The First Reginald Bretnor Megapack

by Reginald Bretnor

  The Judge put on his spectacles. George Giele began to flip the pictured pages of a magazine, holding it over so that Miss Luckmeyer might see. Mrs. Hiram Puny folded her hands again.

  Presently there was a knock of knuckles on the door. They all looked up. “Come in, my dear,” Mrs. Weatherbleak called. “Come in.”

  Annette Visser was a tall girl, all angles. Under her short-sleeved sweater, her breasts were like two tangerines, stuck on by a surrealist, too high, too far apart. Her eyes were black and bright. She held her little Mr. Margolis tight by the hand—at once quite happy, and afraid to be.

  Judge Ullbright, gasping, had risen to his feet, and Mr. Hiram Puny was doing so with a squeak of shoes. George Giele had caught himself halfway.

  Mrs. Weatherbleak’s smile had set. “I am so glad you could come by, just for a minute, dear. Now do sit down.” She looked around. “All of us know Miss Visser, I am sure, and Arthur Margolis. And she has something very interesting to tell us, too. Haven’t you, dear?”

  Annette Visser swallowed. Her too-tight, brownish skin flushed faintly. Jerkily, she edged with Mr. Margolis toward the piano bench. They sat, still holding hands. “Arthur—Arthur and me—” she said in a thin, clear voice. “We’re getting married.”

  “Uh—yeah, that’s right,” Arthur Margolis, grinning, nodded uncertainly.

  There was a moment’s silence. Then, “Isn’t that lovely?” cried Mrs. Weatherbleak. And, “Well, well,” the Judge coughed, easing himself back into his chair. And Mr. Hiram Puny said, “Congratulations,” just as if somebody had sold a fine big piece of real estate.

  “How very, very nice!” Mrs. Hiram Puny fluttered her hands. “I’m sure I hope that you’ll be very happy—” She peered at them nearsightedly. “—anyway.”

  George Giele and Miss Luckmeyer said nothing.

  “Dear, I hope you’ll have a pretty wedding in a church?” inquired Mrs. Weatherbleak.

  Annette Visser laughed excitedly. “Not us. We can’t spend all that money—apartments cost too much. We’ll run down to the City Hall this weekend. It isn’t where you’re married that really counts.”

  “Oh, goodness no,” Mrs. Hiram Puny said, and sighed. “It’s just a shame, that’s all.”

  Miss Luckmeyer had been staring at the girl’s skin, her dull hair, the length and thinness of her arms and legs. She had observed that Arthur Margolis was spindle-shanked and pale. Now she shut her eyes; and, to George Giele, her narrowing smile at once revealed her thought. He leaned toward her. “Maybe it’ll seem completely natural to them,” he whispered in her ear.

  She started; her smile disappeared. And Mr. Hiram Puny, his hearing still acute, swivelled around and said, “Huh? I don’t get it,” loudly.

  Mrs. Weatherbleak raised her voice across the room. “You do have an apartment?”

  Annette Visser hesitated. Though she could not have overheard George Giele, she suddenly seemed ill-at-ease. “We—we found one out in Chula Vista,” she said at last. “It’s a long way from where Arthur works. But it is furnished, and it’s sort of cute.” She turned to him. “We’d better go now, hadn’t we?”

  “I’m so glad you dropped in,” Mrs. Weatherbleak said.

  Then Arthur Margolis, embarrassed, went around and shook hands with the men, and invited everybody to drop by sometime, and said that he and Nettie had liked living there; it was so much like home.

  Finally the door clicked, and they were gone.

  Sharply, Mrs. Weatherbleak shut her book. “Well, I never. That’s gratitude for you. Not even a week’s notice!”

  “Oh, how we know,” Mrs. Puny said. “We learned our lesson when Mr. Puny was in real estate.”

  “What I can’t understand—” Shuddering, Miss Luckmeyer let her fingers slide slowly down her thighs. “—is why they’d want to? It’s—it’s indecent.”

  George Giele’s square jaw split in a grin. “Guess it’s the mating season—rabbits, birds, seagulls, everything.”

  The Judge chuckled and coughed. Mr. Puny laughed the way he usually did at Milton Berle. Miss Luckmeyer tittered.

  “Well, evolution’s very strange,” Mrs. Weatherbleak observed. “It makes some people even look peculiar—like pigs and things.”

