Kornbluth, Mary (Ed)

by [Anth] Science Fiction Showcase [v1. 0] [epub]

  He leaned back heavily in his chair. Well, maybe it was a mistake to repress it. That the concept kept returning was proof enough it had a definite meaning. Certainly, the flimsiest of delusions fought against could disorient the reason. All men knew that.

  Well, then, face it, he decided. Time was constant; that was the core. What varied was a person’s outlook on it. To some it dragged by on tar-held feet, to others fled on blurring wings. It just happened he was one of those to whom time seemed overly transient. So transient that it fostered rather than dispelled the memory of that childish wish he’d made that night more than five years before.

  That was it, of course. Months seemed a wink and years a breath because he viewed them so. And—

  The door swung open and Carole came across the rug, holding a glass of warmed milk.

  “You should be in bed,” he scolded.

  “So should you,” she answered. “Yet I see you sitting here. Do you know what time it is?”

  “I know,” he said.

  She settled on his lap as he sipped the milk. “Galleys done?” she asked. He nodded and slid an arm around her waist. She kissed his temple. Out in the winter night a dog barked once.

  She sighed. “It seems like only yesterday, doesn’t it?” she said.

  He drew in faint breath. “I don’t think so,” he said.

  “Oh, you.” She punched him gently on the arm.

  * * * *

  “This is Artie,” said his agent. “Guess what?”

  Owen gasped. “No!”

  He found her in the laundry room, stuffing bedclothes into the washer. “Honey!” he yelled. Sheets went flying. “It’s happened!” he cried.

  “What?”

  “The movies, the movies! They’re buying Nobles and Heralds!”

  “No!”

  “Yes! And - get this now - sit down and get it - go ahead and sit or else you’ll fall! - they’re payingtwelve thousand, five hundred dollars for it!”

  “Oh!”

  “And that’s not all! They’re giving me a ten-week guarantee to do the screenplay at - get this -seven hundred and fifty dollars a week!”

  She squeaked. “We’re rich.”

  “Not quite,” he said, floor pacing, “but it’s only the beginning, folks, on-ly the beginning!”

  October winds swept in like tides over the dark field. Spotlight ribbons wiped across the sky.

  “I wish the kids were here,” he said, his arm around her.

  “They’d just be cold and cranky, darling,” Carole said.

  “Carole, don’t you think—”

  “Owen, you know I’d come with them if I could; but we’d have to take Johnny out of school and, besides, it would cost so much. It’s only ten weeks, darling. Before you know it—”

  “Flight Twenty-seven for Chicago and Los Angeles,” intoned the speaker, “Now boarding at Gate Three.”

  “So soon.” Suddenly, her eyes were lost, she pressed her wind-chilled cheek to his. “Oh, darling, I’ll miss you so.”

  The thick wheels squeaked below, the cabin walls shook. Outside, the engines roared faster and faster. The field rushed by. Owen looked back. Colored lights were distant now. Somewhere among them, Carole stood, watching his plane nose up into the blackness. He settled back and closed his eyes a moment. A dream, he thought. Flying West to write a movie from his own novel. Good God, a veritable dream.

  * * * *

  He sat there on a corner of the leather couch. His office was capacious. A peninsula of polished desk extended from the wall, an upholstered chair parked neatly against it. Tweed drapes concealed the humming air conditioner, tasteful reproductions graced the walls, and beneath his shoes the carpet gave like sponge. Owen sighed.

  A knocking broke his reverie. “Yes?” he asked. The snugly sweatered blonde stepped in. “I’m Cora, I’m your secretary,” she said. It was Monday morning.

  “Eighty-five minutes, give or take,” said Morton Zuckersmith, Producer. He signed another memo. “That’s a good length.” He signed another letter. “You’ll pick these things up as you go along.” He signed another contract. “It’s a world of its own.” He stabbed the pen into its onyx sheath and his secretary exited, bearing off the sheaf of papers. Zuckersmith leaned back in his leather chair, hands behind his head, his polo-shirted chest broadening with air. “A world of its own, kiddy,” he said. “Ah. Here’s our girl.”

  Owen stood, his stomach muscles twitching as Linda Carson slipped across the room, one ivory hand extended, “Morton, dear,” she said.

  “Morning, darling.” Zuckersmith engulfed her hand in his, then looked toward Owen. “Dear, I’d like you to meet your writer for The Lady and The Herald.”

  “I’ve been so anxious to meet you,” said Linda Carson, nee Virginia Ostermeyer. “I loved your book. How can I tell you?”

  He started up as Cora entered. “Don’t get up,” she said, “I’m just bringing you your pages. We’re up to forty-five.”

  Owen watched her as she stretched across the desk. Her sweaters grew more skinlike every day. The tense expansion of her breathing posed threats to every fiber.

  “How does it read?” he asked.

