The Incredible Shrinking Man Read online

Chapter Eleven

  As in a dream, delirium-driven, he was back again at the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Centre, being tested.

  Voice a crispness, voice a hollow waver, Dr. Silver told him that no, he did not have acromicria, as had first been suspected. Yes, there was the bodily shrinkage, but no, his pituitary gland was not diseased. There was no loss of hair, no cyanosis of extremities, no bluish discoloration of skin, no suppressed sexual function.

  There were urinary excretion tests to establish the amounts of creatin and creatinine in his system; important tests, because they would tell much about the functioning of his testes, his adrenals, about the balance of nitrogen in his body.

  Discovery: You have a negative nitrogen balance, Mr. Carey. Your body is throwing off more nitrogen than it is retaining. Since nitrogen is one of the major building blocks of the body, consequently, we have shrinkage.

  An imbalance of creatinine was causing further involution.

  Phosphorus and calcium were being thrown off, too, in the precise proportion in which those elements were found in his bones.

  ACTH was administered, possibly to check the catabolic breakdown of tissue. ACTH was ineffective.

  There was much discussion about a possible dosage of pituitary extract. "It might enable his body to retain nitrogen and cause the disposition of new protein," they murmured. It seemed there was danger, though. The response of the human body to administered growth hormone is not ascertainable; even the best extracts are poorly tolerated and often give aberrant results.

  "I don't care. I want it. Can I be worse off?" he said.

  Dosage administered.

  Negative.

  Something was combating the extract.

  At last the paper chromatography; the capillary trailing of body elements across paper, the specific gravity of each one causing it to stain a different part of the paper.

  And a new element was found in his system. A new toxin.

  Tell us something, they said. Were you ever exposed to any kind of germ spray? No, not bacterial warfare. Have you, for instance, ever been accidentally sprayed with a great deal of insecticide?

  No remembrance at first; just a fluttering amorphous terror. Then sudden recollection. Los Angeles, a Saturday afternoon in July. He had come out of the house, heading for the store. He had walked through a tree-lined alley, between rows of houses. A city truck had turned in suddenly, spraying the trees. The spray misted over him, burning on his skin, stinging his eyes, blinding him momentarily. He yelled at the driver.

  Could that possibly be the cause of all this?

  No, not that. They told him so. That was only the beginning of it. Something happened to that spray, something fantastic and unheard of; something that converted a mildly virulent insecticide into a deadly growth-destroying poison.

  And so they searched for that something, asking endless questions, constantly-probing into his past. Until, in a second, it came. He remembered the afternoon on the boat, the mist washing over him, the acid sting on his body.

  A spray impregnated with radiation.

  And that was it; the search was over at last. An insect spray hideously altered by radiation. A one-in-a-million chance. Just that amount of insecticide coupled with just that amount of radiation, received by his system in just that sequence and with just that timing; the radiation dissipating quickly, becoming unnoticeable.

  Only the poison left.

  A poison that, without destroying the pituitary gland, destroyed, little by little, its ability to maintain growth. A poison that day by day forced his system to convert nitrogen into excess waste matter; a poison that affected creatinine and phosphorus and calcium and left them as waste to be thrown off. A poison that decalcified his bones so that, soft and pliant, they could shrink, little by little. A poison that nullified any administered hormone extract by causing antihormone action in direct opposition. A poison that made him, little by little, the shrinking man.

  The search over at last? Not really. Because there was only one way to fight a toxin, and that was with an anti-toxin.

  So they'd sent him home. And while he waited there, they sought the antitoxin that might save him. At his sides, hands folded into gnarled fists. Why, asleep or waking, did he have to think about those days of waiting? Those days when his very body was continuously tensed for the sound of a knock on the door, the sudden stridency of the telephone ringing. It had been a free fall of the mind, taut consciousness never finding a base to settle on, but hanging in constant suspense, waiting. The countless trips to the post office, where he'd rented a box so he could get two and three deliveries a day, instead of only one. That cruel walk from the apartment to the post office, wanting to run and still walking, his body twitching with his desperate desire to run. Entering the post office, hands numb, heart pounding. Crossing the marble floor, stooping and looking into the box. And, when there were letters, his hands shaking so badly that he could barely slide the key into the lock. Jerking out the letters, gaze stabbing at the return addresses. No letter from the Centre. The sudden feeling that life was gone from him, his feet and legs were running into the floor like candle wax.

