Slow Sculpture

by Theodore Sturgeon

  “It’s a simple answer,” he said shortly. “People are stupid.”

  “That isn’t the answer and you know it,” she said.

  “What is?”

  “Oh, I can’t tell you that! All I know is that the way you do something, when people are concerned, is more important than what you do, if you want results. I mean … You already know how to get what you want with the tree, don’t you?”

  “I’ll be damned.”

  “People are living growing things too. I don’t know a hundredth part of what you do about bonsai, but I do know this: when you start one, it isn’t often the strong straight healthy ones you take. It’s the twisted sick ones that can be made the most beautiful. When you get to shaping humanity, you might remember that.”

  “Of all the— I don’t know whether to laugh in your face or punch you right in the mouth!”

  She rose. He hadn’t realized she was quite this tall. “I’d better go.”

  “Come on now. You know a figure of speech when you hear one.”

  “Oh, I didn’t feel threatened. But—I’d better go, all the same.” Shrewdly, he asked her, “Are you afraid to ask the next question?”

  “Terrified.”

  “Ask it anyway.”

  “No!”

  “Then I’ll do it for you. You said I was angry—and afraid. You want to know what I’m afraid of.”

  “Yes.”

  “You. I am scared to death of you.”

  “Are you really?”

  “You have a way of provoking honesty,” he said with some difficulty. “I’ll say what I know you’re thinking: I’m afraid of any close human relationship. I’m afraid of something I can’t take apart with a screwdriver or a mass spectroscope or a table of cosines and tangents.” His voice was jocular but his hands were shaking.

  “You do it by watering one side,” she said softly, “or by turning it just so in the sun. You handle it as if it were a living thing, like a species or a woman or a bonsai. It will be what you want it to be if you let it be itself and take the time and the care.”

  “I think,” he said, “that you are making me some kind of offer. Why?”

  “Sitting there most of the night,” she said, “I had a crazy kind of image. Do you think two sick twisted trees ever made bonsai out of one another?”

  “What’s your name?” he asked her.

  The Girl Who Knew What They Meant

  I came out of the motel office feeling—well, feeling whatever it is you feel when you’ve just gotten a phone call from somebody saying “You’ve got a week, Sam,” and who will call once more: “You’ve got one more day, Sam,” and then you’re dead. I guess the only thing in the world that could have shifted my mind away from it even for a second would be a girl.

  This one did, only for a second or maybe three. It was the dog first, I guess. Afghan. Always did like Afghans. Have a friend back East who knows this, once sent me a whole book on Afghans—history, care and feeding, show points, pictures of past champions. This one was a honey-colored bitch all long bones and silk, and that’s about all I took in just then because of the girl. She had the dog on a plaited leash. She was dressed in baggy old Levis and an oversized man’s white shirt with the tails out, which is a way Miss Universe could dress in a men’s prison and not be noticed. But the sun was on her face and hair and her hair was just the color and even more silky than the Afghan’s. Also her eyes were very wide apart and matched her hair and the dog and the sunlight, and she wasn’t wearing a brassiere, which isn’t easy to notice under such circumstances but I can. I have a glandular condition that makes me notice those things.

  The whole thing stopped me in my tracks and I met her eyes, and I said (now you’ve got to believe me—of all the things in the whole wide world I might have said, I had to come out with this one) I said: “It’s a beautiful day.”

  And she said, “Why, thank you.” And smiled.

  Then my two or three seconds were up and reality came crashing all around me with one more week, and one more phone call and bang you’re dead, and I went back to my room to sweat it out.

  But you can’t stay feeling any particular way permanently, leastways not at the peak (like scared at that type of phone call) except maybe mad, and in a few hours the fear had gone back to the sprained-ankle kind of dull throb. It’s not filling the world any more, and it’s with you every step of the way, but at least you can think of other things too.

  And what I got to thinking of was this girl, and it wasn’t only the way she looked. I got to playing back that conversation in my head. “It’s a beautiful day.”

  “Why, thank you.”

  Now is that what they call in TV courtroom scenes “a responsive answer”?

  Not if you look at the words. If you look at the words they don’t make any sense at all. But you don’t look at the words. You look at why I wanted to make contact, and what made me say what I said, of all stupid things, and how she answered that instead of the words. She knew just exactly what I meant.

  I had a rush of brains to the head and got to rummaging around in the back of the closet where I’d thrown magazines and old Sunday papers, and there it was, the book. I got it out and banged the dust off it and went down to the office of the motel. It was a real cheap motel, twenty-one rooms and only one telephone which was fine on both counts. You can hide a lot if you live in a place like that. I found Mrs. Walker who came out of her apartment looking worried. She was the manager and how she looked didn’t mean anything, she just had one of those worried faces.

  I said, “Where’s the chick with the dog?”

  She said, “Now, Sam.”

  Is that responsive? I said, “Come on.”

  She said, “Number Five, but she’s a nice girl, Sam.” I guess if you look exactly at the words people use, it can get pretty weird. I mean they don’t say what they’re saying much at all, do they?

