The Return of the Black Widowers

by Isaac Asimov

  "But it's money you lose," said Drake.

  "Well, money isn't everything, to coin a phrase. The pleasure I get out of the Thursday Lunch restores the balance to my favor and, to be absolutely truthful, the fact that they rather fawn on me for my free printing is also pleasant. But that's just among us, please."

  Avalon said gravely, "I hope Roger assured you that anything said at a Black Widowers meeting is considered a privileged communication and never passes beyond these walls."

  "So he did," said Rose.

  By now, Gonzalo was twitching a little, and scowling. "Listen, Mr. Rose, is there anything about this club of yours that's upsetting you?"

  "Upsetting me?" Rose looked surprised. "I can't say there is."

  "No little mystery, no little puzzle, nothing that you can't quite explain."

  Rose's expression of surprise deepened. "Not at all. Is there supposed to be?"

  Avalon said soothingly, "Pay no attention to Mario, Mr. Rose. He's never happy unless there's a puzzle at hand. The rest of us don't require it. —Tell me, what kind of speakers does your club have?"

  "It's always been difficult to find speakers. We don't pay, and the audience is less than a hundred and is, by and large, not composed of important and famous people, for all that we're communicators. However, we've had a very good and enthusiastic man in charge of entertainment over the last few years and he gets us some good people—mayors, senators, military men, industrialists, and so on. Actually—and this is something else I wouldn't want repeated—I find the list of speakers a little too much weighted toward the conservative side to suit me, but usually not offensively so. Some years ago, a public figure I found offensively to the right agreed to speak, and that was one of the few meetings I refused to attend."

  "Are guests sometimes invited?"

  "Oh, yes, that's important. Every guest has to be paid for, so that a good supply of guests not only fleshes out the attendance but the money intake. I once invited Roger to attend one of our luncheons—I'll leave it to him to tell you whether he enjoyed himself."

  "I did," said Halsted. "They set a pretty good table."

  "And if any of you others," said Rose, "would like to sample the club, it would be easy to arrange."

  Trumbull grunted, as though unconvinced of the value of the offer. "Who's talking this coming Thursday?"

  "Actually," said Rose, feeling in his suit coat pocket, "I don't remember. I have the speaker and the entertainment written down because by tomorrow morning I have to have it printed up, if we're going to send out the cards making the announcement in time."

  He continued to feel in his pockets. "That's funny." Gonzalo, who had been slumped in his chair scowling, sat up with sudden interest. "What's funny?"

  "I can't find the card. That's troublesome."

  "Why?" asked Gonzalo avidly.

  "I won't be able to get the cards out if I don't find it." Rose stood up and began emptying his pants pockets.

  The others watched until he sat down and said, with a sickly smile, "I don't seem to have it."

  Halsted cleared his throat. "Does it matter, Dave?"

  "Of course it matters," said Rose petulantly. "Do you think I really like all these jokes about my being absentminded? I don't, you know. Everyone thinks it's funny and I have to go along, but it's not. It's not."

  "Actually," said Avalon, "although it may not be funny to those who suffer from the condition, it is associated with intelligence. Some of the brightest people in history were terribly absent-minded. They tell the story of the great mathematician, Norbert Wiener, who was walking along Memorial Drive in Cambridge and stopped to speak to a colleague. When they were done, Wiener said, 'Tell me, when we stopped to speak was I walking away from Mass Avenue or toward it?' His colleague said, 'Away from it.' 'Ah,' said Wiener with satisfaction, 'then I've had my lunch.' I met Wiener once and, I tell you, I believe that story."

  Drake put in, "They also tell funny stories about Newton and Einstein and Archimedes, all stressing the absentmindedness factor."

  Rose didn't seem consoled by any of this. He said, "Since I don't have the transcendent genius that should go along with absentmindedness, what good are such stories to me?"

  Rubin said, "It's not transcendent geniuses only who are involved. Every one of us becomes increasingly absentminded with age. We all speak rapidly and articulately, but every once in a while we get riling up over a word we can't quite call to mind. It's 'at the tip of the tongue,' the saying goes. Well, that happens more and more often as one grows older."

