“Hey Roxie,” he said to his loving wife at breakfast the next morning. “I loved all the stuff I was reading so late last night, but I couldn't find the ‘How to Pull the Chain on the Other You’ pamphlet.” “That pamphlet had better not fall into unauthorized lands,” she said. “It could be dangerous if some incompetent person got hold of it. And don't call me Roxie. You know my name is Moxie. I hate to be called Roxie.”
“What? What's the matter with you anyhow, Rocks? About once a week you get a cranky spell and say that your name is Moxie instead of Roxie. You burn me when you pull stuff like that.”
“Don't forget to slam the door on your way out,” the unloving wife said.
But that morning at work was full of surprises for Otto, some of them pleasant. “Ah, Ottoman Spaltman!” owner-partner Charles Banner called to him as he walked with the other owner-partner Ed Klaxon. “You seem to be in a fever of intellectual activity today, Ottoman. Do you know, Ed, that Ottoman has come into my office three times this morning and each time he has had one of the brightest ideas ever. Astonishing! We'll talk about his ideas at lunch, Ed.”
“Indeed we will, Charles. And we'll also talk about the four powerful ideas that Ottoman gave me this morning the four times he came into my office. Keep up the good work, Ottoman.”
Well, it was very pleasant to be praised like that by the co-owners of the company. There were only two things wrong with it. Otto hated to be called Ottoman, which was not his name. And he didn't remember going into the office of Charles Banner three times that morning, nor going into the office of Ed Klaxon four times that morning, and he had no idea what the bright ideas were that he had given to those two owners.
But other than that it was all good.
“It must be my alter ego coming up with all those red-hot ideas,” Otto told himself. “If my alter ego is that brilliant, I've got it made. It's just that I'm not in very close contact with my alter ego. I'll read those booklets a little bit closer tonight and get straight on all those details. After all, my alter ego has got to remember whose alter ego he is.”
But the rest of the day was peppered with oddities.
The other artists at the old sweatshirt factory seemed to have become both hard-of-hearing and weak-of-eyesight as far as Otto was concerned. It wasn't exactly as if they were cutting him. It was as if they really didn't notice him.
Mr. Juggers the paymaster came around with the weekly checks, and with that little book in which the payee must countersign the vouchers. Juggers paid everyone, but he did not pay Otto Spaltman.
“What are you, what are you?” Juggers jabbered out, and he looked frightened. “Oh, Otto, it's you. You look different, as if you weren't all there. What's the matter with you anyhow? You'd better pull yourself together, man. You look as if — Oh, I guess it's just the light in here. Why don't you get out of here and I'll try to forget the way you look right now.”
“You forgot to give me my check, Mr. Juggers.”
“Otto, I paid you first of all. And you looked all right then. See, here's your signature where you counter-signed the voucher. You always say that nobody can imitate your signature.”
“They can't. And it is my signature. That's funny.”
“Look in your pockets, Otto. You must have your check. You look terrible, man. You're just not all there.”
“Uh, I don't seem to have real pockets,” Otto mumbled. “And I don't really have things in them, just notions. Odd, odd.” And Otto backed out of the office. The rest of the afternoon was only a vague cloud. Yes, he did feel that he was not all there.
As he came home to his house that evening, Otto Spaltman came onto the ghost of his wife Roxie standing under the lilac bush. She had been crying. “Oh, Otto, don't go up to the house,” her words came vaguely from the air almost like a grasshopper talking. “They've taken over there. We are out, out, out, You and I. No, I really don't think you can see me when you look straight at me, only when you look sideways. Oh, don't go up to the house, Otto. He's taken over, he'll destroy you.”
“Certainly I'll go to the house. It's my house. What are you anyhow? You're a little bit like a thin daydream of Roxie.” And Otto Spaltman went up to his own house.
And he saw himself already standing above him on the top step.
“I've been waiting for you, shadow,” said Otto's self, possibly his other self. “Bug off now! I'll not be complicated nor held back any longer by a shadow like you.”