  She took it for an invitation to perch across the couch arm at his feet. “I think you’re doing wonderfully,” she said. She crossed her legs and frothy slip lace sighed across her knees. “You’re very talented.” She drew in chest-enhancing air. “There’s just a few things here and there,” she said, “I’d tell you what they were right now but - well, it’s lunchtime and—”

  They went to lunch; that day and others after. Cora donned a mantle of stewardship, guiding him as though he were re-sourceless. Bustling in with smiles and coffee every morning, telling him what foods were best prepared at dinner, and, fingering his arm, leading him to the commissary every afternoon for orange juice; hinting at a P.M. continuance of their relationship; assuming a position in his life he had no desire for. Actually sniffling one afternoon after he’d gone to lunch without her; and, as he patted her shoulder in rough commiseration, pressing against him suddenly, her firm lips taking their efficient due, the taut convexities of her indenting him. He drew back, startled. “Cora.”

  She patted his cheek. “Don’t think about it, darling. You have important work to do.” Then she was gone and Owen was sitting at his desk, alarm diffusing to his fingertips. A week, another week.

  “Hi!” said Linda. “How are you?”

  “Fine,” he answered as Cora entered, clad in hugging gabardine, in clinging silk. “Lunch? I’d love to. Shall I meet you at the—? Oh. All right.” He hung up. Cora stared at him.

  As he slipped onto the red leather seat he saw, across the street, Cora at the gate, watching him grimly.

  “Hello, Owen,” Linda said. The Lincoln purred into the line of traffic. This is nonsense, Owen thought. He’d have to try a second time with Cora. The first discouragement she’d taken for nobility; the gesture of a gallant husband toward his wife and children. At least she seemed to take it so. Good God, what complication.

  It was lunch together on the Strip; then, later, dinner, Owen trusting that enough devoted hours to Linda would convince Cora of his lack of interest. The next night it was dinner and the Philharmonic; two nights later, dancing and a drive along the shore; the next, a preview in Encino.

  At what specific juncture the plan went wrong Owen never knew. It gained irrevocable form the night when, parked beside the ocean, radio music playing softly, Linda slipped against him naturally, her world-known body pressing close, her lips a succulence at his.“Darling.”

  He lay starkly awake, thinking of the past weeks; of Cora and of Linda; of Carole whose reality had faded to the tenuous form of daily letters and a weekly voice emitting from the telephone, a smiling picture on his desk.

  He’d almost finished with the screenplay. Soon he’d fly back home. So much time had passed. Where were the joints, the sealing places? Where was the evidence except in circumstantial shards of memory? It w
as like one of those effects they’d taught him at the studio; a montage - a series of quickly paced scenes. That’s what life seemed like; a series of quickly paced scenes that flitted across the screen of one’s attention, then were gone.

  Across the hotel room, his traveling clock buzzed once. He would not look at it.

  * * * *

  He ran against the wind, the snow, but Carole wasn’t there. He stood, eyes searching, in the waiting room, an island of men and luggage. Was she ill? There’d been no acknowledgement of his telegram but—

  “Carole?” The booth was hot and stale.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “My God, darling, did youforget?”

  “No,” she said.

  The taxi ride to Northport was a jading travelogue of snow-cottoned trees and lawns, impeding traffic lights and tire chains rattling over slush-gravied streets. She‘d been so deadly calm on the phone. No, I’m not sick. Linda has a little cold. John is fine. I couldn’t get a sitter. A chill of premonitions troubled at him.

  Home at last. He’d dreamed of it like this, standing silently among the skeletal trees, a mantle of snow across its roof, a rope of wood smoke spiraling from its chimney. He paid the driver with a shaking hand and turned expectantly. The door stayed shut. He waited but the door stayed shut.

  He read the letter that she’d finally given him. Dear Mrs. Crowley, it began, I thought you ought to know... His eyes sought out the childish signature below. Cora Bailey.

  “Why that dirty, little—” He couldn’t say it; something held him back.

  “Dear God.” She stood before the window, trembling. “To this very moment I’ve been praying it was a he. But now..,”

  She shriveled at his touch. “Don’t.”

  “You wouldn’t go with me,” he charged. ‘You wouldn’t go.”

  “Is that your excuse?” she asked.

  “Wha’m I gonna do?” he asked, fumbling at his fourteenth Scotch and water. “Wha’? I don’ wanna lose ‘er, Artie. I don’ wanna lose ‘er an’ the chillren. Wha’m I gonna do?”

  “I don’t know,” said Artie.

  “That dirty li’l—” Owen muttered. “Hadn’t been for her ...”

  “Don’t blame the silly little slut for this,” said Artie. “She’s just the icing. You’re the one who baked the cake.”

  “Wha’m I gonna do?”

  “Well, for one thing, start working at life a little more. It isn’t just a play that’s taking place in front of you. You’re on the stage, you have a part. Either you play it or you’re a pawn. No one’s going to feed you dialogue or action, Owen. You’re on your own. Remember that.”

  “I wonder,” Owen said. Then and later in the silence of his hotel room.

  A week, two weeks. Listless walks through a Manhattan that was only noise and loneliness. Movies stared at, dinners at the Automat, sleepless nights, the alcoholed search for peace. Finally, the desperate phone call. “Carole, take me back, please take me back.”

  “Oh, darling. Come home to me.”

