Orbit 15 - [Anthology]

by Edited by Damon Knight

  My best friend was Permilia. She worked in a jewelry store on the corner of Fifth, and she always used one of my stalls whenever she got the urge to do it. The thing that fascinated me about Permilia was her hands. I mean, why make a fetish of hands? I thought about it and finally decided she removed all her rings and bracelets before getting down to business. Crude way of putting it? No cruder than saying people used to bang their heads off until they got the world so crowded it was like a can of beans. Banging. Why did they call it that? Why did some people always smear mud on the beautiful things? Wasn’t it beautiful to make love? But how did they determine if they were in love or merely in a state of randiness?

  Oh, well, it didn’t affect me personally. I wasn’t interested in sex, and as for masturbation, the stalls were just places I cleaned. Once a week I painted the walls. Every day I scoured them with ammonia, dragged the stools out onto the sidewalk and hosed them down. That was my life.

  I had a one-room pad just off Fifth, a comfortable place I called home. Stall maids earned fairly good pay, so I had some modern conveniences, though not as many as Permilia. Jewelry was a very popular commodity.

  Poor Pisby. He had something wrong in his head. That was where his trouble lay. His body was a pawn of his mind, and he couldn’t control that, so he died. Maybe he was sick both in body and mind. Why didn’t he simply quit doing it, or why didn’t he find a girl? It made no sense. After all, he was nearly fifty, and nobody that age had an intense sexual urge. Had they? I couldn’t say, being young and inexperienced and dead as a doornail in the beef department.

  Fifth Avenue wasn’t exactly crawling with queers, but now and then one ambled by. They were particularly vulnerable to the stalls, so they ought to have stayed on the few streets where there were none. For instance, a queer walks by, takes a gander at a stall and breaks his neck getting inside. According to the erotica I read, such people used to frequent park toilets, which may have been a good deal like the stalls in appearance. Anyway, I sympathized with the queers, as they were made randy as hell by their botched hormones.

  Lydon. What did I think of him? He took over for Pisby, showed up one rainy day when the stink of the stalls was ruining the air. I described him to Permilia, and she laughed and said he was a virgin, like me. How could she tell? Because he didn’t make a fetish of his hands. Later I recalled how she frowned and stiffened after she said that, exactly as if she had suddenly experienced a sharp pain. I asked her what she meant by the hand-fetish business, but she didn’t answer, broke her neck getting away from me, and it was a week before I saw her again.

  No one could live together; no roommates; no girls together, no men together, and, of course, a male and female were not permitted to share a pad. The population had to be kept down.

  Permilia said Lydon must be dead in the beef department because males almost always took to the stalls in their early teens. Their bodies were too exposed to stimulation, and this made them vulnerable. Women were a step behind them. Permilia laughed as she added, “But it’s a short step.”

  Lydon. The first time I laid eyes on him, I thought, “What a grubby little thing; but interesting.”

  He had a red face, and it wasn’t until I got close to him that I realized the redness was acne. It wasn’t bad, except at his jawline. It was unfortunate, because his face was sweetly formed. He had dark eyes and a small nose and mouth. His body was square, but too small. Well, not too small, at that. Looked at as a package of man, he wasn’t unattractive.

  We got off on the wrong foot right from the start. “This isn’t fit work for a fellow,” I said, and he took offense.

  “It’s what I like to do, and who says one job is for a man while another isn’t?”

  Plunging through the crowds, I went back to my own side of the street and figured to stay there. Tension I could do without. This man had a burr up his tail because he had a few pimples. How dumb could you get?

  “You going to vote today?” he yelled at me the next morning. It was early and the sidewalks were empty.

  “Nope.”

  Approaching the curb, he stood with his hands on his hips and scowled. “Why?”

  “For what purpose should I do a dumb thing like that? You think votes make any difference? It’s a con game, and I don’t intend to add to the farce.”

  “What kind of government would we have if everyone felt that way?”

  “Same kind we already got,” I said.

  That was all we had to say to each other that day. Toward evening, he washed up in the outdoor sink and walked away toward the voting booths. I had to laugh behind my hand. With his ass tucked in and his shoulders shoved up in the air, he looked like a stubborn little chicken. For sure, he knew I was watching him, and, for sure, his face was the color of raw mutton. One funny fellow. Except there was something sad about seeing him outlined against the dirty buildings. One leg forward, then the other leg, and his arms didn’t swing too much, and he kept moving farther away from me, and for some reason I continued watching until long after he was out of sight. Lydon. I should find out his last name.

  Permilia came by the next day. “What kind of men are you attracted to?” I said to her, and she gave me an odd look. “Of course, it’s none of my business,” I said. “I know people don’t like personal questions. Only I never see you with your boyfriend. In fact, I never see any couples anywhere. Can’t figure it out. Everybody is banging their head off, but I wonder where they’re doing it.”

  “You’re feeling smutty today,” she said. “Could the gonads be stirring at last?”

