A Saucer of Loneliness (20 page)

“I remember.”

“I seen her this morning. I seen her yesterday an’ four nights last week.”

“The hell you did!”

“You got to get that through your head ‘fore I tell you anything.”

Don shook his head slowly. “This beats anything I ever seen. What happened to you?”

As if he had not heard, the man said, “I found out what ship you was on. I watched the papers. I figured you’d go to the Institoot for mail. I been waitin’ three hours.”

Don grabbed the thin biceps. “Hey. Is somethin’ wrong with Joyce?”

“You give a damn?”

“Listen,” said Don, “I can still break your damn neck.”

The man simply shrugged. Baffled, Don said, between his teeth, “Talk. You said you wanted to talk—go ahead.”

“Why ain’t you wrote to her?”

“What’s that to you?”

“It’s a whole lot to her.”

“You seem to know a hell of a lot.”

“I told you I see her all the time,” the man pointed out.

“She must talk a lot.”

“To me,” said the man, closing his eyes, “a whole lot.”

“She wouldn’t want to hear from me,” Don said. Then he barked, “What are you tryin’ to tell me? You and her—what are you to her? You’re not messin’ with her, comin’ braggin’ to me about it?”

The man put a hand on Don’s chest and pushed him away. There was disgust on his face, and a strange dignity. “Cut it out,” he said. “Look, I don’t like you. I don’t like doin’ what I’m doin’ but I got
to. Joyce, she’s been half crazy, see. I don’t know why she started to talk to me; maybe she just didn’t care any more, maybe she felt so bad she wanted to dive in a swamp an’ I was the nearest thing to it. She been talkin’ to me, she … smiles when she sees me. She’ll eat with me, even.”

“You shoulda stayed away from her,” Don mumbled uncertainly.

“Yeah, maybe. And suppose I did, what would she do? If she didn’t have me to talk to, maybe it would be someone else. Maybe someone else wouldn’t … be as … leave her …”

“You mean, take care of her,” said Don softly.

“Well, if you want to call it that. Take up her time, anyway, she can’t get into any other trouble.” He looked at Don beseechingly. “I ain’t never laid a hand on her. You believe that?”

Don said, “Yeah, I believe that.”

“You going to see her?”

Don shook his head.

The man said in a breathy, shrill voice, “I oughta punch you in the mouth!”

“Shaddup,” said Don miserably. “What you want me to see her for?”

Suddenly there were tears in the weak blue eyes. But the voice was still steady. “I ain’t got nothin’. I’ll never have nothin’. This is all I can do, make you go back. Why won’t you go back?”

“She wouldn’t want to see me,” said Don, “after what I done.”

“You better go see her,” whispered the man. “She thinks she ain’t fit to live, gettin’ you in jail and all. She thinks it was her fault. She thinks you feel the same way. She even … she even thinks that’s right. You dirty rotten no-good lousy—” he cried. He suddenly raised his fists and hit his own temples with them, and made a bleating sound. He ran off toward the waterfront.

Don watched him go, stunned to the marrow. Then he turned blindly and started across the street. There was a screeching of brakes, a flurry of movement, and he found himself standing with one hand on the front fender of a taxi.

“Where the hell you think you’re goin’?”

Stupidly, Don said, “What?”

“What’s the matter with you?” roared the cabby.

Don fumbled his way back to the rear door. “A lot, a whole lot,” he said. He got in. “Thirty-Seven Mulberry Street,” he said.

It was three days later, in the evening, when he went to see Miss Phoebe.

“Well!” she said when she opened to his ring.

“Can I come in?”

She did not move. “You received my letter?”

“Sure.”

“You understood …”

“I got the idea.”

“There were—ah—certain conditions.”

“Yeah,” said Don. “I got to be capable of understandin’ the meaning of reverence, obedience, an’ honor to certain ancient mysteries.”

“Have you just memorized it, or do you feel you really are capable?”

“Try me.”

“Very well.” She moved aside. He came in, shoving a blue knitted cap into his side pocket. He shucked out of the pea-jacket. He was wearing blue slacks and a black sweater with a white shirt and blue tie. He was as different from the scrubbed schoolboy neatness of his previous visit as he was from the ill-fit flashiness of his first one. “How’ve you been?”

“Well, thank you,” she answered coolly. “Sit down.”

