Melancholy Elephants

by Spider Robinson

  She was gaping, perhaps for the first time in her life. “You are telling me that ‘Dr. R.V. Walton’ is Regina Wal…is Philip Roses’s wife?”

  “Trapped in space by free-fall adaptation—one of the unlucky fourteen pioneers. She can never come home again.”

  “Oh my God.” Her eyes were open so wide that the lashes now appeared normal size. She swayed where she stood, and her hands made little seeking gestures for something to clutch. They settled on the robe she wore, and if he needed any further proof of the extent of the impact on her, he had it, for as she clenched at the pockets of the robe it parted, baring her up to the belt, and she failed to notice. “Oh filthy God,” she cried. “Oh, couldn’t he—”

  “Not unless the fucking Space Taxi ever gets off the drawing boards,” he said bitterly. “Ten years overdue already. The Shuttles are space trucks, big rough brutes. All his life Philip Rose has had a bad heart valve. He’s in great shape for a man of sixty-five. He’ll probably live another ten or fifteen years, here on Earth. But there’s never been a day in his life when he could have survived a Shuttle blastoff.”

  She looked up at the ceiling. She looked down at the floor, and absently pulled the robe closed. She looked from side to side. She sat on the floor and stuck out her lower lip and burst into tears.

  He went on his knees beside her, holding her in one strong arm and stroking her hair. She cried thoroughly and easily and for a long time, and when she was done she stopped. “And they still…how could…?”

  “You know,” he told her, “you did him a hell of a big favor, helping him get famous. The money came along just in time, Anne—his phone bill was getting to be a bonecrusher.”

  “You mean—”

  “Every night they spend at least an hour on the phone together, talking, sharing their respective days, sometimes just looking at each other. With a three-quarter-second time lag.” He shook her gently. “Anne, listen to me: It’s sad, but it’s not that sad. They live. They work. They have time together every day, more than some doctors’ spouses—or writers’ spouses—get by on. They just can’t touch. They are, incredible as it may seem to you and me, both quite happy. In all the years I have known them, I’ve never heard either of them complain about the situation, not ever. Maybe there aren’t many people who could maintain and enjoy a relationship like that. But they were already each other’s other leg when she first went up into orbit. When one of them dies, the other will go within a month—but meanwhile what they have is enough for them.”

  She sat with her head bowed. Slowly, stiffly she got to her feet. He helped her and stood himself. He began gathering up dirty cups and dishes.

  “Where’s your laundry?”

  “Down the hall there,” he said, “just past the coat closet. Your clothes will be ready to wear by now. I’ll call you a cab.”

  She was back, dressed and face repaired, by the time the cab showed on the door-screen. “Paul,” she said formally, heading for the door, “I want to thank—”

  He held up his hand. “Wait just one minute, please.”

  She paused, clearly already gone in her mind but trying to be politely attentive.

  “Back when I first met Mr Rose, before I knew his situation, I made my own pass. Tentatively, because I knew he was old-fashioned in some ways. But I made it clear that as his personal secretary and his fan I would do anything he wanted. He was flattered. Turned me down, of course, but it has made for a kind of intimacy between us, that we might never have shared otherwise. So I’m in a position to tell you something you have no business knowing. He won’t mind, and I think I know you well enough now to believe that it may be a comfort of a kind to you. Do you know what he is doing now? Seventy percent certainty?”

  She shook her head.

  “He’s on the phone with Regina. It’s that time of night. He’s telling her about your encounter, embellishing in spots, perhaps, and they are masturbating together.”

  She stood stock still, expressionless, for perhaps ten seconds. And then she smiled. “Thank you, Paul. It is a comfort.”

  And she left. He watched the door monitor until he was certain she had entered the cab safely.

  A week later his phone blinked. He looked over the caller—and accepted at once. “Anne! Hello!”

  “One question,” she said briskly. “When the robe came open, you didn’t look. Not even a glance. Are you gay-only?”

