“I know.” Mike nodded sadly. “They’re busy all the time.”
Greenberg spread his hands imploringly. “So what can I do? I can’t write him a letter or send him a telegram; he ain’t got a door to knock on or a bell for me to ring. How can 1 get him to come up and talk?”
His shoulders sagged. “Here, Mike. Have a cigar. You been a real good friend, but I guess we’re licked.”
They stood in an awkward silence. Finally Mike blurted: “Real hot, today. A regular scorcher.”
“Yeah. Esther says business was pretty good, if it keeps up.”
Mike fumbled at the cellophane wrapper. Greenberg said: “Anyhow, suppose I did talk to the gnome. What about the sugar?”
The silence dragged itself out, became intense and uncomfortable. Mike was distinctly embarrassed. His brusque nature was not adapted for comforting discouraged friends. With immense concentration he rolled the cigar between his fingers and listened for a rustle.
“Day like this’s hell on cigars,” he mumbled, for the sake of conversation. “Dries them like nobody’s business. This one ain’t, though.”
“Yeah,” Greenberg said abstractedly. “Cellophane keeps them—”
They looked suddenly at each other, their faces clean of expression.
“Holy smoke!” Mike yelled.
“Cellophane on sugar!” Greenberg choked out.
“Yeah,” Mike whispered in awe. “I’ll switch my day off with Joe, and I’ll go to the lake with you tomorrow. I’ll call for you early.”
Greenberg pressed his hand, too strangled by emotion for speech. When Esther came to relieve him, he left her at the concession with only the inexperienced griddle boy to assist her, while he searched the village for cubes of sugar wrapped in cellophane.
The sun had scarcely risen when Mike reached the hotel, but Greenberg had long been dressed and stood on the porch waiting impatiently. Mike was genuinely anxious for his friend. Greenberg staggered along toward the station, his eyes almost crossed with the pain of a terrific hang-over.
They stopped at a cafeteria for breakfast. Mike ordered orange juice, bacon and eggs, and coffee half-and-half. When he heard the order, Greenberg had to gag down a lump in his throat.
“What’ll you have?” the counterman asked.
Greenberg flushed. “Beer,” he said hoarsely.
“You kidding me?” Greenberg shook his head, unable to speak. “Want anything with it? Cereal, pie, toast—”
“Just beer.” And he forced himself to swallow it. “So help me,” he hissed at Mike, “another beer for breakfast will kill me!”
“I know how it is,” Mike said around a mouthful of food.
On the train they attempted to make plans. But they were faced by a phenomenon that neither had encountered before, and so they got nowhere. They walked glumly to the lake, fully aware that they would have to employ the empirical method of discarding tactics that did not work.
“How about a boat?” Mike suggested.
“It won’t stay in the water with me in it. And you can’t row it.”
“Well, what’ll we do then?”
Greenberg bit his lip and stared at the beautiful blue lake. There the gnome lived, so near to them. “Go through the woods along the shore, and holler like hell. I’ll go the opposite way. We’ll pass each other and meet at the boathouse. If the gnome comes up, yell for me.”
“O.K.,” Mike said, not very confidently.
The lake was quite large and they walked slowly around it, pausing often to get the proper stance for particularly emphatic shouts. But two hours later, when they stood opposite each other with the full diameter of the lake between them, Greenberg heard Mike’s hoarse voice: “Hey, gnome!”
“Hey, gnome!” Greenberg yelled. “Come on up!”
An hour later they crossed paths. They were tired, discouraged, and their throats burned; and only fishermen disturbed the lake’s surface.
“The hell with this,” Mike said. “It ain’t doing any good. Let’s go back to the boathouse.”
“What’ll we do?” Greenberg rasped. “I can’t give up!”
They trudged back around the lake, shouting halfheartedly. At the boathouse, Greenberg had to admit that he was beaten. The boathouse owner marched threateningly toward them.
“Why don’t you maniacs get away from here?” he barked. 44 What’s the idea of hollering and scaring away the fish? The guys are sore—”
“We’re not going to holler any more,” Greenberg said. “It’s no use.”
