The Complete Adventures of Toffee
Page 54
“Merely the touch of the artist,” Toffee said archly. “Just fitting myself into a part.”
“Have I ever thought to tell you,” Marc said, “that you are the most unprincipled, low-minded...?”
Then suddenly his voice dried in his throat. His gaze darted away from Toffee’s face and swept frightenedly across the horizon.
“Oh, my gosh!” he cried.
Suddenly, like a slow dissolve in a movie, the little valley was simply melting away into black nothingness. Already the distant trees had disappeared. Marc jumped to his feet.
“Look!” he yelled. “Look!”
Toffee was instantly beside him. For a moment she gazed on the horrifying spectacle, then tugged imperatively at his sleeve.
“Come on!” she cried. “Let’s run!”
But as they turned in the other direction the blackness only rushed at them anew; it was coming all around them. They stopped short.
“Will we drop away into nothing?” Toffee wailed, “or just melt away with everything else?”
“We’ll find out soon enough,” Marc moaned.
And perhaps a bit sooner, it seemed, for even as Marc spoke, the darkness swooped to within yards of them.
Toffee drew close to Marc, trembling a bit, and he placed his arm about her shoulders. They stood in expectant silence for a moment, watching the greenness disappear around them. Then, all at once, it was gone beneath them.
It was just as they plunged downward into the darkness that Toffee threw her arms about Marc’s neck and held tight ...
THE world reeled drunkenly through space ... whirled away with eggshaped lopsidedness ... and then there was nothing left anywhere but the original dough from which everything had been made in the first place ... messy, clammy stuff ... and you sank deeper and deeper into it no matter how hard you struggled. Marc tried to cry out ...
And then there was an answer, a scraping of metal on metal. A light showed ahead, dulled and heavily diffused, but it came suddenly. A voice spoke encouragement ...
“Just a minute, and I’ll dig you out. How you ever managed to get snarled up like that flat on your back ... ”
The voice continued scolding him with affection, and a minute later the doughy mass was pulled aside, and he could see that it was only the perspiration-covered sheets. He looked at them, then beyond them to Julie’s gently smiling face. Morning was crowding into the room through the windows behind her.
“’Morning,” he said sheepishly. “Thanks.”
In silence Julie handed him a glass of orange juice, and he boosted himself forward to drink it.
“How’s your ... your back?” she asked tentatively. “Is it better?”
Marc returned the glass to her, tried a few movements involving his mummified spine. There was no definite pain, only a suggestion of stiffness.
“Brand new,” he said, and smiled.
“Oh, I’m so relieved!” Julie breathed. She sat down close beside him on the bed. “I’m sorry. Marc.”
For a moment they only looked at each other. Then, suddenly breaking into laughter, they fell into each other’s arms.
“Oh, Marc!” Julie cried. “I haven’t been so happy in months. I don’t know why. Nothing’s changed; everything’s in the same old mess, and considering what I did to you last night I ought to feel just awful. But I don’t, and I just can’t explain it.”
“Maybe I can,” Marc said slowly. “I think ... just before I fell asleep last night ... I think something very important occurred to me. I think ... !”
Suddenly his voice degenerated into a thin wheeze as the air rushed out of his lungs. He looked as though nothing of even minor importance had passed through his mind from the day of his birth. Julie looked up at him with anxious surprise.
“What is it, dear?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”
Marc didn’t answer; he only stared—into the mirror across the room. Even as he watched, the horrifying thing he had witnessed a moment before repeated itself.
Across the room, almost exactly opposite the mirror was a small alcove, just big enough to accommodate his desk and filing cabinet. When the compartment was not in use a set of curtains concealed its existence. It was the reflection of these curtains and their sudden curious behavior which had set Marc’s hair on end.
FOR curtains which were meant only to hang blissfully on metal rods and behave themselves, these were weaving about in a most distressing fashion. In fact they were carrying on in such a loose-minded way that it was a wonder Marc did not return his head to the cover of the soggy sheets and leave it there just to be spared the sight.
