A Saucer of Loneliness

by Theodore Sturgeon

  “I’d be happy if you could,” he said seriously

  I whacked him on the shoulder. “See? You take all the fun out of it.”

  He got a cab and I started to walk. I walked a whole lot that night, just anywhere. I thought about a lot of things. When I got home, the phone was ringing. It was Kelley.

  I’m not going to give you a blow-by-blow of that talk with Kelley. It was in that small front room of his place—an apartment he’d rented after Hal got sick, and not the one Hal used to have—and we talked the night away. All I’m withholding is Kelley’s expression of things you already know: that he was deeply attached to his brother, that he had no hope left for him, that he would find who or what was responsible and deal with it his way. It is a strong man’s right to break down if he must, with whom and where he chooses, and such an occasion is only an expression of strength. But when it happens in a quiet sick place, where he must keep the command of hope strongly in the air; when a chest heaves and a throat must be held wide open to sob silently so that the dying one shall not know; these things are not pleasant to describe in detail. Whatever my ultimate feeling for Kelley, his emotions and the expressions of them are for him to keep.

  He did, however, know the name of the girl and where she was. He did not hold her responsible. I thought he might have a suspicion, but it turned out to be only a certainty that this was no disease, no subjective internal disorder. If a great hate and a great determination could solve the problem, Kelley would solve it. If research and logic could solve it, Milton would do it. If I could do it, I would.

  She was checking hats in a sleazy club out where Brooklyn and Queens, in a remote meeting, agree to be known as Long Island. The contact was easy to make. I gave her my spring coat with the label outward. It’s a good label. When she turned away with it I called her back and drunkenly asked her for the bill in the right-hand pocket. She found it and handed it to me. It was a hundred. “Damn taxis never got change,” I mumbled and took it before her astonishment turned to sleight-of-hand. I got out my wallet, crowded the crumpled note into it clumsily enough to display the two other C-notes there, shoved it into the front of my jacket so that it missed the pocket and fell to the floor, and walked off. I walked back before she could lift the hinged counter and skin out after it. I picked it up and smiled foolishly at her. “Lose more business cards that way,” I said. Then I brought her into focus. “Hey, you know, you’re cute.”

  I suppose “cute” is one of the four-letter words that describe her. “What’s your name?”

  “Charity,” she said. “But don’t get ideas.” She was wearing so much pancake makeup that I couldn’t tell what her complexion was. She leaned so far over the counter that I could see lipstick stains on her brassiere.

  “I don’t have a favorite charity yet,” I said. “You work here alla time?”

  “I go home once in a while,” she said.

  “What time?”

  “One o’clock.”

  “Tell you what,” I confided, “let’s both be in front of this place at a quarter after and see who stands who up, okay?” Without waiting for an answer I stuck the wallet into my back pocket so that my jacket hung on it. All the way into the dining room I could feel her eyes on it like two hot, glistening, broiled mushrooms. I came within an ace of losing it to the head waiter when he collided with me, too.

  She was there all right, with a yellowish fur around her neck and heels you could have driven into a pine plank. She was up to the elbows in jangly brass and chrome, and when we got into a cab she threw herself on me with her mouth open. I don’t know where I got the reflexes, but I threw my head down and cracked her in the cheekbone with my forehead, and when she squeaked indignantly I said I’d dropped the wallet again and she went about helping me find it quietly as you please. We went to a place and another place and an after-hours place, all her choice. They served her sherry in her whiskey-ponies and doubled all my orders, and tilted the checks something outrageous. Once I tipped a waiter eight dollars and she palmed the five. Once she wormed my leather notebook out of my breast pocket thinking it was the wallet, which by this time was safely tucked away in my knit shorts. She did get one enamel cuff link with a rhinestone in it, and my fountain pen. All in all it was quite a duel. I was loaded to the eyeballs with thiamin hydrochloride and caffeine citrate, but a most respectable amount of alcohol soaked through them, and it was all I could do to play it through. I made it, though, and blocked her at every turn until she had no further choice but to take me home. She was furious and made only the barest attempts to hide it.