  "And how does that help me in my present situation?" demanded Rose.

  Trumbull said, "What if you don't send out a card this week? I suppose the membership will know enough to show up Thursday at noon even without it."

  "You don't understand, sir. In the first place, the membership wants to know who the speaker is and what he will speak about because on that depends the nature and number of guests they will invite. Without the knowledge, they won’t risk it and will arrive without guests. Secondly, the speaker himself wants to be mentioned, and our president is always careful to say something like, 'Well, you certainly drew a good crowd.' Since we don't pay him, it's all the speaker gets. And thirdly, we went through a siege a couple of years ago in which the entertainment and the speakers were often decided on too late and attendance declined and the club nearly died. Since we got in our new man in charge of speakers, that has stopped and the club is flourishing. But any reminder of the bad old days will be much resented, and the blame will be placed squarely on me."

  Gonzalo said, "Phone the man in charge of speakers. It might be embarrassing to have to admit you haven't got the information, but he'll give it to you again, won't he?"

  "I'm sure he would, but he's away on some business trip and won't be back until next Friday. And I have no way of knowing where to reach him."

  "May I make a suggestion?" said Drake. "Why don't we all close our yaps and just sit here quietly? Let's give Mr. Rose a chance. Things are never really forgotten, there's just a problem in recall. If he sits here quietly and relaxes and doesn't try too hard to remember, it may simply come to him. It's there in his mind somewhere."

  There was instant silence that persisted for minute after minute while Rose looked back and forth from person to person.

  Then he shook his head. "Gentlemen, I'm overwhelmed at your thoughtfulness and sympathy, but it won't do any good. I know there are people who forget and then remember, but I'm not one of them. Believe me, I am not. In my mind, there's a bottomless pit, a black hole. Things that fall in never come out." Trumbull said, "It must make life very difficult for you."

  "It does, but I've learned to adjust. Every little thing that I ought to remember, I write down. My secretary understands that she must remember everything since she can't rely on me to remember anything."

  "Well, then," said Gonzalo, "why don't you call her up? She probably knows who the next speaker will be."

  "No, that's exactly what she doesn't know," said Rose impatiently. "I got the information late myself, because our speaker-fellow was busy with his forthcoming business trip and managed to send me the information only at the last minute. Now I have to give it to my secretary tomorrow morning so she can get the cards printed up. It means Saturday work and overtime, but that happens once in a while. The trouble is that she won't know the speaker until I tell her and at the present moment it looks as though I won't be able to tell her."

  Rubin said, "Will it help if we all try to guess? We can name possible topics for a speaker. There's the Gulf Crisis, for instance. You wouldn't be having some Middle Eastern ambassador talking about Saddam Hussein, would you?"

  "We had one last month. It wouldn't be that."

  "How about the recent congressional elections?"

  Rose shook his head. "I don't think so."

  Trumbull said, "Some economist to discuss the forthcoming recession, though I think we're already in one and we're not allowed to say so because it wo
uldn't be patriotic."

  Rose shook his head. He said, "This sounds exactly like the fairy tale about the malevolent dwarf, Rumpelstiltskin. The princess had to guess Rumpelstiltskin's name or lose her baby and she spent a whole year guessing name after name, without result."

  "She did get the name in the end," said Rubin.

  "Yes, she did, but that's only because she overheard Rumpelstiltskin repeating his own name in triumph, saying that the princess would never guess it. When I was young, I thought that a completely unsatisfactory ending, since I didn't see why the dwarf would be so foolish as to say his own name aloud, and why the princess should be so fortunate as to overhear him. In my case, however, there's no one to give away the name or subject of the speaker, and no one to overhear. My own personal Rumpelstiltskin story can only have an unhappy ending."

  Gonzalo looked about suddenly and said, "Where's Henry?"

  Avalon said, "You're not going to ask Henry for an answer to this problem, are you?"

  "Why not? What harm can it do?"

