Collected Fiction (1940-1963)

by William P. McGivern

  THE great double doors of the grotto were closed. At a signal from Lellamy they opened slowly. There was mist about the four that stood in the cavern before the grotto. Strange radiant light played about them and from somewhere music drifted to them. Music that was resigned and lonely, muted and soft.

  “What is that?” Peter asked. His young face was puzzled. He seemed apart from all of them, like a person who is a stranger in his own home. Like a man homesick for a land he has never seen, who yearns for a place, he can never go.

  “Maybe it is because I have known a moment of loneliness,” Lellamy said with a strange smile.

  “Better that than an eternity of loneliness,” Peter said.

  “I will have that, too.”

  She looked at them then, but longest at Rick, before turning toward the grotto. The doors back now and the altar and urn were visible. From the urn vapors of many colors rose and disappeared toward the vaulted ceiling.

  Lellamy walked through the doors and the vapors caught in her brilliant hair, surrounded her in swirling clouds. She seemed to grow taller as she neared the altar, and her head shown against the pale whiteness of the fog.

  She turned slowly and waved to them. There was a soft lonely smile on her lips and they could see her eyes, empty and yearning through the mists.

  Then the door began to close slowly. The music, the lonely muted music rose about them, swelling unbearably, then, fading softly.

  The doors were closing slowly. Peter caught Rick’s arm.

  “This is what I couldn’t tell you about,” he said. He was speaking almost to himself and the words tumbled out excitedly. He swept an arm about in an exultant gesture. “I couldn’t tell anybody about it. The loneliness, I always felt, that was always eating me away inside. I don’t feel that when I’m here, Rick.” He caught Rick and turned him about, stared into his face. “Am I crazy, Rick? I want to stay with her. Am I crazy, Rick?”

  Rick looked into his flushed, transcendentally happy face and he shook his head.

  “You’ve found it, Peter. The thing you looked for in war. You’ve found it here in the grotto.”

  Peter stared at the closing doors and then he laughed.

  “I’ll keep it then, Rick.”

  He waved to them and ran toward the doors. He slipped through the narrowing aperture and then his figure disappeared in the swirling fog that had enveloped Lellamy.

  Rick put his arm about Clare’s shoulder as the massive figured doors closed forever, and the music that swelled about them changed—slowly at first—but then faster and faster, until its tone was joyous and triumphant.

  VOICE FROM A STAR

  First published in the October 1947 issue of Amazing Stories.

  There were other girls than Mona—and just as lovely—particularly that one that always whispered in Joe’s brain . . .

  JOE EVANS was a normal, bright young man with all the standard qualifications for being happy. He had a girl whom he thought was lovely, he had a job that paid him adequately, and he was twenty-six years old.

  But he wasn’t happy.

  The job was one reason. He was a copy writer for a Los Angeles department store and, in spite of the money, the job gave him a pain in the neck.

  He was thinking about this as he sat in the office he shared with Cliff Nesser, watching the sun sink into the horizon. He decided rather abruptly that along with his job he didn’t like California either. Everything looked as if it were built to impress a producer.

  Even the sun couldn’t set normally and unobstrusively, the way it did in Kansas and Illinois. No, it had to go down in a blaze of hammy glory, as if its option were coming up and it was making a last desperate effort to stave off being kicked out of pictures.

  He took his feet off his desk and looked over at Cliff Nesser, a sour lean individual, about forty-five, with graying hair, bags under his eyes big enough to need zippers, and a perpetually tired, sardonic expression. He was busy writing an advertisement for a new perfume, which the manufacturer had called, Boudoir Bombshell.

  “Great business, isn’t it?” Joe said. “Real art. Writing this drivel to tease a bunch of tired, fat dowagers into investing two dollars for a new personality, a new body, and guaranteed love affair. Your money back if you are not attacked five times on your way home from the store. That’s what you’re telling them, isn’t it?”

  Cliff stopped typing and looked over at Joe with a sardonic grin. “Something like that. What the hell’s the difference? They like to hope, just like everybody else.”

