The room was locked, empty, and he was alone and, looking around him, he knew that time was running out in more senses than one.
For this was the last day of his summer and he was still alive.
* * * *
He sank into a chair, staring dully at the dark bowl of the sky beyond the high windows, not seeing the flash and glare of the slender ships as they rose toward space, not seeing the faded stars, the immensity of the universe, seeing only himself and what he would become. For a moment self-pity gnawed at his strength and almost he yielded to it, feeling the easy, emotionless tears of age blur his vision and sting his eyes. Then he recovered and stared about the glowing beauty of the room.
Here were his treasures and, in a sense, here was his life. Here were his memories, the little things, the trifles and yet each with its own association with the past. A statue, he reached for it and let his thumb travel with almost sensuous pleasure over the polished stone, a fragment hardly worth the price of a meal, and yet he had carried it with him for uncounted millions of miles. There a ring, a gift later returned, a gift which, if accepted would have changed the course of his entire life.
For a moment he felt the old pain, the shattering of cynicism and felt a faint regret that now, in this last day, he was alone.
And yet he would not have had it otherwise.
Loneliness was something he had lived with too long to fear now. And he could bear it until he died—if he died. The thought made him sweat, a thin film of glistening moisture over the too-soft skin, and his hand trembled a little as he reached for the bottle of rare old brandy. Death, something he had wanted, something he had paid for, something he had expected all day. Not natural death, that would come and its approach was a thing he dreaded and feared accompanied as it would be by accelerated senility and gibbering insanity. But clean, sweet, merciless death, unknown, immediate, a clean cutting off and a neat finish.
The only way to avoid the winter.
He had arranged it and the Bureau of Euthanasia had never been known to fail. He had tasted the sights and sounds, the sensuous pleasures of good food and good wine, the sight of familiar scenes and the visiting of familiar places for what he had imagined to be the last time. He had ignored the assassin who would be watching his every move, discounting what must come until nerve and sinew could deny his knowledge no longer, until anticipation hovered on the verge of being replaced by fear, and the terrible dread of having to reaffirm his intention once the night had passed.
He knew that he could never do it again.
Liquid sunshine poured from the bottle into the swollen glass. Automatically he warmed it between his palms, unable to desecrate the fluid gold even in his extremity of emotion and, as he inhaled the glorious bouquet, he smiled as an artist might smile or as a man to whom has been given one of the rare pleasures of the earth.
He had always appreciated good wine.
He sipped, letting the nectar drift over his tongue and sting his palate with its familiar taste. He sipped again then, as the glass slipped from his fingers and oblivion came with time but for a single thought, he smiled.
The assassin had been something more than just a killer.
He had been a gentleman.
<
* * * *
ONE ORDINARY DAY, WITH PEANUTS
by
Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson is a witch, she says. A white witch, I believe she claims. That’s as may be; in this book she represents the forces of evil. All these other fellas, knocking themselves out, trying to figure What To Do About It All? and this Jackson comes along, takes a good look at the same messy situation, and says distinctly—and distinctively—
“Nuts!”
Peanuts, of course
* * * *
Mr. John Philip Johnson shut his front door behind him and came down his front steps into the bright morning with a feeling that all was well with the world on this best of all days, and wasn’t the sun warm and good, and didn’t his shoes feel comfortable after the resoling, and he knew that he had undoubtedly chosen the precise very tie which belonged with the day and the sun and his comfortable feet, and, after all, wasn’t the world just a wonderful place? In spite of the fact that he was a small man, and the tie was perhaps a shade vivid, Mr. Johnson irradiated this feeling of well-being as he came down the steps and onto the dirty sidewalk, and he smiled at people who passed him, and some of them even smiled back. He stopped at the newsstand on the corner and bought his paper, saying “Good morning” with real conviction to the man who sold him the paper and the two or three other people who were lucky enough to be buying papers when Mr. Johnson skipped up. He remembered to fill his pockets with candy and peanuts, and then he set out to get himself uptown. He stopped in a flower shop and bought a carnation for his buttonhole, and stopped almost immediately afterward to give the carnation to a small child in a carriage, who looked at him dumbly, and then smiled, and Mr. Johnson smiled, and the child’s mother looked at Mr. Johnson for a minute and then smiled too.
When he had gone several blocks uptown, Mr. Johnson cut across the avenue and went along a side street, chosen at random; he did not follow the same route every morning, but preferred to pursue his eventful way in wide detours, more like a puppy than a man intent upon business. It happened this morning that halfway down the block a moving van was parked, and the furniture from an upstairs apartment stood half on the sidewalk, half on the steps, while an amused group of people loitered, examining the scratches on the tables and the worn spots on the chairs, and a harassed woman, trying to watch a young child and the movers and the furniture all at the same time, gave the clear impression of endeavoring to shelter her private life from the people staring at her belongings. Mr. Johnson stopped, and for a moment joined the crowd, and then he came forward and, touching his hat civilly, said, “Perhaps I can keep an eye on your little boy for you?”
