Microcosmic God (22 page)

She thought of his new face, frightened by the idea. Much careful thinking had yielded the fact that the man she saw sitting at her table as she left must have been Gabe, since only he would have been
sitting there, staring at the ring. Yet at the time she could have sworn it was a total stranger! And now, she couldn’t think of how he differed from the Gabe she had sat at lunch with, nor how that Gabe differed from the one who took her to Romany Joe’s the night before. Chloe was one of those unimaginative girls whose philosophy is strictly on a Q.E.D. basis. That is, if a certain action produced a certain reaction, she was so guided from then on, and did not care how or why it had happened. The operation of the little convertible coupe she drove on weekends was as much a mystery to her as was the gypsy woman’s irregular pentagon. She could believe the automobile’s operation without understanding it—why not the spell? She could start her car, and she could stop it. She had inadvertently started a spell. She would go to Romany Joe’s tonight.

She arrived fairly early, looking worried but very lovely; and by luck she managed to get exactly the same booth she had had the night before. She was grimly determined to undo last night’s weird work, no matter what the cost. As soon as she was settled with a cup of wine, she called the waiter back.

“Meess?”

“I’m looking for a fortune teller,” said Chloe.

“Immediately, meess,” said the waiter, bowing and backing away.

“Wait a minute! I want one particular fortune teller—no other.”

“Vat ees her name?”

“I don’t know. She’s a very old woman, and she carries a bag with her.”

“Vairy old? I am sorry, meess, but ve have no such a one here.”

“But she—” Chloe paused, and then wearily waved the man away. What was the use? She might have known it would be like this. The whole thing made no sense at all. She was sick through and through. She would—

“You were looking for me, modom?”

Chloe started violently. There, beside the booth, was her old fortune-teller.

“I—that is—the waiter said—”

“He is a fool. If you want me, I will come. I come the first time,
and the second time, and then I come no more. Now what is it?”

Chloe almost cried with relief. Now to make an end to this crazy business. She spilled out the whole story, while the old woman stood quietly, missing not a word, watching each passing expression of Chloe’s petulant face with her brilliant little eyes. When Chloe had finished, she said,

“You have made one wish, and it is true; it can not be un-made. What do you want me to do?”

“What
can
you do? Oh please—I’ll give you anything if you’ll make my Gabe as he was. I’ve got to have him back—I’ve got to!”

“You want his nize face, no? Nothing more of him?”

“Oh yes—yes! But I can’t stand him now; what woman wants a husband that can’t be found in a crowd? I’d have to—” she giggled hysterically—“Make him sign a register before I would dare let him in the house at night! Oh please—”

“Yes, I can give you one more wish, if you like. But you must be careful. You must remember that you wished before and now you are unhappy. If you wish again you may not be happy too, more.”

“I don’t care! If I had Gabe back, loving me the way he did, I’d
have
to be happy. You will help me? You will?”

In answer, the gypsy brought out her charms and began to lay them out. Chloe watched breathlessly. There was a slight commotion at the door which she didn’t begin to notice. She watched the strange invisible pentagon take shape over the table, her eyes caught and held by the marvellous dexterity of the old fingers.

In just a few hours Gabe, in his half-crazed, desperate attempt to make his affliction amuse him, had become much sought after—more so, he reflected wryly, than he had ever been before he became so superbly homely. Probably because he was richer now, he grinned as he walked out of a downtown factory with the payroll in his inside pocket and half the police in the city running around him, bumping into him, shoving him out the way in their earnest effort to find him.

He was a little tired of helping himself to other people’s valuables, particularly since he didn’t need money. However, he’d buy
himself a famous automobile or two and take it easy for a while without getting in anyone’s hair.

He strolled around downtown with a good, unpaid-for dinner under his belt and thousands of dollars crammed into his pockets. He didn’t know quite what to do with himself until he saw a brilliant neon display halfway down what had been a side street before said display had been installed. ROMANY JOE’S.

“Now,” said Gabe with great glee, “By all that’s unholy, Joe’s place is the one place in the world that deserves to be robbed by me! I’ll get even with the gypsies for doing this to me—may they prosper!”

He hitched up his trousers, got his hand on the revolver in his right coat pocket, and sauntered in.

