Lovers and Other Monsters

by Marvin Kaye (ed)

  “Why come here and parade it in front of me?” I shouted. “Why don’t you take your human bulldozer and cross a couple of horizons with him? Why come here and rub my nose in it?”

  She stood up, pale, and lovelier than I had thought a human being could be—so beautiful that I had to close my eyes. “I came because I had to have something to compare him with,” she said steadily. “You are everything I have ever dreamed about, Leo, and my dreams are... very detailed....” At last she faltered, and her eyes were bright. “Arthur is—is—” She shook her head. Her voice left her; she had to whisper. “I know everything about you, Leo. I know how you think, and what you will say, and what you like, and it’s wonderful, wonderful... but Leo, Arthur is something outside of me. Don’t you see? Can’t you see? I don’t always like what Arthur does. But I cant tell what hes going to do! You—you share everything, Leo, Leo darling, but you don’t—take anything!”

  “Oh,” I said hoarsely. My scalp was tight. I got up and started across the room toward her. My jaws hurt.

  “Stop, Leo,” she gasped. “Stop it, now. You can do it, but you’ll be acting. You’ve never acted before. It would be wrong. Don’t spoil what’s left. No, Leo—no... no...”

  She was right. She was so right. She was always right about me; she knew me so well. This kind of melodrama was away out of character for me. I reached her. I took her arm and she closed her eyes. It hurt when my fingers closed on her arm. She trembled but she did not try to pull away. I got her wrist and lifted it. I turned her hand over and put a kiss on the palm. Then I closed her fingers on it. “Keep that,” I said. “You might like to have it sometime.” Then I let her go.

  “Oh Leo, darling,” she said. “Darling,” she said, with a curl to her lip....

  She turned to go. And then—

  “Arhgh!” She uttered a piercing scream and turned back to me, all but bowling me over in her haste to get away from Abernathy. I stood there holding her tight while she pressed, crouched, squeezed against me, and I burst into laughter. Maybe it was reaction—I don’t know. But I roared.

  Abernathy is my mouse.

  Our acquaintance began shortly after I took the apartment. I knew the little son-of-a-gun was there because I found evidences of his depredations under the sink where I stored my potatoes and vegetables. So I went out and got a trap. In those days the kind of trap I wanted was hard to find; it took me four days and a young fortune in carfare to run one of them down. You see, I can’t abide the kind of trap that hurls a wire bar down on whatever part of the mouse happens to be available, so that the poor shrieking thing dies in agony. I wanted—and by heaven, I got—one of those wire-basket effects made so that a touch on the bait trips a spring which slams a door on the occupant.

  I caught Abernathy in the contraption the very first night. He was a small gray mouse with very round cars. They were like the finest tissue, and covered with the softest fuzz in the world. They were translucent, and if you looked very closely you could see the most meticulous arrangement of hairline blood-vessels in them. I shall always maintain that Abernathy owed his success in life to the beauty of his ears. No one with pretensions to a soul could destroy such divine tracery.

  Well, I let him alone until he got over being frightened and frantic, until he got hungry and ate all the bait, and a few hours over. When I thought he was good and ready to listen to reason, I put the trap on my desk and gave him a really good talking-to.

  I explained very carefully (in simple language, of course) that for him to gnaw and befoul in his haphazard fashion was downright antisocial. I explained to him that when I was a child I was trained to finish whatever I started to eat, and that I did it to this day, and I was a human being and much bigger and stronger and smarter than he was. And whatever was good enough for me was at least good enough for him to take a crack at. I really laid down the law to that mouse. I let him mull over it for a while and then I pushed cheese through the bars until his tummy was round like a Ping-Pong ball. Then I let him go.