  And when they'd moved to the lake the suffering was even worse, because then he had to wait for Lou to go to the post office, standing at the front window, hands shaking when he saw her come walking back down the street. He would know she had no letter because she walked so slowly, and yet he would be unable, until she actually said so, to believe that no letter had come. He pitched over on his stomach and bit into the sponge savagely. It was so horribly true that thought was his undoing. To be unaware; dear God, to be joyously unaware. To be able to rip the tissues of his brain away and let them drip like clouded paste from his fingertips. Why couldn't His breath stopped. He reared up sharply, ignoring the sudden throb of pain in his head. Music.

  "Music?" He murmured faintly. How could there be music in the cellar?

  Then he knew; it wasn't in the cellar, but upstairs. Louise was playing music on the radio: Brahms' First Symphony. He leaned on his elbows, lips parted, holding his breath and listening to the sturdy beat of the symphony's opening phrase. It was barely audible, as though he stood in the lobby of a concert hall hearing the orchestra through closed doors.

  Breath escaped finally, but he did not move. His face was still, eyes unblinking. It was still the same world, then, and he was still a part of it. The connecting sound of music told him so. Upstairs, gigantically remote, Louise was listening to that music. Below, incredibly minute, he was listening too. And it was music to both of them, and it was beauty.

  He remembered how, toward the end of his stay in the house, he had been incapable of listening to music unless it was played so low that Lou couldn't even hear it. Otherwise the music was magnified into a clubbing noise at his ears, giving him a headache. The clatter of a dish was a knife jab at his brain. The sudden cry or laughter of Beth assailed him like a gun fired beside his ear, making his face contort, making him cover his ears.

  Brahms. To lie like a mote, an insignificance in a cellar, listening to Brahms. If life itself were not fantastic, that moment could be labeled so.

  The music stopped. His gaze jerked up as if he might see, in the darkness, the reason for its stopping. He lay there, silent, listening to the muffled voice of the woman who had been his wife. His heart seemed to stop. For a moment he was really part of that old world again.

  His lips formed the name Lou.

  Because the summer ended, the teen-aged girl who had worked at the lake grocery store had to return to school. The opening had been given to Lou, who had applied for it a month before. Vaguely she'd thought that Scott would take care of Beth when she got a job. But now it was painfully clear that, barely reaching the height of Beth's chest, he couldn't take care of her at all. Moreover, he refused to try. So she made arrangements with a neighbourhood girl who had left high school. The girl agreed to take care of Beth while Lou wa
s working.

  "Lord knows, we won't have much money left after paying her," Lou had said, "but I guess there's no alternative. "

  He'd said nothing. Not even when she told him that, as much as she hated to say it, he'd have to stay in the cellar during the day unless he wanted the girl to know who he was; for, obviously, he couldn't pass for a child. He'd only shrugged his dainty shoulders and left the room without a word.

  Before Lou left for work the first morning, she prepared sandwiches and two thermos bottles, one of coffee, one of water for Scott, He sat at the kitchen table, propped up on two thick pillows, his pencil-thin fingers partially curled around a mug of steaming coffee, his face giving no indication that he heard a word she was saying to him.

  "This should last you easily," she was saying. "Take a book with you; read. Take naps. It won't be so bad. I'll be home early. "

  He stared at the circles of cream floating like oil drops on the coffee. He twisted the cup very slowly on its saucer. It made a squeaking sound that he knew irritated Lou.

  "Now remember what I told you, Beth," Lou said. "Don't say a word about Daddy. Not a word. Do you understand?"

  "Yes. " Beth nodded.

  "What did I say?" Lou demanded.

  "I don't say a word about Daddy. "

  "About the freako," Scott mumbled.

  "What?" Lou asked, looking at him. He stared into the coffee. She didn't pursue it; he had fallen into the habit of muttering to himself since they'd moved to the lake.

  After breakfast, Lou went down to the cellar with him, carrying one of the lawn chairs for him to sit on. She pulled down her suitcase from a pile of boxes between the fuel tank and the refrigerator and set it on the floor. She put two chair cushions in it.

  "There, you can take a nice nap there," she said.

  "Like a dog," he muttered.

  "What?"

  He looked at her like a bellicose doll.

  "I don't think the girl will try to come down," she went on. "Then again, she might be nosy. Maybe I'd better put the lock on the door. ". "No. "

  "But what if the girl comes down?"

  "I don't want the door locked!"

  "But, Scott, what if-"

  "I don't want the door locked!"

  "All right, all right," she said, "I won't put the lock on. We'll just have to hope the girl doesn't decide she wants to see the cellar. "

  He didn't speak.

  While she made sure he had everything he needed, bent far over to give him a dutiful peck on the forehead, went back up the steps and lowered the door into place, Scott stood motionless in the middle of the floor. He watched her walk past the window, the skirt of her dress windblown around her shapely legs.