  “There are too many things I don’t understand, is all. Used to be it didn’t bother me, but now, well, what kind of world do we live in? I never been anywhere since Conditioning Center, other than in the orphanage. Been to fifth grade, like most people, and once in a while I take a bus to the Rally Field and listen to the election baloney, but that’s hardly any experience.”

  “You’re asking the wrong person, love. I never been anywhere, either.”

  “Don’t you ever get curious about what’s out of sight?”

  “Only when I get desperate,” said Permilia, and laughed.

  Since I couldn’t think of a response to that, I changed the subject. “Did you vote?”

  “Sure.”

  “Who for?”

  This time she merely smiled. “Sydney Lummet.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Dammit, Vega, when are you going to grow up?”

  “Why didn’t you vote for Sebastian?”

  “That virgin.”

  This was a subject I was interested in. “Lummet has something wrong with him. I mean, he’s weird. I saw him once on tv, and that was too often. Let me tell you about it. First thing that happened after the screen lighted up was a close shot of his hands; nothing but his hands. He had colored noodles strung on them like Christmas ornaments. Next thing that showed was his teeth, growing big as saws, and then the next thing you knew, he started eating those damned noodles off his fingers, one at a time. Never witnessed anything like it in my life. If that business draws votes for him, I’ll eat my hat.”

  Keeping a straight face, Permilia said, “Vega, you’re the dearest friend I have. You’re so innocent and stupid and sweet. Why don’t you lay off subjects you don’t understand? If you don’t like Sydney Lummet, vote for Sebastian or don’t vote at all.”

  She started to walk away, and I called after her. “Were you ever innocent and stupid and sweet?”

  She whirled and gave me an angry stare. Suddenly her face softened, crumpled. My surprise increased as I watched her eyes glisten with quick tears. Then she hurried away from me so fast she almost ran. I lost sight of her as she shouldered her way into the crowds.

  That scene made me brood for a solid week. Somehow I had hurt Permilia, and I wanted to punish myself for having done it. More, I wanted to know how and why it had happened.

  I had some words with Lydon. “My name is Vega, not that you’re all that inte
rested, but since we work close together, I’m not about to go on yelling, ‘Hey, you.’ “

  One leg to hold him up, red face, stammering; the man was bright but he was also dumb. “I wondered what it was.”

  “Why didn’t you just ask me?”

  “Wasn’t wondering that much.” His fingers rambled up to his face and worried a pimple.

  “Don’t do that,” I said. “Your hands are filthy from cleaning stalls and you shouldn’t be pawing your face with them. If you stopped doing—”

  “Why don’t you mind your own business?”

  “It’s obvious you can’t stand me, but I may as well tell you I couldn’t care less. It’s only that we work almost side by side—”

  “I didn’t mean to say it.”

  “In that case, I want to ask you a question; about older women. You think maybe their nerves go with age? I have this friend—”

  “I don’t know anything about women.”

  “Aren’t men pretty much the same?”

  He got redder by the second. “I can’t answer that.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just told you. I don’t know anything about women.”

  “Then I’ll change the subject. Take these stalls. Why do you figure so many people use them? My clientele are regular as clockwork; two, three times a day most of them come by, and some more often than that. I can’t figure out the attraction, can you?”

  Lydon stiffened up like a board. When he left me and stalked into his resting booth, he was more statue than human. I tried to get another glimpse of him, but some people walked by and blocked him from my view.

  I knew. He was embarrassed about sex. Shy. Set me to wondering how old he was. He hadn’t any beard to speak of, but then his hair wasn’t too dark, which may have accounted for that. Probably he was my age. Two dunderheads.

  Slept terribly that night, dreamed of a skeleton that had no flesh on it except in a crazy place. It kept following me around and I kept telling it to go away and leave me alone because I was dead as a doornail in the beef department. The skeleton laughed, and when I looked at its teeth I recognized it as Sydney Lummet. Instead of ordinary equipment between his legs, he had colored noodles.

  The next day, Lydon brought me an eggbeater. “It’s a present.”

  “What for?”

  “Know you don’t have one. They’re dear on the market.”

  “And eggs aren’t even on the market,” I said.

  He spoke very seriously. “You never know when one will turn up.”

  He went back to his side of the street, and I spent the morning alternately smiling and frowning. Permilia came by to use a stall, but she didn’t speak to me.

  Finished with my cleaning, I sat and snatched glimpses of Lydon between passersby. It was uncanny, but each day he seemed to be growing better-looking. How could that be? I heard first impressions were the only true ones, and when I first laid eyes on Lydon he was a grubby little mutt. Today he was no worse-looking than any of the fancy fellows who used my stalls.

  Couldn’t watch him in the afternoon because he sat on the curb and watched me. That pleased me. I passed time by examining the hands of my customers. The women preferred heavy jewelry; the men liked crepe streamers or thin chains that dangled free or were wrapped around the fingers. One fellow, a kook, had a thing about handcuffs. Once a day, every day, he came bursting through the mobs, stopped at the first stall, burst into tears, unlocked the cuffs on his wrists and darted inside.