  “That’s true,” Mrs. Puny replied. “Take Mildred Camber and that chow of hers. It’s almost frightening when you think of it. And if they look like that—” She shivered. “—maybe they have the instincts too. Maybe the poor things can’t help themselves.”

  Miss Luckmeyer leaned forward. “Do bugs have mating seasons?” she asked. “Because that’s what both of them remind me of—some kind of bug: brown, with a skinny body and lots of legs. Something I’ve seen not awfully long ago.”

  “Stick-insects!” George Giele slapped his knee. “You hit it on the head!”

  The Judge guffawed. Hiram Puny snickered. Mrs. Weatherbleak giggled seismically.

  “Say, say!” George Giele reached for the picture magazine, opened it, held it up. “They’re right in here. Look! Praying mantises. See how much taller she is than he? See, they’re mating—”

  Mrs. Puny turned delicately away.

  “—and afterwards she eats him up—”

  He stopped. There was a sudden silence. The idea filled the room. They tasted it.

  George Giele’s jowls turned red. “That’s what she’ll do!” His laughter soared. “She’ll eat him up! With—with salt and pepper. A-a-afterwards!”

  “That isn’t nice at all,” Mrs. Puny quavered. “Nobody would do that.”

  Miss Luckmeyer, eyes sparkling, reached for the magazine without a word.

  Each evening after supper, all the nice people who lived at Mrs. Weatherbleak’s came down into the parlor for an hour or so; and, every evening in the parlor, the idea grew. Amusing details of behavior were remembered; newly-found facets of resemblance were discussed…

  “It’s queer, Mrs. Weatherbleak. It’s as George says. She has a hungry look.” “I know it isn’t so—but don’t you feel that their arms and legs have more joints than they ought to have?” “Hm-m, yes, a colleague on the bench once told me of a case in France, a most unpleasant case…”

  As always, too, coincidence brought fresh material to the fantasy. George Giele twice saw Arthur Margolis on a downtown street. “Well,” he reported, “honeymoon can’t be over. He’s still on the menu, ha-ha-ha!”

  And, a week after the wedding, Hiram Puny ran into Annette Visser in a chain store, shopping on bargain day, her cart piled high. She had a case of catsup—a whole case. “What’d she want with that, hey?” he asked afterwards. “I don’t get it, unless—”

  The idea held them, and they nourished it. Each took that tenuous similarity, that cruelly apt abstraction of design, and filled it in. George Giele grinned, talking of knives and forks and condiments. Hiram Puny listened to him, and said, “Yum-yum, crunch-crunch,” and snickered. Painting no clear picture of his own, Judge Ullbright cited cases; the Donner Party was his favorite. Mrs. Weatherbleak giggled, and shook her head, and murmured, “I can just see her now.”

  Miss Luckmeyer, though, showed little interest in the consummation. On these occasions, she closed her eyes, and, with satisfaction, considered the dry, rustling, entomological caresses which must precede it.

  For three weeks, the jest thrived. Then, in its fullness, it was screened off, suddenly shrouded, forbidden as a parlor subject of discussion.

  One evening, Hiram Puny came down alone, a little worried, a little shamefaced. Mrs. Puny, he said, was having nightmares. He’d told her she was foolish, taking it that way. Wasn’t it just a joke, ha-ha? But she’d wake up, all pale as if she was scared to death, and then she’d lie there and swear she could see stick-insects in the wallpaper pattern, fighting, and trying to eat each other up, and—well, doing things.
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br />   Swift glances were exchanged, covert reminders that everybody knew of Mrs. Puny’s stay in a small private hospital.

  She could see the bugs change into Miss Visser and Mr. Margolis, Mr. Puny reported. She couldn’t stand it any more.

  Mrs. Weatherbleak pursed her lips. She clucked maternally. She frowned at George Giele, who was on the point of saying something tart. “Now, Mr. Puny,” she declared, “don’t you fret. You tell her I know how sensitive she is, poor dear, and to just come on down. We’re going to promise never to bring it up again.” She peered at them. “Aren’t we?”

  George Giele shrugged. The Judge formally gave his word. “Silence is golden,” Miss Luckmeyer said, a little acidly.

  Some minutes later, Mrs. Puny joined them, and watched the television show. And they kept their promise.

