Smoke

by Donald E. Westlake

  “Hardly.”

  Peter turned back to the subject. “We’ll stand here bickering about nothing at all,” he explained, “for fifteen minutes, and then we’ll take your pulse and look in your eyes and do a few more things like that, and then we’ll close you away in the guest room upstairs—”

  “It has its own john,” David assured him.

  “—and then,” Peter said, “we’ll examine you again at . . .” He consulted his watch. “It’s nearly midnight now. Every two hours. We’ll disturb your beauty sleep, I’m afraid, at two, and four, and six, and so on.”

  “Disturbing our own, as well,” David added, as though the subject cared.

  “During the day tomorrow,” Peter went on, “the staff will be down here, in the research area, but only David and I ever go up to the living quarters, so no one else needs to know you’re here. We’ll feed you at appropriate times, and go on observing you at two-hour intervals, and at midnight tomorrow we will be happy to let you go.”

  “Me, too,” said the subject. “Can I call my girl?”

  “Sorry,” said Peter.

  “She’ll worry,” said the subject.

  “I imagine she’s used to that,” Peter said, “given you for a boyfriend.”

  So that was the end of that. Conversation grew more desultory, time crept by, and at last the fifteen minutes were up. David and Peter gave the subject his first postserum examination, found no abnormalities, and wrote everything down on a long yellow legal pad. “Fine,” Peter said. “Now we go upstairs. The elevator’s too small for three, I’m afraid.”

  As they were leaving the lab, the subject pointed back to LHRX2, saying, “What about the antidote? Doesn’t that come along with us?”

  “Don’t worry,” Peter said. “You won’t need it.”

  “Besides,” David said, “that isn’t—” But then he broke off, at a warning glare and headshake from Peter, behind the subject’s back. Oh, of course. The point was to keep the subject soothed, not permit him to get more than necessarily tense. “We know where it is,” David said, “if we need it. Which we won’t.”

  “Okay.”

  With no more complaint, the subject went on ahead of them up the stairs two flights and then past their cold dinners and down the hall and into the rose room. “See you at two,” Peter said, and locked the door, and he and David went back to their main living quarters, where David mourned their dinner a while before nuking it in the microwave, and Peter said, “We can’t take turns, of course. This is still a criminal here, we’ll both have to wake up every two hours.”

  “Assuming we sleep at all,” David said. “Oh, Peter! Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it works?”

  “Not wonderful, exactly,” Peter said. “We did struggle very hard on this, David, you and I, after all.”

  “You know what I mean, though.”

  Peter unbent. He smiled at his partner. “I do know what you mean. And you’re right, wonderful is the word.”

  It was not, however, the word for their dinner, when at last they got back to it. They finished it just the same, their attention elsewhere, on the guest in the rose room and the serum even now coursing through his veins. Affecting his pigment? They discussed what they would do if the experiment proved a success. If the subject, Freddie, became even a little translucent, they would photograph him from every angle, they would document the fact as much as possible, they would even bring in one or two trusted staff members during the day tomorrow to see the subject for themselves. Then, armed with that documentation—but not with Freddie; they’d keep their side of the bargain and release him—they could go to the governor of New York or the president of a tobacco company or almost anybody and get permission and funding for much broader experimentation, with volunteers who could be thoroughly documented and checked and observed by all the impartial medical men you want. No problem.

  This prospect keyed them up so much they didn’t go to bed at all between midnight and 2 A.M., when it was time for the first check on the subject. They unlocked his door to find him in bed sound asleep, but he quickly and amiably awoke, yawning. How could he be so calm under such circumstances?

  David and Peter examined him once more, found no changes at all, locked him in the room again, and this time went to bed, setting the radio alarm for 3:50. It went off at that awful hour, with the kind of ungodly modern music the classical stations like to put on when no one’s listening, and they got up, brushed their teeth, dressed hurriedly, and went down the hall to find the door of the rose room gone.

  Well, no, not gone. It was leaning against the wall inside the room. The subject had removed the pins from the hinges, moved the door, and left. “Oh, Christ!” said Peter.

