by Gene Wolfe
He had taken several steps from it before he saw the witch standing on the other side of the stairwell watching him. He grinned at her, though he could not see her expression in the dim light. “I’ve got a key, Madame S. She gave me one. I was going to wait for her, only it’s getting too late.”
The witch said nothing. He could just make out the whites of her eyes and the darker dark that was her hair.
“It’d be better if you didn’t mention it. Nicer—you know what I mean?”
Slowly she vanished. There was no shimmer, and her disappearance was not sudden like the bursting of a soap bubble, nor did she disperse like smoke or melt like the ferns of frost on a windowpane. She was and was not, with between the two a moment, the knife edge of time, when she was and was not.
Stubb was alone in the hall. He went around the stairwell until he stood where she had, fished out the paper matches with which he had lit Candy’s cigarette, struck a match, and held it up until it scorched his fingers, peering at the floor. Shaking his head, he rapped his temple and returned to his room.
Once more stripped to his shorts, he lay in the dark with his hands beneath his head. When he had rested so for perhaps half an hour, he muttered, “She doesn’t think more of that Baby Ruth than I do of my prick.”
* * *
Barnes’s room was across from Stubb’s. It was larger than Stubb’s, smaller than the fat girl’s, cleaner than either. Its walls were decorated with ads for various jokes and novelties. These were:
a bottomless drinking glass;
a swizzle stick that smoked when put in a drink;
a cigarette lighter shaped like a dog, operated by lifting the dog’s hind leg;
a cigarette lighter shaped like a toilet, operated by lifting the seat;
a rubber fly;
a real fly entombed in plastic ice;
a deck of cards in which the spades and clubs were red and the diamonds and hearts black;
a deck whose backs could be read with tinted glasses;
a deck in which the jacks simpered, the queens winked and beckoned, and the kings leered;
semen, vomit, and excrement reproduced in soft plastic;
a watch decorated with a nude woman whose arms were its hands, depicted at a relatively modest 6:30;
and a watch numbered counterclockwise.
Besides all these, there was one picture that was more or less conventional. Suspended from a stick-on hook like an erectile penis, it showed a voluptuous blonde whose gown, brassiere, and panties would vanish if the room became humid.
It was not humid, however, and the blonde appeared fully dressed. Barnes was dressed too, in tattered nylon pajamas and a robe. His room boasted a small table in addition to the bed and dresser, and he sat before it composing a letter on the florid, gold-crested stationery of the nearby Hotel Consort. He wrote slowly and laboriously, the tip of his tongue occasionally protruding from one corner of his mouth. From time to time he kissed the point of his souvenir pen.
Dear Lois,
Wonderful to hear from you. I know now you don’t hold a grudge. Me neither. It’s over but it might have been different. I think about that alot and I bet you do to.
Can’t understand what happened to the child support. I would have my bank stop the check but then what would happen if it’s just stuck in the mail and later got delivered to you alright. Let me know when you write next—if not I’ll have them stop and send you a new one, no joke.
Doing alot of business but the weather is so bad I wish I was south like you. Rain and snow. I know you said I could visit Little Ozzie and of course Lois so did the judge.
But, I’m not sure you mean it. Tell you what. If you mean it get me a plane ticket and send it. (Address c/o Mr. B. Free who is District Manager here.) Then I’ll know you mean it and I’ll pay you back when I get there.
Kiss Little Ozzie for me.
See You soon.
When he had completed this letter, Barnes drew an S-shaped flourish under his signature. After carefully retracting the point of the souvenir pen, he picked up the letter and read it with evident satisfaction.
Taking up his pen again, he addressed an envelope, crossing out the location of the hotel and substituting that of Free’s house. When the letter had been folded and sealed inside, he took a quarter-sheet of stamps from the table’s shallow drawer, tore off one, moistened its back with the tip of his hard-working tongue, and (with the greatest attention to its position) gummed it on upside-down.
