While Mortals Sleep: Unpublished Short Fiction

by Kurt Vonnegut

  “Might?” said Ben triumphantly. “It did—and I don’t mean once; I mean hundreds of times.” He added up her bill. “I’ve never laid eyes on her,” he said, “but, if there’s one thing I learned about in this business, it’s how the human mind works.” He looked up. “Two ninety-five.”

  He was amazed to see tears on the rims of her eyes.

  “Oh, hey—say, now,” said Ben remorsefully. He touched her. “Gosh—hey, listen—don’t mind me.”

  “I don’t think it’s very nice for you to talk that way about people you don’t even know,” she said tautly.

  Ben nodded. “You’re right, you’re right. Don’t mind me. You picked a lousy time to come in. I was looking around for something to hit. Why, hell—Rose is probably the salt of the earth.”

  “I didn’t say that,” she said. “I never claimed that.”

  “Well, whatever it was you did claim,” said Ben. “Don’t pay any attention to me.” He shook his head, and he wondered at the two dead years in the grocery store. Anxiety and a million nagging details had held him prisoner all that time, numbed him, dried him out. There’d been no time for love or play—no time, even, for thoughts of them.

  He worked his fingers, unsure that love and playfulness would ever come back into them.

  “I shouldn’t be ragging a nice girl like you,” he said. “I should give you a smile and a gardenia.”

  “Gardenia?” she said.

  “Sure,” said Ben. “When I opened up two years ago, I gave every lady customer a smile and a gardenia. Since you’re my last customer, seems like you ought to get a little something, too.” He gave her the opening-day smile.

  The smile and the offer of a gardenia pleased and confused the poor, pretty mouse of a girl, and made her blush.

  Ben was fascinated. “Gee,” he said, “now you make me really sorry the florist shop is closed.”

  Her pleasure went on and on, and so did Ben’s. Ben could almost smell the gardenia, could almost see her pinning it on, her hands all thumbs.

  “You’re selling your store?” she said.

  There was radiance between them now. There were overtones and undertones to everything they said. The talk itself was formal, lifeless.

  “The business failed,” said Ben. It didn’t matter much anymore.

  “What are you going to do now?” she said.

  “Dig clams,” said Ben, “unless you’ve got a better idea.” He cocked his head, and, with the control of an actor, he showed in his face how keenly hungry for a girl he was.

  Her fingers tightened on her purse, but she didn’t look away. “Is that hard work?” she said.

  “Cold work,” said Ben. “Lonely work, out there with a fork.”

  “Is there a living in it?” she said.

  “The way I live,” said Ben. “No wife, no kids—no bad habits. Won’t make as much as old man Kilraine spent on cigars.”

  “Toward the end, all he had was his cigars,” she said.

  “And his nurse,” said Ben.

  “He’s dead, and you’re young and alive,” she said.

  “Eeeeeeeeeeyup,” said Ben. “Guess I’m the big winner after all.”

  He picked up her small bag of groceries, went outside, and saw the big car she’d come in.

  “Rose let you take this big boat?” he said. “What does that leave her?”

  “It’s embarrassing,” she said. “It’s too big. It makes me want to hide under the dashboard when I go through towns.”

  Ben opened the front door for her, and she slid into the leather chauffeur’s seat. She seemed no bigger than a ten-year-old, dwarfed by the great steering wheel and instrument panel.

  Ben set the groceries on the floor beside her, and he sniffed. “If ghosts had smells,” he said, “that’s what the ghost of Joel Kilraine would smell like—cigars.” He wasn’t about to say goodbye to her. He sat down beside her, as though resting and gathering his thoughts. “You ever hear how he made his money? Clear back in 1922, he figured out that—” His words trailed off as he saw that the spell was broken, that she was about to cry again.

  “Miss,” said Ben helplessly, “you sure cry easy.”

  “I cry all the time,” she said pipingly. “Everything makes me cry. I can’t help it.”

  “About what?” said Ben. “What’s there to cry about?”

  “About everything,” she said wretchedly. “I’m Rose,” she said, “and everything makes me want to cry.”