  But that wasn’t the worst. The alarm system had been dismantled, not carefully: wires dangled from the box next to the elevator door. “Hell and damn,” said Peter.

  They went down to the first floor, where they found that Freddie NoName had taken all the rest of their office equipment with him on his way out. “Bastard,” said Peter.

  Then they went back up one flight and looked around the lab, and it was David who noticed that the LHRX2 was gone. “Oh, Peter, my God,” he said, pointing at the empty space where that black after-dinner mint had lately stood.

  Peter looked. “Oh, no,” he said.

  Half-whispering, David said, “He thinks it’s the antidote.”

  “Oh, wow,” Peter said.

  5

  Peg Briscoe dreamed of open mouths, huge open mouths with great red sluglike tongues and teeth that were huge and filthy and alive, writhing like Medusa’s snakes. And she was being drawn into them, drawn into the horrible foul-smelling mouths.

  This is very scary, she thought, in the dream. This is really very scary. I better quit working for Dr. Lopakne.

  The mouths were getting closer, the writhing tongues reaching for her, the snakey teeth glaring at her with their shiny chrome-filling eyes. This is truly scary, Peg told herself in the dream. I think I better wake up now.

  So she did, to find a hand on her breast. She opened her eyes in the blackness of the bedroom and whispered, “Freddie?”

  “Who else?” Freddie whispered, his breath warm on her ear, his hand roaming over her body.

  “You’re late,” she whispered.

  “I had a hell of a thing happen,” he whispered, moving her legs apart. “I’ll tell you all about it.”

  “I had such an awful dream,” she whispered, as he moved around under the covers, getting closer to her. “I’m going to have to quit at the dentist.”

  “That’s okay,” he said. He was on top of her now, supporting weight on his elbows. “I got a bunch of stuff in the van.”

  “Mmm, nice,” she whispered, feeling that gentle pressure, feeling him find his way home. Her left hand reached out in the darkness, toward the bedside table. “Oh, let me see you,” she whispered, and her fingers found the pull chain. She pulled, and the light came on, and she SCREAMED.

  “Wha?”

  Her eyes snapped shut. She thought, Take me back to the dream! Back into the mouths, anywhere, anywhere but here!

  Thrashing on top of her. “Whasa matter?”

  She opened her eyes; wide, and stared at the ceiling. “There’s nobody here!” she screamed, “Oh, my God, I’m going crazy!”

  “What? Whadayou—Holy shit!”

  The thrashing redoubled. A weight lifted from her, and the covers flung themselves back from her body, down to a heap on her ankles. In the light of the bedside lamp, she stared down at her own naked body, the white sheet all around, the sudden indentation in the sheet beside her and then that indentation just as suddenly gone.

  She was alone in the room. Alone! Is this a dream? she asked herself.

  Drugs! All at once, she was sure of it. Years ago, she’d experimented, the way everybody experimented, she’d tried some pretty wild chemicals that nobody knew what the side effects were, or how long they could hang around inside the body. Was this a
—was this a bad trip, five years late?

  Over to the right was the dresser, with the mirror above it. From over there came the voice that sounded so much like Freddie’s: “Holy Jesus!”

  Peg whimpered; she couldn’t help it. She wanted to reach down to the flung covers and pull them up over herself, but she was afraid to move. She whimpered again and said, in a new tiny voice, “Freddie?”

  “What the fuck has happened?”

  “Freddie, where are you?”

  “I’m right here, for Christ’s sake!”

  “Freddie, what are you doing?”

  “I’m looking at myself,” said the voice, from over by the dresser and the mirror. “I’m looking for myself.”

  “Freddie, don’t do this!”

  “It’s those goddamn doctors! That goddamn stuff they shot me with!”

  “What? Freddie?”

  “The fucking antidote didn’t work!”

  “Freddie?”

  A big indentation came into the sheet beside her, as though someone had sat down on the other side of the bed. She screamed, but not as loudly as before. She kept staring at that indentation.