  There was no sign of Abernathy for a couple of days after that. Then I caught him again; but since he had stolen nothing I let him off with a word of warning—very friendly this time; I had been quite stern at first, of course—and some more cheese. Inside of a week I was catching him every other night, and the only trouble I ever had with him was one time when I baited the trap and left it closed. He couldn’t get in to the cheese and he just raised Cain until I woke up and let him in. After that I knew good relations had been established and I did without the trap and just left cheese out for him. At first he wouldn’t take the cheese unless it was in the trap, but he got so he trusted me and would take it lying out on the floor. I had long since warned him about the poisoned food that the neighbors might leave out for him, and I think he was properly scared. Anyhow, we got along famously.

  So here was Gloria, absolutely petrified, and in the middle of the floor in the front room was Abernathy, twinkling his nose and rubbing his hands together. In the middle of my bellow of laughter, I had a severe qualm of conscience. Abernathy had had no cheese since the day before yesterday! Sic semper amoris. I had been fretting so much over Gloria that I had overlooked my responsibilities.

  “Darling, I’ll take care of him,” I said reassuringly to Gloria. I led her to an easy chair and went after Abernathy. I have a noise I make by pressing my tongue against my front teeth—a sort of a squishy-squeaky noise, which I always made when I gave cheese to Abernathy. He ran right over toward me, saw Gloria, hesitated, gave a “the hell with it” flirt with his tail, turned to me and ran up my pants-leg.

  The outside, fortunately.

  Then he hugged himself tight into my palm while I rummaged in the icebox with my other hand for his cheese. He didn’t snatch at it, either, until he let me look at his ears again. You never saw such beautiful cars in your life. I gave him the cheese, and broke off another piece for his dessert, and set him in the corner by the sink. Then I went back to Gloria, who had been watching me, big-eyed and trembling.

  “Leo—how can you touch it?”

  “Makes nice touching. Didn’t you ever touch a mouse?”

  She shuddered, looking at me as if I were Horatio just back from the bridge. “I can’t stand them.”

  “Mice? Don’t tell me that you, of all people, really and truly have the traditional Victorian mouse phobia!”

  “Don’t laugh at me,” she said weakly. “It isn’t only mice. It’s any little animal—frogs and lizards and even kittens and puppies. I like big dogs and cats and horses. But somehow—” She trembled again. “If I hear anything like little claws running across the floor, or see small things scuttling around the walls, it drives me crazy.”

  I goggled. “If you hear—hey; it’s a good thing you didn’t stay another hour last night, then.”

  “Last night?” Then, “Last night....” she said, in a totally different voice, with her eyes looking inward and happy. She chuckled. “I was telling—Arthur about that little phobia of mine last night.”

  If I had thought my masterful handling of the mouse was going to do any good, apparently I was mistaken. “You better shove off,” I said bitterly. “Arthur might be waiting.”

  “Yes,” she said, without any particular annoyance, “he might. Goodbye, Leo.”

  “Goodbye.”

  Nobody said anything for a time.

  “Well,” she said, “Goodbye.”

  “Yes,” I said, “I’ll call you.”

  “Do that,” she said, and went out.

  ❖

  I sat still on the couch for a long time, trying to get used to it. Wishful thinking was no good; I knew that. Something had happened between us. Mostly, its name was Arthur. The thing I couldn’t understand was how he ever got a show, the way things were between Gloria and me. In all my life, in all my reading, I had never heard of such a complete fusion of individuals. We both felt it when we met; it had had no chance to get old. Arthur was up against some phenomenal competition; for one t
hing that was certain was that Gloria reciprocated my feelings perfectly, and one of my feelings was faith. I could understand—if I tried hard—how another man might overcome this hold, or that hold, which I had on her. There are smarter men than I, better looking ones, stronger ones. Any of several of those items could go by the board, and leave us untouched.

  But not the faith! Not that! It was too big; nothing else we had was important enough to compensate for a loss of faith.

  I got up to turn on the light, and slipped. The floor was wet. Not only was it wet; it was soft. I floundered to the seven-way lamp and cranked both switches all the way around.

  The room was covered with tapioca. Ankle-deep on the floor, inches deep on the chairs and the couch.