  “Fine way for a grown man to make a living,” Joe said. He looked disgustedly at the tips of his brown oxfords. “Why don’t we get a. job in a steel mill or a railroad yard? Our conscience wouldn’t bother us so much if we did some honest work for a change.”

  “I have absolutely no interest in being honest,” Cliff said. “You talk like all academic artists. ‘Off to the steel mill! Off to the railroad yard! Work and sweat! Live honestly.’ That’s great, as long as you just talk about it. But did you ever work in a mill? Ten to one, no. It’s hard, stinking work, and I don’t want any part of it. I would rather sit in a warm office, for the same dough, and tell Mrs. Richdough how to win her husband back from his blonde secretary, although she couldn’t do it even if she had her face lifted with a derrick. It’s not honest, but damn it, it’s clean and comfortable.” Joe took his feet off the desk and picked up a pencil. He drew a picture of a fat dowager having her face lifted by a derrick. It wasn’t a very good picture.

  “I don’t really mean I’d rather work in a steel mill,” he said.

  “Then please stop talking about it,” Cliff said, “it makes me nervous.”

  “I want to write. I want to write a good book. And what do I do? I sit here writing this junk just because they pay me for it. I’m a coward, that’s all.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re just normal. You like to eat, you like a place to sleep, you like a drink, a smoke, a good time occasionally. This job gives you all those things. What the hell would a book give you? A headache, probably.”

  “Oh, I’ve heard all that,” Joe said, “but it’s no excuse. If a guy wants to write he shouldn’t worry about physical things.”

  Cliff leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling.

  “Now you are sounding the corny artist type. Why shouldn’t you worry about the physical things? If you don’t eat who else will worry? Let me tell you about me. When I was your age I wrote a play. A very fine play. But I couldn’t eat it, I couldn’t wear it, I couldn’t live in it. So I threw it away. I got this job. I’m happy. I don’t want to struggle, to torture myself, to live in a garret and write fine plays. Me, for Mrs. Richdough. She’s not art, but she’s steaks on the table and a case of beer on ice.”

  Joe looked at his watch and got up.

  “YOU’RE a lot of help,” he said.

  “I’m going to get out before I’m corrupted. I guess we can leave now. The whistle blew and we can take off our overalls.”

  “What’s the hurry? The usual date with Mona?”

  Joe nodded. “My excuse for living.”

  “How’re you doing with her?”

  “So-so. She doesn’t think I make enough money.”

  “A very brilliant girl. Marry her and you’ll own this joint in five years.”

  “I don’t want to own this joint. I want to write.”

  “Pardon me,” Cliff said. He went back to his typewriter. “I have the feeling of sitting through a bad show twice.”

  “Go back to Mrs. Richdough,” Joe said. “She understands you.”

  “I just love that girl,” Cliff grinned. “I think I’ll promise her a date with Wolf Wolfman if she’ll buy a gallon of Boudoir Bombshell.”

  “You would, too,” Joe said gloomily, as he left the office.

  He had a drink, then caught a cab out to the Wilshire Towers where Mona lived. The building was Hollywood Tudor, with a lot of glass-brick walls, palms, cute modern furniture, and about
as much warmth as you’d find in the regrets of finance company.

  Mona loved it. She thought it was haut monde, whatever that meant.

  Joe went up to the sixteenth floor in an elevator that traveled as if it were jet-propelled.

  He went down the wide, creamy-white corridors and knocked at Mona’s door.

  There was a little delay. There always was. Mona liked to build up dramatic effects by keeping people waiting. Joe wondered what she’d do if he spoiled her act sometime by arriving with nothing on but a pair of shorts. Then he wondered what was wrong with him tonight. He usually wasn’t so sensitive and critical.

  The door opened a few minutes later and Joe decided, as he always did, that the wait was worth it. Mona stood in the doorway, a bright smile on her face, looking every inch the brilliant young interior decorator.

  “Joe, it’s so nice to see you!” she cried. She extended one hand gracefully. “Do come in!”

  For the second time Joe wondered why he was in such a critical mood. Did she always have to accentuate her words like a bobby soxer? Would something cataclysmic happen if she didn’t extend one hand like a reigning monarch and invite him in, as if she were a visiting diplomat?