  “Listen, Peg,” said a voice from somewhere above the indentation. “What happened to me was—hey!” the voice suddenly interrupted itself, as though surprised and pleased by something.

  Fearful, trembling all over, Peg said, “Hey? Hey what?”

  “When I close my eyes,” said Freddie’s voice, “I can still see!”

  “Oh, Freddie, I’m gonna have a heart attack, I’m gonna have an accident right here in the bed, Freddie, don’t do this, whatever you’re doing, don’t do it!”

  “Listen, Peg, listen,” Freddie’s voice said, and something horrible touched her arm.

  This time she SHRIEKED—she let out a good one—and recoiled half off the bed.

  “Jeeziz, Peg! The neighbors are gonna call the cops!”

  “What was that? What was it? Something touched me!”

  “I touched you, Peg.”

  “You? Who are you?”

  “I’m Freddie, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m right here, I—listen, let me explain.”

  “I can’t stand this!”

  “Peg,” the voice said, “Peg, turn off the light.”

  “What? Are you crazy?”

  “Believe me, Peg, it’ll be better. Turn off the light.”

  Afraid to disobey—what if something horrible touched her again?—she reached out and pulled the chain and turned off the light, and in the blessed shield of darkness she sat up, reached forward, grabbed the covers, and pulled them up over herself as she lay back down. All the way over herself, head and everything.

  “Peg?”

  “Wha?”

  She could feel him shifting around, changing position on the bed, sitting there beside her. “You feel a little better, Peg?”

  She did. It was stupid, but she did. Just not seeing him—well, she wouldn’t be able to see him anyway, but in the darkness there was no way to know you couldn’t see him. “A little,” she admitted, but kept the covers over her head just the same.

  “Peg,” said Freddie’s voice in the darkness, outside the covers, “let me tell you what happened. I went to a place to get some stuff tonight, and these two doctors grabbed me and held a gun on me.”

  “Doctors?”

  “Some kinda doctors. It was a lab kinda place, with equipment I could turn over pretty easy, so I went in, and they got me, and they made me this deal.”

  “Freddie, that is you there, isn’t it?”

  “Sure it’s me, Peg,” Freddie said, and patted her through the covers, and the funny thing was, the pat was comforting. As long as she couldn’t see that she couldn’t see him, things were okay. Almost normal.

  She sighed. She relaxed one tiny notch. She said, “Okay, Freddie. What happened?”

  “They made me this deal,” Freddie said. “I’d help them with this experiment, or they’d call the cops. I mean, one option was, they don’t call the cops. They were doing cancer research and they had this medicine and they needed to test it on a person. And there was this other stuff that was the antidote, in case something went wrong. So I went along with them—”

  “Sure.”

  “—and as soon as I could I got out of there and took the stuff I came for and took the antidote and come right home. And you know I don’t like to turn the light on when you’re asleep . . .”

  “I know.”

  “So that’s what it is,” Freddie said, and sighed.

  Peg tentatively moved her head out from under the covers, like a turtle. She looked in the blackness toward the sound of his voice, pretending she’d be able to see him if the light was on. “What’s what it is, Freddie?” she asked.

  “The antidote didn’t work,” Freddie said. “I don’t know what the hell all this has to do with cancer research, but I see what they did to me. Peg?”

  “Yes, Freddie?”

  “I’m invisible, Peg,” Freddie said. “Isn’t that a bitch?”

  He sounded so forlorn, so lost, that she couldn’t help it, her heart went out to him. “Oh, come here, Freddie,” she said, reaching out, finding his arm, pulling him close.

  “I’m sorry, Peg,” Freddie said, sliding in under the covers.

  “It’s not your fault,” she said, arms around him, caressing him.

  “Aw, thanks, Peg,” Freddie said, and kissed her, and pretty soon they were heading back toward where they’d been going in the first place.

  “One thing,” Peg said, as Freddie’s comforting weight settled upon her.

  “What’s that, Peg?”

  “Don’t turn on the light.”