  Ben’s world yawed, shimmered, and righted itself. “You?” he said softly. “Rose? Twelve million dollars? Cloth coat? Cornflakes? Oleo margarine? Look at your purse! The patent leather’s all chipping off.”

  “That’s how I’ve always lived,” she said.

  “You haven’t lived very long,” said Ben.

  “I feel like Alice in Wonderland,” said Rose, “where she shrank and shrank and shrank until everything was too big for her.”

  Ben chuckled emptily. “You’ll grow back,” he said.

  She rubbed her eyes. “I think Mr. Kilraine must have done it as some kind of joke on the world—making somebody like me so rich.” She was trembling, white.

  Ben took her arm firmly, to calm her.

  She went limp gratefully. Her eyes glazed over. “Nobody to turn to, nobody to trust, nobody who understands,” she said in a singsong. “I’ve never been so lonely and tired and scared in all my life. Everybody yammering, yammering, yammering.” She closed her eyes and lay back like a rag doll.

  “Would a drink help?” said Ben.

  “I—I don’t know,” she said dully.

  “Do you drink?” said Ben.

  “Once,” she said.

  “Do you want to try again, Rose?” said Ben.

  “Maybe—maybe that would help,” she said. “Maybe. I dunno. I’m so sick of thinking, I’ll just do anything anybody tells me to do.”

  Ben licked his lips. “I’ll go get my truck and a bottle my creditors don’t know about,” he said. “Then you follow me.”

  Ben put away Rose’s groceries in the vast kitchen of the Kilraine cottage. The tidbits were lost in canyons of porcelain and steel.

  He mixed two drinks from his bottle, and carried them into the entrance hall. Rose, her coat still on, lay on the spiral staircase, looking at her wedding-cake ceiling far above.

  “I got the oil burner going,” said Ben. “It’ll be a while before we feel it.”

  “I don’t think I’ll ever feel anything again,” said Rose. “Nothing means anything anymore. There’s too much of everything.”

  “Keep breathing,” said Ben. “That’s the big thing for now.”

  Rose inhaled and exhaled rattlingly.

  Some of what she felt began to creep into Ben’s bones, too. He had a spooky sense of a third person in the house—not the shade of Joel Kilraine, but the phantasm of twelve million dollars. Neither Rose nor Ben could speak without a polite, nervous nod to the Kilraine fortune. And the twelve million, a thousand dollars a day at three percent, took full advantage of their awe. It let nothing go by without comment—without giving the conversation a hard, rude wrench.

  “Well, here we are,” said Ben, giving Rose her drink.

  “And here I am,” said the twelve million dollars.

  “Two sleepy people—” said Ben.

  “I never sleep,” said the Kilraine fortune.

  “Fate’s a funny thing,” said Ben, “bring us together like this tonight.”

  “Heh heh heh,” said the twelve million. The hehs were spaced far apart, and the sarcasm in them squawked like rusty hinges.

  “What’s this house and everything got to do with me?” said Rose. “I’m just a plain, ordinary person.”

  “With a plain, ordinary twelve million simoleons,” said the Kilraine fortune.

  “Sure you are,” said Ben. “Just like the girls I used to go around with in high school.”

  “Only with twelve million iron men,” said the Kilraine fortune.

  �
�I was happy with what I had,” said Rose. “I’d graduated from nursing school—was making my own way. I had nice friends, and a green ’49 Chevy that was almost paid for.”

  The twelve million let out a long, wet raspberry.

  “And I was helping people,” said Rose.

  “Like you helped Kilraine for twelve million spondulics,” said the twelve million.

  Ben drank thirstily. So did Rose.

  “I think it speaks very well for you that you feel the way you do,” said Ben.

  “And somebody’s going to bamboozle her out of the whole works, if she doesn’t brighten up,” said the twelve million.

  Ben rolled his eyes. “Gee—it’s funny about troubles,” he said. “You got troubles, I got troubles—everybody’s got troubles, whether they’ve got a lot of money or a little money or no money. When you get right down to it, I guess love and friendship and doing good really are the big things.”

  “Still, it might be kind of interesting to shuffle the money around,” said the twelve million, “just to see if somebody might not get happier.”

  Ben and Rose covered their ears at the same time.