  “She’s thinking about it now,” said the head. Only it wasn’t a head this time. It was a flaccid mass of folded tissue. In it I could see pulsing blood vessels. My stomach squirmed.

  “Sorry. I’m out of focus.” The disgusting thing—a sectioned brain, apparently—moved closer to me and became a face.

  I lifted a foot out of the gummy mass, shook it, and put it back in again. “I’m glad she’s gone,” I said hoarsely.

  “Are you afraid of the stuff?”

  “No!” I said. “Of course not!”

  “It will go away,” said the head. “Listen; I’m sorry to tell you; it isn’t syzygy. You’re done, son.”

  “What isn’t syzygy?” I demanded. “And what is syzygy?”

  “Arthur. The whole business with Arthur.”

  “Go away,” I gritted. “Talk sense, or go away. Preferably—go away.”

  The head shook from side to side, and its expression was gentle. “Give up,” it said. “Call it quits. Remember what was good, and fade out.”

  “You’re no good to me,” I muttered, and waded over to the book case. I got out a dictionary, glowering at the head, which now was registering a mixture of pity and amusement.

  Abruptly, the tapioca disappeared.

  I leafed through the book. Sizable, sizar, size, sizzle—“Try S-Y,” prompted the head.

  I glared at it and went over to the S-Y’s. Systemize, systole—

  “Here it is,” I said, triumphantly. “The last word in the S section.” I read from the book. “‘Syzygy—either of the points at which the moon is most nearly in line with the earth and the sun, as when it is new or full’. What are you trying to tell me—that I’m caught in the middle of some astrological mumbo-jumbo?”

  “Certainly not,” it snapped. “I will tell you, however, that if that’s all your dictionary says, it’s not a very good one.” It vanished.

  “But—” I said vaguely. I went back to the dictionary. That’s all it had to say about syzygy. Shaking, I replaced it.

  ❖

  Something cat-sized and furry hurtled through the air, clawed at my shoulder. I started, backed into my record cabinet and landed with a crash on the middle of my back in the doorway. The thing leaped from me to the couch and sat up, curling a long wide tail up against its back and regarding me with its jewelled eyes. A squirrel.

  “Well, hello!” I said, getting to my knees and then to my feet. “Where on earth did you come from?”

  The squirrel, with the instantaneous motion of its kind, dived to the edge of the couch and froze with its four legs wide apart, head up, tail describing exactly its recent trajectory, and ready to take off instantly in any direction including up. I looked at it with some puzzlement. “I’ll go see if I have any walnuts,” I told it. I moved toward the archway, and as I did so the squirrel leaped at me. I threw up a hand to protect my face. The squirrel struck my shoulder again and leaped from it—

  And as far as I know it leaped into the fourth dimension or somewhere. For I searched under and into every bed, chair, closet, cupboard and shelf in the house, and could find no sign of anything that even looked like a squirrel. It was gone as completely as the masses of tapioca....

  Tapioca! What had the head said about the tapioca? “She’s thinking about it now.” She—Gloria, of course. This whole insane business was tied up with Gloria in some way.

  Gloria not only disliked tapioca—she was afraid of it.

  ❖

  I chewed on that for a while, and then looked at the clock. Gloria had had time enough to get to the hotel. I ran to the phone, dialled.

  “Hotel San Dragon,” said a chewing-gum voice.

  “748, please,” I said urgently.

  A couple of clicks. Then, “Hello?”

  “Gloria,” I said. “Listen; I—”

  “Oh, you. Listen—can you call me back later? I’m very busy.”

  “I can and I will, but tell me something quickly: Are you afraid of squirrels?”

  Don’t tell me a shudder can’t be transmitted over a telephone wire. One was that time. “I hate them. Call me back in about—”

  “Why do you hate them?”

  With exaggerated patience, she said carefully, “When I was a little girl, I was feeding some pigeons and a squirrel jumped right up on my shoulder and scared me half to death. Now, please—”

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “I’ll speak to you later.” I hung up. She shouldn’t talk to me that way. She had no right—

  What was she doing in that hotel room, anyway?