“Who are you?” Otto demanded in a voice with a slight squeak to it. Oh, Otto's wife Roxie was on the porch too. But she looked estranged, estranged.
“I'm Ottoman Spaltman, of course, the Primary Me,” the dominant figure on the top step spoke in the voice of one with authority. “And who do you think that you are, pipsqueak?”
“Um, I'm Otto,” Otto said weakly, and Ottoman laughed at him with his chattering laugh.
“There ought to be a way to turn this around,” Otto was thinking to himself. “I have an advantage here somewhere, if I can only think what it is.”
“What's all this about, Roxie?” Otto asked his wife on the porch, she who looked so estranged.
“I'm not Roxie, I'm Moxie,” she said. “I always hated to be called Roxie. I've just pulled the chain on Roxie, and now the shadow that's all that's left of her is sniffling over there in the shadow of the lilac bush.”
“And I always hated to be called by that bob-tailed form of Otto,” Ottoman Spaltman said. “So I've just evicted you from myself. I've just pulled the chain on you.”
“Ah, there was one last booklet, ‘How to Pull the Chain on the Other You if Things Get Really Rough’,” Otto mumbled. “Somehow that one got lost. I didn't get to read it.”
“I did,” Ottoman said. “I read it. It really works. It has worked on you. And I'm glad it didn't fall into your irresponsible hands. You're finished here now, Otto, and what's left of you is fading out. Leave now. Walk down that walk with the evening sun behind you, and you'll see that you no longer cast a shadow.”
Otto turned away and walked sorrowfully down the walk with the evening sun at his back. And, no, he didn't cast a shadow. And as he passed the lilac bush his loving wife Roxie, the real Roxie of whom there wasn't very much left, fell into silent step beside him. And she didn't cast a shadow either.
They walked slowly towards downtown. It was probably the lowest moment in life for both of them, if indeed they were still in life.
“What worse could happen to us now?” Otto asked silently. “Roxie, be careful! You'll be killed!”
Roxie had started to cross a busy street, and a car had run right through her. It took them both a moment to realize that she hadn't been hurt or even touched.
And after that lowest point in their lives, things got better for them.
“Oh, things like that can't hurt me now,” Roxie uttered. “Nothing can hurt me now that I've already been hurt so badly by being evicted from my own personality and my own skin. But maybe we should move along about ten feet up in the air so we won't startle people if they look sideways and see us. Yes, this is better up here. And I catch a glint of others now and then. Maybe we can get acquainted with some of them, and then we won't be so lonesome.”
“There should be some advantage in this,” Otto muttered doggedly. “There should be some advantage in being invisible. Some advantage in being able to walk on the air. Some advantage in not being harmed by anything, not even a hurtling automobile. Some advantage in speaking to each other soundlessly.”
“Otto, I just had an intuition,” Roxie spoke soundlessly. “Ottoman and Moxie won't remember us now. They've scrubbed us out completely. Ottoman and Moxie haven't any defense in the world against us. Otto, there are advantages.”
“Oh, oh, oh, oh!” Otto chortled. “Were I vengeful, and I am, we could just about write our own ticket on them. Oh, we may have every advantage. What else can we do? Let's see if we can walk through walls.”
Sure they could walk through walls. It had been
their other egos that had been inhibited against walking through walls and now they were free of those other egos.
“Can we move physical objects?” Roxie asked. “Oh, of course we can. But I sure was never able to lift anything as big as this before I was disassociated from Moxie. Can we enjoy food and drink? Let's see whether we can. How wonderful! A table set for two.”
Sure they could enjoy food and drink. They had walked through a wall from outer air into a luxury apartment and now they were eating a luxury meal.
“Yawk, yawk, yawk!!” a lady was hollering. “Henry, Henry, two ghosts are eating our meal. I sure don't want to tangle with them. You'll have to take me out to supper. Maybe they'll be gone when we get back. Oh hurry, let's get out of here. I'm scared to death of ghosts.”