  “I’m sick and tired of your feeling sorry for me,” I said to Permilia. It had been a week since I’d spoken to her. “You act like I’m a lamb about to be led to the slaughter. Kindly tell me what in hell is wrong with you.”

  “Memory. There’s a piece of brain in my head that won’t be laid to rest.”

  “You’re different. Don’t you like me anymore? If you don’t you can be frank about it. You don’t have to use my stalls out of politeness.”

  “You fool.”

  “That’s easy to say. Everyone is a fool.”

  Quick as a wink, she changed the subject, or I thought she did. “There’s a clinic on Eighth does a lot of operations free of charge.”

  “What kind of operations?”

  “They’ll lop off your beef if you ask them.”

  “Holy crow.”

  “Takes three minutes; no pain, no fuss.”

  “Permilia, what in the world—”

  “Go over there and get it done. Right away. Today.”

  “There’s another clinic on Ninth,” I said. “It’s for nuts, and you’d better get over there fast.”

  “Do it, sweetie,” she said, and her eyes were full of tears.

  “Go away. You’re scaring me.”

  Lydon. He makes me miserable. Do I make him miserable? I hope so. There is a kind of sweetness like no other, and it only comes riding on the person of another. This sweetness worries me. It makes me despair. A pair of pants is nothing but a pair of pants. Shoulders, smelly old feet, hands, sweaty neck, hair in need of a shampoo, common face. Ordinary things. He comes out of his resting booth and everything which I am grows alert, like hair that suddenly stands on end. He looks across the street to see if I’m there, and naturally I am, and where else does he think I’d be? I’m never sick, so why look to see if I went somewhere?

  The stink of the stalls saturates the air. The crowds have gone home. It is raining. I like the stink and the moans and the rain. He’s over there where I can see him. The sweetness is as the steam rising from the sidewalks. Unhappy am I because it’s almost quitting time, and he’ll lock up his booth and walk away without saying good-bye. This business is making me sick. He sits over there, watching me all day, but seldom does he smile or say good-bye. I mean, if I’m fit to look at all day, aren’t I fit for more?

  “Permilia, I have a problem.”

  “You’re alive.”

  “That isn’t the problem.”

  “I’m in a hurry.”

  “You’re getting to hate me, and I don’t know what I did.”

  She replied, but not to me; to herself maybe. “I should have grown a shell around me, like a clam. What do I care about a dumb kid? So she’ll grow up, the same as everybody else, and I should laugh. I told her to go to that clinic, but she wants to keep her button. Why? Because without the goddam thing she might as well be dead. But she’ll be dead if she keeps it. What kind of a world is this?”

  Sydney Lummet won the election. We had a new President and everybody was happy. I was happy too. That old Lydon, that dumbbell, he brought me a present; a camera. I took his picture, he took mine.

  “Did you vote for Lummet?” I said.

  “Sebastian. I’m sorry the way the election turned out. I don’t think Lummet can handle the economic crisis. Already we got too many people starving. He’s an egotist. Besides, he leans too heavy toward psychology. You can’t run a country on speculation, which is all psychology is.”

  I wasn’t paying any attention to what he said. From the corner of my eye, I stared at his throat. The sun made it pink; it glistened like baby skin. Probably he looked that way all over. Next I examined his face. Common, ordinary man, except that he gave me a bellyache.

  He was smiling at me. “Do you like to read?”

  It was my turn to get red. “You won’t laugh?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I don’t know enough to get along. You know. I’m not backward as far as brains go, but nobody ever tells me anything. How can I learn about life unless I read? So I read porno.”

  The smile left his face as if someone had smacked it off. His eves grew small and narrow, and his mouth went thin. “Both of us are in the same boat. I read it too.”

  At noon he came over to my side of the street. We sat on the curb and had lunch together.

  “What do you want to do with your life?” he said. “What is it that you have to have? I mean, what’s your main interest?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

>   “Me, either. I guess I’m just waiting for life to come and get me. Doesn’t it work that way? We wait for death. I guess we wait for life too.”

  “I guess.”

  Permilia and I were both out of sorts. My trouble was a mystery to me. As for my friend, I planned to tell her to see a doctor, that is if I could get close enough to her. Suddenly I had the plague or something. Regular, she came to use the stalls, and regular, she kept out of my reach. From what I could see from a distance, she was steadily losing weight. Her skin looked bad. In fact, her whole appearance was haggard. Maybe she had gotten hooked on dope. I’d ask her, first chance I got.

  My trouble. Awake at three every morning with my brain clicking away at the same old subject. Lydon. Why didn’t he go away? So he didn’t show up at work for three days. I didn’t know if he had been sick. For some reason I was afraid to cross the street and ask him. Why didn’t he come over and tell me where he had been? He sat in his resting booth, after he returned, and he looked as white as a sheet. Damn you, Lydon, what’s wrong? Why don’t you like me anymore?