He nodded. Turning, he spoke pleadingly. "Listen. It's all we have—the box. Truly it is. The box. And the cat. And they're here. The box, the cat, at last. Put the cat in the box. Will you? Will you let me put the cat in the box?"
"No," I said, shocked.
"Please. Please. Just for a minute. Just for half a minute! Please let me put the cat in the box!"
"Why?"
"I can't stand this terrible uncertainty," he said, and burst into tears.
I stood some while indecisive. Though I felt sorry for the poor son of a bitch, I was about to tell him, gently, No, when a curious thing happened. The cat walked over to the box, sniffed around it, lifted his tail and sprayed a corner to mark his territory, and then lightly, with that marvelous fluid ease, leapt into it. His yellow tail just flicked the edge of the lid as he jumped, and it closed, falling into place with a soft, decisive click.
"The cat is in the box," I said.
"The cat is in the box," Rover repeated in a whisper, falling to his knees. "Oh, wow. Oh, wow. Oh, wow."
There was silence then: deep silence. We both gazed, I afoot, Rover kneeling, at the box. No sound. Nothing happened. Nothing would happen. Nothing would ever happen, until we lifted the lid of the box.
"Like Pandora," I said in a weak whisper. I could not quite recall Pandora's legend. She had let all the plagues and evils out of the box, of course, but there had been something else, too. After all the devils were let loose, something quite different, quite unexpected, had been left. What had it been? Hope? A dead cat? I could not remember.
Impatience welled up in me. I turned on Rover, glaring. He returned the look with expressive brown eyes. You can't tell me dogs haven't got souls.
"Just exactly what are you trying to prove?" I demanded.
"That the cat will be dead, or not dead," he murmured submissively. "Certainty. All I want is certainty. To know for sure that God does play dice with the world."
I looked at him for a while with fascinated incredulity. "Whether he does, or doesn't," I said, "do you think he's going to leave you a note about it in the box?" I went to the box, and with a rather dramatic gesture, flung the lid back. Rover staggered up from his knees, gasping, to look. The cat was, of course, not there.
Rover neither barked, nor fainted, nor cursed, nor wept. He really took it very well.
"Where is the cat?" he asked at last.
"Where is the box?"
"Here."
"Where's here?"
"Here is now."
"We used to think so," I said, "but really we should use larger boxes."
He gazed about him in mute bewilderment, and did not flinch even when the roof of the house was lifted off just like the lid of a box, letting in the unconscionable, inordinate light of the stars. He had just time to breathe, "Oh, wow!"
I have identified the note that keeps sounding. I checked it on the mandolin before the glue melted. It is the note A, the one that drove Robert Schumann mad. It is a beautiful, clear tone, much clearer now that the stars are visible. I shall miss the cat. I wonder if he found what it was we lost?
Groucho
By Ron Goulart
Ron Goulart has long been one of the funniest writers in SF, with an unerring instinct for all that is bizarre, zany, cockeyed, gonzo, and just plain downright weird in contemporary society. His books include the novels The Sword Swallowers, After Things Fell Apart, When the Waker Sleeps, and A Talent for the Invisible, among more than fifty others. His short fiction has been collected in Broke Down Engine and Other Troubles With Machines, What's Become of Screw-loose? and Other Inquiries, The Chameleon Corps and Other Shape Changers, and Nuzenbolts and More Troubles With Machines. His most recent books include the novels Cowboy Heaven, Hail Hibbler, and Skyrocket Steele.
Here he proposes a theory about the inner workings of Hollywood and the television industry that may be dubious—or it may not. Come to think of it, have you seen some of the television shows they've had on lately? These days, they may all be being written by cats. . . .