  Then she was gone, but he remained unmoving, staring out the window at the spot where she had passed. His small hands kept flexing slowly against his legs. His eyes were motionless. He seemed engrossed in somber thought, as if he might be contemplating the relative merits of life and death. At last the expression slipped from his features. He drew in a long breath and looked around. He lifted his palms briefly in a gesture of wry surrender, then let them slap down on his thighs.

  "Swell," he said.

  He climbed up on the chair, taking his book with him. He opened the book to the fringe bottomed leather marker that read, "This Is Where I Fell Asleep," and started to read. He read the passage twice. Then the book fell forward in his lap and he thought about Louise, about the impossibility of his touching her in any way. He reached her kneecaps and a little more. Somewhat short of manliness, he thought, teeth gritted. His expression did not change. Casually he shoved the book off the chair arm and heard it slap down loudly on the cement.

  Upstairs he heard Lou's footsteps moving toward the front of the house, then fading. When they returned they were accompanied by another set of footsteps and he heard the voice of the girl, typically adolescent, thin, fluttery, and superficially confident.

  Ten minutes later Lou was gone. In front of the house he'd heard the sputtering cough, the sudden gas-fed roar of the Ford being warmed up. Then, after a few minutes, the gunning sound had gradually disappeared. Now there were only the voices of the girl Catherine and Beth. He listened to the rise and fall of Catherine's voice, wondering what she was saying and what she looked like. Bemused, he put the indistinct voice to distinct form. She was five feet six, slim waisted and long-legged, with young, up tilted breasts nudging out her blouse. Fresh young face, reddish-blonde hair, white teeth. He watched her moving lightly as a bird, her blue eyes bright as polished berries. He picked up the book and tried to read, but he couldn't. Sentences ran together like muddy rivulets of prose. The page was obscured with commingling words. He sighed and stirred uncomfortably on the chair. The girl stretched to the urging of his fancy, and her breasts, like firm-skinned oranges, forced out their silken sheathing.

  He blew away the picture with an angry breath. Not that, he ordered.

  He drew his legs up and wrapped both arms around them, resting his chin on his knees. He sat there like a child musing on the case for Santa Claus.

  The girl had half taken off her blouse before he shut the curtain on her forcibly imposed indelicacy. The taut look was on his face again, the look of a man who has found effort unrewarding and has decided on impassivity instead. But, far beneath, like lava threatening in volcanic bellies, the bubbling of desire went on.

  When the screen door of the back porch slapped shut and the voices of Beth and the girl floated into the yard, he slid off the chair with sudden excitement and ran to the pile of boxes beside the fuel tank. He stood there for a moment, his heart jolting. Then, when his mind came up with no authoritative resistance, he clambered up the pile and peered through a corner of the cobweb-streaked window. Lines of pain shriveled in around his eyes.

  Five feet six had become five feet three. The slim waist and legs had become chunky muscle and fat; the young, up-tilted breasts had vanished in the loose folds of a long-sleeved sweat shirt. The fresh young face lurked behind grossness and blemishes, the reddish-blonde hair had been dyed to a lackluster chestnut. There were, feebly remaining, white teeth and movements like a bird's; a rather heavy bird's. The colour of her eyes he couldn't see.

  He watched Catherine move around the yard, her broad buttocks cased in faded dungarees, her bare feet stuck in loafers. He listened to her voice.

  "Oh, you have a cellar," she said.

  He saw the look on Beth's face change obviously and felt his muscles tightening.

  "Yes, but it's just empty," Beth said hastily. "Nobody lives there. " Catherine laughed unsuspiciously.

  "Well, I hope not," she said, looking toward the window. He shrank back, then realized that the cellar could not be seen through any of the windows because of the glare of light on them. He watched them until they disappeared around the back end of the house. His eyes caught the fleeting sight of them as they moved past the window over the log pile. Then they were gone. Grunting, he climbed back down the pile of boxes and went back to the chair. He put one of the thermos bottles on the arm of the chair and retrieved the book. Then, sitting down, he poured smoking coffee into the red plastic cap and sat there, the book open and unread on his lap, sipping slowly. I wonder how old she is, he thought.

  He started up on the chair cushion, eyes jerking open.

  Someone was lifting the cellar door.

  With a gasp, he flung his legs over the edge of the suitcase just as the person's hold slipped and the door crashed down. He struggled to his feet, looking frantically toward the steps. The door started to rise again; a spear of light shot across the floor, widening.