As it was, Marc peered wildly into the mirror as the curtains suddenly parted themselves, took on individual lives of their own, and began to twist about in the air in a way that defied all reason. This continued for several seconds, then matters got worse.
The curtain on the left retreated from the performance and hung limp. Marc sighed a sigh of relief, only to catch his breath in a new convulsion of horror. The curtain on the right, not content with behaving like something human, had decided to look like something human as well. Actually, in the manner of a close fitting dress, the thing began to assume bumps and hollows of all extremely feminine and alarming nature. It was then, and only a moment before a flash of red hair showed around the edge of the curtain, that Marc realized the awful truth of the situation; Toffee had materialized. She had materialized in his bedroom, without any clothes, and was trying to fashion a dress for herself from the draperies.
“Darling! Julie cried. “Why are you looking like that? What’s the matter?”
Julie’s voice suddenly reminded Marc of the real danger in the situation. He glanced up, reached out and gripped Julie’s shoulders just in time to prevent her turning about to see what he was staring at.
“There’s nothing wrong!” He laughed falsely. “Everything’s wonderful! Wonderful! Go get me some breakfast!”
“What?” Julie asked confusedly.
But Marc’s gaze had again been captured by a movement in the mirror. As he looked up Toffee’s reflection smiled brightly at him and waved.
“Stay where you are!” Marc gibbered. “Go back!”
“What?” Julie asked.
Marc looked at her unhappily. “I’m starving!” he gibbered. “Get me something to eat! I may start gnawing on the bedpost in a minute!”
“But you just said for me to stay where I was. Why?”
“Yes, yes, I know,” Marc said. He smiled feebly. “What I mean is that I’m hungry and want breakfast, but I hate to see you leave to get it because ... because it’s so nice to see you this morning ... ”
JULIE smiled uncertainly and patted his head. “I’ll get you something right away,” she said. “But I’ll hurry.”
“Oh, don’t!” Marc said. “Take all the time you want!”
Julie looked at him quizzically and started to rise from the bed. Unfortunately for everyone’s peace of mind Toffee chose that moment to stick one shapely leg around the edge of the curtain.
“Don’t!” Marc yelled.
Julie sat down quickly and reached a hand to Marc’s brow. “But how can I get breakfast if I don’t leave?” she asked patiently.
Marc turned to her with an harrassed expression. “You can’t!” he cried. “That’s just it! So leave! Go on! Go ’way!”
“What!” An expression of utter hopelessness came over Julie’s face.
“Go!” Marc said desperately. “Hurry!”
Julie stared at him for a long moment. “Are you sure you aren’t harboring some sort of terrible grudge against me for what I did last night?” she asked slowly. “I’ll understand perfectly if ... ”
“No, no, no!” Marc broke in. “I was never more fond of you than I am right at this minute. Go away.”
“All right,” Julie said. “I’m going. But don’t call me back this time the minute I make a move for the door.”
“I won’t,” Marc said. “I’ll be silent as the grave.”
Quickly, Marc whirled around and stared in the direction of the alcove. As he did so the blood in his veins was sorely put to it whether to run hot or cold; Toffee, curvesome as a serpent and twice as fleshy, had stepped from behind the curtains and, at the moment, had arranged herself into a posture of highly seductive nature. This, judging by her expression, she considered humorous in the extreme. Not so, Marc.
“No!” he cried. “Stop!”
Julie did not bother to turn around; she merely stopped where she was in the doorway and placed her hands carefully on her hips. “Oh, no!” she groaned. “I’ve married a man who fancies himself a traffic signal!”
“No!” Marc yelled. “Not you!”
“Then who?” Julie asked with thredbare patience. The twenty-seven little men with pointed heads sitting on the bureau? Is that who you mean, dearest?”
“Just go!” Marc implored her. “Go!”
“Stop, go, stop, go, stop go!” Julie shrilled. “I am not operated electrically. More’s the pity!” Slowly she started to turn around to face her ever-changing spouse and—eventually—the nakedest redhead any wife ever had the sheer horror of discovering in her husband’s bed chamber.