It wasn't a wolf that killed him, but it wasn't exactly a dog either. The police, never able to reach a satisfactory conclusion as to what ripped Buzz Stover to pieces, finally wrote his death off as due to an attack by some sort of wild animal that had somehow strayed into his Hollywood Hills neighborhood. They had to fudge a little to do that and ignore items such as a sworn statement by Buzz's nearest neighbor, a respected rock composer, that he had seen a large gray dog leaving Buzz's house on the night of his death. The hound left by way of the front door, whistling an old Broadway show tune. The police, even in Southern California, aren't especially anxious to follow up leads like that and so the exact cause of Buzz's death remains a mystery to just about everyone. I'm probably the only person, with the possible exception of Panda Cruz, who knows who actually destroyed Buzz and why. But, as I long ago resolved, it's best never to talk about the murder cases you happen to get tangled in. Especially the supernatural ones.
When I had lunch with Buzz on that gray rainy day this past spring I tried to warn him about his own delving into the supernatural.
"Delving? What kind of candy-apple word is that?" He bounced, a feisty sneer on his plump little face, on the leatherette banquette. "Is that the kind of verbiage you put into the ads you grind out at that advertising sweatshop where—"
"Hush!" suggested a gaunt old gentleman at a nearby table in the dim, exclusive Beverly Hills restaurant.
"Up yours, grandpappy!" Buzz flashed him a finger, returned his attention to me. "I didn't come to this vastly overpriced bistro to—"
"Do you know who you just gave the finger to? That's Jean Alch, the most respected French film director of the 1950s. He won—"
"He's got gravy on his rugby shirt. And the '50s are dead and gone." He picked up his Otranto's menu, put it back down near his water goblet. "I shouldn't even be eating. I'm still in mourning."
"Yes, I was sorry to hear about Warren getting killed in that car accident. You guys had been partners for—"
"Six glorious years." Buzz was a small chunky man of thirty-six, who persisted in wearing silken warm-up suits to lunch. "It's lousy enough losing a writing partner when your shows are doing so-so, but Goon Squad is number two on the tube all across this great land of ours right now. Honesty compels me to admit that Warren Gish, rest his soul, was equally responsible for the brilliant Goon Squad scripts that pushed the show to its present pinnacle."
"I thought Warren did the plots and all the dialogue and you just did the polish."
"It is truly incredible that someone in the ad game, a Hollywood hanger-on for all these many years, can be so dumb," said Buzz, hunching. "My polishing is what made those scripts work, what made Curly Hudnut and Dip Gomez into our nation's leading macho TV stars."
"How are you going to continue the scripting?"
"Scripting? Where do you get your vocabulary, from back issues of Writer's Digest lying around your barber shop?"
"I heard you've been having trouble finding a new associate anywhere near as good as Warren was," I said. "The producers of Goon Squad supposedly weren't satisfied with your first solo script."
Buzz winced. "Naw, they loved it . . . but I would feel better with a new assistant," he said. "In fact, I . . . well, call me sentimental, but I wish there were some way I could get Warren back. See, that night when the poor bastard had his fatal crash, we'd had a little squabble at a party out in Malibu just a little while before. I feel bad."
"You punched him in the snoot."
"Only once." Buzz held up a single finger.
"Ah, he does it yet again," muttered Jean Alch.
"This one isn't for you, Uncle Wiggly," said Buzz. He gave a forlorn shake of his head. "I can't believe Warren's been gone a month. God."
"You really did have a fight that night?"
"All great teams fight—Martin and Lewis, Hecht and MacArthur, Rodgers and Hammerstein," Buzz told me. "You don't know what it means to be overflowing wit
h talent. Putting two highly gifted people like Warren and me together, it's going to cause a few sparks."
"I hear he kicked you in the groin," I said, "that night."
"Naw, only the knee." Buzz, wincing again, leaned back to gaze up at the crystal chandelier directly above us. "Did you have any trouble getting shown to this table today?"
"Nope."
He nodded, pensive. "He made me spell my name twice, Otranto himself who's known me since he was salad chef at Udolpho's seven years ago," he said. "I'm getting a little invisible, I fear. It usually starts at posh places like this, they stop seeing you. It spreads to parking lot attendants, then receptionists, producers, the works. In six months you can cease to exist altogether."
"Maybe, considering what's been happening, you ought to take a vacation or—"
"Who told you to suggest that to me?"