They sat facing one another. Don was watchful, Miss Phoebe wary. “You’ve … grown,” said Miss Phoebe. It was made not so much as a statement but as an admission.

“I did a lot,” said Don. “Thought a lot. You’re so right about people in the world that work for—call it yin an’ Yang—an’ know what they’re doin’, why they’re doin’ it. All you got to do is look around you. Read the papers.

She nodded. “Do you have any difficulty in determining which side these people are on?”

“No more.”

“If that’s true,” she said, “it’s wonderful.” She cleared her throat. “You’ve seen that—that girl again.”

“I couldn’t lie.”

“Are you willing to admit that beastliness is no substitute for the true meeting of minds?”

“Absolutely.”

“Well!” she said. “This
is
progress!” She leaned forward suddenly. “Oh, Don, that wasn’t for you. Not you! You are destined for great things, my boy. You have no idea.”

“I think I have.”

“And you’re willing to accept my teaching?”

“Just as much as you’ll teach me.”

“I’ll make tea,” she said, almost gaily. She rose and as she passed him she squeezed his shoulder. He grinned.

When she was in the kitchenette he said, “Fellow in my neighborhood just got back from a long stretch for hurting a little girl.”

“Oh?” she said. “What is his name?”

“I don’t know.”

“Find out,” she said. “They have to be watched.”

“Why?”

“Animals,” she said, “wild animals. They have to be caught and caged.”

He nodded. The gesture was his own, out of her range. He said, “I ate already. Don’t go to no trouble.”

“Very well. Just some cookies.” She emerged with the tea service. “It’s good to have you back. I’m rather surprised. I’d nearly given you up.”

He smiled. “Never do that.”

She poured boiling water from the kettle into the teapot and brought it out. “You’re almost like a different person.”

“How come?”

“Oh, you—you’re much more self-assured.” She looked at him searchingly. “More complete. I think the word for it is ‘integrated’. Actually, I can’t seem to … to … Don, you’re not hiding anything from me, are you?”

“Me? Why, how could I do that?”

She seemed troubled. “I don’t know.” She gave him a quick glance, almost spoke, then shook her head slightly.

“What’s the matter? I do something wrong?”

“No, oh no.”

They were quiet until the tea was steeped and poured.

“Miss Phoebe …?”

“What is it?”

“Just what did you think went on in that car before we got arrested?”

“Isn’t that rather obvious?”

“Well,” he said, with a quick smile, “to me, yeah. I was there.”

“You can be cleansed,” she said confidently.

“Can I now! Miss Phoebe, I just want to get this clear in my mind. I think you got the wrong idea, and I’d like to straighten you out. I didn’t go the whole way with that girl.”

“You didn’t?”

He shook his head. “Oh,” she said. “The policeman got there in time after all.”

He put down his teacup very carefully. “We had lots of time. What I’m telling you is we just didn’t.”

“Oh,” she said. “Oh!”

“What’s the matter, Miss Phoebe?”

“Nothing,” she said, tensely. “Nothing. This … puts a different complexion on things.”

“I sort of thought you’d be glad.”

“But of course!” She whirled on him. “You are telling me the truth, Don?”

“You can get in an’ out of County,” he reminded her. “There’s records of her medical examination there that proves it, you don’t believe me.”

“Oh,” she said, “oh dear.” Suddenly her face cleared. “Perhaps I’ve underestimated you. What you’re telling me is that you … you didn’t
want
to, is that it? But you said that the old memory of the rat left you when you were with her. Why didn’t you—
why
?”

“Hey—easy, take it easy! You want to know why, it was because it wasn’t time. What we had would last, it would keep. We din’t have to grab.”

“You … really felt that way about her?”

He nodded.

“I had no idea,” she said in a stunned whisper. “And afterward … did you … do you still …”

“You can find out, can’t you? You know ways to find out what I’m thinking.”

“I can’t,” she cried. “I can’t! Something has happened to you. I can’t get in, it’s as if there were a steel plate between us!”

“I’m sorry,” he said with grave cheerfulness.

She closed her eyes and made some huge internal effort. When she looked up, she seemed quite composed. “You are willing to work with me?”

“I want to.”

“Very well. I don’t know what has happened and I must find out, even if I have to use … drastic measures.”

“Anything you say, Miss Phoebe.”