“People are afraid of us, Roxie,” Otto grinned. “Oh the possibilities, the possibilities! Revenge is at hand!”
“I can think of a hundred revenges,” Roxie gloated. “I never did like living in the same skin with that Moxie anyhow. These people have some trendy records. Here's one we might take for our theme song.” Roxie put the trendy, novelty record ‘There'll Always Be Another Me’ on the luxury record player in the luxury apartment. You know the piece:
“There'll always be another me.
He isn't quite my cup of tea.”
A little while later, as they strolled in the balmy air some twenty feet above the street, they met another disassociated couple.
“Oh, hi,” the disassociated lady said. “Yes, it really can be as much fun as it seems, and it gets better all the time. We'll get in touch with you. There's a lot of us, and we're wonderful company. Oh, the Avalon Luxury Apartments over there are haunted, and almost all of the people have moved out. And some of us have moved in. We can make ourselves at home anywhere, of course, but it's nice to have a special place too. You can take any place on the third floor. It's really plush.”
Otto and Roxie went to their old Spaltman home.
“We'll scare them just a little bit tonight,” Otto said. “I can see fun going on and on almost forever.”
“And I sure don't want that Moxie wearing any of my clothes any longer,” Roxie spoke soundlessly. “I'll get them all, now that we can walk on air and carry as much of anything as we want to. I'll leave her stitchless. I'll strip her, and as often as she puts anything on I'll strip her again, indoors and out, in daylight or in darkness.”
“Yowk, yowk, yowk!” Moxie Spaltman was screaming a little while later. (Terrified ladies don't really scream ‘eek, eek, eek’. They really scream ‘yowk, yowk, yowk’). “Ottoman, some ghost has just stripped my pajamas off me and left me as bare as a jay bird. And she's cleaning out everything! All my beautiful clothes! Stop her, stop her!” “Yipe, yipe, yipe!” Ottoman was carrying on. “Some ghost has just punched me in the nose and kneed me in the groin. Ow, wow, wow! Help me, Moxie. This is clear out of the world. A ghost that's whistling ‘There'll always be another me’ while he punches the bejabbers out of me. And when I punch him back all I punch is air. A ghost, a ghost, a ghost! Save me, Moxie.”
“I'll just take these little booklets from Los Angeles quackeries along with me,” Otto chuckled. “I don't want them to fall into irresponsible hands again. Say, this sample tonight is only a sample, Roxie. The fun can go on and on almost forever, and we have the whole world to have fun in.”
“Wonderful, wonderful,” Roxie was gloating. “Otto, do you suppose that, now that we have ‘Shuffled off the Mortal Coil’, we have become—”
“It's a thought, Roxie. One of these pamphlets was right. We Really Can Work Magic, now that we've pulled the chain on those two folks who were holding us back. There's no limit to the Pleasure and Profit and Limitless Power we can have now.”
Square And Above Board
The people were young and the season was springtime. It was said of young Midas Muldoon that he was a complex man, but this was a lie. He was as straightforward as a crooked man could be. He wanted power, he wanted prestige, and he wanted whopping wealth. He wanted to be envied. He wanted to be hated and admired at the same time. He wanted to make people crawl. He wanted to make people quake in fear. Certainly those were all straightforward aims, and in Midas there was never any element of concealment.
Midas had been given his curious name by his father Croesus Muldoon, a confidence man who always swore that he would live and die in a great stone castle. And he did die in a great stone castle of sorts, one of the outskirts of McAlester Oklahoma. Midas, like his father, liked to bet. And he liked to fight. He was athletic, magnetic, and champion at the game of checkers or draughts.
In contrast to Midas, his best friend Cristopher Kearny was an intricate and convoluted fellow. He often stopped to think things over, and you can get eaten alive doing that. This being-eaten-alive was never fatal to Cris however. For him, it was one way of getting to the very inside of a situation, or a corporation. He was an inventor, a promoter, an investor. He had only a nominal lust for wealth, and yet he began to acquire rapid wealth while still quite young; and he did this by being an insider in very many ways.