When they bought beer and Mike, on an impulse, hired a boat, the owner cooled off with amazing rapidity, and went off to unpack bait.
“What did you get a boat for?” Greenberg asked. “I can’t ride in it.”
“You’re not going to. You’re gonna walk.”
“Around the lake again?” Greenberg cried.
“Nope. Look, Mr. Greenberg. Maybe the gnome can’t hear us through all that water. Gnomes ain’t hardhearted. If he heard us and thought you were sorry, he’d take his curse off you in a jiffy. ”
“Maybe.” Greenberg was not convinced. “So where do I come in?”
“The way I figure it, some way or other you push water away, but the water pushes you away just as hard. Anyhow, I hope so. If it does, you can walk on the lake.” As he spoke, Mike had been lifting large stones and dumping them on the bottom of the boat. “Give me a hand with these.”
Any activity, however useless, was better than none, Greenberg felt. He helped Mike fill the boat until just the gunwales were above water. Then Mike got in and shoved off.
“Come on,” Mike said. “Try to walk on the water.”
Greenberg hesitated. “Suppose I can’t?”
“Nothing’ll happen to you. You can’t get wet, so you won’t drown.”
The logic of Mike’s statement reassured Greenberg. He stepped out boldly. He experienced a peculiar sense of accomplishment when the water hastily retreated under his feet into pressure bowls, and an unseen, powerful force buoyed him upright across the lake’s surface. Though his footing was not too secure, with care he was able to walk quite swiftly.
“Now what?” he asked, almost happily.
Mike had kept pace with him in the boat. He shipped his oars and passed Greenberg a rock. “We’ll drop them all over the lake—make it damned noisy down there and upset the place. That’ll get him up.”
They were more hopeful now, and the comments, “Here’s one that’ll wake him,” and “I’ll hit him right on the noodle with this one,” served to cheer them still further. And less than half of the rocks had been dropped when Greenberg halted, a boulder in his hands. Something inside him wrapped itself tightly around his heart and his jaw dropped.
Mike followed his awed, joyful gaze. To himself, Mike had to admit that the gnome, propelling himself through the water with his ears, arms folded in tremendous dignity, was a funny sight.
“Must you drop rocks and disturb us at our work?” the gnome asked.
Greenberg gulped. “I’m sorry, Mr. Gnome,” he said nervously. “I couldn’t get you to come up by yelling.”
The gnome looked at him. “Oh. You are the mortal who was disciplined. Why did you return?”
“To tell you that I’m sorry, and I won’t insult you again.”
“Have you proof of your sincerity?” the gnome asked quietly.
Greenberg fished furiously in his pocket and brought out a handful of sugar wrapped in cellophane, which he tremblingly handed to the gnome.
“Ah, very clever, indeed,” the little man said, unwrapping a cube and popping it eagerly into his mouth. “Long time since I’ve had some.”
A moment later Greenberg spluttered and floundered under the surface. Even if Mike had not caught his jacket and helped him up, he could almost have enjoyed the sensation of being able to drown.
I really don’t believe in feminist fiction, and certainly not in the fields of fantasy and science-fiction. If a male writer can put us into the mi
nd of a six-armed Legamoth from Canopus, he can sure as hell show us what Shirley McNulty from down the block is thinking. James Schmitz, for one, built a whole SF career on the antics of strong female protagonists (come to think of it, if you’d ever met Mrs. Schmitz, you’d understand why). Other male writers have done as well or better at putting themselves in the minds of members of the opposite sex, and of course the reverse is true.
On the other chromosome …
There are some stories that a man simply would not write. Not because being male renders him incapable of so doing, but just because he’s unlikely to think of certain themes, or at least to approach them in as, well, personal a fashion.
After you read Nina Hoffman’s story, you might want to think twice about approaching them at all.
Savage Breasts
NINA KIRIKI HOFFMAN
I was only a lonely leftover on the table of Life. No one seemed interested in sampling me.