“Lie down over there.”

“On that? I’m longer than it is!” He went to the little sofa and maneuvered himself so that at least his shoulder blades and head were horizontal. “Like so?”

“That will do. Make yourself just as comfortable as you can.” She threw a tablecloth over the lampshade and turned out the light in the kitchenette. Then she drew up a chair near his head, out of his visual range. She sat down.

It got very quiet in the room. “You’re sleepy, you’re so sleepy,” she said softly. “You’re sl—”

“No I ain’t,” he said briskly.

“Please,” she said, “fall in with this. Just let your mind go blank and listen to me.”

“Okay.”

She droned on and on. His eyes half closed, opened, then closed all the way. He began to breathe more slowly, more deeply.

“… And sleep, sleep, but hear my voice, hear what I am saying, can you hear me?”

“Yes,” he said heavily.

“Lie there and sleep, and sleep, but answer me truthfully, tell me only the truth, the truth, answer me, whom do you love?”

“Joyce.”

“You told me you restrained yourself the night you were arrested. Is this true?”

“Yes.”

Miss Phoebe’s eyes narrowed. She wet her lips, wrung her hands.

“The union you had with me, that flight of soul, was that important to you?”

“Yes.”

“Would you like to do more of it?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t you realize that it is a greater, more intimate thing than any union of the flesh?”

“Yes.”

“Am I not the only one with whom you can do it?”

“No.”

Miss Phoebe bit her lip. “Tell the truth, the truth,” she said raggedly. “Who else?”

“Joyce.”

“Have you ever done it with Joyce?”

“Not yet.”

“Are you sure you can?”

“I’m sure.”

Miss Phoebe got up and went into the kitchenette. She put her forehead against the cool tiles of the wall beside the refrigerator. She put her fingertips on her cheeks, and her hands contracted suddenly, digging her fingers in, drawing her flesh downward until her scalding, tight-shut eyes were dragged open from underneath. She uttered an almost soundless whimper.

After a moment she straightened up, squared her shoulders and went noiselessly back to her chair. Don slumbered peacefully.

“Don, go on sleeping. Can you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“I want you to go down deeper and deeper and deeper, down and down to a place where there is nothing at all, anywhere, anywhere, except my voice, and everything I say is true. Down and down, deep, deep …” On and on she went, until at last she reached
down and gently rolled back one of his eyelids. She peered at the eye, nodded with satisfaction.

“Stay down there, Don, stay there.”

She crouched in the chair and thought, hard. She knew of the difficulty of hypnotically commanding a subject to do anything repugnant to him. She also knew, however, that it is a comparatively simple matter to convince a subject that a certain person is a pillow, and then fix the command that a knife must be thrust into that pillow.

She pieced and fitted, and at last, “Don, can you hear me?”

His voice was a bare whisper, slurred, “Yes …”

“The forces of evil have done a terrible thing to Joyce, Don. When you see her again she will look as before. She will speak and act as before. But she is different. The real Joyce has been taken away. A substitute has been put in her place. The substitute is dangerous. You will know, when you see her. You will not trust her. You will not touch her. You will share nothing with her. You will put her aside and have nothing to do with her.

“But the real Joyce is alive and well, although she was changed. I saved her. When she was replaced by the substitute, I took the real Joyce and made her a part of me. So now when you talk to Miss Phoebe you are talking to Joyce, when you touch Miss Phoebe you are touching Joyce, when you kiss and hold and love Miss Phoebe you will be loving Joyce. Only through Miss Phoebe can you know Joyce, and they are one and the same. And you will never call Joyce by name again. Do you understand?”

“Miss … Phoebe is … Joyce now …”

“That’s right.”

Miss Phoebe was breathing hard. Her mouth was wet.

“You will remember none of this deep sleep, except what I have told you. Don,” she whispered, “my dear, my dear …”

Presently she rose and threw the cloth off the lampshade. She felt the teapot; it was still quite hot. She emptied the hot-water pot and filled it again from the kettle. She sat down at the tea table, covered her eyes, and for a moment the only sound in the room was her deep, slow, controlled breathing as she oxygenated her lungs. She sat up, refreshed, and poured tea.

“Don! Don! Wake up, Don!”

He opened his eyes and stared unseeingly at the ceiling. Then he raised his head, sat up, shook himself.