Gremlins (7 page)

“You think it’s mean of me to even think about firing somebody, right?” Gerald demanded. “Well, let me tell you something. It’s a tough world out there. To get ahead you have to be tougher. That’s why I’m junior vice-president at age twenty-three. In two or three years I’ll have Mr. Corben’s job. And when I’m thirty, I’ll be a millionaire. When you’re thirty, you’ll probably be only twenty-eight.”

Billy shrugged. “Well, you have my blessing, Ger,” he said evenly.

“Don’t call me that. My name’s Gerald.”

“Sure, Ger.”

At that moment Kate passed nearby with a tray and drinks, wearing an apron on which DORRY’S PUB was emblazoned in large green letters. Gerald spun his head and snapped his fingers in her direction. With a tight smile, she moved to the table.

“I’ll have an Irish coffee,” Gerald ordered. “But don’t pour the Irish whiskey in the coffee. Bring it in a separate glass and I’ll do it.”

Kate nodded, looked at Billy. “You all right?” she asked.

“Fine,” he said.

Glancing at the drawing in his lap, she turned her head sideways and smiled. “Do I sense some hostility there?” she murmured slyly.

“Hostility but no talent,” Gerald countered.

“I think it’s good,” Kate said.

“Then you’re still into comic books,” Gerald sneered.

Billy, somewhat embarrassed by Kate’s praise and intimidated by Hopkins’s arrogance, tried to change the subject. He succeeded only in blurting an obvious statement that Gerald gleefully pounced on.

“I guess you’re working tonight,” he said to Kate.

“No, dummy,” Gerald interjected. “She’s modeling aprons.”

“Every weeknight,” Kate said, ignoring him. “So Dorry won’t have to pay an extra waitress.”

“No pay?” Gerald said. “You work for free? Suppose everybody did that! It’s ridiculous. Maybe there’s a young mother out there who could use the money.”

“Dorry’s got to save as much money as he can or Mrs. Deagle will close down this place pretty soon. So everybody’s pitching in to help. It’s not a matter of keeping a paying job from someone else. If this place closes down, a lot of jobs will go.”

“I think it’s great,” Billy said.

“It’s dumb economically,” Gerald muttered. “If a business can’t make it without help from charity, it deserves to go under.”

“I’ll get your Irish coffee,” Kate said, turning to leave.

“Wait a minute,” Gerald said in a softer tone. “You don’t have to get all bent out of shape because I’m practical. Actually, it’s a very nice thing you’re doing.”

“Thank you,” Kate replied.

Gerald reached out to touch her arm. “Hey, Kate,” he said. “You haven’t seen my new apartment.”

“I haven’t seen your old apartment,” she countered.

“That’s right,” he retorted. “The lights were out.”

Seeing the fire in her eyes, Gerald laughed elaborately. “Just kidding,” he said. “But why don’t we have dinner tomorrow night, just the two of us?”

“I’d love to, but I’ve got to work.”

“Tell Dorry you’re sick. He won’t be able to dock you.”

Kate smiled mirthlessly, shook her head no, and left. Gerald watched her with smoldering, lustful eyes. Then he looked at Billy in a conspiratorial manner. “You think she’s got something going with Dorry?” he asked.

“Dorry?” Billy laughed. “He’s in his forties, maybe old enough to be her grandfather.”

“Why else would she work for free?”

“You ever hear of the Christmas spirit?” Billy challenged.

“Only the kind that comes in a bottle.” Gerald smiled.

“I’m sorry for you.”

“Don’t be.”

Billy swallowed the last of his beer, threw a dollar on the table, and stood up. “That’s for Kate,” he said. “And thanks a lot for the drink, Ger.”

“I told you never to—”

But Billy didn’t hear the rest. He was already halfway to the door. As he reached out to push it open, he spotted Kate coming out of the back room and into the bar. She smiled warmly at him and winked.

It was chilly outside, but during his walk home Billy hardly felt it.

C H A P T E R
SEVEN

L
ynn Peltzer always felt an extra twinge of nervousness around Christmas time. It hadn’t always been that way. Growing up in a suburb of Pittsburgh, she had been a fairly normal child of a middle-class family. Christmas excited her because she usually received some new clothes and a few special things. In addition, she enjoyed picking out presents for other people, anticipating their joy as they opened them. Though not especially religious, she also enjoyed the holiday because it seemed symbolic of new hope, kindness, and generosity.

