Time and the Riddle: Thirty-One Zen Stories (36 page)

“Don't think about me,” she said. “I could starve to death while you sit here stuffing yourself.”

“Since when do I let you starve to death?”

“Where did you get the hamburger?”

He took one out of the air and put it in front of her.

“It's full of onions,” Suzie said. “You know how I hate onions.”

Harvey rose and dropped the hamburger into the garbage pail.

“Harvey, what are you doing?”

“You don't like onions.”

“Well, you can't just throw it away.”

“Why not?” Harvey felt himself changing, and the change was encompassed in those simple words—why not? Why not? He plucked a hamburger without onions out of the air, dry and hard, the way his wife cooked them.

“Be my guest,” he said coolly.

She took a bit of the hamburger and then informed him through a mouth filled with food that he was acting very funny. “What do you mean, funny?”

“You're just acting funny, Harvey. You got to admit that you are acting funny.”

“All right, it's a different situation.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I can take things out of the air,” said Harvey. “That's pretty different. I mean, it's not something that you go around doing. For example, you want some chocolate cake?” He reached out and retrieved a piece of chocolate layer cake and placed it in front of Suzie. “How does it taste? Try it.”

“Harvey, I'm still eating the hamburger, and don't think I don't realize that, it's very unusual what you can do.”

“It's not like I'm just a kid,” Harvey said. “I'm a forty-one-year-old loser.”

“You're not a loser, Harvey.”

“Don't kid yourself. I am a loser. What have we got? Five thousand dollars in the bank, a four-room apartment, no kids, nothing, absolutely nothing, a great big fat zero, and I am still forty-one years old.”

“I don't like to hear you talk like that, Harvey.”

“I am just making the point that I got to think this through. I got to get used to the fact that I can take things out of the air. It's an unusual talent. I got to convince myself.”

“Why? Don't you believe it; Harvey?”

“I do and I don't. That's why I have to think about it.”

Suzie nodded. “I understand.” She ate the chocolate cake and then went into the bedroom and turned on the television again.

Harvey followed her into the bedroom. “Why do you say you understand? Why do you always tell me that you understand?” She was trying to concentrate on the television screen, and she shook her head. “Will you turn off that damn box!” Harvey shouted.

“Don't shout at me, Harvey.”

“Then listen to me. You watch me take things out of the air and tell me you understand. I take a piece of chocolate cake out of the air, and you tell me that you understand. I don't understand, but you tell me that you understand.”

“That's the way it is, Harvey. They send people up to the moon, and I don't know any more about it than you do, but that's the way science is. I think it's very nice that you can take things out of the air. I think that if one of those computer places put it on a computer, they would be able to tell you just how it works.”

“Then why do you keep saying that you understand?”

“I understand that you want to think about it.”

Harvey closed the door of the bedroom and went back into the living room and thought about it. It was actually the first moment he had really thought about it, and suddenly his head was exploding with ideas and notions. Some were what his friends in the advertising agencies would have called very creative notions, and some were not. Some were simply the crystallization of his own dissatisfactions. If someone had suggested to him the day before that he was a seething mass of dissatisfactions, he would have denied the accusation hotly. Now he could face them as facts. He was dissatisfied with his life, his job, his home, his past, his future, and his wife. He had never set out to be an accountant; it had simply happened to him. He had always dreamed of living in a large, spacious country home, and here he was in a miserable apartment with paper-thin walls in an enormous jerry-built building on Third Avenue in New York City. As far as his past was concerned, it was colorless and flat, and his future promised nothing that was much better. His wife—?

He thought about his wife. It was not that he disliked Suzie; he had nothing against her, nor could he think of very much that he had going for her. She was short, dark, and pretty, but he couldn't remember why or exactly how he had come to marry her. The plain fact of the matter was that he adored oversized blondes, large, tall, buxom, beautiful blondes. He dreamed about such women; he turned to watch them on the street; he fell asleep thinking about them and he awakened thinking about them.