After satisfying himself that it had adhered, he added the letter to a modest stack of similar ones on the left side of the table, stood up, and stretched. In his stocking feet, he padded across the room to the light switch. Drawing the blind down the single window left the room in a darkness that was nearly total.
The whisper of his feet on the floorboards came again, followed by a nearly imperceptible scraping as he shifted the picture of the voluptuous woman with the disappearing gown to one side.
The hole in the wall behind it showed no light. His finger explored it, and at last he thrust the souvenir pen into it. When he had satisfied himself that it had not been blocked, he replaced the picture and switched on the light again. Taking up a soiled supermarket tabloid from the bed, he began to read the classifieds.
The Women
Stubb had fallen asleep, but the noise woke him. He flipped the wall switch and opened the door to illuminate the dark hall. Candy lay halfway up the stair, trying to rise.
He found her purse, hung it over his wrist, and bracing his feet on the worn wood, got his hands beneath her arms. “Hold the rail,” he told her.
She nearly fell backward, taking him with her.
“Jesus!”
“’S all right,” she said. “I’m swell.” Her tongue was thickened almost to unintelligibility.
After a moment, he realized she no longer knew whether she was going up or down. “You want to go to the john?” he asked. “Up here.”
She shook her head. “Go bed.”
“Swell. Your room’s up here too. Jesus, what have you been drinking?”
“Had li’l party.”
“I bet.” He put a hand under her knee and lifted until her foot was on the step where he stood. “Come on, you can make it. Hold on to the rail.” He tugged at her, and she lurched upward.
Once he got her to the top, it was easier. Half steering, half carrying her, he brought her to her door. Her key, chained to a rabbit’s foot, was near the top of her purse.
He pulled her coat from her shoulders and maneuvered her to the bed, then closed the door and locked it. Candy staggered up at once, nearly falling, fumbling at the side of her skirt.
“That’s fine,” he told her. “Go to sleep. I haven’t got the bread anyway.”
The fat girl’s hands fell helplessly. “Undress.”
“Hell, it won’t hurt you to sleep with your clothes on.”
She began to fumble with the closure of her skirt again.
“All right, I don’t want you stumbling around getting hurt. What happened to your shoes, anyhow? God damn it, this thing’s tighter than you are.”
The zipper at the side of her skirt was open already, or perhaps had never been closed. When Stubb released the straining catch, a gap as wide as his hand appeared between the ends of the waistband.
“Thanks.”
“Sure.”
Her blouse buttoned up the front. He ran nimble fingers down the buttons, pulled the blouse away, and threw it over the headboard. Her belly, white, soft as gelatin, and balloonlike in its distension, overhung the elastic of her panties and propped the swollen breasts in her sagging brassiere. Swaying, she embraced it, lifting and fondling it as if to compensate it for the discomfort it had endured.
“Candy, if you’d just charge ’em by the pound, you’d make a fortune.”
She belched. “Pizza. Lots of pizza. Went up to his place. Marty.”
“I thought they were all named John.”
She
belched again. “Pizza and boilermakers.”
Stubb shook his head. “He give you anything, or did you just take it out in food and booze?”
Quite suddenly the fat girl took two tottering steps backward and fell across the bed. Stubb lifted her feet onto the mattress and rolled her on her side. A tin wastebasket half full of crumpled Kleenex stood beside the dresser; he put it on the floor near her head.
Her eyes fluttered open, closed again.
“If you get sick, use that,” he told her. “Stay off your back. You could choke.”
He bunched the pillow behind her shoulders and pulled blankets over her. “Well, you won’t freeze tonight when they turn off the gas. You might be the only one who won’t.”
At the sound of his voice, her lips twitched in a smile, then she began to snore. He squatted on the floor and dumped her purse onto the rug. The pack of Viceroys still held four cigarettes; he took one, lit it, and inhaled deeply. If she had ever had a billfold, it was gone, but there were loose bills among the soiled tissues, chewing-gum wrappers, and exhausted lipsticks. Twelve dollars in singles, two twenties, and several dollars in change. He took five singles and one of the twenties, making a roll he tucked into the crotch of his shorts.