  With two distinct lunges, Scott grabbed the coffee thermos and the book and almost dived under the fuel tank. As the opened door slammed down, he slid himself behind the big carton of clothes. He clutched the book and thermos bottle to his chest, feeling sick. Why did he have to be so vitriolically stubborn about having the lock put
on the door? Yes, it was the idea of being imprisoned that he hadn't liked. But at least in prison, others could not come in.

  He heard the cautious descent on the stairs, the clicking of loafers, and he tried to stop breathing. As the girl entered he shrank back into the shadows.

  "Hmm," the girl said. She moved around the floor. He heard her kick the chair experimentally. Would she wonder why it was there? Wasn't it an odd place for a chair, right in the middle of a cellar floor? He swallowed dryly. And what about the suitcase with the pillows in it? Well, that might be where the cat slept.

  "Jesus, what a mess," said the girl, her shoes scuffing over the cement. For a moment he saw her thick calves as she stood by the water heater. He heard her fingernails tapping on the enameled metal.

  "Water heater," she said to herself. "Uh-huh. "

  She yawned. He heard the straining sound in her throat that accompanied tense stretching. It broke off with a loud grunt. "Boop-dee-doodle-oodle," said the girl.

  She moved around some more. Oh, my God, the sandwiches and the other thermos, he thought. Damn nosy bitch! his mind snapped. Catherine said, "Hmm. Croquet. " Then, in a few minutes, she said, "Oh, well," and went back up the steps and the cellar shook with the crash of the dropped door. If Beth were taking a nap, that would end it.

  As Scott crawled out from under the fuel tank, he heard the back screen door slam shut and Catherine's footsteps overhead. He got up and put the thermos bottle back on the chair arm. Now he'd have to let Lou put the lock on the door.

  "Damn the stupid little. . . "

  He paced the floor like a caged animal. Nosy bitch! You couldn't trust one of them. First damn day and she had to see the whole house. She'd probably gone through every bureau, cabinet, and closet in the house.

  What had she thought about seeing male clothing? What lie might Lou have to tell, or already told? He knew that she'd given Catherine a false last name. Since no mail was delivered to the house, there was not too much danger of the girl's discovering the lie.

  The only danger was that Catherine might have read those articles in the Globe-Post and seen the pictures. Yet if that were so, surely she already suspected that he must be hiding in the cellar and would have searched more carefully. Or had she been searching?

  It was ten minutes later when he decided to have a second sandwich and discovered that the girl had taken them.

  "Oh, Christ!" He slammed an infuriated fist on the arm of the chair and almost wished she'd hear him and would come down so he could berate her for a stupid pryer.

  He sank back on the chair and shoved the book off the arm again. It slapped loudly on the floor. The hell with it, he thought.

  He drank all the coffee and sat there, sweating, glaring straight ahead. Upstairs, the girl walked around and around.

  Fat slob, he called her in the jaded smallness of his head.

  "Sure, go ahead," he said. "Lock me in. "

  "Oh, Scott, please," she begged. "It was your decision. Do you want to take a chance on her finding you?"

  He didn't answer.

  "She may come down again if the door's open," Lou said. "I don't think she thought anything one way or the other about finding that bag of sandwiches here yesterday. But if she finds another one. . . "

  "Good-by," he said, turning away.

  She looked down at him for a moment. Then she said quietly, "Good-by, Scott," and she kissed him on the top of the head. He drew away.

  While she went up the steps he stood on the floor, rhythmically slapping the folded newspapers against the calf of his right leg. Every day it's going to be the same, he thought; sandwiches and coffee in the cellar, a good-by peck on the head, exit, door lowering, lock snapping shut.

  When he heard it, a great suction of terror pulled the breath from him and he almost screamed. He saw Lou's moving-legs, and suddenly he shut his eyes, pressing his lips together to block the cry wavering in his vein-ridged throat. Oh, God, dear God, a prisoner now. A monster that good and decent people lock into their cellars so the world may not know the awful secret. After a while the tension ran out of him and passive withdrawal came back again. He climbed up on the chair and lit a cigarette, drank coffee, and thumbed carelessly through the previous evening's Globe-Post that Lou had brought home.

  The short article was on page three. Head: where is the shrinking man? Subhead: No Word Since Disappearance Three Months Ago.

  "New York: Three months ago Scott Carey, the 'Shrinking Man,' so called because of the strange disease he had contracted, disappeared. Since then, no word about him has been received from any quarter. "

  What's the matter, you want more pictures? he thought.

  "Authorities at the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Centre, where Carey was being treated, said they could make no comment as to his present whereabouts. "

  They also can't make antitoxin, he thought. One of the top medical centers in the country, and here I sit, shriveling away while they fumble.

