by Ellery Queen
“Yes—it’s all right.”
She had remained just outside the kitchen door in the gloom of the unlit hall and it was amazing how much she looked—just then—like Millie. Those glittering eyes set in the tightening silvery skin of the drawn face. The narrow shoulders hunched up against his anger—or some implacable inner pain. The formless dress, hanging straight as laundry on a line on a windless day. Lord God, how he had loved her! Can anyone understand how much love it had taken to do what he had done?
“And I’ll want two hours for lunch,” he said, more gently now. “I go home for lunch.”
“It’s all right,” she said again.
They sometimes didn’t understand that he had to have two hours in the middle of the day to tend Millie and do the chores. He had discovered early that if he let the dishes go, even for one day, or the endless laundry, or anything, that it seemed to become almost insurmountable and would bury him alive. And Millie’s flowers—Always, every noon, he gathered flowers from the garden and arranged them in the vase by her bed. He was good with flowers—he had the hands both to grow and to arrange them. Artist’s hands, Millie had said. Creative.
He smiled at the memory and the woman saw it and stepped tentatively back into the kitchen.
“When?” she said.
“I’ll start tomorrow.”
“And finish—?”
“When I’m done,” he said. “It won’t be soon. Do you like flowers?”
“My husband—when he was alive—we had a garden.”
“And now?”
“I can’t.” Her hands, he saw, were lumpy, like gnarled pink clubs. She drew them behind the edges of her dress out of his sight, and her eyes closed for a moment.
She had been a beautiful woman once; not, he thought, so long ago.
“When did he die?”
“Three years.”
Her eyes closed again, slowly, as though of their own inexorable weight, and he stared at her until they opened again.
“I’ll start this afternoon,” he said.
He could not understand the flat tire on the truck. Outside, he looked at it as though it had betrayed him, which it had, he thought. If it had not blown when it did—and for no visible reason—he would be home by now sorting out his life, or trying to. More important to get your life sorted out than to replace some leaky sink.
He got out the jack and changed the tire. It took him twenty minutes. He would put it on her bill.
He brought her roses, a dozen or so mixed long stems from his yard. He’d always liked the way a random color-mix of roses looked in a tall slender vase—the vase was important—and even though the one she gave him was too fat, his arrangement looked fine on the kitchen table in a patch of sun there. It was the first thing he did when he returned that afternoon and it amazed her. His arrangement of the flowers was exquisite, a Renoir still life, and she could not believe the roughness with which those same hands attacked the sink a few moments later.
“Eight dollars an hour if you watch me,” he said, his old gruff self.
“I’m looking at the flowers,” she said spunkily.
“Nevertheless you’re in the room.”
“I’ll pay it,” she said.
He amazed and frightened her. He must be the man because he was the man Dr. Mortimer had recommended, and Dr. Mortimer had called her, not vice-versa. She didn’t even know who Dr. Mortimer was—someone from the Coroner’s office, had he said?—had never even heard of him until he’d phoned and given her Mr. Fixit’s name. “For that leaky sink,” he’d said, “and any other problem you’ve got. Yes, Mr. Fixit’s your man.”
“Who are you—?” she’d started to say, but he’d cut her off.
“Oh, and remember,” he’d said sharply. “Mr. Fixit works only for cash. No checks, just cash. Every night.”
He was on his back now, under the sink, his legs sticking out onto the worn linoleum of the floor, his big battered work boots lolling there for a moment as though asleep. David had had a pair of boots like that—she supposed all men did—and he’d be doing this job now if he were still alive. Tears welled in her eyes, rendering prismatic the roses in the vase. Dying suddenly like that—in full stride—as it were—and leaving her to struggle on alone. What a blessed way to go!—all at once instead of one crumbling pain-wracked piece at a time.