The woman turned and glared at him distrustfully, and Mr. Johnson added hastily, “We’ll sit right here on the steps.” He beckoned to the little boy, who hesitated and then responded agreeably to Mr. Johnson’s genial smile. Mr. Johnson brought out a handful of peanuts from his pocket and sat on the steps with the boy, who at first refused the peanuts on the grounds that his mother did not allow him to accept food from strangers; Mr. Johnson said that probably his mother had not intended peanuts to be included, since elephants at the circus ate them, and the boy considered, and then agreed solemnly. They sat on the steps cracking peanuts in a comradely fashion, and Mr. Johnson said, “So you’re moving?”
“Yep,” said the boy.
“Where you going?”
“Vermont.”
“Nice place. Plenty of snow there. Maple sugar, too; you like maple sugar?”
“Sure.”
“Plenty of maple sugar in Vermont. You going to live on a farm?”
“Going to live with Grandpa.”
“Grandpa like peanuts?”
“Sure.”
“Ought to take him some,” said Mr. Johnson, reaching into his pocket. “Just you and Mommy going?”
“Yep.”
“Tell you what,” Mr. Johnson said. “You take some peanuts to eat on the train.”
The boy’s mother, after glancing at them frequently, had seemingly decided that Mr. Johnson was trustworthy, because she had devoted herself wholeheartedly to seeing that the movers did not—what movers rarely do, but every housewife believes they will—crack a leg from her good table, or set a kitchen chair down on a lamp. Most of the furniture was loaded by now, and she was deep in that nervous stage when she knew there was something she had forgotten to pack—hidden away in the back of a closet somewhere, or left at a neighbor’s and forgotten, or on the clothesline—and was trying to remember under stress what it was.
“This all, lady?” the chief mover said, completing her dismay.
Uncertainly, she nodded.
“Want to go on the truck with the furniture, sonny?” the
mover asked the boy, and laughed. The boy laughed too and said to Mr: Johnson, “I guess I’ll have a good time at Vermont.”
“Fine time,” said Mr. Johnson, and stood up. “Have one more peanut before you go,” he said to the boy.
The boy’s mother said to Mr. Johnson, “Thank you so much; it was a great help to me.”
“Nothing at all,” said Mr. Johnson gallantly. “Where in Vermont are you going?”
The mother looked at the little boy accusingly, as though he had given away a secret of some importance, and said unwillingly, “Greenwich.”
“Lovely town,” said Mr. Johnson. He took out a card, and wrote a name on the back. “Very good friend of mine lives in Greenwich,” he said. “Call on him for anything you need. His wife makes the best doughnuts in town,” he added soberly to the little boy.
“Swell,” said the little boy.
“Goodby,” said Mr. Johnson.
He went on, stepping happily with his new-shod feet, feeling the warm sun on his back and on the top of his head. Halfway down the block he met a stray dog and fed him a peanut.
At the corner, where another wide avenue faced him, Mr. Johnson decided to go on uptown again. Moving with comparative laziness, he was passed on either side by people hurrying and frowning, and people brushed past him going the other way, clattering along to get somewhere quickly. Mr. Johnson stopped on every corner and waited patiently for the light to change, and he stepped out of the way of anyone who seemed to be in any particular hurry, but one young lady came too fast for him, and crashed wildly into him when he stooped to pat a kitten which had run out onto the sidewalk from an apartment house and was now unable to get back through the rushing feet.
“Excuse me,” said the young lady, trying frantically to pick up Mr. Johnson and hurry on at the same time, “terribly sorry.”
The kitten, regardless now of danger, raced back to its home; “Perfectly all right,” said Mr. Johnson, adjusting himself carefully. “You seem to be in a hurry.”
“Of course I’m in a hurry,” said the young lady. “I’m late.”
She was extremely cross and the frown between her eyes seemed well on its way to becoming permanent. She had obviously awakened late, because she had not spent any extra time in making herself look pretty, and her dress was plain and unadorned with collar or brooch, and her lipstick was noticeably crooked. She tried to brush past Mr. Johnson, but, risking her suspicious displeasure, he took her arm and said, “Please wait.”
“Look,” she said ominously. “I ran into you and your lawyer can see my lawyer and I will gladly pay all damages and all inconveniences suffered therefrom but please this minute let me go because I am late.”
“Late for what?” said Mr. Johnson; he tried his winning smile on her but it did no more than keep her, he suspected, from knocking him down again.
“Late for work,” she said between her teeth. “Late for my employment. I have a job and if I am late I lose exactly so much an hour and I cannot really afford what your pleasant conversation is costing me, be it ever so pleasant.”
“I’ll pay for it,” said Mr. Johnson. Now these were magic words, not necessarily because they were true, or because she seriously expected Mr. Johnson to pay for anything, but because Mr. Johnson’s flat statement, obviously innocent of irony, could not be, coming from Mr. Johnson, anything but the statement of a responsible and truthful and respectable man.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I said that since I am obviously responsible for your being late I shall certainly pay for it.”