  They kept their promise for ten entire days. By then, Arthur Margolis had disappeared.

  The policeman was quite young, and fairly handsome in his new brown suit; and Mrs. Weatherbleak, sensing something in the wind, invited him into the parlor.

  Supper was over, and everyone was there. The policeman frowned slightly when he saw them. “They all live here?” he asked of Mrs. Weatherbleak.

  She said they did, and simpered, and added that they were her dearest friends.

  “Okay.” He nodded and sat down. “You know an Arthur Margolis?”

  Nobody answered. Only the creaking furniture replied.

  “Margolis,” he repeated. “Arthur. Didn’t he use to live here?”

  Their glances darted, quickly, like avid flies.

  “I knew it.” Mrs. Hiram Puny’s small head pecked the air. “I could tell right from the first that he was—shady.”

  “Mrs. Puny’s a real judge of character,” agreed her husband. “She spots ’em every time. Why, I remember once—”

  Mrs. Weatherbleak broke in loudly. “You’d never think it, not to look at him. If I’d dreamed for a minute—well, he’d not have set foot in this house, believe me!”

  “What’d he do, Sergeant?” George Giele asked. “What’d you get him for?”

  Woodenly, the policeman looked from face to face. “Not anything, far as I know. The guy’s missing, is all.”

  There was a silence, soft and perilous, hovering there. The tip of Mrs. Weatherbleak’s tongue came out to lick her parched cranberry lips. She stared at Mrs. Puny curiously. “Missing?” came her dry whisper. “Really?”

  Since Friday, the policeman said. Yeah. Once a month, maybe, the lumber firm sent Arthur Margolis up to the mill at Julian. He stayed a couple of days, usually, checking accounts. On Friday morning, he told his wife he thought he’d have to go. She didn’t even start to worry till Sunday night. Then, Monday, his boss had phoned. Where was Arthur? Julian? Heck no, he hadn’t even shown up for work on Friday. “So there we are,” the policeman said. “It’s sure rough on her; she says they’re newlyweds.” He shook his head. “And the trail’s four days cold already.”

  “Four days?” George Giele exclaimed. “Why that’s enough—”

  He stopped; and Hiram Puny snickered suddenly. “Yum-yum, crunch-crunch,” he cackled, showing his teeth. And then, with a swift, sidelong look at Mrs. Puny, he too was silent.

  Miss Luckmeyer looked up, clinical interest shining in her eyes. “You haven’t found the body?” she inquired.

  There was a hardness in the policeman’s face. “What is this?” he demanded. “What’s all this ‘yum-yum’ stuff? Lady, what makes you think there’s got to be a body? Maybe you people know something I don’t know?”

  “Oh, goodness—” Mrs. Weatherbleak’s smile, congealing, warned the room. “—it isn’t that at all.”

  “Ha-ha!” George Giele shifted in his seat. “It’s just a—sort of a standing joke. Something somebody said—”

  They chorused their corroboration.

  “Damn’ funny,” remarked the policeman. “Like a crutch.” He paused. “That crack about the body—that’s part of it, I guess?”

  “No,” snapped Miss Luckmeyer. “I mean, if he’s not dead—why ever else do people disappear?”

  The policeman told her there were other reasons. He took a ball-point pen and a sheaf of filing cards from his pocket, and asked his questions. Did the guy drink? What about other women? Debts? So on and so on.

  They answered him as well as they knew how, as well as their preoccupation would permit. Mrs. Puny closed her eyes; swaying a little, fingers kneading her knees, she forced out her responses—pale, fragmentary phrases rendered unreal by the brutality which impaled her mind.

  Finally, the policeman left. The thought they shared was free, to live, to flow beyond the tight enclosure of each privacy, to walk into the room.

  “It’s queer,” George Giele said, and shivered. “Damn’ queer.”

  “Yes, isn’t it?” Mrs. Weatherbleak replied in a hushed voice. “He was such a thin man.”

  “My God!” Miss Luckmeyer spat. “No one would really—”

  The Judge sat up. The folded flesh above his collar shook as he spoke. “Ah, wouldn’t they? You don’t know the world then. There was that Sutting case, just for example—a frightful thing. And—”

  Mrs. Puny covered her face. She whimpered through the leanness of her hands. She lurched erect, staggered, ran from the room leaving the door ajar.

