A Saucer of Loneliness (38 page)

“Yup!”

I pushed the whole round curtain back, and there in the corner, just at eye level, was a triangular shelf. Grouped on it were four figurines, made apparently from kneaded wax. Three had wisps of hair fastened by candle-droppings. The fourth was hairless, but had slivers of a horny substance pressed into the ends of the arms. Fingernail parings.

I stood for a moment thinking. Then I picked up the hairless doll, turned to the door. I checked myself, flushed the toilet, took a towel, shook it out, dropped it over the edge of the tub. Then I reeled out. “Hey honey, look what I got, ain’t it
cute
?”

“Shh!” she said. “Oh for crying out loud. Put that back, will you?”

“Well, what is it?”

“It’s none of your business, that’s what it is. Come on, put it back.”

I wagged my finger at her. “You’re not being nice to me,” I complained.

She pulled some shreds of patience together with an obvious
effort. “It’s just some sort of toys I have around. Here.”

I snatched it away. “All right, you don’t wanna be nice!” I whipped my coat together and began to button it clumsily, still holding the figurine.

She sighed, rolled her eyes, and came to me. “Come on, Dadsy. Have a nice cup of coffee and let’s not fight.” She reached for the doll and I snatched it away again.

“You got to tell me,” I pouted.

“It’s pers’nal.”

“I wanna be personal,” I pointed out.

“Oh all right,” she said. “I had a roommate one time, she used to make these things. She said you make one, and s’pose I decide I don’t like you, I got something of yours, hair or toenails or something. Say your name is George. What is your name?”

“George,” I said.

“All right, I call the doll George. Then I stick pins in it. That’s all. Give it to me.”

“Who’s this one?”

“That’s Al.”

“Hal?”

“Al. I got one called Hal. He’s in there. I hate him the most.”

“Yeah, huh. Well, what happens to Al and George and all when you stick pins in ’em?”

“They’re s’posed to get sick. Even die.”

“Do they?”

“Nah,” she said with immediate and complete candor. “I told you, it’s just a game, sort of. If it worked, believe me old Al would bleed to death. He runs the delicatessen.” I handed her the doll, and she looked at it pensively. “I wish it did work, sometimes. Sometimes I almost believe in it. I stick ’em and they
just yell
.”

“Introduce me,” I demanded.

“What?”

“Introduce me,” I said. I pulled her toward the bathroom. She made a small irritated “oh-h,” and came along.

“This is Fritz and this is Bruno and—where’s the other one?”

“What other one?”

“Maybe he fell behind the—down back of—” She knelt on the edge of the tub and leaned over to the wall, to peer behind it. She regained her feet, her face red from effort and anger. “What are you trying to pull? You kidding around or something?”

I spread my arms. “What you mean?”

“Come on,” she said between her teeth. She felt my coat, my jacket. “You hid it someplace.”

“No I didn’t. There was only four.” I pointed. “Al and Fritz and Bruno and Hal. Which one’s Hal?”

“That’s Freddie. He give me twenny bucks and took twenny-three out of my purse, the dirty—. But Hal’s gone. He was the best one of all. You
sure
you didn’t hide him?” Then she thumped her forehead.

“The window!” she said, and ran into the other room. I was on my four bones peering under the tub when I understood what she meant. I took a last good look around and then followed her. She was standing by the window, shading her eyes and peering out. “What do you know. Imagine somebody would swipe a thing like that!”

A sick sense of loss was born in my solar plexus.

“Aw, forget it. I’ll make another one for that Hal. But I’ll never make another one that ugly,” she added wistfully. “Come on, the coffee’s—what’s the matter? You sick?”

“Yeah,” I said, “I’m sick.”

“Of all the things to steal,” she said from the kitchenette. “Who do you suppose would do such a thing?”

Suddenly I knew who would. I cracked my fist into my palm and laughed.

“What’s the matter, you crazy?”

“Yes,” I said. “You got a phone?”

“No. Where you going?”

“Out. Goodbye, Charity.”

“Hey, now wait, honey. Just when I got coffee for you.”

I snatched the door open. She caught my sleeve.

“You can’t go away like this! How’s about a little something for Charity?”

“You’ll get yours when you make the rounds tomorrow, if you don’t have a hangover from those sherry highballs,” I said cheerfully. “And don’t forget the five you swiped from the tip plate. Better watch out for that waiter, by the way. I think he saw you do it.”