  He caught the robe reference at once; the question took him a second. “Eh? Oh…I see. Emphatically no. It’s just that I only look at skin that’s being shown to me.”

  She nodded. “Thought so. Wanted to be sure.” She smiled. “I know why you didn’t lie to me. I’m going to be very busy for a long time. Be patient.”

  And the screen went dark, leaving him mystified.

  Two years later he was talking to one of the dozens of reporters who crammed the pressroom at Edwards Air Force Base.

  “—takes off just like a conventional plane,” he was saying, “no more takeoff stress than a 797—so Mr Rose should have no trouble at all. I think it’s going to add twenty years to his life.”

  “What I can’t figure,” the reporter said, “is how incredibly fast the thing got pushed through. Two years from a standing start, wham, the damned thing is out of R & D, into production, and up in the air.” He turned his head to watch the big monitor screen which showed the new Space Taxi climbing, endlessly climbing. “Two years ago it was too expensive and impractical. Now it’s halfway to ESS and your boss has a firm reservation for the fourth flight in a couple of months. Somebody in congress made a big muscle…but why wouldn’t he cash in on the PR? I go back to the Shuttle days, Mr Curry, and that was like pulling teeth. This went so quick it almost scares me.”

  Paul nodded. “Yep, it’s a wonder, all right,” he said, and then he said, “Excuse me, Phil,” very abruptly, and seemed to teleport across the crowded pressroom.

  She was waiting for him, exquisite in white and blue.

  “Hello, Paul.”

  “Hello, Anne.”

  “Two years is a long time.”

  “Yes.” He gestured at the huge monitor. “Short time for a project like that, though. You did a good job.”

  She smiled. “Today, for the first time in two years, my father is off the hook.”

  He smiled back. “I pity your enemies.”

  “You didn’t lie to me, two years ago, because you were in love with me.” The way she said it was somewhere between a question and an accusation.

  “That’s right.”

  “Are you sexually or romantically encumbered now?”

  “No.”

  “Then there is some skin I’d like to show you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Should we have dinner before or after, do you think?”

  An observer might have said she read her answer on his face, but it was really nothing of the sort.

  Chronic Offender

  Chronic Offender

  In respectful memory of Damon Runyon,

  Who knows no other tense than the present,

  And sometimes the future.

  You will think that when a guy sees eighty summers on Broadway, he sees it all, and until recently so will I. It is a long time since I see something that surprises me very much, and in fact the last time I remember being surprised is when the Giants take the wind for L.A. But when I come home a couple of nights after my eightieth birthday, along about four bells in the morning, and find a ghost watching my TV, I am surprised no little, and in fact more than somewhat.

  At first I do not figure him for a ghost. What I figure him for is a hophead, what they call nowadays a junkie, and most guys will figure this proposition for a cinch, at that. I decide that my play is to go out again, and have a cup of coffee, and come back when he is finished, or maybe even ask the gendarmes to come back before he is finished. But Astaire will never hoof again and neither will I, because I have not even managed to get her into reverse when this character hauls
out a short John Roscoe and says like this:

  “Stand and deliver.”

  This is when I figure him for a ghost, because I recognize the words he uses, and then his voice, and finally his face, and who is it but Harry the Horse.

  Now, Harry the Horse is never a guy I am apt to hang around with, as he is a very tough guy, who will shoot you as soon as look at you, and maybe even sooner. Furthermore he is many years dead at this time, and I figure the chances are good that the climate where he is lately is hot enough to make him irritable. In fact, I am wishing more with every passing moment to go have this cup of coffee, but I cannot see any price at all on arguing with a John Roscoe, especially such a John Roscoe as is being piloted by Harry the Horse, or even his ghost. So I up with my mitts and say as follows:

  “Don’t shoot, Harry.”

  Well, it turns out that nobody is more surprised than Harry when he recognizes me. I cannot figure this, since I always understand that ghosts know who they are haunting, but then again I never hear of a ghost packing a John Roscoe, at that. In fact, I start to wonder if maybe Harry the Horse is not a hallucination, and I am gone daffy.

