Puttering About in a Small Land

by Philip K. Dick

  “And you’re so industrious,” she said.

  “I do my share,” he said.

  “Pete does the work. You drink coffee next door and lie over at the steam bath talking with the other—” She started to say, other little merchants.

  “Say it,” he said.

  “Say what?”

  “I don’t know.” He came into the kitchen. “Whatever dirty remark you started to say and didn’t.”

  “You can’t tell a good man when you meet him,” she said. “I read somewhere that that’s the best use college has, to teach you to recognize a good man. It’s too bad you didn’t go to college, then.”

  “I can tell a good man. Pete’s a good man, and you treat him like he was dirt. Olsen’s a good man. Chic Bonner’s nothing but a horse’s ass.” He started out.

  She said, “You don’t deserve to have a store. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard so you could have it.”

  Pausing, he said, “Too late now.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “What do you want,” he said, “gratitude?” He continued on back into the other room.

  “Just some decent response from you,” she said. “Something rational and intelligent.”

  “For Christ’s sake!” he shouted. “I’m not going to take that guy into my store; it’s my store and nobody’s buying into it. Liz is right.”

  “It’s interesting,” she said, feeling bitter. “You find her opinion to be worth more than mine. I wonder why.”

  “Because she’s right.”

  “Is that the reason? You know,” she said, “I finally figured out what Liz reminds me of. In those big supermarkets on Saturday you go in and there’s some little fat jolly woman at the back, with a tray of crackers and some new cheese they’re selling; she has on a yellow uniform tied at the waist—you know. And when you go by wheeling your cart, she calls out in that bright cheerful voice, ‘Say, honey, don’t you want to try a free sample of Kraft’s new bacon and cheddar cheese spread?’ or whatever it is.”

  Roger said, “I think I’ll go down to the store.”

  “Wait,” she said, not wanting him to go. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t say that.” But then she said, “Why do you think so much of her? What is it about her? Is it because she’s sort of sexy, in an oozy way? I’d like to know. Really.”

  “Go to hell,” he said.

  “What I’d like to know,” she said, unable not to say it, “is how a man like Chic Bonner could get himself mixed up with a woman like that.”

  The front door closed. Instantly, she leaped up and ran through the house. Now I’ve done it, she said. She opened the door. Roger stood on the porch, his hands shoved in his pockets, his body hunched.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, going out to him and putting her arms around him. “Don’t go down to the store. I won’t say anything more. Maybe we could do something; could we take a walk, or go to some club for a while? Maybe there’s a band playing.”

  “No,” he said. “I’m too tired.” But he came back into the house with her. “I don’t feel like talking about it,” he said.

  “Maybe it’s because I miss Gregg,” she said.

  He said, “Doesn’t that dance stuff take up enough of your time?”

  Again she felt anger. But she kept her mouth shut. In her anger was a quantity of dread. I don’t quite understand this, she said to herself. What is it? What’s going on?

  Maybe I don’t know everything, she thought.

  And then she thought, Could he be getting to where he’s falling in love with her?

  But she’s such a fool, she thought to herself. That was the word for Liz. She was just a plain fool.

  A comedienne, she thought. With a floppy cap and a trident, or whatever it was that fools carried. Little Liz Bonner, keeping them all in stitches.

  But, she thought, remembering an unbreakable Decca record that Gregg owned and treasured, Danny Kaye’s recording of “Tubby the Tuba”…in the end the funny little thing won out.

  The next evening, Wednesday, when Roger got home he said to her, “I just have time to eat and then I’ve got to get back to the store.”

  “Okay,” she said, expecting it.

  At dinner he ate almost nothing.

  “Worries?” she said, wishing he would say something to her, tell her about them. “Why don’t you let me come along—maybe I can help you. Or keep you company.”

  “No,” he said. “Thanks.”

  “Is it hard work you have to do down there?”

  “Some. I have to shove a few crates around. Bring some table model TVs upstairs.”

  She said, “Be careful of your side.”

  Putting on his coat, he started out the door of the house, his car keys in his hand. As he passed her she noticed something odd. He smelled unusually good. Stopping him, she reached up.

  “What is it?” he said, jerking away.

  She thought, It’s aftershave that smells like that. He must have shaved.

  “I may go out on some prospects,” he said. “A couple was in the store today; I got their name. I might drive a set out to their place and leave it.”

  “Oh,” she said. In the past he had done that. Certainly it was possible. “Then if I called the store you might not be there,” she said.

  “That’s right.”

  She said, “Can I call you Pee-wee the piccolo?”

  With suspicion, he said. “What’s that? Why?”

  “That’s Tubby’s friend,” she said. “In the recording.”

  For an interval he studied over what she had said, and then he understood and he got on his face an expression so strong and yet so hopelessly complicated that if she had not known what he felt she would not have had any idea of what it meant.

  “God damn you,” he said. “God damn you.” Turning his back he went off down the path to the car.

  I shouldn’t have said that, she said to herself. Why did I say that? What’s happening to me?

  All during the drive to the store, his hands shook and he could scarcely see the traffic ahead of him. He drove by habit, parked in an empty slot, and walked across the sidewalk to the dark, closed-up store.