"Nobody, Buzz. You seem sort of—"
"Listen, I know you're one of the few guys I can trust in this goofy town." He was leaning toward me, elbows on the table. "That script I did on my own was a complete turkey. Couple more like that and . . . brrr. I fade out completely."
"C'mon, a new collaborator and—"
"Nope, I need Warren's help to save me."
"How can you expect to—"
"Do you ever watch Strange, Isn't It?" His voice had dropped to a whisper.
"Once. I don't go in for that Real People sort of—"
"You know Panda Cruz, don't you, the love of my life?"
"The slim redhead?"
"No, you're thinking of . . . oh, right. Last time we met, at the screening of Six Demented Coeds, Panda was a redhead," he answered, remembering. "She's a blonde now, working as a secretary for Gossamer-Stein, the halfwits who produce Strange, Isn't It?" He rubbed his plump little hands together. "There was this old bimbo on the show last week, a Mrs. Brill from Oxnard. She can contact the dead."
"Nobody can do that, Buzz."
"Mrs. Brill can," he assured me. "Panda and I drove out to her dump day before yesterday. She's going to get me through to Warren."
"You actually believe you can—"
"It works. Really. She had me talking to my dead mother. I swear."
"Doing anyone's mother is easy. That can be faked by any fortune-teller."
"You can't fake my mom. I tell you this old bimbo is legit. She's got occult powers."
"Okay, so she puts you in touch with the spirit of Warren Gish. Then what? You plan to sit around the seance while he dictates a Goon Squad story through this woman?"
After glancing carefully around Otranto's, Buzz replied, "She may, if all the signs are right . . . and certain essential rituals are performed . . . she may get Warren to come back."
"Come back? How?"
"You know, reincarnate."
"As who?"
"There's the tricky part. She doesn't know exactly where he'll pop up. But she guarantees he will come back in some form and save my apples." He straightened up, smiling tentatively. "Going to be terrific, together again, turning out top-notch scripts, winning Emmy awards."
"You mentioned certain rituals. What exactly do you have to do?"
Buzz studied his stubby fingernails. "Black magic stuff," he said finally. "We have to take off our clothes and . . . um . . . sacrifice a goat. Things like that."
"Things like that can get you in considerable trouble."
"Maybe, but it's worth it," Buzz said. "They're not going to bench me just yet. Nope."
My advertising agency responsibilities took me out of town the day after that lunch with Buzz. One of our clients, the Arends Labs, was test-marketing a new liquid headache remedy in Phoenix, Arizona. The stuff was called Brainwash and, although it apparently relieved the stubbornest headache in under ninety seconds, it was causing approximately one customer in three to experience violent and fantastic hallucinations. I flew in to help the Arends publicity man come up with a plausible story to soothe everybody. Usually these sorts of troubleshooting jobs take no more than two or three days, but in this instance Junior Arends also came out from the main office in Orlando, Florida. I was in Phoenix nearly two days before I realized Junior had appropriated two cases of the suspect headache cure and was consuming several bottles of Brainwash a night. The resulting hallucinations prompted him, eventually, to join a marimba band that was playing backup at a male strippers club in a sleazy sector of town. By the time I located him, got him detoxified and coauthored some copy that pacified the mayor, the governor and various health officers, a week and half of my life had passed into oblivion.
Buzz never spoke much about the session with Mrs. Brill, the psychic, whereat he and Panda performed certain occult rites and got a message across to his recently deceased partner. "It was degrading, but damn effective," was all Buzz would say when I asked him about it over the phone on my return. He was more talkative about the reincarnation of Warren Gish.
It had been a rainy evening, about a week after the seance, and Buzz was sitting alone in the spacious living room of his hillside house. The night was chill and misty as well. Panda, who now and then lived with him, was over in Burbank at the taping of the Strange, Isn't It? show.
"Rape, incest, torture, terminal cancer," Buzz was mumbling, striving to come up with a topic he hadn't used on Goon Squad. "Child molesting, sodomy, bubonic plague . . . Geeze, I ought to be able to switch something. Is there a twist on abortion nobody's come up with? Could we get by with bestiality again?"
A faint scratching sounded.