  He was going to shove the thermos bottle off the chair, but then he realized it would only be hurting himself. Compulsively he gripped one hand with the other and squeezed until the fingernails went bloodless, until his wrists began to ache. Then he let his hands flop on the arms of the chair and stared morosely at the orange wood between his spread fingers. Stupid colour to paint lawn chairs, he thought. What an idiot the landlord must have been!

  He wriggled off the chair and began pacing. He had to do something besides sit and stare. He didn't feel like reading. His eyes moved restlessly about the cellar. Something to do, something to do. . .

  Impulsively he stepped over to a brush leaning against the wall and, grabbing it, began to sweep. The floor needed sweeping; there was dirt all over, stones, scraps of wood. He cleared all of them from the floor with quick, savage motions; he swept them into a pile beside the steps, and flung the brush against the refrigerator.

  Now what?

  He sat down and had another cup of coffee, kicking nervously at the chair leg. While he was drinking, the back screen door opened and closed, and he heard Beth and Catherine. He didn't get up, but his gaze moved to the window, and in a moment he saw their bare legs move past. He couldn't help it. He got up and went to the pile of boxes and climbed up. They were standing by the cellar door in bathing suits, Beth's red and frilly, Catherine's pale blue and glossy, in two pieces. He looked at the round swell of her breasts in the tight, pulled-up halter.

  "Oh, your mother locked the door," she said. "Why did she do that, Beth?"

  "I don't think I know," Beth answered.

  "I thought maybe we could play croquet," said Catherine.

  Beth shrugged ineffectually. "I don't know," she said.

  "Is the key in the house?" asked Catherine.

  Another shrug. "I don't know," said Beth.

  "Oh," said Catherine. "Well. . . let's have a catch, then. " Scott crouched on top of the boxes, watching Catherine as she caught the red ball and threw it back to Beth. It wasn't until he'd been there five minutes that he realized he was rigidly tensed, waiting for Catherine to drop the ball and bend over to pick it up. When he realized that, he slid off the boxes with a disturbed clumsiness and went back to the chair.

  He sat there breathing harshly, trying not to think about it. What in God's name was happening to him?

  The girl was fourteen, maybe fifteen, short and chubby, and yet he'd been staring at her almost hungrily. Well, is it my fault? he suddenly flared, letting fury take over. What am I supposed to do, become a monk?

  He watched his hand shake as he poured water. He watched the water spill over the sides of the red plastic cup and dribble down his wrist. He felt the water like a trickling of ice down his hot, hot throat. How old was she? he wondered.

  Flesh pulsed over his jaws as he kept biting. He stared through the grimy window at Catherine, who was lying on her stomach, reading a magazine.

  She lay sideways to him, stretch
ed out on a blanket, her chin propped up by one hand, the other hand idly turning the pages.

  His throat was dry but he didn't notice it; not even when it tickled and he had to clear it. His small fingers pressed for balance against the rough surface of the wall.

  No, she couldn't be less than eighteen, he commented to himself. Her body was too well developed. That bulge of breast as she lay there, the breadth of her hips. Maybe she was only fifteen, but if so she was an awfully advanced fifteen.

  His nostrils flared angrily and he shuddered. What the hell difference did it make? She was nothing to him. He took a deep breath and prepared to return to the floor but just then Catherine bent her right knee and the leg wavered lazily in the air.

  His eyes were moving, endlessly moving over Catherine's body, down her leg and across the hill of her buttock, up the slope of her back and around her white shoulder, down to the ground-pressing breast, back along the stomach to her leg, up her leg, down her He closed his eyes. He climbed down rigidly and went back to the chair. He sank back in it, ran a finger over his forehead, and drew it away dripping. His head fell back against the wooden chair. He got up and went back to the boxes. He climbed up without a thought. Yes, that's it, have another look at the back yard, mocked his alien mind.

  At first, he thought she had gone into the house. A betraying groan began in his throat. Then he saw that she was standing by the cellar door, lips pursed estimating, looking at the lock. He swallowed. Does she know? he thought. For one wild instant he thought he would run to the door and scream, "Come down, come down here, pretty girl!" His lips shook as he fought the desire. The girl walked past the window. His eyes drank her in thirstily, as if it were the final view of all time. Then she was gone and he sat down on the top of the boxes, back to the wall. He stared at his ankles, the thickness of a policeman's club. He heard the back door shut and then the footsteps of the girl moving around overhead.

  He felt drained. He felt that if he relaxed an iota more, his body would run down over the boxes like syrup on a hill of ice cream.