  I’ll leave her, he said to himself. I’m never going back.

  Unlocking the door, he entered, and relocked the door behind him, leaving the key in it.

  Christ, he said. He felt as if his head were going to burst; the pressure inside was terrific. Going downstairs to the bathroom he washed his face in cold water.

  She must have smelled the fucking aftershave, he said to himself. In a fashion it was funny.

  What’ll I do? he thought. Pull out now, before she has anything to go on? Before she really has something?

  Upstairs the phone rang. The sound of its ring reached him barely; had it not been for his practice at hearing it down here in the basement he would not have noticed.

  His watch read seven. Too early. Anyhow, even if he sprinted up the steps, he would probably not make it in time. So he finished washing his face, drying himself, and then he walked leisurely up to the main floor. By that time the phone had become silent.

  In the office he sat at the desk, smoking and thinking things over. What if Chic comes home? What if Virginia hops into a cab and drives over here? What if she drives over there?

  And he thought to himself that in any case, even in the best of all possible cases, with neither Chic nor Virginia coming home or appearing at the door, or hiring private eyes or whatever, he still had the unsolvable, hopeless problem. He still did not know how really serious he was towards Liz, how far he wanted to go with her. Because, after all, there was only one serious place to take it, and that was straight to the courts for a divorce or two and then, after the year of the interlocutory decrees, a remarriage. He and Liz Bonner. Or rather Liz Lindahl. And how many children? he asked himself. She would probably keep the two boys. No, he thought, not if the divorce was by Chic. Not if she was divorced on the grounds of adultery. And Virginia, in any case, would k
eep Gregg. So at best he would wind up with Liz and her two boys; he would lose Gregg, and he might find that Jerry and Walter were no substitute, even Jerry and Walter and Liz together.

  Of course, he and Liz would have children. Realizing that, he felt a little better.

  God, he thought. How far ahead his thoughts had gone. It seemed a little premature. And yet, while they were in the motel, after they had gone to bed together and were just lying, doing nothing, Liz had said suddenly.

  “You know what?”

  “What?” he had said.

  “I’d like to bear your child. I really would. That’s what I want more than anything else.”

  And he had thought of her as being an instinct-driven female body, prowling about in search of a man to impregnate her, and then, after that, she would search for a place at which to give birth to that child. A secure, peaceful place. It would not end simply with the impregnation. It would not end here; she had to have the rest, How could she not have the rest? If he did make her pregnant, then he had only just begun to get himself mixed up with her. And even if she did not actually become pregnant, the notion was there, the idea. When they went to bed again—if they did—she would be thinking of that. Of course, she would not dare let herself become pregnant until he had shown that he could and would leave Virginia. In a sense he was lucky to be married to someone else; Liz could not possibly take such a risk—she could not, in her scatterbrained haste, leave the cap off the tube or the diaphragm in the box. So he did not have to worry about a surprise announcement from her. Unless it happened by mistake.

  But he knew perfectly well, whether Virginia did or not, that Liz had all her wits about her. Especially, he thought, when she was doing such a thing as fitting on her diaphragm. There, she was beyond foolishness. She could not err. And, he thought, not because some instinct held her hands steady; it was because she could not afford to err. The situation was too serious.

  Did he love her? he asked himself. Do I love her?

  What kind of a question, he wondered, did that really amount to. No, he decided, I guess I do not. On the other hand, I never loved Virginia, nor Teddy, nor the girl in high school whose name was Peggy Gottgeschenk who was the first girl I ever took out and got. Nobody loves anybody in this century, nor does anybody pray, or open gulls to examine their gizzards for a harbinger of the future. But, he thought, I would stand up for her. That’s as close as anyone can come. If it were a question of her or me, I would let myself get the ax between the shoulders rather than her. Isn’t that enough? The rest, he thought to himself, is talk.

  I used to feel like that, he thought to himself, about my brother. That was before he died. In a sense, I felt like that about all of them, my brother and then Peggy Gottgeschenk and then Virginia Watson and now Liz Bonner. But, he thought, does that prove anything? Does that prove I’m a liar? Or that I am kidding myself? No, he thought. It only proves that nothing is permanent. Even the Bank of America Building, where all the money and all the property deeds in California eventually wind up. Even that will pass away. We will all be gone in a little while. But my love is as great as theirs, and theirs is practically a legend.

  The phone rang. He lifted the receiver off the hook.

  “Hi,” Liz’s close, breathy voice came.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “How are you?”

  “Fine.”

  “He’s gone,” she said. “Come on over.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Hurry,” she said. She hung up.

  He locked the store after him, got into his car, and drove over to San Fernando as fast as he could manage it.

  At eight-thirty that evening, Virginia called the store. She got no answer. Later on, at nine, she called again.

  Depressed, she called her mother.

  “Have you gone to bed?” she asked.

  “At nine?” Marion said. “You must think I’m getting to be a regular old lady.”

  “I’m here alone,” she said. “Roger went down to the store to work. He took the car.”