The sink was older than God, he thought; cast-iron, heavy as a battleship. He would replace it with stainless steel and the corroded metal pipes below with plastic. He’d done a hundred jobs like this, his hands and tools moving almost without conscious direction. It was easy—and dull, deadly dull, and no way to spend your life. Before—with Millie alive—he’d had no choice and thus no nagging doubts. He’d never thought about his work, he’d just done it and then hurried home. But now—He had no sense of vocation. This was not really what he was meant to do with these hands and this life, and it depressed him now as it never had before.
He quit at five that afternoon. It was no longer necessary that he quit at five and rush home to Millie, but the habit of years wouldn’t be broken overnight. Besides, the job was not going right, fighting him at every turn; an unfriendly job, almost an enemy job.
He wiped his hands clean on a rag and said, “I’ll take my money now.”
She was still seated at the kitchen table, reading. She got up awkwardly, painfully. “It’s in the bedroom,” she said. “Come.”
“Bring it to me here.”
“No!” She faced him, dander up, cheeks pink with the rush of blood. She’d thought that it might happen now, at the end of the first day, and she didn’t want it to happen in the kitchen. She felt firm and righteous about it. She had some say in the matter after all, didn’t she?—and she’d been a fighter all her life. “In the bedroom,” she said stoutly, and turned and walked through the open door to the hall. He shrugged and followed.
After talking with Dr. Mortimer, she’d closed her savings account at the bank and brought the money home, several thousand dollars in small bills. It was in a gray metal box on her bedside table, the lid open.
“That’ll be four and a half hours,” he said, “including changing the tire. Times eight. Thirty-six dollars—even.”
The unfairness of it riled her suddenly. “But I didn’t talk to you after that first minute or two.”
“You were in the room—it’s the same thing.”
“It isn’t! And the tire had nothing to do with me!” She stamped her foot and felt pain rush through her body and gather in her neck and head, as it always did. She could have screamed with it, her eyes wide with it, the pain burning in them like fire.
“Lie down!” he ordered quickly, and she almost fell onto the bed. He rolled her onto her face and his hands seemed to circle her neck, pressing gently, and the pain receded at once, a light airy sense filling her mind, as though she’d drifted free from her body and all that it was. She groaned. It was a wonderful relief.
But then his hands lifted and she returned to her body and its pain, and she groaned again and said, “More,” a whisper, a prayer.
He was taking money from the box, counting off three tens, a five, and a one. He looked at her angrily. “You shouldn’t have anything like this much money in the house,” he said. “What about burglars?” He was angry at her because he didn’t love her—and what right had she to need his hands on her as Millie had? You had to love a person to help them in that special way and he couldn’t just turn it on, could he? “There must be thousands here,” he growled.
“Take it,” she said. “It’s for you. Dr. Mortimer—”
“What do you mean Take it’? What do you think I am, some kind of crook?” He stuffed the $36 in his pocket and strode to the door of the room, whirling there to look back at her. He was going to tell her he quit, but she was so frail and thin as to seem almost printed on the surface of the bed, and his anger waned.
“I’ll be here at nine tomorrow,” he said, and then amended it to “eight tomorrow,” rem
embering he needn’t spend so much time at home any more.
In the four hours before noon the next day he got a great deal done and was well pleased with himself. And not at all displeased with her. She had sat in perfect silence all morning at the kitchen table, reading, and now again sniffing at the roses, which, even though just half open, nearly filled the window frame behind them.
From the little distance away she looked pretty sitting there, her misshapen hands hidden in her lap, and he felt a surge of sympathy for her, almost of affection. He asked her if she liked pizza and she said she did and he went out and got one for their lunch while she made coffee. She could make coffee, at least, and open cans with the electric opener, but not much else.
The afternoon went as well as the morning had and he didn’t quit until nearly six o’clock.
“Couple more days at this rate,” he bragged, “and I’ll have ’er done.”
“Oh?” she said, surprised. “All of it?”
“Of course all of it. I don’t leave loose ends, lady.”