“I earned it tonight, Candy,” he told the sleeping girl softly. “For a minute there, I thought we were both going down those steps.”
The rest he swept back into her purse.
* * *
On the roof, old Ben Free was speaking to the witch. “It’s coming closer,” he said. “I feel like I can hear it.”
“I cannot hear it,” she told him. “But you are correct. It draws so near. Soon it will be in Virgo.”
The snow had stopped again, but not before it had covered the rooftop with a fluffy layer. The old man’s booted feet left shambling tracks that might have been a bear’s; the witch’s footprints were so tiny and sharp they might have been a doe’s, and in places they did not appear at all. The sky had cleared. In the moonlight, the shadows were deep blue.
“I’m talking about the wreckin’ ball,” the old man grumbled.
“I speak of Saturn. It is the same.”
“Horseshit.”
“You say that, who can hear it swung already?”
He seemed not to hear her. “Anyway, they’ll find me like I always knew they would. It was a long chase I give them.”
“The years, you mean.”
“You know better, Ma’am, or you wouldn’t be up here on the roof with me.”
“Whom do you mean, then?”
“It ain’t your affair.”
“I tried to give you a gentlemanly escape, but you would have none of it. Do you prefer rudeness, Mr. Free? I do not.” The witch put one foot on the parapet, and holding up her black skirt in the parody of a curtsy, stepped onto the coping and began to walk along it.
“You’ll fall,” the old man said. “You’ll bust your fool neck.”
“I do not much care, Mr. Free, and because I do not, I will not fall. Anyway, we are said to fall more slowly than others. We float when ducked, and given the least crust of ice, we can run over the snow like wolves.”
“You tell lies, too.”
“Not I.” The witch laughed; her laughter was clear and yet unpleasant. “I used to as a child, I confess. But I soon found the truth more disconcerting.”
“Next thing you’ll tell me you knew I was here, and that was why you come.”
“Not at all. I am as destitute as the rest, or nearly. Like them, I attempt to live by my wits; and though I wish to think I have more, I live as badly as they.”
Free looked at her and shook his head. “You’re proud of it, though, girl. Proud you’re whatever you are.”
“Whatever I am is the best thing to be. I am the only person I have ever met who is not a fool.”
“Present company excepted, I s’pose.”
“You tell me you are awaiting destruction and your death. If I were you, I would welcome them; but you do not, and neither do you flee.”
“Where I just come from, men don’t die easy. Women neither.”
“I am properly rebuked. Why don’t you run? Even if you have no money, there are places that will accept a homeless old man.”
“I can’t. I won’t. You think you can see thirty foot into the hill, don’t you, girl? You can’t see a thing.”
“What can I not see, Mr. Free?”
“You think this here me that’s talking to you is all there is. Don’t you know there ain’t a man to either side of the Muddy that’s all held in his skin?”
“There is something in what you say.”
“You think these walls are mine. I’m telling you these walls are me. Here’s where I started out from. Here’s where I’ve come to lick my wounds for—well, a sight of years. More than my whole life. Here’s where I’ll live as long as they stand, and here’s where I’ll die when they come down. See my chimney there? That’s as much me as what you’re talking to.”
“We live inside you then, we four. I find that amusing. Like worms in a corpse. Very well, Mr. Free, will you speak to me out of your chimney? Or is your flue hoarse from smoking?”
One of the tiles of the coping slipped under the witch’s feet. She nearly fell before it shattered on the pavement two floors below.
* * *
As the night wore on, the old house became cold. Barnes stripped the blankets from his bed, wrapping one about his shoulders, the other around his legs.