  You have to understand that Harry the Horse looks not a day older than when I see him last, which is going back about fifty years. Furthermore his suit is the kind they do not make for fifty years, except it looks no older than is customary on Harry when I know him, and likewise his hair is greased up like only some of the spics and smokes still do anymore, and in fact he looks in every respect like he does when I last see him, except that he is not smiling and not laying down and does not seem to have several .45 caliber holes in him. In fact, he looks pretty good, except for his forehead being wrinkled up a little like something is on his mind.

  “Well,” he says, “it is certainly good to see you, even if you do become an ugly old geezer. I will never think to guzzle your joint if I know it is you. If fact, I will not guzzle your joint, even though this causes me some inconvenience, because,” he says, “you have always been aces with me. So now you must help me pick some other joint to guzzle.”

  Now, I hear of ghosts that like to scare a guy out of his pants, although personally I never meet one, but I never hear that they are interested in the contents of the pants pockets. Even if they are the ghost of Harry the Horse. “Harry,” I say, “what would a guy such as yourself be doing working the second storey?”

  “Well,” Harry the Horse says, “that is a long story. But if I do not tell the story to someone soon I think I will go crazy, and in fact you are just the guy to tell it to, because you remember the way things used to be in 1930.”

  “Harry,” I say, “I have nothing better to do than to hear your story.”

  And Harry the Horse nods, and says to me like this:

  One day me and Spanish John and Little Isadore all happen to be in the sneezer together, on account of a small misunderstanding about the colour of some money we are spending, and I wish to say in passing that this beef is a total crock, as we steal that money fair and square from a bank on Third Avenue, and can we help it if things are so bad that banks are starting to pass out funny money? But anyway there we are in the sneezer, so naturally we call Judge Goldfobber to get us out. As you probably know, Judge Goldfobber is by no means a judge, and never is a judge, and in my line it is a hundred-to-one against him ever being a judge, but he is a lawyer by trade, and he is better than Houdini at getting citizens out of the sneezer, and in fact when it comes to getting out of the sneezer Goldfobber is usually cheaper than buying a real judge, at that.

  So we call him and he comes right down and springs us, and then he takes us back uptown to his office and pours us a couple of shots of scotch, and furthermore it is scotch he gets from Dave the Dude, and you know that Dave the Dude handles only the very best merchandise. So we knock them back and then Goldfobber says like this: “Boys, when I spring a guy for bad paper it is my firm policy never to accept my fee in cash. None of you has any gold or securities, so I propose to take it out in trade.”

  “Judge,” I say, “you have always been a good employer, and in fact it seems to me that every time you put a little job our way, we come away with a few bobs for our trouble. Furthermore you are a right gee, because you put down several potatoes to bail us out, and you must know that you have no more chance of seeing us show up in court than Hoover has of seeing another vote. So we are happy to entertain your proposition.”

  “Well,” he says, “it is not exactly a job you can be proud of.”

  “How do you mean?” Little Isadore asks.

  “For one thing, it involves chilling a guy, and an old guy besides, and furthermore he is one of those guys who is so brilliant that he is like a baby. It is not exactly sporting.”

  “Judge,” Spanish John says to him, “I and my friends are suffering greatly from the unemployment situation, because if nobody is working and making money, there is nobody for us to rob, and if there is nobody for us to rob, we are reduced to robbing banks, and you see how that works out. I do not speak for my friends, but I myself will be happy to chill somebody just on general principles, and if it is an old guy that does not shoot back, why, so much the better.”

  “It involves work,” Judge Goldfobber says.

  “How do you mean ‘work’?”

  “Physical exertion. Manual labor. You will have to carry something very much like a phone booth, and which weighs maybe twice as much as a phone booth, down three flights of stairs and deliver it to my place out on the Island.”

