Collected Fiction

by Kris Neville

  “Chickadee, we are sure.”

  “I’m not,” Mrs. Harrison said. “So we’ll just buy a few things at first, things we can pay for if something goes wrong and they send us a bill. Anyhow, it’s near the end of the month, and we’ll find out in four or five days.”

  A few minutes later, Mr. Harrison called up Moss-Eagleberg’s charge department. He gave his name and address. Bessie checked against his recording; okayed it. The human operator said, “Your circuit is open now, sir. You can dial your order.” And, very carefully, he dialed the catalog numbers: a big tri-di TV set, a Chinchilla trimmed hostess gown, a flacon of En Chaleur No. 5, a silver service for eight, a banquet for two with ortolans, truffles, and other strange goodies from the Rotisserie, a case of champagne, and a box of expensive cigars.

  They didn’t have to wait long. At 11:15, the delivery port in the hall buzzed its warning, and cartons and packages began to come out. As they appeared, Mr. Harrison opened each one and checked up on its contents. Every item was there. In fact, there were two tri-di sets.

  “My finger must’ve slipped dialing that one,” he remarked. “Well, no harm’s done. Anyhow, it works just as I told you. I’ll hang onto my job for awhile so nobody’ll get any funny ideas, but from now on Moss-Eagleberg’s going to support us in style. Let’s celebrate!”

  They celebrated right through the weekend, enjoying their champagne hangovers thoroughly, and spending almost as much time over the catalog as in watching their new tri-di sets. They celebrated all over again on New Year’s Eve. Then, as the first days of January went by without any bill, Mrs. Harrison began to say less and less about what might happen if something went wrong, and to think more and more about a future of opulent ease provided by Bessie.

  On January 10, unable to wait any longer, she phoned Moss-Eagleberg, asked for a statement on her husband’s account, and was informed that no purchases had been made. When he came home that evening, she had her new shopping list all made out.

  “I want you to order all these things in the morning, Eberhard dear,” she told him. “It’s too soon after Christmas to buy jewelry and clothes; they’ll be almost sold out. So this time I’ll simply get things for the house: a grand piano, a Louis the Something-or-other bedroom suite, and a dear little electronic organ, and new curtains all around, and a freezer, and a real antique spinning-wheel, and a marbletop dresser, and—oh, and all sorts of things.”

  “Better not go getting too much big stuff,” Mr. Harrison warned, “at least not at one time. It won’t come up through the port; the janitors’ll have to bring it in the service elevator. We don’t want them getting suspicious.”

  “Don’t worry,” Mrs. Harrison said. “I’ve thought of all that. We aren’t going to order more than once in two weeks, even things like our meals. If the police found it out, goodness knows what they’d do! They’d probably use that psychiatric technique on you, the one that made cyber-surgery on people out of date. Then where would we be?”

  Mr. Harrison laughed. “I’d be sort of a zombi. I’d be just like a Cuddlypet only more so. But they’ll never find out because Bessie won’t tell them. She loves me too much, ha-ha-ha! It’s BUILT-IN!”

  Next day, just before noon, the delivery came through. As the smaller objects were being stacked up in the hall, the telephone rang; and Mr. Harrison, breaking off the catchy commercial he was humming, answered it.

  “Hello? Mr. Harrison?” The building manager sounded a little upset. “We’ve got a raft of stuff for you down here, Mr. Harrison. You—you want to come down?”

  “No, indeed, Mr. Quandt. Just send it up.”

  “All of it?”

  “Of course, all of it!” Mr. Harrison snapped. “Why shouldn’t you send all of it up?”

  “Well, okay if you say so. If you can figure where to put three grand pianos in that apartment of yours, I guess it’s your busi—”

  “What’s that? How many pianos?”

  “Three, Mr. Harrison, like I said. The store must of made a mistake.”

  Mr. Harrison covered the mouthpiece. “They—they sent three grand pianos,” he said to his wife.

  “Well, we’ll have to send two of them back.”

  “We—we can’t send them back, Chickadee. There’d be too many questions. My God, we can’t even sell them! We’ll have to fit them in someplace, that’s all. I—I must’ve dialed a three instead of a one when I ordered. That must’ve been it. Whew!” He turned back to the phone. “There’s been no mistake, Mr. Quandt,” he declared a little too loudly. “I checked with the wife. She—she likes music a lot.”