  He didn't know how long he'd been there when the back door whined open and slammed shut again. He twitched, startled, and rose up again.

  Catherine walked past the window, a key chain dangling from her fingers. His breath caught. She'd been in the bureau drawers and found the extra keys!

  He half slid, half jumped down the stacked boxes, wincing as he landed on his right ankle. He grabbed the sandwich bag and shoved the thermos bottles into it. He tossed the half-finished box of crackers on top of the refrigerator.

  His eyes fled around. The paper! He darted to it and snatched it up, as he heard the girl experimenting with the keys at the door. He stuck the folded newspaper on the shelf of the wicker table, then grabbed his book and the bag and ran for the dark, sunken room where the tank and water pump were. He'd decided beforehand that if Catherine ever came down again, that was where he'd hide. He jumped down the step to the damp cement floor. At the door, the lock clicked open and was pulled out of the metal loop. He stepped gingerly over the network of pipes and slid in behind the high, cold-walled tank. He set down the bag and book and stood there panting as the door was pulled up and Catherine came down in the cellar.

  "Locking the cellar," he heard her say in slow disgust. "Think I was gonna steal somethin' or somethin'. "

  His lips drew back in a teeth clenched, soundless snarl. Stupid bitch, he thought.

  "Hmmmph," said Catherine. He heard her loafers clicking over the floor. She kicked the chair again. She kicked the oil burner and it resounded hollowly. Keep your goddam feet to yourself! his brain exploded.

  "Croquet," she said. He heard a mallet being slid out of the rack. "Hmmph," she said again, a little more amusedly. "Fore!" The mallet clicked loudly on the cement. Scott edged cautiously to the right. His shirt back scratched over the rough cement wall and he froze. The girl hadn't heard. "Uh-huh," she was saying. "Hoops, clubs, balls, stakes. Yowza. " He stood looking at her.

  She was bending over the croquet rack. She'd loosened her halter while she'd been lying in the sun, and it hung down almost off her breasts as she leaned over. Even in the dim light, he could see the distinct line of demarcation where tanned flesh became milk-white.

  No, he heard someone begging in his mind. No, get back. She'll see you. Catherine leaned over a little more, reaching for a ball, and the halter slipped.

  "Oops," said Catherine, putting things to order. Scott's head fell back against the wall. It was damply cool in there, but wings of heat were buffeting his cheeks.

  When Catherine had gone and locked the door behind her, Scott came out. He put the bag and book on the chair and stood there feeling as if every joint and muscle were swollen and hot.

  "I can't," he muttered, shaking his head slowly. "I can't. I can't" He didn't know what he meant exactly, but he knew it was something important.

  "How old's that girl?" he asked that evening, not even glancing up from his book, as though the question had just, idly and unimportantly, occurred to him.

  "Sixteen, I think," Lou answered.

  "Oh," he said, as if he had already forgotten why he asked. Sixteen. Age of pristine possibility. Where had he heard that phrase?

  He shook it off, crouching on the boxes, a delicately limbed dwarf in corduroy rompers, looking out bleakly at the rain, watching the drops spatter on the ground, splashing freckles of mud on the windowpanes. His face was a mask of expressionless defeat. It shouldn't have precipitated, thought his mind. Oh, it shouldn't have.

  He hiccupped. Then, with a tired sigh, he climbed down the pile and walked unsteadily to the chair. He jolted back in it and, whoops!, he caught the whisky bottle as it almost toppled off the arm. O bottle of booze beloved! He snickered.

  The cellar was a haze of gelatin around his bobbing head. He tilted back the bottle and let the whisky trickle hot in his throat, burning in his stomach.

  His eyes watered. I am drinking Catherine! his mind cried fiercely. I have distilled her, synthesizing loins and breasts and stomach and sixteen years of them into a conflagrating liquor, which I drink, so. His throat moved convulsively as the whisky gurgled down. Drink, drink! And it shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey.

  Drunk I am and drunk I mean to stay, he thought. He wondered why it had never occurred to him before. This bottle that he held before him now had stood in the cupboard for three months and, before that, two months in the old apartment. Five months of suffering neglect. He patted the brown glass bottle; he kissed it fervently. I kiss thee, Catherine liquefied. I buss the distillation of thy warm, sugared lips. Simple, came the thought, because she is so much smaller than Lou, that's why I feel like this. He sighed. He swung the empty bottle over his lap. Catherine gone. Down the hatch with Catherine. Sweet girl, you swim now in my veins, a dizzying potion.