  "It can do a great deal of harm, Mario. There simply is no way in which Henry can pull an answer out of a hat and you'll just be embarrassing him. Roger, as host, you can order Mario not to do any such thing. I will not have Henry pained unfairly."

  There was a mumble of agreement around the table and Halsted said, "They're right, Mario. Leave Henry alone in this case. That's an order."

  Rose was looking puzzled. He said, "What's all this about Henry? He's the waiter, isn't he? Why should he be asked?"

  Avalon said, "Because he's brighter than any of us and can usually see farther into a millstone than we can. In this case, though, matters are hopeless and it would be futile to ask him."

  "Certainly," agreed Rose.

  Henry was suddenly among them, noiselessly as usual. His ordinarily impassive face was distinctly flushed. "My apologies, gentlemen," he said, "I should have been able to help you at a considerably earlier time."

  "Help us?" said Rose, with a bit of asperity. "How do you mean, help us?"

  "Is it not true that your next speaker will be a William McKechnie, who will discuss the greenhouse effect that now threatens the planet? And will the entertainment not consist of a nightclub singer named Diana Felner?"

  Rose's eyes opened wide. "I can't believe it. Of course. That's right. Those are indeed the people." Gonzalo said, "Aha! And they didn't want me to ask you, Henry."

  Avalon said, "In heaven's name, Henry, how on earth could you come up with those names?"

  "It was quite simple, Mr. Avalon. I had information the rest of you did not have. When Mr. Rose arrived, he looked down at his hand and read off the name of the restaurant and its address from a piece of pasteboard. I paid little attention to that since I wasn't aware at the time of his inability to remember crucial points.

  "He then gave me his coat, his hat, his gloves, his umbrella, and the piece of pasteboard. I deposited everything in the cloakroom and, since one never throws away anything given for the purpose of checking, I placed the pasteboard in his hatband.

  "It was far too late in the course of the discussion that I remembered the pasteboard, which none of the rest of you had seen, except for Mr. Rose himself, who had obviously forgotten about it. It occurred to me that since Mr. Rose, as he said, had to write down everything lest he forget, there would always be the problem of finding something on which to make his little notes.

  "It struck me that any card has two sides, and if one side is used there is still the other side for further use. I slipped into the cloakroom, obtained the piece of pasteboard with the name of this restaurant on it, and on the other side was other information which I assumed was what Mr. Rose was looking for. In a way, sir, I overheard Rumpelstiltskin."

  Henry handed Rose the pasteboard. With a stunned expression on his face, Rose examined each side, and the others flocked about to study it.

  Avalon laughed. "As you said, Henry, the matter was very simple, but for a moment or two I really thought you had a special pipeline to all the knowledge in the world."

  Henry smiled gently. "I'm afraid that my abilities are only human and quite limited after all, Mr. Avalon. What we must do now, however, is persuade Mr. Rose, somehow, to keep a firm grip on the pasteboard and not allow anything to happen to it. I hesitate to suggest pinning it to his shirt—"

  Return to Table of Contents

  One More Just for Harlan

  THE WOMAN IN THE BAR

  T

  he hits and outs of baseball did not, as a rule, disturb the equanimity (or lack of it) of a Black Widowers banquet. None of the Black Widowers were sportsmen in the ordinary sense of the word, although Mario Gonzalo was known to bet on the horses on occasion.

  Over the rack of lamb, however, Thomas Trumbull brushed at his crisply waved white hair, looked stuffily discontented, and said, "I've lost all interest in baseball. Once they started shifting franchises, they broke up the kind of loyalties you inherited from your father. I was a New York Giants fan when I was a young man, as was my father before me. The San Francisco Giants were strangers to me and as for the Mets, well, they're just not the same."

  "There are still the New York Yankees," said Geoffrey Avalon, deftly cutting meat away from bone and bending his dark eyebrows in concentration on the task, "and in my own town, we still have the Phillies, though we lost the Athletics."