“Thursday then,” she said, looking at the roses, and then out the window for a moment—at infinity. “Thursday will be fine. Thursday.” She repeated it quietly to herself, getting the sense of it. Just two more days. After so many thousands of them.
She got up and led him to the bedroom again and asked him how much this time and he hemmed and hawed before answering, less assertive today. “Seven,” he said finally. “Times seven. Forty-nine dollars.”
“But you worked longer than that,” she said. “Nearly nine hours. And then there’s the matter of the pizza.”
“My treat,” he said. “Forty-nine is enough. Fifty. Make it fifty even.”
She took five ten-dollar bills from the gray metal box and handed them to him. She would not argue tonight, one way or the other. But she would ask, “Would you—please—the neck again? It was such a relief. It was almost as though—a kind of preview.” She closed her eyes and swayed a bit in delicious recall and he caught her arms in his hands and then dropped them as though they’d turned hot.
“I know,” she said, her eyes open again, and hurt, almost ashamed. “It must be—repellent—to touch me. Anywhere.”
“It’s not that,” he said angrily, and caught her fleshless arms again in his hands. “I’m used to it. It’s just that—I have no right, only love gives you the right.”
“Love! What has love to do with it? You have the gift—it’s in your hands—I felt it there. Is not pity enough? Is not money? Empty the box, but for God’s sake give me your hands! Dr. Mortimer did not say you’d fight me! You are Mr. Fixit, aren’t you?”
“Who’s Dr. Mortimer?”
“He recommended you.”
He could remember no Dr. Mortimer, but he’d had dozens, even hundreds of customers down through the years. It didn’t matter. “Of course I’m Mr. Fixit,” he said, and drew her gently against his chest, his hands sliding up her spine to the neck, and that detached feeling starting almost at once for her, that sense of flight, of freedom—
“Oh, God—” She sighed against his chest, slumping there, her body almost empty of feeling, her knees melting. He caught her and put her on the bed and her big eyes flinched as the pain surged back again. “More,” she pleaded, almost inaudibly, but he was standing now, his hands at his sides. He took the comforter from the foot of the bed and drew it up around her chin. Then he kissed her lightly on the forehead and told her to sleep, and she tried, searching for that distant point of balance where the pain would be like a fire at which she could merely warm herself.
He was there earlier the next day, and stayed later. He brought enough lunch for them both and ate his while he worked. He felt committed to being done with the job—paint and all—by Thursday night. He’d promised her and he saw in her eyes the need for that promise to be fulfilled. Besides, he felt a growing affection for her, for her courage, for her Millie-like qualities.
During the long painful years of Millie’s decline he had not realized there must be other women out there in similar agony, but alone, with no loving husband to serve and protect them and finally, when the time came, to guide them through that light-filled door. Now he knew; and simply knowing was a source of love.
That night, before he left, he took just a few dollars from the gray metal box. He didn’t really need money any more, with Millie gone. Then he eased her pain for a few moments with his hands, covered her with the comforter and kissed her. He didn’t leave until he knew she’d found sleep again.
He was finished the next day by five o’clock and sat down at the kitchen table with her, tired. It was almost, he thought for a moment, like being home, like being with his wife again. He smiled at her and reached across the table and touched her hands, which she no longer felt the need to hide from him. The roses, alongside, had reached their peak of perfection and were awesome in their beauty. But already several petals had fallen to the table below.
“They too,” she said to him, and felt a chill sweep her flesh. He was through now. Her eyes were enormous. She got up and walked from the room and he followed.
She insisted on paying him full count for the day’s work, eight dollars for each of eight hours. $64. She made him put it in his wallet. She wanted no laxity now, nothing less than full measure, either way.
He took her shoulders in his hands and pulled her against his chest. He was happy with her there, she belonged there. He felt love for her, unforced, natural. His lips brushed her forehead and his hands moved up her spine for the last time to her neck. Her knees buckled then and he picked her up and placed her gently on the bed, his hands barely pressing her throat, the sinewy sides of her neck, softly probing, knowing more in themselves than he knew or wanted to know. He could almost feel her leaving, as Millie had left, almost feel her slip between his fingers and brush by as she rose.