“Table for one, sir?” asked Romany Joe, rubbing his hands.

“C’mere,” ordered Gabe coldly, and without even looking at Joe, walked over to the cashier. Joe followed.

“What can I do for you, sir?”

“Your belly,” said Gabe in his best movie-gangster style, “Reminds me of a great, big balloon. Now I’m a funny feller. I like to pop balloons. I like to pump bullets into them. I’m going to bust that one of yours unless you get back of that counter and shell out all the twenties and everything else bigger than a twenty. I ain’t greedy—you can keep the rest. Now—
move!”
and he prodded Joe with the concealed gun. Joe moved. The cashier squeaked and then subsided, and it was her squeak that caused the rustle that Chloe couldn’t hear, so engrossed was she in the gypsy’s work.

The gypsy steadied the structure carefully, and then carefully withdrew her hand. “Now!” she said hoarsely. “Make your wish!”

Chloe’s mind raced. She would restore Gabe’s looks, if there was anything in this mumbo jumbo. And he would be all hers—all hers. She’d see to that! “I wish,” she said, “that Gabe will be handsome again—
and that he will never be able to make love to another woman besides me!”

The weird flame leaped up, blinding her. She was shocked into silence—her whole mind was silenced, not even able to exult. And through that silence knifed the gypsy’s voice—frightened now;
“You
wish too much! Ah, it is not good.…”

Romany Joe, trembling, pushed the pile of bills across the counter. Gabe smiled, reached for it, and then stiffened. In the mirror behind Romany Joe, he saw the reflection of a man—

A tall, handsome man. His features, his teeth, his hair, breathtakingly beautiful. It was—

Himself! Gabe Jarret!

Gabe backed away, gun in hand, stripped of his cloak of anonymity. His eyes darted to right and left, seeking a way out, trying subconsciously to merge himself into the crowd, utterly failing.

Romany Joe ducked down, came up with a blue automatic. Gabe’s revolver coughed twice, twice again—Gabe stared at it, his hand clamped tight on the trigger, wondering hysterically why it had gone off. Romany Joe folded slowly down over the counter, slid behind it, his clawed fingernails shrieking on the marble. Gabe ran towards the door, found his way blocked by three waiters. He fired wildly, missed, and the gun was knocked out of his hand as he was tackled from two sides at once. He went down, and just before his head struck the floor and knocked him unconscious, he saw Chloe’s drawn face, and heard her shriek, “Gabe! Oh God, Gabe!”

He had a fractured skull. It was very bad, and it took him a long time—more than a year—to get well enough to stand trial for the murder of Josef Blebenau, known as Romany Joe. And during all that time, and during the trial, and after, in the days in the death house when appeal after appeal was being fought, Chloe visited him constantly. He loved her, and she loved him, and, being where he was, he had no chance at all to make love to any other woman. No chance at all, for the rest of his life. He died on the chair.

Chloe got her wish, you see. He was handsome, and saw only her for the rest of his days. It was not what she wanted, but it was her wish. But then, of course, wants and wishes are not the same thing.

H
ENLEY REACHED OUT
to push it back under those hills, out of his eyes; but it was eight and a half million miles away and busy making the dawn a pretty one. His quarrel wasn’t with the sun anyway, he reflected, staring at it through meshed eyelashes. His quarrel was with a man whose name he didn’t know yet, but he’d find out. Oh yes he would, and then there was going to be a party. Henley was going to have fun at the party, and the other guy was not. The other guy was going to get pushed around.… Henley gazed for a long moment at the great, straight band canted across the sky before he identified it as the top of his windshield. He lay staring complacently at it until he shivered, and then he realized that he was soaking wet. He could tell without trying that if he moved at all his head would begin to detonate blindingly. He weighed this knowledge against a growing curiosity as to his whereabouts, and it was some time before the curiosity was intense enough to justify the pain of sitting up. He moved himself gently, both hands to his face, pulling himself upright by his cheeks. The two-day stubble offended him.