MARC felt fate bearing down on him in a way that made him understand the feelings of a deeply rooted daisy looking up at an approaching steam roller. He turned away and closed his eyes in the cowering aspect of one who expects to receive a load of brickbats on the nape of the neck. He stood, his nerves laerted against Julie’s cry. There was a beat of silence—then it came.
But it was not the cry that Marc had braced himself against. This cry was sharply out of character, not at all the triumphant cawe of a wronged wife laying hand to definite proof of her husband’s perfidy. This was sheerly, unmistakably a cry of basic, physical pain.
Marc opened his eyes and turned around, then started back with a gasp of surprise. Julie the beauty who always walked in regal stateliness, whose every move and gesture was a masterpiece of living poetry, was suddenly squatting in the doorway, clutching at herself in a way which was not only ungainly but downright repellent.
For a long moment surprise rendered Marc totally incapable of action. Then with a burst of logic and simultaneous realization, he whirled Toffee’s direction. Suddenly, this whole shuddering situation was all too clear to him.
Toffee, now completely emerged from her place of hiding, turned and smiled at him in a conspiratorial and knowing way. Marc noticed that her left hand was raised significantly in Julie’s direction, while the right was held over the face of the curious ring, as though shading it.
He stared at her in horror; he couldn’t imagine exactly what part the unearthly ring was playing in Julie’s unlovely predicament, but he was absolutely certain that it was responsible to some degree or another. He was stunned beyond caution.
“Stop that,” he demanded angrily. “Stop that instantly!”
Julie, still crouching in the doorway, her back to the room, trembled and turned her eyes to the ceiling.
“Do you think I’m doing this because I like it?” she gritted between clenched teeth. “Do you actually imagine I wouldn’t stop it if I could, you beast?”
“Now, Julie!” Marc turned about, held out an imploring hand to her arched back.
“You shut up, you vindictive vermin!” Julie hissed, announcing her sentiments through the length of the outer hallway. “So you bear a grudge, huh? Hah! I’m only surprised you didn’t break your back under the load!
“Julie ... !” Marc pleaded. “I don’t under... !”
“No!” Julie broke in. “Oh, no! Don’t you dare say I don’t understand! And don’t tell me I don’t know when I’ve been brutally, wantonly and vengefully kicked from and in the rear!”
“Julie!” Marc gasped. “I didn’t kick you. I know it’s hard to believe, but ...”
“You’re darned tootin’ it’s hard to believe!” Julie sneered. “In fact it’s impossible to believe, you liar!”
“But ... !”
“Well, aren’t you at least going to call the doctor? As inhuman as we both now know you to be, there must be some slim thread of decency somewhere in the tacky fabric of that character of yours.”
Marc turned beseechingly to Toffee.
“Please,” he implored her. “Please! You’re not helping matters, you know, in taking that attitude.”
“Ohhh!” Julie groaned. “I didn’t take this attitude, I was kicked into it!”
WITH a bland smile Toffee nodded to Marc. Then carefully she removed her hand from the ring, and there was a bright glitter from its surface. Toffee winked broadly and stepped back into the alcove. In the doorway Julie straightened instantly and turned around, her hands clenched tightly at her sides. She stretched her back tentatively.
“Well, I’m all right again,” she announced heavily. “No thanks to you, Mr. Wife Kicker!”
“Julie ... ,” Marc began, “you’ve got to listen to me!”
“Oh, no, I don’t!” Julie corrected him emphatically. “I don’t have to listen to you. All I have to do is convince myself that I like that lamp over there too well to shatter it on your skull.” Calming herself with an effort, she eyed him with controlled malevolence. She breathed deeply. “I think I can trust myself now not to run to the kitchen for the ice pick.” She turned away. “Goodbye, Mr. Marcus Pillsworth!”
“Julie ... !”
“And may your soul blister in everlasting hell!” Julie added as she swept out of the room and into the hallway.