  “Don’t worry,” Freddie said.

  6

  It’s hard to service a body you can’t see. Freddie’s bathroom experiences in the morning were more complex than usual. Shaving turned out to be the easiest part of it—if maybe the least necessary, all things considered—since he was used to shaving in the shower, where he couldn’t look at his face anyway. The worst, particularly in the shower, was that he could see through his eyelids. Now, when a person closes his eyes it’s because he wants them closed. He doesn’t want to see water spraying straight down from the shower fixture onto his eyeballs, and he certainly doesn’t want to watch the soapy outline of knuckles, in extreme close-up, squidging deep into his eyes.

  Still, he eventually finished, his towel swooping and swirling in what seemed to be an empty room, and came out to dress—shoes and socks and pants okay, but the polo shirt had these round openings for arms and neck, and nothing there—and by that time Peg was back. She’d taken one look at him this morning—or, rather, she’d taken one look at where she’d thought he might be, judging by the sounds he was making—and she’d said, “I don’t need this, Freddie. I’ll be right back.” And off she’d gone.

  And now she was back, in the kitchen, and when Freddie walked in she stood up from her breakfast of dry toast and black coffee, looked at the round openings in the polo shirt, and said, “I thought it was gonna be like that. I can’t do anything about the hands, but there’s your head.” And she gestured at the butcher-block counter between the sink and the refrigerator.

  Freddie went over to look. Peg had gone to one of those party-supply places, or tourist-junk places—whatever. And here on the butcher block were four full-head latex masks: Dick Tracy, Bart Simpson, Frankenstein’s monster, and the Ayatollah Khomeini. Freddie said, “Khomeini?”

  “It was marked down. The way I look at it,” Peg said, “you’ve got kind of a mood thing there. You go through the day, you can decide who you feel like.”

  “If I ever feel like Frankenstein,” Freddie said, “you better worry.”

  “I figure you’ll mostly be Bart Simpson,” Peg told him.

  “Have a cow,” Freddie agreed morosely, beginning to feel sorry for himself. He sighed, and said, “Peg, how do I eat through one of those?”


  “I don’t wanna know about it.” Picking up her toast and coffee, she said, “I think we don’t eat together anymore. I’ll be in the living room. When you come in, be one of those fellas, okay?”

  “Okay, Peg.” Freddie sighed again. “Being an invisible guy,” he said, “is kind of a lonely job, isn’t it?”

  Taking pity on him, Peg said, “Maybe it’ll go away pretty soon.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Or we’ll adapt, we’ll get used to it.”

  “You think so?”

  “Eat your breakfast, if you can find your mouth,” Peg told him. “Then come in and we’ll talk.”

  She left the kitchen, and Freddie poured orange juice and coffee, then popped a couple fake waffles into the toaster. Sitting alone at the small kitchen table, feeling more and more sorry for himself, he ate his breakfast, lifted his shirt to find out if he could still see the food he’d just eaten, and looked in at a bowl of succotash and soy sauce, without the bowl. Lowering the shirt and averting his gaze, he decided he wouldn’t mention this part of the experience to Peg. Nor let her discover it for herself, if at all possible.

  The visual replay of breakfast so discouraged him he almost went into the living room without his new head. In the doorway, in the nick of time, he remembered, and made a U- turn.

  His choosing of Dick Tracy was a kind of self-therapy, an attempt to lighten his mood through the therapeutic use of comedy. He was a crook, see, and Dick Tracy was a cop. Get it? Well, it was a try.

  Peg didn’t help much. Looking up from Newsday, “Ah, the Dick head,” she said.

  “Thanks, Peg.”

  “That isn’t what I meant. Sit down, Freddie, let’s talk.”

  “It’s hot inside here,” Freddie complained, sitting in his favorite chair, across from the TV.

  “If you want to talk to me,” Peg told him, “you’ll keep it on.”

  “I’m just saying.” Whenever Freddie sighed, inside the latex mask, it ballooned slightly, as though Dick Tracy had recurring mumps.