  “Let’s get some music in this mausoleum,” said Ben. He went into the living room, loaded the big phonograph with records, and turned the volume up loud. For a moment, he thought he’d driven the Kilraine fortune away. For a moment, he was free to appreciate Rose for what she was—pink, sweet, and affectionate.

  And then the twelve million dollars started singing along with the music. “Bewa, scratch, and lucre,” it sang, “Mopus, oof, and chink; Jack and bucks and rhino; Bawbees, specie, clink.”

  “Dance?” said Ben wildly. “Rose—you wanna dance?”

  They didn’t dance. They huddled together to music in a corner of the living room. Ben’s arms ached, he was so grateful to have Rose in them. She was what he needed. With his store and his credit gone, only a woman’s touch could make him whole.

  And he knew he was what Rose needed, too. He pitted muscle against muscle, to make himself hard and bulging. Rose fawned against the rock he was.

  Bundled up in each other, their heads down, they could almost ignore the hullabaloo from the Kilraine fortune. But the twelve million dollars still seemed to prance around them, singing, cracking wise—hell-bent on being the life of the party.

  Ben and Rose talked in whispers, hoping to keep a little something private.

  “It’s a funny thing about time,” said Ben. “I think maybe that’s the next big thing science is going to turn up.”

  “How you mean?” said Rose.

  “Well, you know—” said Ben. “Sometimes two years seems like ten minutes. Sometimes ten minutes seems like two years.”

  “Like when?” said Rose.

  “Like now, for instance,” said Ben.

  “How like now?” said Rose, letting him know with her tone that she was way ahead of him. “How you mean?”

  “I mean,” said Ben, “it seems like we’ve been dancing for hours. Seems like I’ve known you all my life.”

  “That’s funny,” said Rose.

  “How you mean?” said Ben.

  “I feel the same way,” murmured Rose.

  Ben caromed back through time to his high school senior prom—when childhood had ended, when the scrabbling curse of maturity had begun. The prom had been an orgy of unreality. Now that feeling was back. Ben was somebody. His girl was the prettiest thing on earth. Everything was going to be just fine.

  “Rose,” said Ben, “I—I feel kind of like I was coming home. You know what I mean?”

  “Yes,” said Rose.

  She tilted her head back, her eyes closed.

  Ben leaned down to kiss her.

  “Make it good,” said the Kilraine fortune. “That’s a twelve-million-dollar kiss.” Ben and Rose froze.

  “Four lips into twelve million dollars gives three million dollars a lip,” said the Kilraine fortune.

  “Rose, listen—I—” said Ben. No thoughts came.

  “He’s trying to say he’d love you,” said the twelve million, “even if you didn’t have a thousand dollars a day, without even touching the principal. He’d love you even if the principal wasn’t going right through the roof in the bull market; even if he had two dimes of his own to rub together; even if he wasn’t dead sick of working. He’d love you even if he didn’t want money so bad he could taste it; even if he hadn’t dreamed all his life of going bluefishing in his own Crosby Striper, with a Jacobson rod, a Strozier reel, a Matthews line, and a case of cold Schlitz.”

  The Kilraine fortune seemed to pause for breath.

  Ben and Rose let each other go. Their hands fell away from each other lifelessly.

  “He’d love you,” said the twelve million dollars, “even if he hadn’t said a hundred times that the only way to make big money, by God, was to marry it.” The Kilraine fortune closed in for the final kill. There was no need of it. The perfect moment of love was already dead, stiff and bug-eyed.

  “I guess I’d better say good night,” said Rose to Ben. “Thanks a lot for starting the oil burner and everything.”

  “Glad to be of help,” said Ben desolately.

  The twelve million dollars administered the coup de grâce. “He loves you, Rose,” it said, “even though you aren’t what anybody’d call a raving beauty or a personality girl—even though nobody but a sick old man ever fell in love with you before.”

  “Good night,” said Ben. “Sleep tight.”

  “Good night,” said Rose. “Sweet dreams.”

  All night long, Ben, in his rumpled, narrow bed, took inventory of Rose’s virtues—virtues any one of which was more tempting than twelve million dollars. In his agitation, he peeled wallpaper from the wall by his bed.