  Another cab ride, this time joyous. The porch light burning, the door flung open, Carole running to him. Arms around each other, walking back into their home together.

  * * * *

  The Grand Tour! A dizzying whirl of places and events. Misted England in the spring, the broad, the narrow streets of Paris, Spree-bisected Berlin and Rhone-bisected Geneva. Milan of Lombardy, the hundred, crumbling-castled islands of Venice, the culture trove of Florence, Marseilles braced against the sea, the Alps-protected Riviera, Dijon, the ancient. A second honeymoon; a rush of desperate renewal, half seen, half felt like flashes of uncertain heat in a great, surrounding darkness.

  They lay together on the riverbank. Sunlight scattered glittering coins across the water, fish stirred idly in the thermal drift. The contents of their picnic basket lay in happy decimation. Carole rested on his shoulder, her breath a warming tickle on his chest.

  “Where has the time all gone to?” Owen asked, not of her or anyone but to the sky.

  “Darling, you sound upset,” she said, raising on an elbow to look at him.

  “I am,” he answered. “Don’t you remember the night we saw that picture A Moment or Forever? Don’t you remember what I said?”

  “No,”

  He told her; of that and of his wish and of the formless dread that sometimes came upon him. “It was just the first part I wanted fast though,” he said, “not the whole thing.”

  “Darling, darling,” Carole said, trying not to smile, “I guess this must be the curse of having an imagination. Owen, it’s been over seven years. Seven years.”

  He held his watch up. “Or fifty-seven minutes,” he said.

  * * * *

  Home again. Summer, fall, and winter. Wind from the South selling to the movies for $100,000; Owen turning down the screenplay offer. The aging mansion overlooking the Sound, the hiring of Mrs. Halsey as their housekeeper. John packed off to military academy, Linda to private school. As a result of the European trip, one blustery afternoon in March, the birth of George.

  Another year. Another. Five years, ten. Books assured and flowing from his pen. Lap of Legends Old, Crumbling Satires, Jiggery Pokery, and The Dragon Fly, A decade gone, then more. The National Book Award for No Dying and No Tomb. The Pulitzer prize for Bacchus Night.

  He stood before the window of his paneled office, trying to forget at least a single item of another paneled office he’d been in - that of his publisher the day he’d signed his first contract there. But he could forget nothing; not a single detail would elude him. As if, instead of twenty-three years before, it had been yesterday. How could he recall it all so vividly unless, actually—

  “Dad?” He turned and felt a frozen trap jaw clamp across his heart. John strode across the room. “I’m going now,” he said.

  “What? Going?” Owen stared at him; at this tall stranger; at this young man in military uniform who called him Dad.

  “Old Dad,” laughed John. He clapped his father’s arm. “Are you dreaming up another book?”

  Only then, as if cause followed effect, Owen knew. Europe raged with war again and John was in the army, ordered overseas. He stood there, staring at his son, speaking with a voice not his; watching the seconds rush away. Where had this war come from? What vast and awful machinations had brought it into being? And where was his little boy? Surely he was not this stranger shaking hands with him and saying his good-bys. The trap jaw tightened. Owen whimpered.

  But the room was empty. He blinked. Was it all a dream, all flashes in an ailing mind? On leaden feet, he stumbled to the window and watched the taxi swallow up his son and drive away with him. “Good-by,” he whispered, “God protect you.”

  No one feeds you dialogue, he thought; but was that he who spoke?

  * * * *

  The bell had rung and Carole answered it. Now, the handle of his office door clicked once and she was standing there, face bloodless, staring at him, in her hand the telegram. Owen felt his breath stop.

  “No,” he murmured; then, gasping, started up as, soundlessly, Carole swayed and crumpled to the floor.

  “At least a week in bed,” the doctor told him, “quiet; lots of rest. The shock is most severe.”

  He shambled on the dunes, numbed, expressionless. Razored winds cut through him, whipped his clothes, and lashed his gray-streaked hair to threads. With lightless eyes, he marked the course of foam-flecked waves across the Sound, Only yesterday that John went off to war, he thought; only yesterday he came home proudly rigid in his academy uniform; only yesterday he was in shorts and grammar school; only yesterday he thundered through the house leaving his wake of breathless laughter; only yesterday that he was born when the winds whipped powdery snow across—

  “Dear God!” Dead. Dead! Not twenty-one and dead; all his life a moment passed, a memory already slipping from the mind.

  “I take it back!” Terrified, he screamed it to the rushing sky. “I take it back, I never meant it!” He lay
there scraping at the sand, weeping for his boy, yet wondering if he ever had a boy at all.

  “Attendez, m’sieurs, m’dames! Nice!”

  “Oh my; already?” Carole said. “That was quick now, wasn’t it?”

  Owen blinked. He looked at her, at this portly, gray-haired woman across the aisle from him. She smiled. Sheknew him?

  “What?” he asked.

  “Oh, why do I talk to you?” she grumbled. “You’re always in your thoughts, your thoughts.” Hissing, she stood and drew a wicker basket from the rack. Was this some game?