  I crossed the court to Number 5 and rapped. After a bit the door opened a little bit. The white shirt was buttoned with three buttons only and she went to work on the fourth one as soon as her hand was off the doorknob.

  “Here’s a book you want to borrow from me.”

  “Book?” She looked at it as I held it up, and smiled. I didn’t try to tell you what that smile was like the first time. I won’t try about the second time either. She knew that book. “Oh, I always wanted a copy, but it’s too expensive.”

  “Well you can take your time with it. Soon as I saw your dog I knew you’d want to have a look at it so I dug it out.”

  “I really appreciate it.” That smile.

  “It’s all right.” I backed off a step and made the OK sign with my free hand. “See you around.” I started to walk off and heard the door close softly behind me. You don’t push at first. Later you push.

  Then I turned around and knocked again. She opened and I said, “You forgot to take the book.”

  She didn’t laugh. “You forgot to give it to me.” Then she opened the door all the way and made Come In with her hand.

  I went in and put the book down on the dresser. It was a room like all the other rooms in the place—small, a double bed, plastic curtains with dust on them, walls with smog on them, suitcase-sized refrigerator with two electric burners bolted into the top and you could wash your dishes in the bathroom sink. For four bucks a night or ninety a month with linens and utilities, who cares? She had a piece of green glass, the kind they break out of a mold, big as my two fists, standing on the night table and some books, not the kind I ever read, and of course the dog. I scratched the dog in that hollow place under and behind the ear and she liked it.

  I sat down on the one puffy grimy chair and she sat on the bed with one ankle under her. We talked about her working at the veterinarian’s two blocks away and she couldn’t get any place to live cheap enough with a dog. Animals. California, especially Southern California, LA is not like any other city in the world with a feeling to it, like a San Francisco feeling, a Chicago feeling, N
ew York, New Orleans, they all have a special thing you would know in fifteen seconds with your eyes closed, but there is no such thing as a Los Angeles feeling. When you get to know it well you find there is a Pasadena kind of feeling that is not the same as Beverly Hills, and Encino sort of tastes different from Pacoima or Glendale, but there is no such thing as a real city-wide city flavor in LA. And I have a theory that no matter how long people live in LA they have no roots. They mostly come from other places and they had no roots there either, they cut them before they came or they just never had any, so it’s like the whole place is adrift. And she said, “What’s the matter?”

  I said, “Nothing.” I’d been laughing a lot too.

  She made coffee and I heard about the guy she was going to get married to only he got drafted and meningitis in boot camp and died, and how her folks made it so hard on her because they lived together before he went away and since then somehow her folks blamed her. “Not that they ever said that, but whatever they said, that’s what they meant.” Then we had dinner, she cooked it, she didn’t have anything but eggs so we ate those, and somehow it was ten o’clock and we were talking about snapping turtles, how if you stand on them it doesn’t hurt them but they pull in their necks and you can drill a hole in the edge of their shell to put a chain on and they never feel it, if you want to keep one for a pet, and all of a sudden she held out her arms and that was it.

  She had the most beautiful body I have ever seen. She did not wear brassieres for three reasons. One was they made her feel bound up and she did not want to feel bound up in any way. The other two reasons, one was on the right and one on the left, big and firm and perfect and holding themselves up and out without help from anything. She didn’t like to wear clothes at all, that was where it was at. I have seen that before, but always chicks who went for see-through clothes and low-cut this-and-thats, peepshow for everybody. With her it was a private personal thing. Once she said “When you’re naked you can lie to another naked person but it’s not easy.” She was a tremendous lay and she did not know or use any tricks. She just was.

  Well for three days she was at work or we were together every waking or sleeping minute. One night she woke me up and the whole room was like echoing. She said I was cussing in my sleep, shouting. She was afraid. She asked me what was the matter and I told her nothing. I tried to go to sleep again and she held me and I think I cried.

  So I told her about Millikein, he had it figured I was responsible for what happened to his brother, he had his mind made up I had to die too. Millikein had more money than God, but I don’t think that would have made any difference; he was a man who made his mind up and that was it. He made up his mind I was going to die on his kid brother’s birthday and he told me a whole year ahead. I ran a lot and hid a lot but he always found me and called me up or wrote me a letter as soon as I stopped, or I would meet him on the street. He even bought a beer bar, called Bash West, up the street. He always talked real nice to me, and I could go see him any time I wanted to; the only thing was, I was going to get killed four days from now. If it was a blackmail thing or something about money that I could pay off, well fine, but it wasn’t. And what I told her was there wasn’t any use going to the cops because who would listen to a story like that? I just didn’t mention that if I got the cops smelling into my business with Millikein’s brother, it could get even worse.

  Well the next afternoon I was laying on my bed which I had swung around so I could see across the court toward Number 5, so I would know when she got home from work, and I saw this chick, and even with what was going down between me and the girl with the Afghan, the first look at what walked in to that motel court brought me bolt upright. I mean the skirt up to here and a see-through blouse with just a couple little pockets here and here, and the hair fixed just so, wow, and long legs and a front end the like of which I swear I had seen only once in my life, and that was in Number 5.