Marc stood undecided for a moment. He started toward the hall then checked himself and spun around in the direction of the alcove. Two striding steps brought him to the drapes, and with a single sweeping gesture of outrage, raked them aside. Toffee was disclosed sitting on the edge of the desk, one leg crossed casually over the other, blowing on her nails. She glanced up and smiled innocently
“Lo,” she said.
“Why you slithering little reptile!” Marc barked. “Of all the witless stunts ... !”
Toffee waggled a slender finger at his costume. “Has anyone ever told you how cunning you look in those pajamas?” she murmured. “Are they ripped that way on purpose for ventilation?”
With a seizure of modesty Marc snatched at the curtains and clutched them around him. He looked rather like a Roman senator with his toga slipping. Toffee laughed.
“I thought that would put the muzzle on you, you old Puritan,” she said.
MARC drew himself up to his full six feet and two inches, and eyed her with lofty disdain. “You’re in a nice position to talk,” he observed frigidly.
“I’m in a nice position for a lot of things,” Toffee sighed, “but you’d never notice.”
Marc cleared his throat and averted his eyes. “Don’t be brazen,” he said. “I would offer you these curtains if I didn’t need them so desperately myself.”
“Always the perfect host,” Toffee commented.
“Never mind me,” Marc said. “What about you? Whatever possessed you to do a thing like that?”
“Like what?”
“Oh, stop it, Marc said wearily. “It was perfectly evident that you were at the bottom of that little demonstration.”
“At the bottom?” Toffee laughed. “You put it so well. Unless you wanted to say I was at the seat of things.”
“There you go. Just give you a simple statement and you squeeze enough dirt out of it to start a truck farm,” Marc agitated his drapes. “Either you tell me what you’re up to or I’ll stop projecting you if I have to belt myself over the head with a sledge hammer.”
Toffee smiled slowly. “I might as well make a clean breast of it,” she said. “If the anatomical reference doesn’t strike you as too racy?”
“Never mind,” Marc said shortly. “You wouldn’t recognize a moral scruple if it were presented to you in a gla
ss jar.”
“Very well,” Toffee said. “Apparently you’ve guessed the function of my ring.” She held up her hand and the fearsome ornament glittered brightly. “Actually the stone projects a ray which, in effect, sensitizes the bones and tissues of the human body, separates them slightly according to how long you time the concentration, and holds them apart. Maybe you noticed that Julie, just before her accident, was slightly taller than usual. Anyway, once you have the subject focused, it’s only a matter of breaking the ray quickly with the other hand. Things, drawn apart and out of line snap back with such a force that the subject might just as well be struck witn a hammer.” She looked at Marc. “See what I mean?”
“I think so.” Marc said slowly. “In other words you focused the radiation on the base of Julie’s spine, drew ... uh ... things out of line, broke the suspending force suddenly, so that they jarred together with such momentum that they were thrown out of place ... the sacroiliac, in this case.”
“Exactly,” Toffee said. “In effect, I simply gave your wife a good rousing kick in the ...”
“Croup,” Marc supplied quickly.
“In the croup” Toffee agreed. “And when I wanted her to get over it I merely pulled the things ... apart again, then released them more gently so as to return them to their proper adjustment.”
“But what I want to know,” Marc said evenly, “is just what possessed you to demonstrate this diabolical little gadget on Julie?”
“Two reasons,” Toffee explained. “First to make sure the ring works the way I planned it, second to get Julie out of the way.”
“Get her out of the way?” Marc repeated apprehensively. “Now look here if you have any sordid actions about a dalliance on a divan, for instance . . .”
“I always have these notions,” Toffee said. “However at the moment I’m having them in conjunction with other notions.” She smiled prettily. “I’ve come to straighten out the world.”
“You what?” Marc asked incredulously.
“You will admit it needs straightening out?” Toffee asked complacently.
“Well, yes,” Marc said. “But believe me the one thing it doesn’t need is your ministrations. It couldn’t take it, And I wish you’d get rid of that filthy ring.”