  He jumped up suddenly and flung the bottle with all his might against the wall. It exploded sharply and a hundred whisky-fragrant scraps of glass danced across the cool cement. Good-by, Catherine. He stared at the window. Why'd it have to rain? he thought. Oh, why'd it? Why couldn't it be sunny so the pretty girl could lie outside in her bathing suit and he could stare at her and lust in secret, sick vicariousness?

  No, it had to rain; it was in the stars.

  He sat on the edge of the chair swinging his legs. Upstairs there were no footsteps. What was she doing? What was the pretty girl doing? Not pretty, ugly. What was the ugly girl doing? Who cared whether she was pretty or ugly? What was the girl doing.

  He watched his feet swinging in the air. He kicked out. Take that, air; and that. He groaned. He got up and paced around. He stared at the rain and the mud-spattered windows. What time was it? Couldn't be more than noon. He couldn't take this much longer. He went up the steps and pushed at the door. It was locked, of course, and Louise had taken all the keys with her this time. "Fire her!" he'd yelled that morning. "She's dishonest!" and Lou
had answered,

  "We can't, Scott. We simply can't. I'll take the keys. It'll be all right. " He braced his back against the door and reared up. It hurt his back. He gasped angrily at the air and butted his head against the door. He fell down on the step, dizziness clouding his brain. He sat there mumbling, hands pressing at his skull. He knew why he wanted the girl discharged. It was because he couldn't stand to look at her, and it was far beyond his ability to tell Lou about it. The most she could do would be to make one more insulting offer. He wouldn't take that. He straightened up, smiling in the shadows.

  Well, I fooled her, he said. I fooled her and sneaked a whisky bottle down, and she never knew. He sat there, breathing heavily, thinking about Catherine leaning over the croquet rack, about her halter slipping.

  He stood abruptly, banging his head again. He jumped down the steps, ignoring the pain. And I'll fool her again!

  He managed to feel grimly justified as he climbed the box pile clumsily. A drunken, crooked grin on his face, he knocked up the hook on the window and shoved at the bottom of its frame. It stuck. His face got red as he pushed at it. Get out, goddam your stupid bones!

  "Son-of-a-"

  The window flew out and he flopped across the ledge. The window flew back in and banged the top of his head. The hell with it! His teeth were gritted. Now, he dizzily told the world. Now we'll see. He crawled out into the rain, not fighting at all against the vicious dredging of heat in him. He stood up and shivered. His eyes fled up to the dining room window and the rain drizzled in his eyes and ran across his face and spattered on his cheeks. What now? he thought. The cold air and rain were cooling off the surface of impulsion.

  Deliberately he walked around the house, staying close to the brick base until he'd reached the porch. Then he ran to the steps and up them. What are you doing? he asked. He didn't know. His mind was not conducting the tour.

  He stood on tiptoe and cautiously looked into the dining room. No one was there. He listened but didn't hear anything. The door to Beth's room was shut; she must be taking a nap. His gaze moved to the bathroom door. It was shut.

  He sank back on his heels and sighed. He licked raindrops from his lips. Now what? he asked again.

  Inside the house, the bathroom door opened.

  With a start, Scott backed away from the window, hearing footsteps pad across the kitchen floor, then fade. He thought she'd gone into the living room and edged to the window again, pushed up on his toes. His breath stopped. She was standing at the window looking out at the yard. She was holding a yellow bath towel in front of her.

  He couldn't feel the rain spattering off him, crisscrossing like cold, unrolling ribbons across his face. His mouth hung open. His gaze moved slowly down the smooth concavity of her back, the indentation of her spine a thin shadow that ran down and was lost between the muscular half-moons of her white buttocks. He couldn't take his eyes from her. His hands shook at his sides. She stirred and he saw the glitter of water drops on her, quivering like tiny blobs of gelatin. He sucked in a ragged, rain-wet breath. Catherine dropped the towel.

  She put her hands behind her head and drank in a heavy breath. Scott saw her left breast swing up and stand out tautly, the nipple like a dark spear point. Her arms moved out. She stretched and writhed. When she turned he was still in the same tense, muscle quivering pose. He shrank back, but she didn't see him because the top of his head was barely higher than the window sill. He saw her bend over and pick up the towel, her breasts hanging down, white and heavy. She stood up and walked out of the room.

  He sank down on his heels and had to clutch at the railing to keep his legs from going limp beneath him. He half hung there, shaking in the rain, a stark look on his face.

  After a minute he stumbled weakly down the steps and around the house to the cellar window. He crawled through and locked the window behind him. He climbed down the hill of boxes, still shuddering. He sat on the lawn chair, an old sweater wrapped around himself. His teeth were chattering, and he shivered uncontrollably.