“Don’t be silly,” she said, and for the first time the frown disappeared. “I wouldn’t expect you to pay for anything—a few minutes ago I was offering to pay you. Anyway,” she added, almost smiling, “it was my fault”
“What happens if you don’t go to work?”
She stared. “I don’t get paid.”
“Precisely,” said Mr. Johnson.
“What do you mean, precisely? If I don’t show up at the office exactly twenty minutes ago I lose a dollar and twenty cents an hour, or two cents a minute or . . .” She thought. “... Almost a dime for the time I’ve spent talking to you.”
Mr. Johnson laughed, and finally she laughed, too. “You’re late already,” he pointed out. “Will you give me another four cents worth?”
“I don’t understand why.”
“You’ll see,” Mr. Johnson promised. He led her over to the side of the walk, next to the buildings, and said, “Stand here,” and went out into the rush of people going both ways. Selecting and considering, as one who must make a choice involving perhaps whole years of lives, he estimated the people going by. Once he almost moved, and then at the last minute thought better of it and drew back. Finally, from half a block away, he saw what he wanted, and moved out into the center of the traffic to intercept a young man, who was hurrying, and dressed as though he had awakened late, and frowning.
“Oof,” said the young man, because Mr. Johnson had thought of no better way to intercept anyone than the one the young woman had unwittingly used upon him. “Where do you think you’re going?” the young man” demanded from the sidewalk.
“I want to speak to you,” said Mr. Johnson ominously.
The young man got up nervously, dusting himself and eyeing Mr. Johnson. “What for?” he said. “What’d I do?”
“That’s what bothers me most about people nowadays,” Mr. Johnson complained broadly to the people passing. “No matter whether they’ve done anything or not, they always figure someone’s after them. About what you’re going to do,” he told the young man.
“Listen,” said the young man, trying to brush past him, “I’m late, and I don’t have any time to listen. Here’s a dime, now get going.”
“Thank you,” said Mr. Johnson, pocketing the dime. “Look,” he said, “what happens if you stop running?”
“I’m late,” said the young man, still trying to get past Mr. Johnson, who was unexpectedly clinging.
“How much do you make an hour?” Mr. Johnson demanded.
“A communist, are you?” said the young man. “Now will you please let me—”
“No,” said Mr. Johnson insistently, “how much?”
“Dollar fifty,” said the young man. “And now will you—”
“You like adventure?”
The young man stared, and, staring, found himself caught and held by Mr. Johnson’s genial smile; he almost smiled back and then repressed it and made an effort to tear away. “I got to hurry,” he said.
“Mystery? Like surprises? Unusual and exciting events?”
“You selling something?”
“Sure,” said Mr. Johnson. “You want to take a chance?”
The young man hesitated, looked longingly up the avenue toward what might have, been his destination and then, when Mr. Johnson said, “I’ll pay for it,” with his own peculiar and convincing emphasis, turned and said, “Well, okay. But I got to see it first, what I’m buying.”
Mr. Johnston, breathing hard, led the young man over to the side where the girl was standing; she had been watching with interest Mr. Johnson’s capture of the young man and now, smiling timidly, she looked at Mr. Johnson as though prepared to be surprised at nothing.
Mr. Johnson reached into his pocket and took out his wallet. “Here,” he said, and handed a bill to the girl. “This about equals your day’s pay.”
“But no,” she said, surprised in spite of herself. “I mean, I couldn’t.”
“Please do not interrupt,” Mr. Johnson told her. “And here,” he said to the young man, “this will take care of you.” The young man accepted the bill dazedly, but said, “Probably counterfeit” to the young woman out of the side of his mouth. “Now,” Mr. Johnson went on, disregarding the young man, “what is your name, miss?”
“Kent,” she said helplessly. “Mildred Kent.”
“Fine,” said Mr. Johnson. “And you, sir?”
“Arthur Adams,” said the you
ng man stiffly.
“Splendid,” said Mr. Johnson. “Now, Miss Kent, I would like you to meet Mr. Adams. Mr. Adams, Miss Kent.”
Miss Kent stared, wet her lips nervously, made a gesture as though she might run, and said, “How do you do?”
Mr. Adams straightened his shoulders, scowled at Mr. Johnson, made a gesture as though he might run, and said, “How do you do?”
“Now this,” said Mr. Johnson, taking several bills from his wallet, “should be enough for the day for both of you. I would suggest, perhaps, Coney Island—although I personally am not fond of the place—or perhaps a nice lunch somewhere, and dancing, or a matinee, or even a movie, although take care to choose a really good one; there are so many bad movies these days. You might,” he said, struck with an inspiration, “visit the Bronx Zoo, or the Planetarium. Anywhere, as a matter of fact,” he concluded, “that you would like to go. Have a nice time.”
The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 1 - [Anthology] Page 25