I was alone that day in the company cafeteria when I made the fateful decision which changed my life. If Gladys, the other secretary in my boss’s office and my usual lunch companion, had been there, it might never have happened, but she had a dentist appointment. Alone with the day’s entree, Spaghetti-0’s, I sought company in a magazine I found on the table.
In the first blazing burst of inspiration I ever experienced, I cut out an ad on the back of the Wonder Woman comic book. “The Insult that Made a Woman Out of Wilma,” it read. It showed a hipless, flat-chested girl being buried in the sand and abandoned by her date, who left her alone with the crabs as he followed a bosomy blonde off the page. Wilma eventually excavated herself, went home, kicked a chair, and sent away for Charlotte Atlas’s pamphlet, “From Beanpole to Buxom in 20 days or your money back.” Wilma read the pamphlet and developed breasts the size of breadboxes. She retrieved her boyfriend and rendered him acutely jealous by picking up a few hundred other men.
I emulated Wilma’s example and sent away for the pamphlet and the equipment that came with it.
When my pamphlet and my powder-pink exerciser arrived, I felt a vague sense of unease. Some of the ink in the pamphlet was blurry. A few pages were repeated. Others were missing. Sensing that my uncharacteristic spurt of enthusiasm would dry up if I took the time to send for a replacement, I plunged into the exercises in the book (those I could decipher) and performed them faithfully for the requisite twenty days. My breasts blossomed. Men on the streets whistled. Guys at the office looked up when I jiggled past.
I felt like a palm tree hand-pollinated for the first time. I began to have clusters of dates. I was pawed, pleasured, and played with. I experienced lots of stuff I had only read about before, and I mostly loved it after the first few times. The desert I’d spent my life in vanished; everything I touched here in the center of the mirage seemed real, intense, throbbing with life. I exercised harder, hoping to make the reality realler.
Then parts of me began to fight back.
I reclined on Maxwell’s couch, my hands behind my head, as he unbuttoned my shirt, unhooked my new, enormous, front-hook bra, and opened both wide. He kissed my stomach. He feathered kisses up my body. Suddenly my left breast flexed and punched him in the face. He was surprised. He looked at me suspiciously. I was surprised myself. I studied my left breast. It lay there gently bobbing like a Japanese glass float on a quiet sea. Innocent. Waiting.
Maxwell stared at my face. Then he shook his head. He eyed my breasts. Slowly he leaned closer. His lips drew back in a pucker. I waited, tingling, for them to flutter on my abdomen again. No such luck. Both breasts surged up and gave him a double whammy.
It took me an hour to wake him up. Once I got him conscious, he told me to get out! Out! And take my unnatural equipment with me. I collected my purse and coat and, with a last look at him as he lay there on the floor by the couch, I left.
In the elevator my breasts punched a man who was smoking a cigar. He coughed, choked, and called me unladylike. A woman told me I had done the right thing.
When I got home I took off my clothes and looked at myself in the mirror. What beautiful breasts. Pendulous. Centerfold quality. Heavy as water balloons. Firm as paperweights. I would be sorry to say good-bye to them. I sighed, and they hobbled. “Well, guys, no more exercise for you,” I said. I would have to let them go. I couldn’t let my breasts become a Menace to Mankind. I would rather be noble and suffer a bunch.
I took a shower and went to bed.
That night I had wild dreams. Something was chasing me, and I was chasing something else. I thought maybe I was chasing myself, and that scared me silly. I kept trying to wake up, but to no avail. When I finally woke, exhausted and sweaty, in the morning, I discovered my sheets twisted around my legs. My powder-pink exerciser lay beside me in the bed. My upper arms ached the way they did after a good workout.
At work, my breasts interfered with my typing. The minute I looked away from my typewriter keyboard to glance at my steno pad, my breasts pushed between my hands, monopolizing the keys and driving my Selectric to distraction. After an hour of trying to cope with this I told my boss I had a sick headache. He didn’t want me to go home. “Mae June, you’re such an ornament to the office these days,” he said. “Can’t you just sit out there and look pretty and suffering? More and more of my clients have remarked on how you spruce up the decor. If that clackety-clacking bothers your pretty little head, why, I’ll get Gladys to take your work and hers and type in the closet.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said. I went back out in the front room and sat far away from everything my breasts could knock over. Gladys sent me vicious looks as she flat-chestedly crouched over her early-model IBM and worked twice as hard as usual..
