by Sam Merwin
"No more standing in a teller's cage for me. No morefeeling the life-sap dry up inside me, handling thousands of dollars aday and none of it mine."
She stepped to him, gripped him tightly, her fingernails makingthemselves felt even through the heavy material of his jacket. Shekissed him fiercely and said in a throaty whisper, "Darling, I'm goingupstairs. Come up in ten minutes--and be young again with me."
She left him standing alone in front of the fire....
Coulter filled his pipe and lit it. His mother had said _we_ when shetalked of her plans, as if her son were merely an object to be movedabout at her whim. _Pick up my lighter at MacAuliffe's ... going to takea trip abroad this summer ... not going to be foolish about her...._ Hecould see the phrases as vividly as if they were written on a videoteleprompter.
And then he saw another set of phrases--different in content, yetstrangely alike in meaning. _Nonsense, we'll have a yacht ... lord itover ordinary mortals ... a long wait._ He thought of the voodoo and thefingernail parings, of the savage materialism of the woman who was evennow preparing herself to receive him upstairs, who was planning torelive his life with him in _her_ image.
He thought of his wife, foolish perhaps, but true to him and neverdomineering. He thought of the Scarborough house and the good friends hehad there, hundreds of miles and twenty years away. He wondered if hecould go back if he got beyond the five-mile radius of the strangemachine in the basement.
He looked down with regret at his slim young body, so unexpectedlyregained--and thought of the heavier, older less vibrant body that laywaiting for him five miles away. Then swiftly, silently, he tiptoed intothe hall, donned coat and hat and gloves, slipped through the front doorand bolted for the Pontiac.
He drove like a madman over the icy roads through the dark. Somehow hesensed he would have to get beyond the reach of the machine before Evegrew impatient and came downstairs and found him gone. She might, in heranger, send him back to some other Time--or perhaps the machine workedboth ways. He didn't know. He could only flee in fear ... and hope....
At times, in the years that had passed since his abrupt breaking-off ofhis romance with Eve Lawton, he had wondered a little about why he haddropped her so quickly, just when his mother's death seemed to open thepath for their marriage.
Now he knew that youthful instinct had served him better than he knew.Somehow, beneath the charm and wit and beauty of the girl, he had sensedthe domineering woman. Perhaps a lifetime with his mother had made himextra-aware of Eve's desire to dominate without its reaching hisconscious mind.
But to have exchanged the velvet glove of his mother for the velvetglove of Eve would have meant a lifetime of bondage. He would never havebeen his own man, never....
He could feel cold sweat bathe his body once more as he sped past theBrigham Farm. According to his wristwatch just eight and a quarterminutes had elapsed since Eve had left him and gone upstairs. He felt asudden urge to turn around and go back to her--he knew she would forgivehis attempt to run away. After all, he couldn't even guess at what wouldhappen when he reached the outer limit of the machine's influence. Wouldhe be in 1934 or 1954--or irretrievably lost in some timeless nowhere atall?
He thought again of what Eve had said about yachts and world travelingand wondered how she could hope to do so if the radius of influence wasonly five miles. Eve might be passionate, headstrong and neurotic, butshe was not a fool. If she had planned travel on a world of two decadespast she must have found a way of making his and her stay in that pastpermanent, without trammels.
If she had altered the machine ... But she wouldn't have until he wascaught in her trap when, inevitably, he returned to look at the scenesof his childhood. He tried to recall what she had done, what gesturesshe had made, when she demonstrated the machine. As nearly as he couldremember, all Eve had done was to pluck out his nail parings, the bit ofhair and scarf, then return them to their receptacle.
Voodoo.... She was close to mad. Or perhaps he was mad himself. He wipedhis streaming forehead with a sleeve, barely avoided overturning as herounded a curve flanked by signboards....
He felt a bump....
And suddenly he was in the big convertible again, guiding it over to oneof the parking lanes at the side of the magnificent two-laned highway.He looked down at his sleek dark vicuna coat, visualized the rise ofplump stomach beneath it, reached in his breast pocket for a panatella.
* * * * *
He noticed the tremble in his hand. _No, no cigars now_, he thought._Not with the old pump acting up like this. Too much excitement._ Hereached for the little box of nitroglycerin tablets in his watch-pocket,got it out, took one, waited.
Maybe his life wasn't perfect, maybe there wasn't much of it left tolive--but what there was was his, not his mother's, not Eve's. Theunsteadiness in his chest was fading. He turned on the ignition, droveslowly back through the housing developments, the neon signs andclover-leaf turns and graded crossings toward the city....
When he got back to the hotel he would call Connie in Scarborough. Itwould be heavenly, the sound of her high, silly little voice....
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from _Fantastic Universe_ May 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.
