Flash and Filigree

by Terry Southern

  “Yes, Doctor. Mrs. Gross is here now. Mrs. Hugo Gross.”

  “Mrs. Hugo Gross. Have her come in, please.”

  In appearance, Mrs. Gross was a strange woman, one of those large-boned, ageless women, carefully dressed, but fantastically made-up, and wearing a close-fitting, beret style hat. A heavy layer of pan-stick covered her face and lips, so that there was no difference in color between them, both being the same dull-glossed ochre; the periphery of the lips, however, was sharply etched by a thin crimson line.

  “Mrs. Gross?” said Dr. Eichner, rising and extending his hand.

  “How do you do, Doctor,” said Mrs. Gross with a penetrating smile.

  “Please sit down, Mrs. Gross.” The Doctor regarded her studiously. He took her to be an actress almost at once. “You were referred to me—”

  “Yes, Doctor, by Mrs. Winthrop-Garde.”

  “Mrs. Winthrop-Garde,” Dr. Eichner repeated, striking an attitude of reflection.

  “Of Washington, Doctor.”

  Mrs. Gross’s eyes were not large, but brilliant blue they were set to advantage in a wide swirl of dark up-swept lashes beneath pearl-shadowed lids, which were faintly iridescent. The lashes were almost theatrically false, while the brows above were drawn in a black arch of permanent surprise.

  “But what can I be thinking of?” demanded Mrs. Hugo Gross, bringing a black-gloved hand to her cheek in slight chagrin. “I doubt that Mrs. Winthrop-Garde was married at that time! Now what was her maiden name? We only met a short time ago, you see, and—”

  “Oh, no matter,” said Fred Eichner genially, waiving the question with his hand. “No matter at all! I was, I must confess, simply curious.” And he gave Mrs. Gross a smile that caused her to writhe pleasantly, though with no serious loss of her rather gracious bearing. “Well, now, Mrs. Gross,” he continued, “what, exactly, seems to be the trouble?”

  “A skin-disorder of some sort, Doctor,” said Mrs. Gross gravely, then went on, smiling in half apology, “though I imagine you would have guessed as much! However, it’s a form of rash, I suppose, occurring periodically—at no particular intervals—two weeks, three, sometimes as widely spaced as a month—on my stomach, and on my hips, the back of my hips—” Without being in the least coy, Mrs. Gross displayed a certain half smiling modesty as she concluded, “— where I sit down is what I mean to say. It began about a year ago . . .”

  “To your knowledge,” the Doctor took it up, “were you ever subject to allergies? As a child, perhaps?”