  When dawn came, he knew that a kiss was all that could drown out the twelve million dollars. If he and Rose could kiss, ignoring all the nasty things the Kilraine fortune could say about it, they could prove to each other that they had love above all. And they’d live happily ever after.

  Ben decided to take Rose by storm, to overwhelm her with his manliness. They were, after all, when all was said and done, a man and a woman.

  At nine that morning, Ben lifted the massive knocker on the front door of the Kilraine cottage. He let it fall. The boom echoed and died in nineteen rooms.

  Ben was in clamming clothes, as big as Paul Bunyan, in hip boots, two layers of trousers, four layers of sweaters, and a villainous black cap. He carried his clam rake like a battle-ax. Beside him was a bucket stuffed with a burlap bag.

  The heiress to the Kilraine fortune, wearing an old bathrobe patterned with daisies a foot across, answered the door. “Yes?” said Rose. She took a step backward. “Oh—it’s you,” she said. “I’m not used to you in boots.”

  Ben, supported by his clothing, maintained an air of ponderous indifference. “I’d like to go clamming off your beach, if that’s all right with you,” he said.

  Rose was shyly interested. “You mean there are clams right out there?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Ben. “Cherrystones.”

  “Well, I never,” said Rose. “Like in a restaurant?”

  “That’s who’ll buy ’em,” said Ben.

  “Now, isn’t God good to Cape Codders,” said Rose, “putting all that food out there for anybody who needs it?”

  “Yes,” said Ben. He touched his cap. “Well, thanks for everything.” He timed his turn carefully, so she would be sure he was walking out of her life. And then he turned back to her suddenly, passionately, and grabbed her.

  “Rose, Rose, Rose,” said Ben.

  “Ben, Ben, Ben,” said Rose.

  The Kilraine fortune seemed to yell at them from somewhere deep in the cottage. Before they could kiss, it was with them again. “This I’ve got to see—this twelve-million-dollar kiss,” it said.

  Rose ducked her head. “No, no, no, Ben, no,” she said.

  “Forget everything else,” said Ben. “We’re what matters.�
�

  “Forget twelve million dollars like you’d forget an old hat,” said the Kilraine fortune lightly. “Forget all the lies most men would tell for twelve million dollars.”

  “I’ll never know what matters again,” said Rose. “I’ll never be able to believe anything or anybody again.” She wept quietly, and closed the door in Ben’s face.

  “Goodbye, Romeo,” said the twelve million to Ben. “Don’t look so blue. The world is full of girls just as good as Rose, and prettier. And they’re all waiting to marry a man like you for love, love, love.”

  Ben walked away slowly, heartbroken.

  “And love, as we all know,” the Kilraine fortune called after him, “makes the world go ’round.”

  Ben laid the burlap bag on the beach before the Kilraine cottage, and waded into the sea with his bucket and rake. He buried the tines of the rake in the bay floor, and worried them through the sand.

  A telltale click ran through the handle of the rake to Ben’s gloved fingers. Ben tipped the handle back, and lifted the rake from the water. Resting on the tines were three fat clams.

  Ben was glad to stop thinking about love and money. Swaddled in the good feel of thick wool, listening only to the voices of the sea, he lost himself in the hunt for treasure under the sand.

  He lost himself for an hour, and in that time he gathered almost half a bushel of clams.

  He waded back to the beach, emptied his bucket into the bag, and rested and smoked. His bones ached sweetly with manly satisfaction.

  For the first time in two years, he saw what a fine day it was, saw what a beautiful part of the world he lived in.

  And then his mind began to play with numbers: six dollars a bushel … three hours a bushel … six hours a day … six days a week … room rent, eight dollars a week … meals, a dollar and a half a day … cigarettes, forty cents a day … interest on bank loan, fifteen dollars a month …

  Money began talking to Ben again—not big money this time, but little money. It niggled and nagged and carped and whined at him, as full of fears and bitterness as a spinster witch.

  Ben’s soul knotted and twisted like an old apple tree. He was hearing again the voice that had held him prisoner in the grocery store for two years, that had soured every smile since the milk and honey of high school.