He thought about one of them now. And then he began to grin; an idea had clamped onto him and it wouldn't let go. He sat up in his chair and stared at the bedroom door. He straightened his spine. The television blared from behind the door.

“To hell with it!” he said. It was a new Harvey Kepplemen. He stood up, his spine erect. “Tall, blond, beautiful—” he whispered, and then hesitated over the notion of intelligence. “To hell with intelligence!”

He reached out into the air in front of him with both hands now, and suddenly there she was, but he couldn't hold her and she fell with an enormous thud and lay sprawled on the floor, a blond, naked woman, very beautiful, very large, magnificently full-breasted, blue eyes wide open and very motionless and apparently lifeless.

Harvey stood staring at her.

The bedroom door opened, and there was Suzie, who also stood and stared at her.

“What is that?” Suzie cried out.

The answer was self-evident. Harvey swallowed, closed his mouth, and bent over the beautiful blonde.

“Don't touch her!”

“Maybe she's dead,” Harvey said hopelessly. “I got to touch her to find out.”

“Who is she? Where did she come from?”

Harvey turned to meet Suzie's eyes.

“No.”

Harvey nodded.

“No. I don't believe it. That?” Now Suzie walked over to the large blonde. “She's seven feet long if she's an inch. Harvey, what kind of a creep are you?”

Harvey touched her, discreetly, on the chest just below the enormous breasts. She was as cold as a dead mackerel.

“Well?”

“She's as cold as a dead mackerel,” Harvey replied bleakly.

“Try her pulse.”

“She's dead. Look at her eyes.” He tried the pulse. “She has no pulse.”

“Great,” Suzie said. “That's just great, Harvey. Here we are with a dead seven-foot-long blonde with oversized mammaries, and now what?”

“I think you ought to cover her up,” Harvey suggested meekly.

“You're damn right I'm going to cover her up!” And Suzie marched off to the bedroom and returned with a blanket which just about fitted the enormous body.

“What do I do now?” Harvey wondered.

“Put her back where you got her from.”

“You must be kidding.”

“Try it,” said a new Suzie, cold and nasty. “If you can take things like this out of the air, maybe you can put them back.”

“How? Just suppose you tell me how, being such a great smart-ass about everything else.”

“I'm not a prevert.”

“You mean pervert. Who's a pervert? That's a hell of a thing to say.”

Suzie swept the blanket aside. “Look at her.”

“All right, I've seen her. Now what do we do with her?”

“What do
you
do.”

“OK, OK—what do I do?”

“Lift her up and put her back.”

“Where?”

“Wherever you take these damn things from, back with your lousy water rolls and Danish pastry.”

Harvey shook his head. “We been married a long time, Suzie. I never heard you talk like that before.”

“You never made me a present of a seven-foot dead blonde before.”

“I guess not,” Harvey agreed, reaching out and obtaining a prune Danish.

“What's that for?”

“I want to see if I can put it back.”

“Look, Harvey,” Suzie said, her voice softening a little, “it's no use putting back a prune Danish. You got to put back big Bertha there.” Harvey, meanwhile, was stabbing the air with the prune Danish. “Harvey—forget the Danish.”

He let go of it, hoping and praying that it would return to whatever unknown had produced it, but instead it dropped with a wet plop on one of the huge breasts, dripping its soft prune filling all over the beautiful oversized mammary. Harvey ran for a napkin, wiped frantically, and only made the situation worse. Suzie joined him with a wet sponge and a handful of paper towels.

“Let me do it, Harvey.”

She cleaned up the mess while Harvey managed to heave one of the long, meaty legs into the air. “Put her back,” he said. “Suzie, I could never lift her. It would take one of those hoist cranes. She must weigh two hundred and fifty pounds.”

“I suppose that's what you always wanted. Do you know, she's as cold as ice.”

“Do you suppose I killed her?” he asked woefully.

“I don't know. I think I'll telephone Dave.”

“Why?”

“He'll know what to do.”

“As far as I am concerned, your brother Dave can drop dead.”