He remained over her for three or four minutes and then straightened, exhausted. Her eyes were half open and he closed them and kissed her once more on the pale brow. Then he covered her with the comforter, tucking it carefully beneath her chin.
Then he went into the kitchen, gathered up his tools, and went home.
She had the same kind of voice and he told her over the phone that he’d come by at eight in the morning.
It was the same kind of house, too, old, the shingles curling on the roof, the peeling paint. He stopped for a moment in front and then pulled into the driveway.
And the same kind of eyes—huge, aglow with the heat of a ceaseless fight. The same loose shapeless dress.
He didn’t enter when she bade him. Instead he said, “Who recommended me?”
“What does it matter?” The same spunky voice.
“Was it Dr. Mortimer?”
“Yes.”
“Is he your doctor?”
“No. I’d never heard of him before. He called me. He said he was with—” She paused, frowning.
“Yes?”
“The Coroner’s office, I believe. I talked to him but once, yesterday. You are Mr. Fixit, aren’t you?” The big eager eyes glanced at the truck with the name on the side.
He nodded; and once again refused her almost imperious demand that he enter. “Later,” he said, his eyes flicking at the truck as though to say, “Quiet—patience,” to the tires. “This afternoon at one. I get seven dollars an hour, in cash.”
“I know what you get. Plus one if I talk to you.”
It pleased him that she knew. He grinned. “Yes. I’ll be back at one.”
At the Coroner’s office a lady clerk said to him, “Dr. Mortimer? Just a moment, please.” She went away and returned in a minute with a man in a full-length white smock. She said, “This is Dr. Jackson.”
Dr. Jackson put out his hand, had it shaken, and said, “Dr. Mortimer is not a member of our staff. Perhaps I can help you.”
“Do you know Dr. Mortimer?”
“Of course. He’s one of the finest pathologists I’ve ever seen work.”
“Here?
He’s worked here?”
“Why, yes, of course. As a specialist. He assisted on a case just last week.”
“A little old lady found dead in her bed?”
“Why, yes. How—?”
“And before that?”
“Well, last month—”
“Another little old lady?”
“Why, yes, I believe so. But—”
“Where can I get hold of Dr. Mortimer?”
“Ah—well, let me see. I believe he’s with the University.”
“Here in town?”
“Well—no, I believe another branch. Or perhaps—”
“What?”
“Well, come to think of it, I believe he mentioned an eastern school—Dartmouth? Harvard? I’m not sure.”
“What does he look like?”
“Ah, well now—let’s see, he’s—”
“Tall? Short?”
“Hmmmm.”
“White? Black? Brown?”
“Not brown, if I remember, but—well, maybe. By George, what color was the man?”
Mr. Fixit smiled. “I guess we’ll never know,” he said, and turned and walked away.
When he got to the little old lady’s house that afternoon, he had a dozen long-stem roses in his hand, and, for the first time in his life, a sense of vocation—a calling.
And a partner.
Donald E. Westlake
The Girl of My Dreams
The unusual—even extraordinary—tale of a mugging, of a beautiful girl in danger, of a shirt salesman in a clothing store who becomes a shining knight. . .Why unusual, even extraordinary? Well, read the story and judge for yourself. We promise you won’t forget it, perhaps never. . .
Yesterday I bought a gun.
I’m very confused; I don’t know what to do.
I have always been a mild and shy young man, quiet and conservative and polite. I have been employed the last five years—since at 19 I left college because of lack of funds—at the shirt counter of Willis & DeKalb, Men’s Clothiers, Stores in Principal Cities, and I would say that I have been generally content with my lot. Although recently I have been finding the new manager, Mr. Miller, somewhat abrasive—not to overstate the matter—the work itself has always been agreeable, and I have continued to look forward to a quiet lifetime in the same employment.