  Her husband hesitated. He snickered foolishly. Then, as Miss Luckmeyer rose, he found his feet. As they went after Mrs. Puny, he muttered something about “more sleeping pills” over his shoulder.

  Mrs. Weatherbleak, Judge Ullbright, and George Giele remained alone.

  “She’s just too—well, imaginative,” Mrs. Weatherbleak observed, letting the broad shelf of her bosom rise and fall.

  “It doesn’t do to close your eyes to things,” said the Judge, “but you mustn’t let ’em grow on you, either. Mrs. Puny lacks—er—self-control.”

  “That four day business,” declared George Giele, “is enough to give anyone the creeps.”

  Then the phone rang in the hall; and Mrs. Weatherbleak got up to answer it, promising she’d be right back. In a moment, they heard her voice, metallic, shaping the tones of friendliness without its warmth.

  “On, yet, Miss Visser—I mean, Mrs. Margolis—yes, we know all about it, you poor dear. … Yes, the police were here. … Just asking questions, dear. … Of course, it must be awful for you there, all by yourself. I can quite understand why. … Well—I don’t know. For a few days, you say? … Naturally, just till they find him, dear, and it is spoken for. … No, no, I don’t mean you can’t have it, but—” Mrs. Weatherbleak’s voice became more intimate. “—there isn’t a single place left in the dining room, dear. I’ll have to have your meals all served upstairs. I know you won’t mind that.”

  At first, wrapped in the immediacy of her own concern, Annette Margolis noticed nothing strange. She was glad to have breakfast and supper in her room; she didn’t have to talk. She came and went, unconscious of the implications which might have been conveyed by a glance, an attitude, a word. When Mrs. Puny, with a cry, ducked back behind a door at the sight of her, it was coincidence. When Mrs. Weatherbleak gave her a magazine to read, it was an act of simple kindness; she scanned the pages, shivered a little at the mantises, and put the thing aside. She did not wonder what went on each evening in the parlor.

  Not at first. Not until the day before the police found Arthur Margolis.

  She came in ten minutes late for supper. She looked for Mrs. Weatherbleak to tell her she was back. She found her in the dining room. “Hello,” she called.

  No one replied. Mrs. Puny’s little hand jerked upward to her lips. The others simply stared. No one invited her to enter. Even though there were two vacant seats, nobody said a word.

  And she stared too, while Mrs. W
eatherbleak’s smile assumed its shape to say, “I’ll have your supper sent up right away, dear.”

  Afterwards she thought about it in her room, and slowly the sense of wrongness grew on her, the sense of something horrible carefully veiled. It was persistent. The next day, even before she heard that Arthur had been found, even as she was packing her grip to go, it haunted her.

  That evening, after supper, all the nice people who lived at Mrs. Weatherbleak’s came down into the parlor to hear the news. Even Mrs. Puny came, light-headed in her sudden convalescence. They took their places, and, exchanging speculations on how and where and why, they waited eagerly.

  Mrs. Weatherbleak entered. She stood dead still until the custard creases of her smile had set. Cocking her head, she listened in the hall. She closed the door.

  “Our Mrs. Margolis—” Her sharp, dry giggle welled; her surface shook. “She’s upstairs packing now. She told me—everything.”

  “Where did they find him?” Miss Luckmeyer asked impatiently. The others echoed her.

  But Mrs. Weatherbleak, before she answered, minced tantalizingly across the room to her own chair, sat there, regarded them. Again, she giggled. “Well,” she began, “it’s just the funniest thing. They didn’t really find him. He found himself.”

  “Not in a casserole?” George Giele cried, in mock astonishment. And they all laughed.

  “No, in Los Angeles,” Mrs. Weatherbleak said. “He walked into one of those offices—is it called Travellers’ Aid?—and told them that he’d just remembered who he was. He said he’d had a fall, or maybe a car had hit him—he wasn’t sure which—and that he’d been sort of wandering for those four days.”

  “I’ll bet,” Hiram Puny remarked sarcastically.

  “I’ll bet he caught on when she shook catsup on him!” George Giele roared. “Oh, ha-ha-ha! I’ll bet the male mantis tries to get away—and then his instincts bring him back.” He opened his arms wide. “Come to my mandibles, you pretty thing,” he cooed seductively.