  Then his momentary irritation vanished as he looked at her, and realized for the dozenth time, how truly beautiful and chic she was.

  Her hair was the color of ripe wheat, a creamy blonde that looked and was as soft as silk. She wore it up, so that it swept past her tiny ears like shimmering wings. Her features were regular and classic, and only in Joe’s most exasperated moments did he wish they were a little less regular and a little more natural and expressive. Even if her features were unstimulating, which they weren’t her body would have taken care of things nicely. She was slim and lush, qualities which too often don’t go together. Her body had the pencil-slim appeal of a young girl, miraculously combined with the softly rounded curves of an exciting woman.

  She had dancers’ legs, almost too lovely to be real. The leg-make-up she wore transformed them to the color of well-creamed coffee, and gave them a texture that would have caused any self-respecting silk-worm to hang its head.

  Joe found his irritation vanishing as he followed her into the living room of her chic apartment. He sat down and let her fix him a drink.

  “Well,” she said brightly, as she handed him a Martini, “how did the day go?”

  She sat down before him on a footstool and sipped her drink. She managed to look like a charming school-girl, despite the drink, the chic apartment, her long bare legs and the platform shoes she wore. She could manage to look just about anyway she pleased.

  SHE didn’t really care how Joe’s day had gone, and no one knew it better than Joe. It was part of her present act. The wide-eyed sympathetic little woman, with a drink for the poor tired man.

  “So-so,” Joe said. “And you?”

  That was a subject dear to her heart. “Simply ghastly,” she said. She accentuated ghastly so that it acquired two extra syllables. “I had that simply horrible job to do for Raoul Martin. I told you about that. Well, the man is simply incredible. He wants chains in his apartment. Great brass chains hung from wall to wall, and satin drapes. Now I ask you? I told him it would look simply weird, and he said that was precisely his idea. Such an incredible creature! Really!”

  “Must be quite a character,” Joe said. He didn’t put much enthusiasm in it. When Mona was exulting about her clients his toleration point sunk to a depressing low.

  “Darling, you’ve no idea! Another drink?”

  “Might as well,” Joe said. “And by the way, about that little deal of mine. Have you thought it over?”

  Mona poured a drink and tried to look thoughtful.

  “Marriage? Oh, Joey, don’t be dull tonight! I simply can’t marry you right away. I’m incredibly fond of you, but I simply can’t.”

  “A proposal is your idea of dull conversation?”

  “Now Joey, don’t be stuffy! You know I can’t stand stuffy people. I didn’t mean to hurt you, but I really can’t tell you right away how I feel.”

  “Do you love me?”

  “Oh, loads, but that isn’t the point.”

  “What is the point? Do we have to be psycho-analyzed or have our hand writing interpreted before we can get together?”

  “Darling, it’s nothing so sordid. It’s simply a question of money.”

  “What could be less sordid?” Joe said. He drank his drink and looked at the floor.

  “Darling, don’t be bitter and bourgeoisie. There’s nothing sordid about money. I simply must have it. It’s like—like nylons or anything else important.”

  “Well, let’s have dinner, anyway,” Joe said. “There’s nothing sordid about steak I guess.”

  Mona laughed happily and then leaned forward and brushed her lips across Joe’s cheeks. “That’s my Joey,” she cried. “I love you when you’re so gay and silly.”

  THEY had dinner at a restaurant that made a point of not being inconvenienced by the butter shortage. There was a waiter in a blue uniform with a silver bucket of butter pats, whose only job was to toss a few lumps on empty plates. The management also made it a point of presenting its customers with a bill which looked like the closing figures of the Federal Reserve Bank.

  When their after-dinner brandies were just luscious memories, Joe suggested a show. Mona wanted to go to the dog races, but when Joe told her greyhounds were really half-breeds she changed her mind.

  They went to see Sylvia Dare in “Scarlet Passion.” Sylvia was a new Hollywood import. She had won a beauty contest in a canning factory in Omaha and after several pictures, she had blossomed as a star. She was the hottest thing in town, a new sensation, the darling of the reviewers, choicest bait for the local wolves.