  We got each other up the dim dawn-lit stairs, shushing each other drunkenly, both much soberer than we acted, each promising what we expected not to deliver. She negotiated her lock successfully and waved me inside.

  I hadn’t expected it to be so neat. Or so cold. “I didn’t leave that window open,” she said complainingly. She crossed the room and closed it. She pulled her fur around her throat. “This is awful.”

  It was a long low room with three windows. At one end, covered by a venetian blind was a kitchenette. A door at one side of it was probably a bathroom.

  She went to the venetian blind and raised it. “Have it warmed up in a jiffy,” she said.

  I looked at the kitchenette. “Hey,” I said as she lit the little oven, “coffee. How’s about coffee?”

  “Oh, all right,” she said glumly. “But talk quiet, huh?”

  “Sh-h-h-h.” I pushed my lips around with a forefinger. I circled the room. Cheap phonograph and records. Small-screen TV. A big double studio couch. A bookcase with no books in it, just china dogs. It occurred to me that her unsubtle approach was probably not successful as often as she might wish.

  But where was the thing I was looking for?

  “Hey, I wanna powder my nose,” I announced.

  “In there,” she said. “Can’t you talk quiet?”

  I went into the bathroom. It was tiny. There was a foreshortened tub with a circular frame over it from which hung a horribly cheerful shower curtain, with big red roses. I closed the door behind me and carefully opened the medicine chest. Just the usual. I closed it carefully so it wouldn’t click. A built-in shelf held towels.

  Must be a closet in the main room, I thought. Hatbox, trunk, suitcase, maybe. Where would I put a devil-doll if I were hexing someone?

  I wouldn’t hide it away, I answered myself. I don’t know why, but I’d sort of have it out in the open somehow …

  I opened the shower curtain and let it close. Round curtain, square tub.

  “Yup!”

  I pushed the whole round curtain back, and there in the corner, just at eye level, was a triangular shelf. Grouped on it were four figurines, made apparently from kneaded wax. Three had wisps of hair fastened by candle-droppings. The fourth was hairless, but had slivers of a horny substance pressed into the ends of the arms. Fingernail parings.

  I stood for a moment thinking. Then I picked up the hairless doll, turned to the door. I checked myself, flushed the toilet, took a towel, shook it out, dropped it over the edge of the tub. Then I reeled out. “Hey honey, look what I got, ain’t it cute?”

  “Shh!” she said. “Oh for crying out loud. Put that back, will you?”

  “Well, what is it?”

  “It’s none of your business, that’s what it is. Come on, put it back.”

  I wagged my finger at her. “You’re not being nice to me,” I complained.

  She pulled some shreds of patience together with an obvious effort. “It’s just some sort of toys I have around. Here.”

  I snatched it away. “All right, you don’t wanna be nice!” I whipped my coat together and began to button it clumsily, still holding the figurine.

  She sighed, rolled her eyes, and came to me. “Come on, Dadsy. Have a nice cup of coffee and let’s not fight.” She reached for the doll and I snatched it away again.

  “You got to tell me,” I pouted.

  “It’s pers’nal.”


  “I wanna be personal,” I pointed out.

  “Oh all right,” she said. “I had a roommate one time, she used to make these things. She said you make one, and s’pose I decide I don’t like you, I got something of yours, hair or toenails or something. Say your name is George. What is your name?”

  “George,” I said.

  “All right, I call the doll George. Then I stick pins in it. That’s all. Give it to me.”

  “Who’s this one?”

  “That’s Al.”

  “Hal?”

  “Al. I got one called Hal. He’s in there. I hate him the most.”

  “Yeah, huh. Well, what happens to Al and George and all when you stick pins in ’em?”

  “They’re s’posed to get sick. Even die.”

  “Do they?”

  “Nah,” she said with immediate and complete candor. “I told you, it’s just a game, sort of. If it worked, believe me old Al would bleed to death. He runs the delicatessen.” I handed her the doll, and she looked at it pensively. “I wish it did work, sometimes. Sometimes I almost believe in it. I stick ’em and they just yell.”

  “Introduce me,” I demanded.