For a while I was happy enough just to rest. After all that nocturnal exertion, I was tired. My chair wasn’t comfortable, but my body didn’t care. Then I started feeling rotten. I watched Gladys. She had scruffy hair that kept falling out of its bobby pins and into her face. She kept her fingernails short and unpolished and she didn’t seem to care how carelessly she chose her clothes. She reminded me of the way I had looked two months earlier, before men started getting interested in me and giving me advice on what to wear and what to do with my hair. Gladys and I no longer went to lunch together. These days I usually took the boss’s clients to lunch.
“Why don’t you tell the boss you have a sick headache too?” I asked. “There’s nothing here that can’t wait until tomorrow.”
“He’d fire me, you fool. I can’t waggle my femininity in his face like you can. Mae June, you’re a cheater.”
“I didn’t mean to cheat,” I said. “I can’t help it.” I looked at her face to see if she remembered how we used to talk at lunch. “Watch this, Gladys.” I turned back to my typewriter and pulled off the cover. The instant I inserted paper, my breasts reached up and parked on the typewriter keys. I leaned back, straightening up, then tried to type the date in the upper right-hand corner of the page. Plomp plomp. No dice. I looked at Gladys. She had that kind of look that says eyoo, ick, that’s creepy, show it to me again.
I opened my mouth to explain about Wilma’s insult and Charlotte Atlas when my breasts firmed up. I found myself leaning back to display me at an advantage. One of the boss’s clients had walked in.
“Mae June, my nymphlet,” said this guy. Burl Weaver. I had been to lunch with him before. I kind of liked him.
Gladys touched the intercom. “Sir, Mr. Weaver is here.”
“Aw, Gladys,” said Burl, one of the few men who had learned her name as well as mine, “why’d you haveta spoil it? I didn’t come here for business.”
“Burl?” the boss asked over the intercom. “What does he want?”
Burl strode over to my desk and pushed my transmit button. “I’d like to borrow your secretary for the afternoon, Otis. Any objections?”
“Why no, Burl, none at all.” Burl is one of our biggest accounts. We produce the plastic for the records his company produces. “Mae June, you be good to Burl now.�
��
Burl pressed my transmit button for me. I leaned as near to my speaker as I could get. “Yes, sir,” I said. With tons of trepidation, I rose to my feet. My previous acquaintance with Burl had gone further than my acquaintance with Maxwell yesterday. Now that my breasts were seceding from my body, how could I be sure I’d be nice to Burl? What if I lost the company our biggest account?
With my breasts thrust out before me like dogs hot on a scent, I followed Burl out of the office, giving Gladys a misery-laden glance as I closed the door behind me. She gave me a suffering nod in return. At least there was somebody on my side, I thought, as Burl and I got on the elevator. I tried to cross my arms over my breasts, but they pushed my arms away. A familiar feeling of helplessness, one I knew well from before I sent away for that pamphlet, washed over me. Except this time I didn’t feel my fate lay on the knees of the gods. No. My life was in the hands of my breasts, and they seemed determined to throw it away
Burl waited until the elevator got midway between floors, then hit the stop button. “Just think, Mae June, here we are, suspended in mid-air,” he said. “Think we can hump hard enough to make this thing drop? Wanna try? Think we’ll even notice when she hits bottom?” With each sentence he got closer to me, until at last he was pulling the zip down the back of my dress.
I smiled at Burl and wondered what would happen next I felt like an interested spectator at a sports event. Burl pulled my dress down around my waist.
“You sure look nice today, Mae June,” he said, staring at my front, then at my lips. My breasts bobbled obligingly and he looked down at them again. “Like you got little joy machines inside,” he said, gently unhooking my bra.
Joy buzzers, I thought. Jolt city.
“You like me, don’t you, Mae June? I can be real nice.” He stroked me.
Smart Dragons, Foolish Elves Page 30