Cris was not athletic; he was not magnetic (he said that only the base metals were magnetic); and he was not a checkers champion. His game was chess. He did not like to fight, or bet. He won a lot of bets, it's true, some of them large ones, some of them from Midas Muldoon. In these cases however Cris was not betting. Midas was always betting, but Cris was always riding an inside sure thing. Midas Muldoon and Cristopher Kearney were rivals in many things.
One of the things that they were rivals for was Bridie Caislean, a very pretty and devious and intelligent girl. And Midas Muldoon always seemed to be very far ahead on this particular rivalry.
When Cris Kearny was twenty-two years old, his auditor Linus Caislean told him that he had just become a millionaire.
“It couldn't have happened to a nicer fellow,” Linus said, “nor could the other good mews that Bridie has just told me of you have happened to a nicer fellow. I heartily welcome you into the family.”
Something about this came very near to puzzling Cris, but he hadn't become a millionaire at twenty-two by allowing himself to be puzzled very much or very long. So when Bridie Caislean came into Cris' little office exactly one minute after her father Linus Caislean had walked out of it. Cris looked at her and asked her only one word: “When?”
“There's two things I like about you, Cris honey,” Bridie said. “One of them is that you catch onto things quick. The other one is that you're a millionaire now. I've been doing the work on your account for papa, you know. Oh, one month from today, the first day of June we'll get married. Midas Muldoon will whip you when he hears about it, of course. He may even kill you. That's the day when he was supposed to marry me, and he doesn't know any different yet.”
“Midas will neither whip me nor kill me, but neither will he give you up as easily as that. He'll stay in the race all the way down to the wire, and he's especially tricky in the hack-stretch. But there's no way that he can acquire a million dollars within a month; and I can't think of anything that could hook you better than a million dollars.”
“Neither can I,” Bridie Caislean said.
Bridie herself was quite magnetic. She had sufficient of base metal, iron and steel, in her for that. She also had an amalgamated heart: one part pure gold, one part quick mercury, and eight parts brass.
Bridie had been beauty queen at North-Central State A & M Tech (she'd have been beauty queen even at Harvard if she'd gone there) and she was an extravagantly attractive girl. She was as straightforward in her aims as was Midas Muldoon, and she had a talent for being on the inside of things that was at least equal to that of Cris Kearny. She was full of fun and interests, and she was the only thing that Cris had ever envied Midas. Now he was quite pleased to be marrying her.
“What are you thinking about, dear?” Bridie asked Cris one sunny day during their engagement.
“Oh, of all the ancient terrors,” Cris said, “of
the Sea Monster that is the most primordial of the terrors, of the loathsome and murderous disease that will be diverted from its victim only by another victim, of ghosts that return with the sea-wrack of their deaths still on them. And most of all I was thinking of the terror of falling, though in the sunny little daydream reverie I've just been having the fall is only a piddling thousand feet. But the terror of falling is the most overriding terror of them all. Did you know that even bright Lucifer, a winged creature, was so terrified of the depths before him that he forgot to use his wings and so fell like lightning?”
“Cris, Cris, maybe you are just terrified of marrying me.”
“Fear of marriage is one of the ancient terrors, yes, but it's a minor one of them. But strangely enough, in my afternoon daydream, I do not marry you.
“Then throw that daydream away. It's flawed. Forget it. Is your cousin Cohn Kearny coming to our wedding, have you heard? I've phoned him. He says that he may come. I just believe that I will phone him again and make sure that he comes. Hey, we sure did get acquainted fast on that transatlantic telephone!”
“How did you know that I had a cousin named Colin Kearny?”
“How did I know that you have a cousin who has five times as much money as you have? Honey, would I miss something like that when I was running a check on you? I'm thorough. Two million Irish pounds, and a Castle in Ireland besides. Oh, I'll get him to come somehow!”
“Bridie, in your slippery little mind you're not thinking of switching to a man you've never even seen? You're capable of it.”
The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty Page 297