Not until she met Rand Peltzer did she begin to associate Christmas with danger.

Neither he nor she had intended it to happen that way. Nearly a quarter century before, when they were married, both of them had had high expectations that someday Rand would have his face on the cover of
Time
magazine. He had not gone to college, but when he patented a simple device that made it easier for laundries to locate their customers’ clothes, he seemed to be on his way. Taking a smooth-talking friend’s advice, Rand quit his job in the sporting goods department of a large store and “invested in himself,” as he put it. His lifelong desire was to be another Thomas Edison, and to that end he forthwith applied himself. The money ran out soon, most of the inventions gathered dust, and eventually he was forced to find a job selling other people’s wares, but Rand never really gave up. Working in his spare time, he continued to conceive and construct new instruments to benefit society.

The problem was that they were usually tested first on Lynn, and almost always as Christmas presents.

The first year Lynn received an automatic, “painless” ear-piercing device for use in the home. It sent Lynn to the hospital emergency room Christmas night and it was well after New Year’s before she could remove the bandages from her earlobes. The next year an improved fingernail polish remover caused something strange and crusty to grow on her nails and remain there for several months. Other devices, such as pineapple parers, automatic shoe buffers, cleaning poles capable of reaching anywhere, and fish cleaners, all came neatly wrapped at Christmas, were duly tried, failed, and recalled for “improvements.” Most, fortunately, never saw the light of day again. A good sport, Rand shook his head and endured the jokes generated by his failures, but the light bulb of inspiration never left its permanent spot above his head.

Lynn wondered what it would be this year. Her wonder was not alloyed with dread but with uncertainty. It would be nice to prepare herself if that was possible.

The real problem, she supposed, was that she simply couldn’t tell Rand to just stop inventing things and trying them out on her. She loved the big guy and if he ever gave up this quirky habit, it would kill her. Such feelings of love, however, did not cause her to flinch less as the annual day of present-giving approached.

“It’ll be all right,” she said aloud to herself, adding optimistically: “Last year was easy with the tomato dicer. We had the ceiling cleaned in minutes, washed our faces, and that was that.”

Removing the meat loaf from the oven, she caught a glimpse of herself in the glass door. With her styled gray hair and face that was marred only by “character lines” (no sense calling them wrinkles just yet), she was remarkably well preserved for forty-seven. She was reasonably content with life and well aware of the fact that whatever excitement was due her had probably happened already, but she often wondered how things would have turned out if she had been the breadwinner instead of Rand. He was tenacious, but she was a fighter. He traveled circuitous routes; she bored straight ahead. Sometimes Lynn wondered how she would have handled herself if, not having been born several decades too soon, she had been drafted into the army and asked to fight for her country. Surprisingly, the idea intrigued rather than repelled or frightened her.

“Too late now,” she said, looking at the clock.

Billy was already late for dinner, even considering the fact that he had to walk home. As for Rand, there was no telling when he would walk in.

A moment later she heard the front door open and, a beat after that, the clatter of an object hitting the floor of the living room. Those crossed swords again, Lynn thought with a sigh, putting the meat loaf on the counter and moving to the hallway.

Billy was in the process of picking up the swords and restoring them to the shaky holder, which had been designed by Rand in a moment of inspiration. (“Anybody can drive a nail into the wall and hold up those swords,” he had argued. “It takes a genius to create a decorative holder that doesn’t damage the plaster.”) No doubt about it, Lynn mused as she watched Billy delicately restore the balance of power against the wall, that holder is beautiful and doesn’t hurt the wall. But it sure makes a racket when one or both of those swords hit the floor, especially when it happens in the middle of the night.

“Hi, Mom.” Billy smiled, taking off his jacket, aiming it for a chair, then taking it to the hall closet.

“Dinner’s ready,” she said.

“O.K.,” he said. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Before you go . . .”

He waited, framed in the doorway. Her expression told him that something was wrong—not tragic but definitely unpleasant.

“I got a call from Mrs. Deagle this afternoon,” Lynn began.

“Oh.” Billy walked to the kitchen.

“I know she’s a terrible person, Billy, but it seems you go out of your way to make her angry.”