  “Judge,” I say, greatly horrified, “we are eternally grateful for what you do for us. But to do manual labor in satisfaction of a debt is perilously close to honest work, and that is more grateful than I, for one, wish to be. However,” I say as he starts to frown, “not only am I grateful, but I just remember that you know where Isadore and me bury Boat-Race Benny three years ago, so we will accept your job.”

  So he gives us an address up in Harlem, and that night we borrow a truck somebody is not using to go up there.

  The job goes down as easy as a doll’s drawers, or maybe even easier. The building is a big fancy joint, with a doorman and everything, but the lock on the back door does not give Little Isadore any difficulty, and neither does the lock on the apartment door of the old geezer. The name on his door is “Doctor Philbert Twitchell,” so we figure him for a sawbones, except it turns out he is not that kind of doctor, but the professor kind.

  Anyway, we stick him up in his bed, and we scare him so bad we nearly save ourselves the trouble of croaking him. We tell him to show us the phone booth, and toots wheat, and he just blinks at us. This Doc Twitchell is about a million years old and bald as an eight ball, and I wish to say I never see another guy like him for blinking. In fact I remember thinking that he will be a handy guy to have around on a hot day, since he keeps a pretty good breeze going, except of course that by the time the next hot day comes around he will not be blinking so good, and is apt to smell bad, besides.

  About the time I haul the hammer back on my Roscoe he gives up blinking and gets up and puts on a bathrobe that looks like it belongs to Jack Johnson, and he takes us to the phone booth. It is in a big room way in back of his apartment, and the room is a kind of a lavatory, like in this movie I see when I am ten years old called Frankenstein, which I hear they are going to remake as a talkie. Anyway there is all kinds of machines and gadgets and gizmos, and a wire the size of a shotgun barrel taped along the floor from the wall to the bottom of this phone booth. It is the size and shape of a phone booth, but it does not really look much like one, and in fact it makes me think of a stand-up coffin, except for all the wires and things hanging off of it. There is no door in it, so I can see the thing is empty, and it occurs to me that it will make a fair coffin, at that, since we can carry the Doc downstairs in it and save an extra trip.

  “Okay,” I say. “This is a cinch. Spanish John, you go down and get the dolly out of the back of the truck. Little Isadore, you go along and wait for him at the
door, keep lookout whilst I croak the Doc here.” At this the Doc starts in blinking a mile a minute. He starts to say something, and then he thinks better of it and waits until Spanish John and Little Isadore are gone, and then he starts talking even faster than he is blinking, which is pretty fast talking indeed. He talks kind of tony, with lots of big fancy words, but I give you the gist:

  “Goldfobber the mouthpiece sends you guys to see me, am I right?”

  I admit this, and starting putting the silencer on my John Roscoe.

  “Would you consider double-crossing Goldfobber?”

  “Certainly. What is your proposition?”

  “You mean Goldfobber does not tell you?” he says, very surprised.

  “Tell me what?”

  “This thing you call a phone booth is a time machine.”

  “You mean like a big clock? Where is the hands?”

  “No, no,” he says, real excited. “A machine for travelling in time.”

  “In time for what?”

  “No, through time! My machine can take you into next week, or next year, or the year after that. It is the only one in the world.”

  “Well, I never hear of such a machine, at that.”

  “Of course not,” he says. “You and me and that thief Goldfobber are the only three people in the world that know about it.”

  “Okay,” I tell him. “So get to the part about why I should double-cross Goldfobber.”

  “Don’t you see?” he says, blinking away. “You can travel to tomorrow night, read the stock market quotations, and then come back to today and buy everything that is going to go up.”

  “I do not know too many guys in the stock racket,” I tell him, “and furthermore I hear it is a chancy proposition. But if I understand you, I can go to tomorrow night and read the racing results, and then come back and bet on all the winning ponies?” I am commencing to get excited.

  “Exactly,” he says, jumping up and down a little. “Likewise the World Series, and the football, and the elections, and—the sky is the limit.”