“You’re not drunk’ ” she gasped.

“You’re not a witch,” I grinned. I blew her a kiss and ran out.

I shall always remember her like that, round-eyed, a little more astonished than she was resentful, the beloved dollar signs fading from her hot brown eyes, the pathetic, useless little twitch of her hips she summoned up as a last plea.

Ever try to find a phone booth at five A.M.? I half-trotted nine blocks before I found a cab, and I was on the Queens side of the Triboro Bridge before I found a gas station open.

I dialed. The phone said, “Hello?”

“Kelley!” I roared happily. “Why didn’t you tell me? You’d ‘a saved sixty bucks worth of the most dismal fun I ever—”

“This is Milton,” said the telephone. “Hal just died.”

My mouth was still open and I guess it just stayed that way. Anyway it was cold inside when I closed it. “I’ll be right over.”

“Better not,” said Milton. His voice was shaking with incomplete control. “Unless you really want to … there’s nothing you can do, and I’m going to be … busy.”

“Where’s Kelley?” I whispered.

“I don’t know.”

“Well,” I said. “Call me.”

I got back into my taxi and went home. I don’t remember the trip.

Sometimes I think I dreamed I saw Kelley that morning.

A lot of alcohol and enough emotion to kill it, mixed with no sleep for thirty hours, makes for blackout. I came up out of it reluctantly, feeling that this was no kind of world to be aware of. Not today.

I lay looking at the bookcase. It was very quiet. I closed my eyes, turned over, burrowed into the pillow, opened my eyes again and saw Kelley sitting in the easy chair, poured out in his relaxed feline
fashion, legs too long, arms too long, eyes too long and only partly open.

I didn’t ask him how he got in because he was already in, and welcome. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to be the one to tell him about Hal. And besides I wasn’t awake yet. I just lay there.

“Milton told me,” he said. “It’s all right.”

I nodded.

Kelley said, “I read your story. I found some more and read them too. You got a lot of imagination.”

He hung a cigarette on his lower lip and lit it. “Milton, he’s got a lot of knowledge. Now, both of you think real good up to a point. Then too much knowledge presses him off to the no’theast. And too much imagination squeezes you off to the no’thwest.”

He smoked a while.

“Me, I think straight through but it takes me a while.”

I palmed my eyeballs. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“That’s okay,” he said quietly. “Look, I’m goin’ after what killed Hal.”

I closed my eyes and saw a vicious, pretty, empty little face. I said, “I was most of the night with Charity.”

“Were you now.”

“Kelley,” I said, “if it’s her you’re after, forget it. She’s a sleazy little tramp but she’s also a little kid who never had a chance. She didn’t kill Hal.”

“I know she didn’t. I don’t feel about her one way or the other. I know what killed Hal, though, and I’m goin’ after it the only way I know for sure.”

“All right then,” I said. I let my head dig back into the pillow. “What did kill him?”

“Milton told you about that doll Hal give her.”

“He told me. There’s nothing in that, Kelley. For a man to be a voodoo victim, he’s got to believe that—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Milton told me. For hours he told me.”

“Well all right.”

“You got imagination,” Kelley said sleepily. “Now just imagine along with me a while. Milt tell you how some folks, if you point a
gun at ’em and go bang, they drop dead, even if there was only blanks in the gun?”

“He didn’t, but I read it somewhere. Same general idea.”

“Now imagine all the shootings you ever heard of was like that, with blanks.”

“Go ahead.”

“You got a lot of evidence, a lot of experts, to prove about this believing business, ever’ time anyone gets shot.”

“Got it.”

“Now imagine somebody shows up with live ammunition in his gun. Do you think those bullets going to give a damn who believes what?”

I didn’t say anything.

“For a long time people been makin’ dolls and stickin’ pins in ’em. Wherever somebody believes it can happen, they get it. Now suppose somebody shows up with the doll all those dolls was copied from. The real one.”

I lay still.

“You don’t have to know nothin’ about it,” said Kelley lazily. “You don’t have to be anybody special. You don’t have to understand how it works. Nobody has to believe nothing. All you do, you just point it where you want it to work.”

“Point it how?” I whispered.

He shrugged. “Call the doll by a name. Hate it, maybe.”

