself, I guess I do owe you that.” He thought for a moment. “It’s not your kind of a story. That’s about the best way to put it.”

  “Not my kind of a story? A double murder in Lover’s Lane? The maudlin mystery of the mugger, or mayhem in Maytime? No kidding, Muley—you’re not serious!”

  “Budgie, this one isn’t for fun. It’s ugly. Very damn ugly. And it’s serious. It’s mysterious for a number of other reasons than the ones you want to siphon into your readers.”

  “What other reasons?”

  “Medically. Biologically. Sociologically.”

  “My stories got biology. Sociology they got likewise; stodgy truisms about social trends is the way I dish up sex in the public prints, or didn’t you know? So—that leaves medical. What’s so strange medically about this case?”

  “Good night, Budgie.”

  “Come on, Muley. You can’t horrify me.”

  “That I know. You’ve trod more primrose pathology in your research than Krafft-Ebing plus eleven comic books. No, Budgie. No more.”

  “Dr. F. L. Muhlenberg, brilliant young biologist and special medical consultant to the City and State Police, intimated that these aspects of the case—the brutal murder and disfigurement of the embarrassed couple—were superficial compared with the unspeakable facts behind them. ‘Medically mysterious,’ he was quoted as saying.” She twinkled at him. “How’s that sound?” She looked at her watch. “And I can make the early edition, too, with a head. Something like DOC SHOCKED SPEECHLESS—and a subhead: Lab Sleuth Suppresses Medical Details of Double Park Killing. Yeah, and your picture.”

  “If you dare to print anything of the sort,” he raged, “I’ll—”

  “All right, all right,” she said conciliatingly. “I won’t. I really won’t.”

  “Promise me?”

  “I promise, Muley … if—”

  “Why should I bargain?” he demanded suddenly. “Get out of here.”

  He began to close the door. “And something for the editorial page,” she said. “Is a doctor within his rights in suppressing information concerning a murderous maniac and his methods?” She closed the door.

  Muhlenberg bit his lower lip so hard he all but yelped. He ran to the door and snatched it open. “Wait!”

  Budgie was leaning against the doorpost lighting a cigarette. “I was waiting,” she said reasonably.

  “Come in here,” he grated. He snatched her arm and whirled her inside, slamming the door.

  “You’re a brute,” she said rubbing her arm and smiling dazzlingly.

  “The only way to muzzle you is to tell you the whole story. Right?”

  “Right. If I get an exclusive when you’re ready to break the story.”

  “There’s probably a kicker in that, too,” he said morosely. He glared at her. Then, “Sit down,” he said.

  She did. “I’m all yours.”

  “Don’t change the subject,” he said with a ghost of his natural humor. He lit a thoughtful cigarette. “What do you know about this case so far?”

  “Too little,” she said. “This couple were having a conversation without words in the park when some muggers jumped them and killed them, a little more gruesomely than usual. But instead
of being delivered to the city morgue, they were brought straight to you on the orders of the ambulance intern after one quick look.”

  “How did you know about it?”

  “Well, if you must know, I was in the park. There’s a shortcut over by the museum, and I was about a hundred yards down the path when I …”

  Muhlenberg waited as long as tact demanded, and a little longer. Her face was still, her gaze detached. “Go on.”

  “… when I heard a scream,” she said in the precise tone of voice which she had been using. Then she began to cry.

  “Hey,” he said. He knelt beside her, put a hand on her shoulder. She shoved it away angrily, and covered her face with a damp towel. When she took it down again she seemed to be laughing. She was doing it so badly that he turned away in very real embarrassment.

  “Sorry,” she said in a very shaken whisper. “It … was that kind of a scream. I’ve never heard anything like it. It did something to me. It had more agony in it than a single sound should be able to have.” She closed her eyes.

  “Man or woman?”

  She shook her head.

  “So,” he said matter-of-factly, “what did you do then?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all, for I don’t know how long.” She slammed a small fist down on the table. “I’m supposed to be a reporter!” she flared. “And there I stand like a dummy, like a wharf rat in concussion-shock!” She wet her lips. “When I came around I was standing by a rock wall with one hand on it.” She showed him. “Broke two perfectly good fingernails, I was holding on so tight. I ran toward where I’d heard the sound. Just trampled brush, nothing else. I heard a crowd milling around on the avenue. I went up there. The meat-wagon was there, Al and that young sawbones Regal—Ruggles—”

  “Regalio.”

  “Yeah, him. They’d just put those two bodies into the ambulance. They were covered with blankets. I asked what was up. Regalio waved a finger and said ‘Not for school-girls’ and gave me a real death-mask grin. He climbed aboard. I grabbed Al and asked him what was what. He said muggers had killed this couple, and it was pretty rugged. Said Regalio had told him to bring them here, even before he made a police report. They were both about as upset as they could get.”