  “No, not to my knowledge, Doctor. Though there is something I think I might tell you. Up until a year ago, I was unbelievably overweight.” Mrs. Gross began here a spritely narrative that, almost to the very end, she punctuated with acute facial expressions, little smiles, sometimes wistful, sometimes of delight, but never morose or dramatic, in spite of what she said. “Not that I’m such a frail slip of a creature now! My weight now is 133. But a year ago, it was 255. Two hundred and fifty-five pounds! I was terribly conscious of my figure—or should I say my disfiguration—and, of course, almost never comfortable socially. At school—college—I began to shun the company of others. I think I know when it really began. My first year in college, one afternoon in French class . . . I was already terribly, terribly overweight—about 190—and I was wasn’t a tall person either. Well, in the French class, during the individual recitations, we always stood by our desks in turn, and when we were finished, the Professor would say—he always spoke to us in French—‘c’est fait,’ or, if it had been quite good, ‘c’est bien fait.’ If it wasn’t satisfactory, however, he would interrupt the recitation with ‘c’est assez!’ or, if it was very bad, ‘c’est bien assez!’ Well, on this particular day, I hadn’t prepared my lesson—which wasn’t like me at all, because I think I can say really quite objectively that I was a very conscientious student, and certainly above the average in French—but, on this occasion, there were circumstances, which I needn’t go into here . . . and I simply wasn’t prepared. Well, he did interrupt—perhaps only to show how democratic he could be, since I was, after all, an exceptional student. ‘C’est bien assez!’ he said. Before I could sit down, someone behind—I’ve never been certain who—said in a loud whisper, ‘Mais oui, c’est bien assez—pour le monstre!’ I can tell you, Doctor, that phrase, just as it was spoken, with all its fault and childish intonation, has haunted me to this day! Well, I left school the next week. I became a sort of recluse, studying privately. Instead of taking books from the library, I bought them, always at different shops. I no longer saw any of my old friends, and changed residence often. I ate in a new restaurant every day—and how I ate! It was escape, recognition, defiance, indifference, security, everything! I remained—not happily though, I assure you—in this frame of mind for years—until, as I say, about one year ago when I read a book, a powerful book, Know Thyself by Dr. Joseph Fineman. Oh, this will sound naïve to you, I’m sure, but—well, it gave me great hope and, as providence would have it, I received at about the same time an invitation to cocktails—from an all but forgotten friend, a schoolmate, perhaps of that very French class, perhaps even the very person who had spoken . . . In any event, I accepted the invitation. In the spirit of the book, I accepted. I went to the party. I arrived late. The door was open, the room was full—a gala crowd—and the hostess was not on hand, so I went in. As I crossed the room, I was obsessed by the phrase, ‘Voilà! C’est bien le monstre!’ I felt faint and sat down at once at the end of a large divan that was covered with fluffy scatter-pillows. A maid, passing with a tray of hors d’oeuvres, stopped, and I took one and settled back on the divan. I sat there, silently, eating, looking straight ahead. Everyone around was engaged in conversation and seemed oblivious of my presence. I was thankful for that. Suddenly, however, I had the strange impression that I was sitting on something, almost as though—well, I casually, or should I say cautiously, looked behind me and assured myself that it was only one of the throw-pillows there, and I settled down again. I hadn’t more than finished my hors d’oeuvre though, when the feeling came over me again—I was so conscious of my weight, you see, and I was stricken with fear at the idea of having sat on something: a man’s hat, a woman’s purse—and so, with as, much stealth as possible, I let my hand down between the arm of the divan and the pillow that was half behind, half under me. Now, this will surprise you—so perhaps you can imagine my, shall we say . . . surprise? For there was something there, all right. Not a purse or hat, as I had feared, but something warm and furry. I sat up quickly and withdrew my hand! Then I reached for it again—I had to know, you see—and I managed to move the pillow slightly and have a peek. What was it? It was the body of a tiny dog, a toy Pomeranian, the smallest of creatures, and the dearest no doubt, of pets—suffocated, of course, by my great body. Well, to bring the story to a close, Doctor, I contrived to scoop the body into my handbag, unseen by anyone, and then walked hurriedly from the room, down the stairs, and into the street. At the first refuse-can, I emptied my handbag—of everything, all my cards, cosmetics, change, personal items, etcetera. And I walked home.

  “After that, I couldn’t eat. I became thin—as you see me now—in no time at all; almost, one might say, over night. And the day of the cocktail party was the day my rash began. Does the story amuse you, Doctor?”

  Toward the end of the narration, Mrs. Gross’ smiles and gesticulations had become progressively exaggerated: she showed such an excess of teeth that they resembled snarls, and suggested pain. From moment to moment she arched her brows and grimaced terrifically, as in a pantomime for a wide, distant audience. The Doctor regarded her with growing scrutiny; there was something haunting, and frighteningly caricaturish about her at these times. Mrs. Gross had built to this, and as a climax, at the point of asking “Does the story amuse you, Doctor?” she threw her head to one side and struck a pose, stone still, her stark face frozen in the distortion of a toothpaste advertisement, a face trapped at the very peak of a hysterical laugh; and the Doctor sat
as one mesmerized with horror until the suspense was shattered by the woman suddenly reaching up and snatching at her hair, which gave way in her grasp, and the full horror smothered the Doctor, as in a valley filling from above with a mountain of snakes, that what was confronting him, laughing with sly insanity, was no less than Felix Treevly.

  A little cry of terror broke from the Doctor before he shuddered and then lunged bodily at his tormentor, seizing at his throat with both hands in the desperate certainty that his mind would snap if he heard another sound from those lips. With an adroit sidestep behind the chair, however, Treevly escaped the thrust. “The Doctor isn’t telling all he knows,” he whispered with fanatic intensity.