Buzz leaped up out of his leather lounge chair, dropping his pencils and his legal tablet. He'd been rather tense since the occult encounter.
The scratching was repeated, louder. The kitchen door rattled as though something were being tossed against it.
"Do I owe anybody money? Is there anyone who wants to break my arms and legs?"
Deciding it was okay to pad through his big shadowy house, he went to investigate, turning on lights as he did.
"What?" he asked from the middle of the kitchen.
More scratching, more rattling of the outer screen door. The yellow back door kept him from seeing what was out there.
"Who is it?"
"Meow, meow."
After flipping the back area floodlights on, Buzz carefully opened the door.
There was a cat out there, a fat furry one the color of butterscotch pudding.
"Hello, pussy."
"Hello yourself, asshole," said the cat.
Buzz jumped backward, hitting his hip a good one on his butcher block table. "A joke, right? Some crazed ventriloquist is lurking out there." He walked again toward the open doorway. "We don't audition for Strange, Isn't It? here. Take your cat over to Burbank for—"
"Let me in, old boy. I'm getting soaked," called the cat. "Having fur is a crock, but since—"
"Warren? Warren Gish?"
"They call me Groucho now. Open up already, huh?"
Hand shaking some, Buzz flung open the screen door, nearly swatting the talking cat off the damp redwood porch. "Groucho? What kind of halfwit name is that for a—"
"I didn't pick it, obviously, old boy," said Groucho, coming into the kitchen. "The cat I got stuck in was already named Groucho. See, I even have a tag under my flea collar with the name on it."
"This is a . . . a miracle."
Groucho shook himself, began rubbing at an ear with his paw. "Get me a towel or something, schmuck."
Buzz grabbed the whole roll out of the rack over the yellow tile sink. "I was anticipating you'd . . . I figured you were going to come back . . . you know, as a person."
"Lot you know about reincarnation," the cat said. "Rush in and summon me back from the other side, use that old skwack in Oxnard of all places to get a lock on my spirit. Typical Buzz Stover move."
"Isn't this better than being dead?"
"The people who own Groucho fed me nothing but Yowl!"
"What is it?"
"Yowl! is the new meaty-like food for contented cats," exp
lained Groucho. "Use some of those towels, I'm soggy."
"Oh, sure. Sorry." He crouched down beside his reincarnated partner. "What's it like on the other side?"
"Can't tell you."
"Rules?"
"Don't remember. When I came jolting back here, the details got lost. Rub vigorously, can you?"
Buzz struggled to massage the dampness out of the wet cat. "How come you can talk? Most cats don't have the power to—"
"It's all part of the mumbo jumbo you worked on me," explained Groucho. "All I know is that right after you dragged my spirit back for that conference in Oxnard I blacked out. I awakened in Pasadena eating Yowl! out of a recycled TV dinner tray. Everybody was calling me Groucho."
"You came all the way here from Pasadena on foot?"
"It's a regular Lassie, Come Home, huh?"
Crumbling up the tattered, wet paper towels, Buzz stood up and away from the butterscotch cat. "I did miss you, Warren."
"Can't you smack Panda instead? I didn't realize, by the way, she was so skinny. When you two stripped down for that mystical ritual, I saw more ribs than tits on her."
"Listen, Warren, I hope you didn't come back just to bicker and squabble."
"You have to address me as Groucho."
"A dumb name."
"Even so, that's the way reincarnation seems to work."
"Would you like something to drink, Groucho?"
"Milk." The cat strolled in the direction of the blue refrigerator. "Can't handle booze anymore, found that out in Pasadena. Something to do with the feline metabolism I'm stuck with."
"I only have skim, because Panda mostly drinks the milk and she's—"
"On a diet. So she can grow even skinnier."
"Everybody doesn't have to be zoftig, War—Groucho. Even one of your wives, remember, was sort of slender."
The cat shuddered. "We don't talk about Estrellita."
"You know, if I can pay you a compliment, that's a cute voice you have now. Has a trace of your old one, but with a sort of—"
"Looney Tunes quality added?"
"I was being sincere," Buzz told him. "You're a very hard guy to flatter."
MAGICATS! Page 9