  “What?”

  “Introduce me,” I said. I pulled her toward the bathroom. She made a small irritated “oh-h,” and came along.

  “This is Fritz and this is Bruno and—where’s the other one?”

  “What other one?”

  “Maybe he fell behind the—down back of—” She knelt on the edge of the tub and leaned over to the wall, to peer behind it. She regained her feet, her face red from effort and anger. “What are you trying to pull? You kidding around or something?”

  I spread my arms. “What you mean?”

  “Come on,” she said between her teeth. She felt my coat, my jacket. “You hid it someplace.”

  “No I didn’t. There was only four.” I pointed. “Al and Fritz and Bruno and Hal. Which one’s Hal?”

  “That’s Freddie. He give me twenny bucks and took twenny-three out of my purse, the dirty—. But Hal’s gone. He was the best one of all. You sure you didn’t hide him?” Then she thumped her forehead.

  “The window!” she said, and ran into the other room. I was on my four bones peering under the tub when I understood what she meant. I took a last good look around and then followed her. She was standing by the window, shading her eyes and peering out. “What do you know. Imagine somebody would swipe a thing like that!”

  A sick sense of loss was born in my solar plexus.

  “Aw, forget it. I’ll make another one for that Hal. But I’ll never make another one that ugly,” she added wistfully. “Come on, the coffee’s—what’s the matter? You sick?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “I’m sick.”

  “Of all the things to steal,” she said from the kitchenette. “Who do you suppose would do such a thing?”

  Suddenly I knew who would. I cracked my fist into my palm and laughed.

  “What’s the matter, you crazy?”

  “Yes,” I said. “You got a phone?”

  “No. Where you going?”

  “Out. Goodbye, Charity.”

  “Hey, now wait, honey. Just when I got coffee for you.”

  I snatched the door open. She caught my sleeve.

  “You can’t go away like this! How’s about a little something for Charity?”

  “You’ll get yours when you make the rounds tomorrow, if you don’t have a hangover from those sherry highballs,” I said cheerfully. “And don’t forget the five you swiped from the tip plate. Better watch out for that waiter, by the way. I think he saw you do it.”

  “You’re not drunk’ ” she gasped.

  “You’re not a witch,” I grinned. I blew her a kiss and ran out.

  I shall always remember her like that, round-eyed, a little more astonished than she was resentful, the beloved dollar signs fading from her hot brown eyes, the pathetic, useless little twitch of her hips she summoned up as a last plea.

  Ever try to find a phone booth at five A.M.? I half-trotted nine blocks before I found a cab, and I was on the Queens side of the Triboro Bridge before I found a gas station open.

  I dialed. The phone said, “Hello?”

  “Kelley!” I roared happily. “Why didn’t you tell me? You’d ‘a saved sixty bucks worth of the most dismal fun I ever—”

  “This is Milton,” said the telephone. “Hal just died.”

  My mouth was still open and I guess it just stayed that way. Anyway it was cold inside when I closed it. “I’ll be right over.”

  “Better not,” said Milton. His voice was shaking with incomplete control. “Unless you really want to … there’s nothing you can do, and I’m going to be … busy.”

  “Where’s Kelley?” I whispered.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well,” I said. “Call me.”

  I got back into my taxi and went home. I don’t remember the trip.

  Sometimes I think I dreamed I saw Kelley that morning.

  A lot of alcohol and enough emotion to kill it, mixed with no sleep for thirty hours, makes for blackout. I came up out of it reluctantly, feeling that this was no kind of world to be aware of. Not today.

  I lay looking at the bookcase. It was very quiet. I closed my eyes, turned over, burrowed into the pillow, opened my eyes again and saw Kelley sitting in the easy chair, poured out in his relaxed feline fashion, legs too long, arms too long, eyes too long and only partly open.

  I didn’t ask him how he got in because he was already in, and welcome. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to be the one to tell him about Hal. And besides I wasn’t awake yet. I just lay there.

  “Milton told me,” he said. “It’s all right.”

  I nodded.

  Kelley said, “I read your story. I found some more and read them too. You got a lot of imagination.”