“For God’s sake, Kelley, you’re crazy! Why, there can’t be anything like that!”

“You eat a steak,” Kelley said. “How’s your gut know what to take and what to pass? Do
you
know?”

“Some people know.”

“You don’t. But your gut does. So there’s lots of natural laws that are goin’ to work whether anyone understands ’em or not. Lots of sailors take a trick at the wheel without knowin’ how a steering engine works. Well, that’s me. I know where I’m goin’ and I know I’ll get there. What do I care how does it work, or who believes what?”

“Fine, so what are you going to do?”

“Get what got Hal.” His tone was just as lazy but his voice was very deep, and I knew when not to ask any more questions. Instead I said, with a certain amount of annoyance, “Why tell me?”

“Want you to do something for me.”

“What?”

“Don’t tell no one what I just said for a while. And keep something for me.”

“What? And for how long?”

“You’ll know.”

I’d have risen up and roared at him if he had not chosen just that second to get up and drift out of the bedroom. “What gets me,” he said quietly from the other room, “is I could have figured this out six months ago.”

I fell asleep straining to hear him go out. He moves quieter than any big man I ever saw.

It was afternoon when I awoke. The doll was sitting on the mantelpiece glaring at me. Ugliest thing ever happened.

I saw Kelley at Hal’s funeral. He and Milt and I had a somber drink afterward. We didn’t talk about dolls. Far as I know Kelley shipped out right afterward. You assume that seamen do, when they drop out of sight. Milton was as busy as a doctor, which is very. I left the doll where it was for a week or two, wondering when Kelley was going to get around to his project. He’d probably call for it when he was ready. Meanwhile I respected his request and told no one about it. One day when some people were coming over I shoved it in the top shelf of the closet, and somehow it just got left there.

About a month afterward I began to notice the smell. I couldn’t identify it right away; it was too faint; but whatever it was, I didn’t like it. I traced it to the closet, and then to the doll. I took it down and sniffed it. My breath exploded out. It was that same smell a lot of people wish they could forget—what Milton called necrotic flesh. I came within an inch of pitching the filthy thing down the incinerator, but a promise is a promise. I put it down on the table, where it slumped repulsively. One of the legs was broken above the knee. I mean, it seemed to have two knee joints. And it was somehow puffy, sick-looking.

I had an old bell-jar somewhere, that once had a clock in it. I found it and a piece of inlaid linoleum, and put the doll under the jar at least so I could live with it.

I worked and saw people—dinner with Milton, once—and the days went by the way they do, and then one night it occurred to me to look at the doll again.

It was in pretty sorry shape. I’d tried to keep it fairly cool, but it seemed to be melting and running all over. For a moment I worried about what Kelley might say, and then I heartily damned Kelley and put the whole mess down in the cellar.

And I guess it was altogether two months after Hal’s death that I wondered why I’d assumed Kelley would have to call for the little horror before he did what he had to do. He said he was going to get what got Hal, and he intimated that the doll was that something.

Well, that doll was being got, but good. I brought it up and put it under the light. It was still a figurine, but it was one unholy mess. “Attaboy, Kelley,” I gloated. “Go get ’em, kid.”

Milton called me up and asked me to meet him at Rudy’s. He sounded pretty bad. We had the shortest drink yet.

He was sitting in the back booth chewing on the insides of his cheeks. His lips were gray and he slopped his drink when he lifted it.

“What in time happened to you?” I gasped.

He gave me a ghastly smile. “I’m famous,” he said. I heard his glass chatter against his teeth. He said, “I called in so many consultants on Hal Kelley that I’m supposed to be an expert on that—on that … condition.” He forced his glass back to the table with both hands and held it down. He tried to smile and I wished he wouldn’t. He stopped trying and almost whimpered, “I can’t nurse one of ’em like that again, I can’t.”

“You going to tell what happened?” I asked harshly. That works sometimes.

“Oh, oh yes. Well they brought in a … another one. At General. They called me in. Just like Hal. I mean
exactly
like Hal. Only I won’t have to nurse this one, no I won’t, I won’t have to. She died six hours after she arrived.”

“She?”

“You know what you’d have to do to someone to make them look like that?” he said shrilly. “You’d have to tie off parts so they mortified. You’d have to use a wood rasp, maybe; a club; filth to rub into the wounds. You’d have to break bones in a vise.”