  The Harrisons put the three grand pianos in the living room, where they took up eighty percent of the space. They hoisted the tri-di TV’s onto one of them, and the spinning-wheel onto another; and they squeezed the organ into the bedroom between the new bedroom set and the marbletop bureau. The next time Mr. Harrison ran into Mr. Quandt in the hall, he dropped a hint that his wife had these moods when she had to be humored; doctor’s orders, he said. And he made up his mind to double-check every digit he dialed in the future.

  As for Mrs. Harrison, she accepted the crowding philosophically. When she wasn’t out window-shopping at Moss-Eagleberg’s, she kept herself busy making out and revising her lists, running happily through such compositions as “Pretty Redwing” and “The Golliwog’s Cakewalk” on her pianos, and regretting that she couldn’t tell that frumpy Eppinger woman about Bessie.

  On January 24, they ordered again, and again Mrs. Harrison put off getting her jewels and her wardrobe. “You order this time,” she said. “All I want is one of those iridium-mink coats, and some silver things for my dresser, and a little more perfume, so it won’t matter much if you do make another mistake. But when I get the really valuable things, I want to do it myself. Now that I think of it, you always do seem to get the wrong number when you phone.”

  When the order arrived, “There!” she cried out. “Didn’t I tell you? I said one iridium-mink coat, and you went and got four.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Mr. Harrison said. “I could’ve sworn I dialed that right. If I didn’t know that machines simply can’t—” He shrugged. “Well, anyway, it’s lucky they had four in stock.”

  Then, without protest, he called up Moss-Eagleberg and arranged to have Bessie record his wife’s voice so that she could charge against his account—and he warned her not to order a thing for two weeks at least.

  Mrs. Harrison assured him that she wouldn’t, adding that he needn’t worry about her dialing half-a-dozen when she meant only one; and she kept her promise for all of five days. On January 29, though, she happened on an ad in the paper where it said that Moss-Eagleberg were having a sale on star sapphires, up to 30 per cent off the regular price. Even though she knew there wouldn’t be any charge, somehow she couldn’t resist it.

  Giving herself the excuse that she might as well charge the next order of food now as later, she picked out a medium-sized stone of about eighteen carats and circled its number. She dialed it last, very slowly and carefully.

  When the delivery arrived, Mrs. Harrison hurriedly searched for the one little package. Not finding it, she controlled her impatience and began checking off all the boxes of food by their numbers. When she had moved every one of them into the kitchen, she found one package left. But it wasn’t a small one. It was about four feet high, and exceedingly heavy. Her heart fluttering, she tore off the paper and exposed a big wooden box with ELL-AY ARTYCRAFTS, INC. stencilled on the side. She obtained a screwdriver, and pried off the top, and exposed a combination sundial and birdbath in genuine simulated bronze, with fat cherubim peeping up over the edge, and North, South, East, and West marked with arrows, and a motto cut into the rim: Honi Soit Qui Mai Y Pense.

  Mrs. Harrison sat down. She wept for two solid minutes. She tried to remember whether she could have made a mistake on the very first number of the sapphire. Then, straining mightily, she pushed the birdbath-cum-sundial into a closet and covered it up. When her hu
sband came back from work, she said nothing about it.

  Four days later, she made another try for the sapphire. This time, she received several pairs of long winter woolies, size 50 long stout. A little hysterically, she hid them back of the birdbath, and said not a word.

  On February 5, the telephone broke up her afternoon nap. When she answered it, a feminine voice sang loudly and clearly:

  “Happy birth-day, to you-u-u

  Happy BIRTH-day to you-u-u,

  Happy BIRTH-DAY, dear Eber-hard,

  Happy birth-day to YOU-U-U!”

  And, within half an hour, something arrived from Moss-Eagle berg—a huge, heart-shaped box of candied fruit with WON’T YOU BE MY VALENTINE? across the outside. As the day was neither Mr. Harrison’s birthday nor St. Valentine’s Day, she deduced that her husband was playing a joke, and she mentioned it to him on his return.

  “. . . and it seems to me,” she concluded, “that you’d be above things like that, especially after lecturing me on not ordering so often. All that candied fruit—it’ll take weeks to eat up!”