“No, I don’t. Mom. She’s just mean and out to get me. She’d like to get everybody.”

“She says you broke her ceramic snowman.”

“It was broken already. Barney must have bumped it. Did she tell you I saved one of her cats from being run over by a car?”

“No.”

“See? She only tells you the bad stuff.”

“Nevertheless—”

The sound of the front door opening interrupted their conversation, which would have been drowned anyway by Rand’s booming voice. “Silent night, holy night!” he sang, giving the old song an uncharacteristically upbeat tempo. “Fa la la la la, la la la la!”

“Let’s not talk about it now,” Lynn said softly. “Not in front of your father.”

“We still have a minute,” Billy said, smiling, “while he puts the sword back.”

As if in echo, there followed the sound of the front door closing and the crash of metal a moment later. Rand’s singing immediately became louder, undercut by the sound of the sword being returned to its shaky position against the wall.

“Sleep in heavenly peace! Fa la la!”

Smiling and ebullient, Rand entered the kitchen, his arms loaded with packages. After putting them carefully on the kitchen table, he gave Lynn a kiss, Billy a hug, and Barney a pat on the head.

“Have a nice trip?” Lynn asked.

“Not bad,” he replied. “Miracle, the company that makes the Kitchen Companion, might be interested in the Bathroom Buddy. It’s got one or two problems I have to iron out, though.”

Lynn suspected there wouldn’t be a sale. They would muddle through, however, and Christmas wasn’t the time to worry about long-range economics. You could drive yourself crazy. It was nice having Rand home and, for the moment, that was all that mattered.

He picked a package off the table and thrust it at her. Automatically, Lynn flinched, then took it.

“It’s just a poinsettia,” Rand said. “Not a real present. You’ll get that later.”

“Oh, thank you,” she murmured, putting the potted flower on the sink. “It’s beautiful.”

“What’s in the other packages?” Billy asked.

Rand walked back to the table. “These are presents for you and your mom that can’t be opened until Christmas,” he answered. “This one can’t wait.”

He gently lifted the burlap-covered box.

“What is it?” Billy asked. “Is it alive?”

“Turn off the lights,” Rand said. Then, realizing that the kitchen’s light came solely from a bright overhead incandescent lamp, he shook his head.“Never mind. It’ll be easier if we go in the living room.”

“He must have gotten me a pet bat,” Billy laughed, as they left the kitchen.

Placing the cage on the coffee table, Rand surveyed the living room lighting. “Still too bright,” he said. “Where’s that light dimmer I made?”

Lynn swallowed a bit nervously. “I put it in the drawer,” she explained. “It was making sounds all by itself, and when it was out, the lights kept blinking on and off.”

“You don’t know how to work it,” Rand said, reaching into the drawer.

“Never mind,” Billy said. “I’ll turn the lights down.”

Rand waved him back into his chair. “Listen,” he announced in a soft but firm tone, “I go to the trouble of making these things so we can relax. They’re labor-saving devices, see? What’s the point of having them if you keep on doing things the old-fashioned way?”

With that, he pointed the flashlight-like device he had located at the nearest lamp.

Shattering with a loud popping noise, as if it had been the target of an unseen sniper, the bulb died instantly, its remains tinkling onto the end table, which was suddenly gripped by darkness.

“That’s no problem,” Rand murmured. “That bulb was about to go anyway.”

“I’ll clean it up later,” Lynn soothed. “First let’s see what’s in the package.”

“Yeah,” Billy seconded. “This will be the first time I’ve ever gotten a present that glows in the dark.”

Kneeling next to the end table, he reached out and gently lifted the burlap. The creature was predominantly brown and white, about eight inches tall with long pointed ears and huge brown expressive eyes. Standing upright like a human being, its body was covered with fluffy fur except for bare spots at the ends of the ears, the extensions of its four-fingered hands, and a quadrilateral space for a moist pug nose and wide mouth resembling that of an elderly gentleman enjoying the luxury of not wearing his dentures. A low noise emanated from the animal, something haunting but softly urgent.

“What is it?” Billy asked, amazed.

“Your new pet,” his father replied.

“It looks like something from Australia,” Lynn said, moving closer to the cage. “Or Red China. They have a lot of animals there that can’t get visas.”