  Dr. Eichner grabbed the onyx paperweight and lashed out blindly. It seemed to just graze Treevly’s brow, for he stumbled, and then fell forward, toward the desk. But in falling, Treevly must have struck his head against the lower part of the desk—for when the Doctor examined him, he was not merely unconscious, he was actually dead.

  Chapter XXIV

  “OF COURSE, IT’S A great relief,” Nurse Thorne was saying to Beth Jackson during a hallway encounter outside gyno.

  “I shouldn’t wonder!” said Beth. “Police all over, what’s the place coming to?”

  “Well, naturally we had to bring the Police into it. Unfortunate, I admit, but there it was.”

  “Oh?”

  “Oh yes, they worked with the private agencies on it.”

  “Well! I’m certainly glad it’s over and done with! Police crawling all over the place, snooping around! What must the patients think, that’s what I’m wondering!”

  “Really, Beth. I seriously doubt if anyone noticed. After all—”

  “Oh, it was noticed rightly enough, no mistaking that! The radio in their car was so loud a body couldn’t think. Hold-up here, accident there, drunks, fires, murders, and Lords knows what! Ha! And poor Miss Klein just out of surgery and running a temp. If my Miss Klein gets worse, I suppose we’ll know who to thank for it!”

  “There’s been a complaint then?”

  “She didn’t say a word, El, bless the darling! The child’s frightened to death as it is.”

  “Well—”

  “Oh, there were plenty who did notice, I can tell you! And small wonder, with their big car in my flower bed. ‘You’ll oblige these sick people by turning your radio down’ is what I told the man. And during Mrs. Burford’s morning program at that! ‘Operatic Highlights,’ El, you know how she loves it. I had to shut the window, warm as it was in that room, would you believe it? If we can’t have fresh air at the Clinic, then where are we?”

  “It isn’t likely to happen again.”

  “Well, thank the Lord for small blessings is what I would say to them!”

  Earlier in the day, during a conference with Nurse Thorne and Mr. Rogers, Beth Jackson had been more or less forced into accepting, on behalf of her department, responsibility for the lost invoice on a small shipment of crocks for gyno.

  Chapter XXV

  FOR A LONG MOMENT, the Doctor stood by his desk, staring down at the lifeless body in pure amazement. Then, as his hand moved with a slow, crab-like involution across the desk toward the inter-office phone, the imagery in his mind’s eye began to rise and sharpen in unfocused conflict, until suddenly, dark indecision locked his brain in a torment. He dropped into a chair and buried his face in his hands, a portrait of despair.

  “Good Lord!” he said half aloud, “out of the frying-pan and into the fire!”

  Then, in a matter of seconds, the seething ambivalence drained away and the Doctor was left with the bleak certainty that he could not, in all conscious sincerity, again risk delivering himself into the judgment of others. This knowledge, with all its sudden implications, was somehow shocking, but was certainly no less the real for that; and his despair gave way at once to deliberation and planning.

  He went to the window. It was the close of another beautiful afternoon: a gentle wind moved past the lengthening shadows of cypress and pine, while the white stone benches along the drive were still warmly opaque with the limping sun. There was no one in sight. Dr. Eichner closed the window and turned away; and from this point forward he moved with quick, inflexible resolve, and assurance. After locking the door, he donned a pair of rubber gloves and a surgical apron. He quickly found Treevly’s wig and put it back on the man’s head. Next he removed the long black glove from Treevly’s right hand, and then he picked him up bodily and carried him to the window, which he opened with Treevly’s hand, pressing it firmly and carefully against the handle. He took the body to a side closet and set it inside, leaving the door of the closet open. This done, the Doctor returned to the desk and briefly examined the contents of the purse Treevly had carried; and then, from a glass case on the wall, he took a large scalpel, and after pressing the handle against Treevly’s palm, he deposited it in the purse. Following this same procedure, along with the scalpel and the black glove, he put into the purse two hundred dollars, which he removed from his own wallet, and four hundred dollars, which he took from a drawer of the desk. From a side-board decanter, Dr. Eichner measured off one half-pint of whiskey, which he then transferred to the chamber of a Norwich stomach-pump. Back at the closet, he fed the tube of the pump into Treevly’s mouth, and finally, reversing the pump’s operational direction, the contents of the chamber into his stomach.