  He hung a cigarette on his lower lip and lit it. “Milton, he’s got a lot of knowledge. Now, both of you think real good up to a point. Then too much knowledge presses him off to the no’theast. And too much imagination squeezes you off to the no’thwest.”

  He smoked a while.

  “Me, I think straight through but it takes me a while.”

  I palmed my eyeballs. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “That’s okay,” he said quietly. “Look, I’m goin’ after what killed Hal.”

  I closed my eyes and saw a vicious, pretty, empty little face. I said, “I was most of the night with Charity.”

  “Were you now.”

  “Kelley,” I said, “if it’s her you’re after, forget it. She’s a sleazy little tramp but she’s also a little kid who never had a chance. She didn’t kill Hal.”

  “I know she didn’t. I don’t feel about her one way or the other. I know what killed Hal, though, and I’m goin’ after it the only way I know for sure.”

  “All right then,” I said. I let my head dig back into the pillow. “What did kill him?”

  “Milton told you about that doll Hal give her.”

  “He told me. There’s nothing in that, Kelley. For a man to be a voodoo victim, he’s got to believe that—”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Milton told me. For hours he told me.”

  “Well all right.”

  “You got imagination,” Kelley said sleepily. “Now just imagine along with me a while. Milt tell you how some folks, if you point a gun at ’em and go bang, they drop dead, even if there was only blanks in the gun?”

  “He didn’t, but I read it somewhere. Same general idea.”

  “Now imagine all the shootings you ever heard of was like that, with blanks.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “You got a lot of evidence, a lot of experts, to prove about this believing business, ever’ time anyone gets shot.”

  “Got it.”

  “Now imagine somebody shows up with live ammunition in his gun. Do you think those bullets going to give a damn who believes what?”

&nbs
p; I didn’t say anything.

  “For a long time people been makin’ dolls and stickin’ pins in ’em. Wherever somebody believes it can happen, they get it. Now suppose somebody shows up with the doll all those dolls was copied from. The real one.”

  I lay still.

  “You don’t have to know nothin’ about it,” said Kelley lazily. “You don’t have to be anybody special. You don’t have to understand how it works. Nobody has to believe nothing. All you do, you just point it where you want it to work.”

  “Point it how?” I whispered.

  He shrugged. “Call the doll by a name. Hate it, maybe.”

  “For God’s sake, Kelley, you’re crazy! Why, there can’t be anything like that!”

  “You eat a steak,” Kelley said. “How’s your gut know what to take and what to pass? Do you know?”

  “Some people know.”

  “You don’t. But your gut does. So there’s lots of natural laws that are goin’ to work whether anyone understands ’em or not. Lots of sailors take a trick at the wheel without knowin’ how a steering engine works. Well, that’s me. I know where I’m goin’ and I know I’ll get there. What do I care how does it work, or who believes what?”

  “Fine, so what are you going to do?”

  “Get what got Hal.” His tone was just as lazy but his voice was very deep, and I knew when not to ask any more questions. Instead I said, with a certain amount of annoyance, “Why tell me?”

  “Want you to do something for me.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t tell no one what I just said for a while. And keep something for me.”

  “What? And for how long?”

  “You’ll know.”

  I’d have risen up and roared at him if he had not chosen just that second to get up and drift out of the bedroom. “What gets me,” he said quietly from the other room, “is I could have figured this out six months ago.”

  I fell asleep straining to hear him go out. He moves quieter than any big man I ever saw.

  It was afternoon when I awoke. The doll was sitting on the mantelpiece glaring at me. Ugliest thing ever happened.

  I saw Kelley at Hal’s funeral. He and Milt and I had a somber drink afterward. We didn’t talk about dolls. Far as I know Kelley shipped out right afterward. You assume that seamen do, when they drop out of sight. Milton was as busy as a doctor, which is very. I left the doll where it was for a week or two, wondering when Kelley was going to get around to his project. He’d probably call for it when he was ready. Meanwhile I respected his request and told no one about it. One day when some people were coming over I shoved it in the top shelf of the closet, and somehow it just got left there.