  After the initial shock of the news, Mr. Harrison had decided, logically enough, that Winkler and Swartz were trying to prove to him that Bessie was grateful. This, however, was hardly a subject he wished to debate with his wife, so he simply assured her that he hadn’t ordered a thing, that he was as puzzled as she was.

  “Nonsense!” cried Mrs. Harrison shrilly, still unnerved by the birdbath and the long underwear. “I refuse to believe it. And you aren’t being funny at all. I’m sure Elmer Maginnis wouldn’t ever have stooped to being so—so childish. Don’t you dare to do it again!”

  When they retired that night, she was still very angry; and the events of the following day did nothing at all to mend matters. The telephone rang. The feminine voice sang its message. Presently, Moss-Eagleberg delivered a pair of large potted cacti.

  Mr. Harrison’s protestations went unheeded. His wife turned the Cuddlypets program up louder than ever before, and ignored him icily. He began to wonder whether he hadn’t better do something about Winkler and Swartz.

  Next morning, he stopped wondering. As it was Saturday, he answered the phone himself. He heard its gay greeting. An hour or so later, after reading the card enclosed with the package, he unwrapped one dozen athletic supporters. On the card was a drawing of a woman in uniform, and under the drawing were the words: Lots of Love to my Aunt in the Service.

  Mr. Harrison decided that on Monday he would approach Winkler and Swartz and take drastic action.

  Mrs. Harrison also reached a decision. With Eberhard making such a fool of himself, there was no point in her waiting for the good things of life. On Monday—

  On Monday, just before lunch, Mrs. Harrison ordered a score of the most expensive items in the jewelry department. She also dialed a small but select wardrobe of the sort which might have been chosen by a particularly wealthy and generous maharajah’s favorite wife. As she hung up, she told herself reassuringly that in no previous delivery had there been more than a single mistake, and that one mistake now wouldn’t really make very much difference—though she did hope it wouldn’t be on the rope of pearls, triple strand.

  At about the same time, Mr. Harrison sneaked out of the office of Jonson, Williamson, Selznick, and Jones, and went to a pay phone. An angry gleam in his eye, the phrases with which to demolish Winkler and Swartz all set in his mind, he called up Moss-Eagleberg and asked for Bessie’s control-room. As soon as it answered, he shouted, “Winkler? Winkler, you listen to me—”

  “Who you want?” shouted the receiver back at him.

  “I want Winder A

  “Not here.”

  “Okay then—Swartz.”

  “Who?”

  “Swartz!”

  “He ain’t here neither!”

  “THEY GO OUT TO LUNCH?” Mr. Harrison bellowed. “WHEN YOU EXPECTING THEM BACK?”

  “THEY WON’T BE BACK!” bawled the receiver. “THEY BEEN TRANSFERRED. THEY’VE WENT OUT TO DALLAS! GODDAMMIT, STOP SHOUTING!”

  Mr. Harrison stopped shouting. His stomach felt as though it had suddenly passed through a very cold wringer. He said, “H-how long ago?”

  “Three weeks!” barked the phone.

  Mr. Harrison groaned. He replaced the receiver, and staggered away from the booth. He found his way to a bar, and had two double bourbons. Then he went back to Jonson, Williamson, Selznick, and Jones, and pretended to work for the rest of the day. He thought of the Valentine present and the cacti and the athletic supporters. He wondered whether his wife might not have ordered them all for a gag, and decided against it. He remembered what Winkler and Swartz had said about Bessie, and cursed both of them for a pair of dumb bastards. Finally he recalled that sometimes a new Cuddlypet took awhile to adjust—that a couple of months might go by before the Schroeder Bypass stabilized properly. It was pretty rare, but it happened. Maybe—

  By the time he got home, he had persuaded himself that something like this had happened to Bessie, that all he and his wife had to do was sit tight for another few weeks and it would all straighten out.

  “Hello! Hello-oh!” he called as he opened the door. “Chickadee, I’m home.”

  He halted abruptly. The hall was full of crates, cartons, boxes, and bundles. Some had been opened, wholly or partially; others were intact. Some were small; some were big; several were simply enormous. And there were more of them showing in the visible part of the living room.

  “H-Honeybunch?” Mr. Harrison called in alarm. “Where are you? Hey, Chickadee!”

  He was answered by a loud and very moist sob from the bedroom. There, stretched out on the Louis-the-Something-or-other bed, he discovered his wife. Dashing in, he tripped over a tangle of paper and string on the floor, swore, sat down on the edge of the bed, put an arm round her. “Sweetheart!” he cried. “Mignonetta! What’s happened? What’s wrong?”