“Like this one. Sure. Wish me dead too.”

“I never wished you dead. I am talking about your brother, Dave.”

“At least he'd have an idea.”

“So have I,” Harvey said. “My idea is very simple and right on it. Call the cops.”

“What? Harvey, are you out of your ever-loving mind? She's dead. You made her dead. You killed her.”

“So I made her dead. What do we do? Cut her up and flush her down the toilet? Neither of us can stand the sight of blood. Do we dump her in an empty lot? Even with your lousy brother Dave, we couldn't lift her up.”

“Harvey,” she pleaded, “let's think about it.”

They thought about it, and then Harvey called the cops.

A dead body, Harvey discovered, was a communal enterprise. Nine men prowled around the little apartment. Eight of them were ambulance attendants, uniformed officers, fingerprint expert, medical examiner, photographer, etc. The ninth was a heavy-shouldered man in plain clothes, whose name was Lieutenant Serpio, who told everyone else what to do, and who never smiled. Harvey and Suzie sat on the couch and watched him.

“All right, take her out,” said Serpio.

They tried.

“Never saw the like of it,” the Medical Examiner was muttering. “She's seven feet tall if she's an inch.”

“Kelly, don't stand there on your feet, give them a hand!” Serpio said to one of the uniformed cops.

Kelly joined with the ambulance attendants, and with the help of another cop they got the oversized blonde onto a stretcher. She hung over either end as they staggered through the door with her, and Suzie said to her husband:

“You're not a pervert, Harvey. You're just a lousy male chauvinist. I have been thinking about you. You are a sexist pig.”

“That's great,” Harvey agreed. “I never did anything to anyone, and the whole world falls on me.”

“You are a sexist pig,” she repeated.

“I find it hard to think of myself that way.”

“Just try. You'll get used to it.”

“What did she die from, Doc?” Lieutenant Serpio asked the Medical Examiner.

“God knows. Maybe she broke her back carrying that bust around. I'll go downtown and chop her up a little, and I'll let you know.”

The apartment cleared out. Only Serpio and a single uniformed cop remained. Serpio stood in front of Harvey and Suzie, staring at them thoughtfully.

“Tell me again,” he said.

“I told you.”

“Tell me again. I got plenty of time. In twenty years of practicing my profession in this town, I thought I had seen everything. Not so. This enlivens my work and gives me a new attitude. Now who is she?”

“I don't know.”

“Where did she come from?”

“I took her out of the air.”

“I know. You took her out of the air. I could send you down to Bellevue, only I am intrigued. Do you make a habit out of taking things out of the air?”

“No, sir,” Harvey answered politely. “Only since this morning.”

“What about you?” he said to Suzie. “Do you take things out of the air?”

She shook her head. “It's Harvey's gift.”

“What else does Harvey take out of the air?” the Lieutenant asked patiently.

“Danish.”

“Danish?”

“Danish pastry with prune filling,” Harvey explained.

The Lieutenant considered this. “I see. Tell me, Mr. Kepplemen, why Danish pastry with prune filling—if it's not too much to ask?”

“I can explain that,” Suzie put in. “You see, we were down in Baltimore—”

“Let him explain.”

“I like it,” Harvey said.

“What about Baltimore?”

“They make it very good down there,” Harvey said.

“Danish pastry?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now do you want to tell me who the blonde is?”

“I don't know.”

“Do you want to tell me how she died?”

“I don't know.”

“The doctor says she's been dead for hours. When did she come here?”

“I told you.”

“Where are her clothes, Harvey?”

“I told you. I got her just the way she was.”

“All right, Harvey,” the Lieutenant said with a sigh. “I am going to have to arrest you and your wife and take you downtown, because with an explanation like this, I have absolutely no alternative. Now I am going to tell you your rights. No, the hell with that. Tell you what, Harvey—you and your wife come downtown with me, and we'll let the arrest set for a while, and we'll see if the boys downstairs figured out what she died from. How does that grab you?”