  Mona and Joe found seats in the middle of the darkened theatre. They watched an animated cartoon, a short featuring a Southern Senator who advocated the repeal of the automobile, and finally the trailer for “Scarlet Passion” flashed on the screen.

  The picture was an impossible bore, Joe decided after the first five minutes. The plot concerned the efforts of a group of ship-wrecked seamen to save their lives and to eventually effect their rescue. This was complicated by the arrival of Sylvia Dare, cast as a native girl, complete with sarong, impeccable coiffure, make-up and painted toenails. All the seamen wanted Sylvia, but she contented herself with performing exotic native dances, about as authentic as the Charleston, and spurning the amorous advances of the seamen. Her only line was something which sounded like, “Me no good for you,” and it was obviously some harassed script writer’s conception of how Pacific Islanders talked.

  Of course, Joe decided, Sylvia really didn’t have to talk. No one cared as long as they could look at her. She had thick blue-black hair, a pale, haunting face and a sultry-looking pair of lips, that were as tempting as any sultry looking pair of lips. The thing that interested Joe was that she looked nice. In spite of the heavy sex act, she looked like a girl who should be baking pies, raising kids and worrying about her speech at the local Parent-Teacher’s meeting.

  Mona hugged his arm and said, “But isn’t she incredible? I mean incredible!”

  “I thought that’s what you meant,” he said. He felt oddly annoyed. Incredible was a word which had an elastic interpretation in Mona’s dialogue. Applied to Sylvia Dare it meant phony and cheap. For no good reason Joe didn’t like it.

  “I think she’s nice,” he said. “How the hell would you look dancing in front of a lagoon with a half dozen guys drooling at you? Like Jane Addams of Hull House, I suppose!”

  “Oh, darling, you are precious,”

  Mona laughed. “I imagine you think she’s sweet.”

  “Well, I do,” Joe said. He felt uncomfortable now and a little ridiculous. And stubborn.

  “Darling you’re a peasant at heart,” Mona sighed. “I suppose that’s what makes you a writer.”

  “I’m a hot writer. Real artist. Full of soul and spirit. Mrs. Richblood
’s little hired hack, that’s all.” For some reason all the bitterness he had felt in talking to Cliff was coming back.

  SYLVIA DARE was looking at the audience now, but he had the strange impression she was looking at him. It was a close-up shot and her face filled the screen. Her eyes, hot and fiery were looking into his, and when her lips parted he felt a funny little tingle at the base of his spine.

  It was almost as if she were going to talk to him!

  Her lips parted, her voice sounded! “You don’t have to be a little hired hack, Joe Evans!”

  Joe felt the little tingle at the base of his spine suddenly generate into a jolt of electricity that traveled up his back like a streak of lightning.

  She had spoken to him!

  “What do you know about it?” he demanded automatically.

  Mona’s fingers dug into his arm. “Joe, what’s the matter?”

  “She talked to me,” he said. His voice was loud and a little hysterical. “She said I didn’t have to be a hired hack.”

  “Joe, what are you babbling about?”

  “About her. Sylvia Dare. She talked to me.”

  “Please, Joe,” Mona said uneasily. “People are looking at you. I don’t thing you’re being funny.”

  “I—I—” He couldn’t get any words out, because he suddenly realized how ridiculous he was sounding. She couldn’t have spoken to him. The sound track had been canned months ago. There was no way she could speak to him. He’d read of things like this, where a person’s mental attitude causes him to imagine he hears voices, but he never expected to experience it himself. It was damned unnerving.

  He forced himself to look at the screen again. Mona was still watching him anxiously, and he felt a flush of embarrassment as he realized she must be thinking what a supreme sap he was.

  Sylvia Dare was at the moment making a date with one of the seamen to meet him that night at the lagoon. The scene was full of innuendoes and the theatre was as quiet as a courtroom before the judge reads the verdict.

  Sylvia spoke, her smooth voice flooded the theatre, and the words hit Joe with the effect of a stuffed eel skin at the base of the neck.