Dear Box 188B,
I do not know what else to call you so I will call you that. I think it is a nice name. The 1 means you are alone and I am 2. That is a pun I guess but I really am. The 88 makes me think of a piano which has 88 keys. I used to play and I bet you do too. To tell the truth I was never very good but I admire people who are. Now since I am a salesman and live in hotels I can never practice. B is for beautiful. It is a womanly letter to me and always has been. A & C is male and so is I. (More puns.) Since I said I was a salesman I bet your thinking I am one of those guys who goes on the road and cheats on a wife. I am single (divorced) I really am. Your ad says you are a JW. I am a GM. I am not prejudiced and do not see why you should. I am 35, 5 ft. 9 in. with black hair and mustache. But, I am not Black. I am White of course.
If you would like to have my picture send me yours and I will send mine right away.
Could be Yours
When he had inspected this letter and sealed it in its envelope, Barnes threw off the blankets, stood up, and stretched. For a moment he looked thoughtfully at the picture of the voluptuous blonde, now as thoroughly clothed as was possible for her. Then, shrugging, he flipped off the wall switch.
This time he was rewarded. Light gleamed from the hole, and he put his eye to it.
It penetrated the wall only a few inches above the top of the witch’s dresser, where some bulky object (he had never learned what it was) cast a shadow on it. From it he could see most of her bed, much of the rest of the room, and a part of the door.
The witch was seated on that bed, fully dressed, nervously smoking a long cigarette that boasted lavender paper and a scarlet tip. For an instant she seemed to look directly at him. She exhaled a stream of smoke and rose; he recoiled instinctively, half expecting to see the burning end of her cigarette come through the hole.
When he looked again, she was seated once more and holding a hairbrush. She drew long pins from her hair, which tumbled in a cascade of night. Under his breath, Barnes began to count the strokes with her. One, two, three … Then he realized she was not counting but brushing to the rhythm of verses she murmured in a foreign language.
He stopped counting, but he was sure she had gone far beyond a hundred when she threw down her cigarette and lowered her brush. A moment later he heard it clack on the dresser top. She came into sight again, head bent as she removed contact lenses.
He expected her to undress, and she did not disappoint him, first removing her boots. They were small and spike-heeled, apparently of
black kid, now wet and much worn. She looked critically at the sole of each before putting it down.
Her dress she pulled over her head with one easy motion, then padded away to her closet, presumably to hang it up. Under it she wore a black corset with garters, and Barnes was in ecstasy.
At that point, however, she seemed to lose interest in the process. She paced her room, looking for all the world like a panther transformed by some incomplete magic. Barnes took the picture from its hook, straightened for a moment to ease his back, then looked again.
Her hand flashed past the peephole. An instant later he could actually smell the perfumed smoke. She had lit another cigarette, and with it she continued her pacing. Carefully, he grasped the back of the chair before his table and pulled it over, then found he could not sit on it and continue to look. He thought of his sample cases and was about to carry one over to put on the chair when the witch went to her closet again. He saw a flash of scarlet as she opened her door, then heard her knock at his own.
The Old Man
“Hello, Mr. Stubb,” Free said. “I hadn’t figured to see you in my kitchen this hour of the night, though you’re mighty welcome. Might I to ask what brings you here?”
“Hunger, sir,” Stubb told him. “Hunger and curiosity.”
The old man massaged his forehead with one big gnarled hand. “You’re seeking to shame me because we didn’t save you some of what Mr. Barnes brought this evening. You’re right to do it, and you’ve done it, Mr. Stubb. I’m most heartily sorry about that.”
Stubb waved the apology away. “From what I hear, it was the Serpentina woman’s money. Besides, you probably figured I ate somewhere else.”
“I didn’t figure, Mr. Stubb. That’s what it was. My mind was otherwhere, thinking about old times.”
“We all do that, sir,” Stubb said. “And I wasn’t trying to put you down when I said I was hungry. See, I got a little money tonight—I was able to help somebody out. The diner where I usually eat was closed, so I went to the all-night grocery and got a frozen TV dinner. It’s in your electric oven now. Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and green beans. If you’d like to split it with me, you’re invited to.”