  "Chicago still has both its teams," said Mario Gonzalo, "and there are still the Cleveland Indians, the Cincinnati Reds, the St. Louis—"

  "It's not the same," said Trumbull, violently. "Even if I were to switch to the Yankees, half the teams they play are teams Lou Gehrig and Bill Dickey never heard of. And now you have each league in two divisions, with playoffs before the World Series, which becomes almost anticlimactic, and a batting average of .290 marks a slugger. Hell, I remember when you needed .350 if you were to stand a chance at cleanup position."

  293 Emmanuel Rubin listened with the quiet dignity he considered suitable to his position as host—at least until his guest turned to him and said, "Is Trumbull a baseball buff, Manny?"

  At that, Rubin reverted to his natural role and snorted loudly. His sparse beard bristled. "Who, Tom? He may have watched a baseball game on TV, but that's about it. He thinks a double is two jiggers of Scotch."

  Gonzalo said, "Come on, Manny, you think a pitcher holds milk."

  Rubin stared at him fixedly through his thick-lensed spectacles, and then said, "It so happens I played a season of semi-pro baseball as shortstop in the late 1930s."

  "And a shorter stop—" began Gonzalo and then stopped and reddened.

  Rubin's guest grinned. Though Rubin was only five inches above the five-foot mark, the guest fell three inches short of that. He said, "I'd be a shorter stop if I played."

  Gonzalo, with a visible attempt to regain his poise, said, "You're harder to pitch to when you're less than average height, Mr. Just. There's that."

  "You're heavily underestimated in other ways, too, which is convenient at times," agreed Just. "And, as a matter of fact, I'm not much of a baseball buff myself. I doubt if I could tell a baseball from a golf ball in a dim light."

  Darius Just looked up sharply at this point. "Waiter," he said, "if you don't mind, I'll have milk rather than coffee."

  James Drake, waiting expectantly for his own coffee, said, "Is that just a momentary aberration, Mr. Just, or don't you drink coffee?"

  "Don't drink it," said Just. "Or smoke, or drink alcohol. My mother explained it all to me very carefully. If I drank my milk and avoided bad habits, I would grow to be big and strong; so I did—and I didn't. At least, not big. I'm strong enough. It's all very un-American, I suppose, like not liking baseball. At least you can fake liking baseball, though that can get you in trouble, too.— Here's the milk. How did that get there?" Gonzalo smiled. "That's our Henry. Noiseless and efficient." Just sipped his milk contentedly. His facial features were small but alive and his eyes seemed restlessly aware of everything in the room. His sho
ulders were broad, as though they had been made for a taller man, and he carried himself like an athlete.

  Drake sat over his coffee, quiet and thoughtful, but when Rubin clattered his water glass with his spoon, the quiet ended. Drake's hand was raised and he said, "Manny, may I do the honors?"

  "If you wish." Rubin turned to his guest. "Jim is one of the more reserved Black Widowers, Darius, so you can't expect his grilling to be a searching one. In fact, the only reason he's volunteering is that he's written a book himself and he wants to rub shoulders with other writers."

  Just's eyes twinkled with interest. "What kind of a book, Mr. Drake?"

  "Pop science," said Drake, "but the questions go the other way.—Henry, since Mr. Just doesn't drink, could you substitute ginger ale for the brandy. I don't want him to be at a disadvantage."

  "Certainly, Mr. Drake," murmured Henry, that miracle of waiters, "if Mr. Just would like that. With all due respect, however, it does not seem to me that Mr. Just is easily placed at a disadvantage."

  "We'll see," said Drake, darkly. "Mr. Just, how do you justify your existence?"

  Just laughed. "It justifies itself to me now and then when it tills me with gladness. As far as justification to the rest of the world is concerned, that can go hang.—With all due respect, as Henry would say."

  "Perhaps," said Drake, "the world will go hang even without your permission. For the duration of this evening, however, you must justify your existence to us by answering our questions. Now I have been involved with the Black Widowers for more than half of a reasonably lengthy existence and I can smell out remarks that are worth elaboration. You said that you could get in trouble if you faked the liking of baseball. I suspect you did once, and I would like to hear about it."

  Just looked surprised, and Rubin said, staring at his brandy, "I warned you, Darius."