  “Poor Roger,” Marion said. “Has he talked to Chic Bonner again about the store?”

  “No,” she said. “What do you think about it? You like the idea, don’t you?”

  “It seemed promising.”

  “You like Chic, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Marion said. “He impressed me as a forthright man, and of more than usual capability.”

  “You think he’d make a good partner for Roger?”

  “I think he’d make an excellent partner. Provided that Roger can work with him and not feel—how should I put it? Not be conscious of certain disparities.”

  “What do you think of Liz Bonner?”

  “Do I have to answer that?”

  “Please,” Virginia said. “You won’t hurt my feelings.”

  “As far as I’m concerned,” her mother said, “she’s about what I’d expect to run into out here in Los Angeles. By that I mean she’s not particularly anything. I don’t really have an impression of her. Just a sort of blank space. She doesn’t talk well, or stand well; she doesn’t know anything; I’d say that the drive-ins and department stores and cafés out here are full of girls like her.”

  “That’s my feeling,” Virginia said. “She’s the type you see in the supermarkets giving away free samples of some new cheese spread.”

  “Oh no,” Mrs. Watson said. “I’ll tell you what type she is. She’s the type—you listen to me, Ginny—she’s the type that when you want to get at the mayonnaise counter for the jar of mayonnaise that’s on sale for forty-nine cents instead of seventy-nine, you find a cart parked in your way. And there’s a plump, short woman who pushed that cart there, in your way, and that woman is at the mayonnaise counter herself, and while you’re fuming and saying to yourself, ‘Does this woman intend to block the aisle indefinitely?’ that short, plump woman is smiling vacantly in your direction and she’s taking the last jar of that forty-nine cent mayonnaise.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I just know,” Mrs. Watson said.

  “You mean you think she’s smarter than she acts? What do you mean?” She felt cross. “Be more specific.”

  “I just mean that cart of hers—interpret that whatever way you like—is going to be parked where you want to go, one of these days.”

  “I don’t follow such imagery.”

  Mrs. Watson said, “Let’s talk about something more pleasant.”

  They discussed various topics, and then Virginia excused herself and rang off.

  What coyness, she thought to herself. Nevertheless, she herself had started it.

  Again she telephoned the store. Again she got no answer. And then she did something that she knew was wrong. Looking through the front window, she made certain that the Olds was not anywhere nearby. She opened the front door so that she would hear its engine if it came up the street, and then she went into the bedroom, to the dresser, and opened the bottom drawer. It was the drawer in which Roger kept his personal articles; she had never looked into his secrets in all the time they had been together. But, she said to herself, this is different. This is the only thing I can think of, and I must do something. I can’t just stand here.

  But it disgusted her.

  She felt as if she had got herself into a degrading position. Let it go, she said to herself. Forget it. This, surely, is worse. This is the worst of all, this rooting around. Peering and searching, and at the same time listening with one ear for the sound of the car.

  What would I say, she wondered, if Roger walked in and saw me? It would be the end.

  But she kept on; her fingers flew. She examined papers, photographs; they turned out to be business papers, and the photographs were mostly of herself and of him. How fitting, she said to herself. Pictures of them, their marriage license, his divorce papers from Teddy, tax statements, physical report from an insurance company, deed on the house, fire insurance on the house, countless papers that had to do with the sto
re…her shame grew until she felt her skin simmering and red.

  At the bottom of the papers she found a manila packet. Should she open it? She unwound the string and opened it.

  Inside—to her disbelief—were pictures torn out of girlie magazines. One was Jane Russell standing with a bow and arrow. Another showed Marilyn Monroe wearing a slip, sideways at a window so that the light showed through her slip and showed her bra. Good grief, Virginia thought. She sat down on a chair to examine the picture. It looked as if the light shone through the bra, too. It looked as if, by a freak brilliance of illumination, the naked breast and nipple could be seen. What a large nipple, she thought. Like a bean.

  Fascinated, she searched farther into the packet. Next she came upon a calendar for the year 1950. The girl, young, with a rather drab face, had been photographed undressing. She had on only a sort of wrapper at her waist, and it, too, was unfastened to show her bare thigh and most of her pelvis. The girl’s breasts were somewhat soft, she decided. They hung down. And, curiously, instead of nipples they seemed to have on each a smear of red, and nothing more.

  After the calendar she found a regular three-cent envelope. In it was a sheaf of paper, rolled up and tied. She unfastened the string. The sheaf fell apart on her lap; the paper was unbleached, coarse, the pictures were so dim that at first she could not make them out. The first showed something anatomical, and she traced it until she discovered that it was a woman’s body, twisted into a shape she had never seen before. What was shown? she wondered. She looked at the next picture. It showed a woman and a man, and then she realized that for the first time in her life she was seeing a genuinely obscene picture. This was pornography, and it was not like what she had always imagined; it was vague, tortured, almost funny. It was revolting. She glanced at the rest. How could human bodies get into such postures? she asked herself. It was worse than an old medical book she had come across, once, in a doctor’s office. But it was similar. She rolled up the sheaf and stuck it back in the envelope.

  She closed up the packet and put it back in the drawer, with the business papers.