  Later he took his clothes off and hung them on the oil burner to dry. He stood by the fuel tank in his brown, high-topped shoes, holding the sweater around his shoulders, staring up at the window. And finally, when he couldn't bear the stillness or the pressure or the thoughts a second longer, he began to kick the cardboard carton. He kicked it until his leg ached and the cardboard side was split almost to the floor.

  "But how did you get a cold?" Lou asked, her voice carrying a note of exasperation. His voice was nasal and thick. "What do you expect when I'm stuck in that damn cellar all day!"

  "I'm sorry, darling, but. . . well, shall I stay home tomorrow so you can stay in bed all day?"

  "Don't bother," he said.

  She didn't mention that she'd noticed that the whisky bottle was gone from the kitchen cupboard. If Lou had been able to lock the windows, too, it would have been all right. But knowing he could get out any time he wanted; knowing that he could spy on Catherine, made it an impossible situation. Hours dragged in the cellar. He might manage to absorb himself in a book for an hour or two, but ultimately the vision of Catherine would flit across his mind and he would put down the book. If Catherine had come out in the yard more often, it would have been all right. Then, at least, he could look at her through the window. But days were getting colder as September waned, and Catherine and Beth stayed in the house most of the time.

  He had taken to bringing a small clock to the cellar. He'd told Lou he wanted to be able to keep track of the time, but what he really wanted was to be able to know when Beth was napping. Then he could go out and peer through the windows at Catherine.

  One day she might be on the couch reading a magazine, and there would be no satisfaction. But the next day she might be ironing, and, for some reason, when she ironed she always took off part of her clothes. Another time she might take a shower and, afterward, stand naked at the back window. And once she had lain naked in the bedroom under the skin-purpling glare of Lou's portable sun lamp. That had been one cloudy afternoon and she hadn't drawn the shades all the way down. He'd stood outside for thirty minutes and never budged.

  Days kept passing. Reading was almost forgotten. Life had become one unending morbid adventure. Almost every afternoon at two o'clock, after having sat in shaking excitement for an hour or more, he would crawl out into the yard and walk secretively around the house, climbing up and peering over the sills of every window, looking for Catherine.

  If she were partly or completely nude, he counted the day a success. If she was, as was most often the case, dressed and engaged in some dull occupation, he would return angrily to the cellar to sulk out the afternoon and snap at Louise all evening.

  Whatever happened, though, he would lie awake at night, waiting for the morning to come, hating and despising himself for being so impatient, but still impatient. Sleep grew turgid with dreams of Catherine; dreams in which she grew progressively more alluring. Finally he even gave up scoffing at the dreams. In the mornings he would eat hastily and go down to the cellar for the long wait until two o'clock, when, heart pounding, he would crawl out through the window again to spy. The end of it came with shocking suddenness.

  He was on the porch. In the kitchen, Catherine was standing naked under Lou's open bathrobe, ironing some clothes.

  He shifted his feet, slipped, and thumped down on the boards. Inside, he heard Catherine call out,

  "Who's there?"

  Gasping, he jumped down the step and started running around the house, looking over his shoulder in fright, to see a frozen-faced Catherine standing at the kitchen window, gaping at his fleeing childlike form. All that afternoon he stood shivering behind the water tank, unable to come out because, even though she hadn't seen him go into the cellar, he was sure she was looking in through the window. And he cursed himself and felt sickly wretched thinking about what Lou would say to him and how she would look at him when she knew.

  He lay still
under the box top, listening to the scratching clamber of the spider over the cardboard. He moistened his lips with a sluggish tongue and thought of the pool of cold water in the hose. He felt around with his hand until it closed over a fragment of damp cracker; then he decided he was too thirsty to eat and his hand drew back again.

  For some reason the sound of the spider's crawling didn't bother him too much. He sensed that he was beyond stark disruption, lying in the shallows of emotion, spent and quiescent. Even memory failed to hurt. Yes, even the memory of the month they'd discovered the antitoxin and injected him three times with it to no avail. All past laments were undone by the drag of present illness and exhaustion. I'll wait, he told himself, until the spider is gone, and then I'll go through the cool darkness and walk over the cliff and that will be the end of it. Yes, that's what I'll do. I'll wait until the spider's gone and then I'll go over the cliff and that will be the end of it.

  He slept, heavily, motionlessly. And, in his dream, he and Lou were walking in September rain, talking as they went. And he said, "Lou, I had an awful dream last night. I dreamed I was as small as a pin. " And she smiled and kissed his cheek and said, "Now, wasn't that a foolish dream?"