  Well sure it was in Number 5. It wasn’t till the chick took out her key that I realized it was the same girl. Just because she didn’t like to wear clothes didn’t mean she didn’t have them or didn’t know how to wear them.

  I was over there so fast I don’t know yet whether I went out my door or through it. She was in the bathroom in mesh panty-hose washing makeup off her face. Makeup. Her.

  I said “Where have you been?” and she said with Millikein.

  She said she had to see him, she had to find out if it was all true.

  I said she thought I was a liar and she gave me a look so—I think tired is the word, such a long tired look I felt something wring inside. She said it wasn’t that, she said she had to talk to him to see if he meant it. She said when people talked to her she knew what they meant. By this time I was willing to buy that, I’d seen it happen with her often enough. So I asked her what he said.

  She dried her face and shook out her hair and came into the room. She took off the panty-hose and threw them in the corner. I never saw her do anything like that before. She fell down on the bed and told me he spoke real nice about me. He said he was just trying to throw a scare into me in case. He said he didn’t have proof of nothing. He said really he thought I was a nice young guy, just irresponsible sometimes and not bad. He said to her not to say anything to me, really because of what had happened I ought to have a good scare thrown into me, don’t spoil it because it was doing me a lot of good in the long run.

  I kind of blew my top at her because she nosed into it and I called her some things that hurt, I guess, that whole long body twitched when I yelled them at her. And I said she’d have to pay off for mixing into it because now Millikein would have to get rid of her too, what would he figure if he wanted to wipe me out and here was a chick knew all about it? And I said even if he was changing his mind, she had made him change it right back again, running off at the mouth like that.

  When I ran out of breath she rolled over and sat up and pushed the hair back from her face. I think I will always remember her like that no matter what else happens. So Goddam beautiful, not only a naked chick, that’s great, but she had a way of being naked like it was clothes, if you see what I mean, good ones, she wore it well like something made for her and cut so well she could forget about it, knowing it was perfect. Oh damn words anyway, that’s what this whole thing is about, damn words anyway.

  So I came down off it and sat next to her and told her it was a hell of a way to take good news like that, I felt the first hope I had for a whole year or more, and I know she did it for me. So we went to bed.

  The next day she didn’t come home from work at all.

  I waited for more than an hour and suddenly got filled up with the worst wild panic I ever had in my life. I ran up the street toward Bash West and from more than a block away I could see the blinking red lights and the people. Three police cars and two hogs and an ambulance. By the time I got there they were putting her in the wagon, I just got a flash of who it was, then the doors closed and it went howling off. They said somebody attacked a girl and she killed him defending herself. There was another meat wagon came then, and what they put in it had the blanket over its face.

  Who can remember all that happened next the way it happened? Running and yelling, a whole lot of stuff about money, why should you need money at a time like that? Yelling at Mrs. Walker the manager to give me twenty so I could get a cab to the hospital, somehow, not that it makes any difference, knowing that when she gave in it was for me not for the girl in five, she wasn’t a nice girl anymore because of me but me, I was still all right, what sense does that make? And then the cab that never came and when it came, standing still or running backwards all the way into Receiving Hospital, oh, forever, and then after all that running and yelling, waiting and waiting and waiting, looking at magazines I couldn’t see, drinking coffee I couldn’t taste out of the machine in the corridor.

  Then the doctor, they must have raided a TV show for him, graying temples, tired eyes, stethoscope around his neck:

  Now she wan
ts to see you very badly, only a few minutes, can’t say which way it will go, really it all depends on her, she can pull through if she wants to.

  And the corner of the IC Unit, that’s Intensive Care in case you didn’t know, all kinds of machines standing around, three nurses running between the beds, a burned kid, an old lady with both legs raised in the air with pulleys and breathing like a power hacksaw, and in the corner, there she was. The nurses put a screen around the bed and said Call me if, and Only a few minutes, and like that.

  I thought she might be knocked out, but no, she was just waiting with her eyes closed. Eye. The other one was under the bandages that covered her whole head and half her face. Otherwise she was covered with a sheet.

  She said to me, “Are you all right?” That’s what she said. I said, “I’m fine.”

  “He’s dead.” She closed her eye.

  “That’s what they tell me.”

  “Well then, you’re all right now.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “He was going to kill you.”

  “That’s not what you said.”

  “That’s not what he said either.” She could still smile a little. It wasn’t the same, with the one eye. “But it’s what he meant.” Then she said for me to lift the sheet.

  I didn’t want to, but she said to. I did and said “Oh my God,” and began to cry. She told me not to.

  I said, “Listen, I don’t care what it looks like, I am going to take care of you.”

  She said, “There’s a whole piece cut right out of one of them. And I’m not going to get that eye back.”

  I said, “Oh, my God.”

  She looked at me for a long time with that one eye. It had that tired look. After a while she said, not mad or anything, “All my life I’ve known what people meant, no matter what they said, and I never met one yet that said what he meant. I don’t think anyone knows how.”