He gritted his teeth and fumbled in the side pocket of the car for the large rag that was cached there. Shaking it out, he flung it over the windshield to shade his eyes.
There are two of me now
, he thought.
One has a honey of a hangover and wants to lie down and die, and the other is worried about Caroline and wants to move
. The part of him that wanted to lie still and pass out watched the other part passively, watched it gaze about the flats back of the city, at the back road, at the way the car was tilted off it into the ditch. The car was a convertible and the top was down and it must have rained hard while he slumped back of the wheel. He searched fumblingly for reasons for his being here, being drunk. The only thing he could find to base it all on was Caroline’s leaving him, and while that was reason
enough, it was no excuse. He couldn’t bring her back by getting drunk. He couldn’t find her or the man she was leaving with. He couldn’t do anything until he could think clearly, and he wouldn’t be able to think clearly until he had another sidecar.

Two sidecars.

He looked down at his hands. One was cut across the knuckles. They thought for him, the hands, darting out to twitch the rag away, finding the brake, the gearshift lever, as his thinking feet began their slow dance over the starter, accelerator, clutch. The engine raced and coughed and raced again cleanly, and the big car backed out of the ditch. The low rasp of a new tire against a crumpled fender rose to a moan and died and rasped again as he backed and stopped and shifted, and then he swept away toward the city, the tortured fender screaming. Henley didn’t care about that now. He rode inside the car, deep inside himself, watching his reflexive driving, looking at an insane mental flash of himself choosing melodramatically between Caroline and a sidecar, taking the sidecar. He felt sick and drove very fast.

There was a man sweeping the sidewalk in front of DeMaio’s when Henley pulled up. “Lousy,” said Henley when the man asked how he was. “You a bartender?”

“I think so,” said the man, watching Henley get out of the car. He thought it was a shame to use expensive clothes like that. “But the boss don’t yet, so I’m a porter. Why?”

“Can you mix a sidecar?”

“We ain’t open yet.” Henley walked into the place and said, “If the doors are open the joint is open. Mix me a sidecar. Two sidecars.” The man began to speak, then left his jaw dropped as he saw the bill Henley tossed on the counter. He went behind the bar.

Henley hung by his triceps for two and a half hours then, drinking sidecars. The only thing in his mind was “Why didn’t Caroline tell me who he was? Maybe I wouldn’t care then. Maybe I wouldn’t be sore.” It was in his mind so long because he said it over and over again. He was saying it half aloud when someone stopped beside him for a beer. Henley screwed his gaze over to the man. He knew him. Ruskin. “Hi.”

Ruskin jumped. “Good God. Henley.” His voice was deep and smooth. He was young and tall and clean. His beer came and he didn’t look at it. He was seeing Henley, the way he looked, his wrinkled clothes, his two-day beard. Henley laughed in two syllables that hurt his throat. He struck Ruskin’s beer; it slid two feet down the bar and turned over. “The ge’mun’s with me,” he told the barkeep who wiped it up. “Two sidecars.”

“You’re in a sweet shape, Henley.”

“Got a right to be. What’s South America like, Ruskin?” Ruskin would know. He had a station at Bahia. Was going back in a day or so.

Ruskin raised his eyebrows. “Big. What part?”

“Dunno,” said Henley flatly. He drank, and then words spilled out. “Wife’s going there. She sent me a note. Polite as hell.” His voice turned falsetto. “I’m sorry but it just won’t work. Don’t hold it against anyone—me, the man I’m going away with, or even yourself. You can’t help being what you are. This shouldn’t bother you much; your girlfriends won’t let you be lonely. I’m going to South America. Maybe I’ll write someday.”

“That the note?” asked Ruskin, and smiled. “You always did cut a lot of corners with her, Henley. Talked a lot about it. You know, I often used to wonder if you talked like that to Car—your wife. Seems you did. Women don’t like that, Henley. Didn’t you know?”

Henley started on Ruskin’s drink. He wasn’t listening. He was trying to think. When the sound of Ruskin’s voice stopped, he said, “Yes, I’ll kill the dirty—” The disgust on Ruskin’s face reached him vaguely. “Don’t like me, do you?” he spat. “Okay, okay. Beat it then. Go on away. Don’t like me, don’t have to stick around. Plenty other—”

Ruskin’s face was pale. “I never realized what a heel you are,” he half-whispered. “How in God’s name could a woman like Caroline ever—” His taut arms relaxed and his hands fell against his thighs. He walked out. Henley glared after him. When he was gone he called, “Hey! Have another—” Then he shrugged and finished the drink.