  The Doctor next removed the right shoe Treevly was wearing, a heavy, low-cut English style walking shoe, and returned to the window with it. The bottom of the window was only two feet above the outside ground level that bordered the Clinic on this side with a dark-loamed flower bed. Opposite the window, the bed narrowed to about one yard’s width where the soil, just freshly turned for planting, had a soft, oily look.

  The Doctor, on his knees, holding the shoe far forward in his right hand, leaned out the window and was on the instant of imprinting it deeply into the soil near the opposite side of the bed when he hesitated and, then suddenly, withdrew his hand. This was the first wavering point in the Doctor’s undertaking, and it set him aback. Something had caused him, intuitively, to withhold the impression of the footmark and, now, to revaluate the situation entirely.

  Procuring a tape from his desk, he measured the width of the bed—forty-five inches. The average woman’s normal step is twenty-five inches, the average man’s, thirty. Certainly, it would not be infeasible for a print to appear there, on the far side of the bed, just at the edge—and yet, or so the Doctor could reason, considering the height of the sill, and the natural impulse to step over the bed, it would be no less feasible for the escaping person to clear the bed with an oversize, springboard step from the sill. This alternate held the advantage in that it did not involve calculations about weight and impetus, which would be necessary in determining the proper depth of the contrived impression. Where the bed ended, the grass immediately began, a heavy bluish grass of such close-cropped thickness, yet so buoyant withal, that, obviously it would not retain a print from a low-heeled shoe for more than a minute. So, leaving the bed untouched, Dr. Eichner turned away from the window and replaced the shoe on Treevly’s foot; and, finally, placing the purse inside the closet, with the body, he shut the door and locked it.

  He then sat down at his desk and telephoned the Police, to report a theft of approximately six hundred dollars, cash money.

  Chapter XXVI

  BABS MINTNER MOVED through the day as through a dream, until, toward afternoon, she met Nurse Beth Jackson just outside gyno, and they were in each other’s arms at once, Beth exclaiming surprise, but saying a minute later that she had intuitively sensed the child’s awakening,

  “Oh, Beth!” cried Babs, clasping hands to her bosom and beaming helplessly. “Isn’t it marvelous!”

  “Yes, child,” Beth returned, near tears, “yes, oh gracious, gracious,” and they both fell to weeping and stroking each other for comfort.

  Nurse Thorne was off duty for a while and away, but she returned to the Cl
inic at about five, looking mannish and trim in a close-fitted tweed suit. The way she strode back and forth in Nurses’ Rest Room, she seemed in need of a short stiff crop to gesture with, strike smartly against her thigh, and clear away things confronting her.

  “So!” She stopped near the window and turned to glare at Beth Jackson, who was sitting on the sofa, absently swishing a last mouthful of tepid coke through her teeth, something she had gotten in the habit of doing after meals, and now did, any time she had coke, on the simple reflex of a once removed association.

  “So! It has actually happened! What a fool I was! What a blind fool! Oh!” Nurse Thorne was so angry she could have bitten herself.

  “El, she’s in a dream! It’s a thing to behold! She’s like a magic, bewitched thing! Oh, it took me back, you’ve no idea!” Beth tilted the empty glass, chuckling into it.

  “And now I suppose she’s pregnant!” said Eleanor Thorne as though the word were enough to make anyone ill.

  Beth was wide-eyed. “Oh, mind, I don’t say they went as far as all that! Really, El, I do think—”

  “Why not?” demanded Nurse Thorne, anxious to face the worst. “Why not? Bewitched! Bewitched! Oh, the hateful, hateful irony of it!” She pointed a prophetic, accusing finger at Beth Jackson. “Mark my words,” she cried; then, facing the window, she brought one hand to her dreadful face. “Oh, it’s really—really too much!”

  “Well,” sighed Beth, looking as absently as she could into the empty glass, “I daresay it would be a pretty one.”

  “Yes,” said Fred Eichner, staring out the window as he spoke into the phone, “I can still see her. She has just reached the front gate and is turning—I can’t see her now—it’s difficult to be sure from here, because of the trees, but I believe she turned left. Left on Wilshire, yes. All right, I’ll wait here for him. Yes, good-bye.”