  Mrs. Harrison quaked. She shook off his arm. She sat up, revealing a very red nose and some badly eroded makeup. “What’s h-happened?” she wailed. “Wh-what’s wrong? Just l-look what you did-id!”

  She pointed, and a new freshet of tears came forth. Mr. Harrison, following her finger, beheld a dark cylindrical object partly concealed by the wrappings over which he had stumbled. He lifted it out. It was about two feet high, leathery, hollow, and more than ten inches across.

  “I just dialed some jewels and a f-few things to wear—and loo-o-k what I got. Ei-eighteen of them!”

  Mr. Harrison looked. He saw that, down at the bottom, the object splayed out very slightly into four recognizable toes. He lifted the tag. On one side it said, CONGO NOVELTIES, Original! Exclusive!; on the other, HIPPOPOTAMUS FOOT UMBRELLA STAND, Guaranteed Real.

  Mr. Harrison let it slide to the floor. He peered at his hands, found they were shaking, put them away in his pockets. “Hippo feet,” he muttered aloud, “for umbrellas. Must be a mistake. That’s what. Just a mistake.”

  Mrs. Harrison threw herself back on the pillow with a shrill cry of anguish.

  “—ha-ha-ha! Machines make mistakes all the time. No harm done, ha-ha! Be all right. Yes, indeed. Don’t you worry.” He patted her clumsily. He went out. He attempted to take a brief inventory. Besides the eighteen hippopotamus feet, he found a bale of peat moss, a turret-top lathe, two lobster traps, a case of Adventist hymnbooks, five or six crates of lettuce, a hayrake, a portable duck blind with decoys, a small Japanese automobile, and a cage containing a family of Belgian hares.

  At that point, definitely dazed, he gave up and went back to the bedroom. Mrs. Harrison was sitting up. She had dried her eyes, and looked combative.

  “S-something went wrong,” Mr. Harrison mumbled.

  She did not reply.

  “M-maybe I ought to have put in a Dappleby Block,” he continued. “Chickadee, maybe that’s what—”

  “Don’t you Chickadee me, you—you beast!” Mrs. Harrison leaped to her feet. “I’ll tell you what’s wrong! That mechanical brain or whatever it i
s—that thing you call Bessie. She loves you! She loves you—and she’s jealous of me! That’s what’s wrong. When you ordered the piano, she sent you two extras. It was the same with the coats, because it was you. But whenever I ordered something, just look what I got—rabbits and birdbaths and hippopotamus feet!” She stamped on the floor. “Well, you just get all that junk out of my house, do you hear? Send it back to your Bessie. Oh, if you could’ve seen the look on that Mr. Quandt’s face when they brought it all up! Like—like we’d stolen it! Oh! Oooh, Eberhard dear, what will we do-o-o?”

  She collapsed on his chest. Again she burst into tears. They clung to each other. Presently, between sobs, “That awful m-machine,” Mrs. Harrison moaned. “She Moves you. And I Move you too. The nerve of the thing, s-sending me all that old trash! And s-sending you p-p-presents like that! Well, you can just choose between us, that’s all. If you want me to stay, you can just send every bit of it back!”

  Mr. Harrison was trying desperately not to think of the expression on Mr. Quandt’s face—and of his probable fate if the police got wind of his little affair with Bessie. However, he got a grip on himself. He pointed out that Bessie was just a machine. He explained that she didn’t really love him, not even as much as a Cuddlypet would have. It was merely a matter of circuits, of condensers and things. He also explained that, much as he wanted to get rid of the stuff that was cluttering the place, it would be taking too big a risk. Of course, he could drop all that lettuce down the garbage disposer, and he guessed he could sneak out some night and let the rabbits loose in the park. But they’d just have to live with the rest of the stuff for a year or two, maybe selling it off or giving it away bit by bit. If they did that, and didn’t let anyone in the apartment, and didn’t have any friends in, maybe they’d be safe enough. Mr. Quandt couldn’t have talked to the police; if he had, they would’ve been there by now. And tomorrow he himself would go down to Moss-Eagleberg’s, and he’d take the Schroeder Bypass right out, and erase all the records, and they’d have no more trouble—because Bessie was just a machine after all.