  I pushed the ugly thought down out of sight, and went and poured myself a beer. Gloria is afraid of tapioca, I thought, and tapioca shows up here. She is afraid of the sound of small animals’ feet, and I hear them here. She is afraid of squirrels that jump on people, and I get a squirrel that jumps on people.

  That must all make some sense. Of course, I could take the easy way out, and admit that I was crazy. But somehow, I was no longer so ready to admit anything like that. Down deep inside, I made an agreement with myself not to admit that until I had exhausted every other possibility.

  A very foolish piece of business. See to it that you don’t do likewise. It’s probably much smarter not to try to figure things out.

  There was only one person who could straighten this whole crazy mess out—since the head wouldn’t—and that was Gloria, I thought suddenly. I realized, then, why I had not called all bets before now. I had been afraid to jeopardize the thing that Gloria and I shared. Well, let’s face it. We didn’t share it any longer. That admission helped.

  I strode to the telephone, and dialled the hotel.

  “Hotel San Dragon.”

  “748 please.”

  A moment’s silence. Then, “I’m sorry, sir. The party does not wish to be disturbed.”

  ❖

  I stood there looking blankly at the phone, while pain swirled and spiralled up inside me. I think that up to this moment I had treated the whole thing as part sickness, part dream; this, somehow, brought it to a sharp and agonizing focus. Nothing that she could have done could have been so calculated and so cruel.

  I cradled the receiver and headed for the door. Before I could reach it, gray mists closed about me. For a moment I seemed to be on some sort of a treadmill; I was walking, but I could not reach anything. Swiftly, then, everything was normal.

  “I must be in a pretty bad way,” I muttered. I shook my head. It was incredible. I felt all right, though a little dizzy. I went to the door and out.

  The trip to the hotel was the worst kind of a nightmare. I could only conclude that there was something strange and serious wrong with me, completely aside from my fury and my hurt at Gloria. I kept running into these blind spells, when everything about me took on an unreal aspect. The light didn’t seem right. I passed people on the street who weren’t there when I turned to look at them. I heard voices where there were no people, and I saw people talking but couldn’t hear them. I overcame a powerful impulse to go back home. I couldn’t go back; I knew it; I knew I had to face whatever crazy thing was happening, and that Gloria had something to do with it.

  ❖

  I caught a cab at last, though I’ll swear one of them disappeared just as I was about to step into it. Must have
been another of those blind spells. After that it was easier. I slouched quivering in a corner of the seat with my eyes closed.

  I paid off the driver at the hotel and stumbled in through the revolving doors. The hotel seemed much more solid than anything else since this horrible business had started to happen to me. I started over to the desk, determined to give some mad life-and-death message to the clerk to break that torturing “do not disturb” order. I glanced into the coffee room as I passed it and stopped dead.

  She was in there, in a booth, with—with someone else. I couldn’t see anything of the man but a glossy black head of hair and a thick, ruddy neck. She was smiling at him, the smile that I thought had been born and raised for me.

  I stalked over to them, trembling. As I reached them, he half-rose, leaned across the tabic, and kissed her.

  “Arthur...” she breathed.

  “That,” I said firmly, “will do.”

  They did not move.

  “Stop it!” I screamed. They did not move. Nothing moved, anywhere. It was a tableau, a picture, a hellish frozen thing put there to tear me apart.

  “That’s all,” said a now familiar voice, gently. “That kiss did it, son. You’re through.” It was the head, but now he was a whole man. An ordinary-looking, middle-sized creature he was, with a scrawny frame to match his unimpressive middle-aged face. He perched on the edge of the table, mercifully between me and that torturing kiss.

  I ran to him, grasped his thin shoulders. “Tell me what it is,” I begged him. “Tell me, if you know—and I think you know. Tell me!” I roared, sinking my fingers into his flesh.