Offbeat: Uncollected Stories Read online

  The words made things simple. He sat there looking at the doctor.

  “Then all this line about . . . manipul . . . that stuff. It was all just a lie to get me out here,” he said.

  “Not at all,” said the doctor, “I merely neglected to tell you that no one on earth practices the profession but myself.”

  Harry felt his muscles growing tight.

  “What if I sign?” he said.

  The doctor raised his hands munificently.

  “In that case,” he said, “You can do anything you want in pitching.”

  Into Harry’s mind crept the daydream he had so often comforted himself with during those periodic bouts of self pity. Him, a thirty game winner—no losses. Him with an endless string of wins, shut-outs, perfect games. The greatest pitcher who ever lived. Visions swallowed up the puny measurement of his soul.

  So he leaned forward and, quickly, he signed the conditions of exchange.

  “He got me a tryout with Montreal,” Harry told me, still sitting there in my apartment. “No matter how I threw the ball I struck out the batter. I was a sensation. Next season I went to Brooklyn. You know the rest.”

  “And that was . . . ten years ago?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Didn’t you ever . . . try to get out of it?”

  “My God,” he said, his voice breaking, “I did everything I could, Jess. I went back to that house to tell him. He wasn’t there, the house was empty.” He drew in a shaking breath. “It was probably always empty.”

  He picked up his glass and stared into it.

  “I tell you I tried everything. I tried balking but I couldn’t get off the mound. I tried to throw the ball into the dirt but I couldn’t, it’d rise up into the strike zone. I tried to heave it over your head into the stands and that was the season every sports writer was raving about my ‘fabulous sinker.’ ”

  “You never saw the . . . doctor again?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “But I know he’s waiting for me. Tonight I’m supposed to meet him at a roadhouse in North Bay Shore. And . . .”

  He didn’t finish, just sat there looking at me with stark, frightened eyes.

  “Isn’t there anything you can do, Harry?” I asked him.

  “No,” he said. “No, nothing. He said the conditions would be met in ten years and they were. I have to pay him tonight.”

  “Will you . . .” I started and could hardly finish, “die?”

  He sat there motionlessly and looked at me.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  Something shuddered down through me but I fought it off. I got up and sat beside him. I put my arm around him.

  “Listen pop,” I said, “Listen. You’re not going.”

  “I have to, Jess, I have to.”

  “Oh, there must be some way to get out of it. There has to be. He has no power over you.”

  “I signed a contract,” he said.

  “Contract,” I said, “what contract? A lousy slip of paper with an address on the other side. Is that a contract you have do follow?”

  “But I . . . signed it,” Harry said. Then I saw something in his eyes, a sort of flicker. He put down the glass suddenly and stood up.

  “Harry . . .”

  “Wait a minute!” He silenced me. “I seem to remember, I seem to . . .”

  It all welled into his face all of a sudden, hope and excitement.

  “Yes!” he said, “An old common law that’s never used anymore. But it’s never been revoked. I remember reading it in a book once at St. John’s.”

  He recited it slow as if he wanted to convince himself.

  “Any contract written on paper which has irrelevant writing on the opposite side is not binding.”

  I started up.

  “Harry, you got him!” I think I shouted and we wrung each other’s hand and laughed and breathed again.

  The first day of the 1976 World Series. Maybe you were there, sitting in the stands that day. Maybe you remember.

  When I came into the locker room I found Harry there, already in his uniform, staring blankly at the metal door of his locker.

  “Today’s the day, pop!” I said.

  He hardly budged, he didn’t even look at me.

  “Stop worrying,” I told him. “It’s in the bag.”

  Harry said, “I saw him.”

  I felt the tips of my fingers go numb.

  “Saw him?”

  “I was coming into the field,” he said. “I looked up and there he was leaning on the railing looking down at me.”

  I tried to swallow the tightness in my throat.

  “Did he . . . say anything?”

  Harry shook his head slowly.

  “He doesn’t have to say anything,” he said.

  “Harry, you know that contract isn’t . . .”

  “Oh, why talk?” he said bitterly. “I signed and he wants payment.”

  For a long time I stood there without speaking. Then I put my hand on his shoulder.

  “You want me to tell Harold to pitch somebody else today?” I asked him.

  “No,” he said, “I . . . I’m not going to let the team down again.”

  I patted his shoulder.

  “All right, pop,” I said.

  The next hour was like the beginning of a nightmare when you’re asleep, all the elements adding up until you suddenly realize you’re getting the shakes. I could feel that while I was getting dressed. The chatter of the rest of the team sounded hollow and I kept looking over at Harry who still sat on the bench looking at his right arm, running his left hand over it again and again. I could feel it while we all moved through the tunnel to the dugout and the murmur of the people in the stands came down to us like far off sounds that frighten you even though you can’t quite identify them. Then we came into the dugout and people started cheering.

  I was putting on my equipment when I saw Harry standing by the stands talking to a man; a man in a summer suit with a woven hat that had a colored band. I felt my body go cold and I stood there fumbling with my shin guards, my eyes fastened on the face of the man Harry was talking to.

  When Harry came back to the dugout his whole body shook. I went to him.

  “What is it, what is it?” I whispered.

  “I told you,” he said in a terrified murmur. “He wants payment.”

  “Didn’t you tell him about . . .”

  He jerked his head with a nod. “I told him,” he said. “He got mad. He said I was cheating him.”

  “And . . . ?”

  His throat moved.

  “That’s all,” he said.

  “What?”

  “He just . . . turned around and walked away,” Harry said, his pupils pinpoints of jet.

  “Then,” I started, “then he’s leaving you alone.”

  Harry didn’t reply. He moved away and bent over the water cooler.

  Ten minutes later we went out to warm him up. Every­body cheered and I saw Harry’s body jolt at the sound. I glanced at the stands but I couldn’t see the man, just a sea of red, happy faces.

  Harry started throwing. I had trouble with my hands at first but then I saw that the ball was coming in good. Harry was fast and he had plenty of control. I started to relax. With every pitch that came in fast or curving or sinking and right in the strike zone the more excited I got. Until, finally, I jumped up and raced over to Harry. I clapped him on the back and I said, “You’ve licked him, pop!”

  Minutes later. The captains went out, exchanged line-ups, the national anthem was sung and we were all in the field. Harry threw in some more warm-up pitches, the outfielders arranged themselves for the first batter. The umpire yelled “Play Ball!”

  Johnny Morgan of the Yanks was first to bat. He got up to the plate and pumped a little. The umpire leaned over my shoulder. I gave Harry the signal. He shook it off. I chuckled and gave him the signal we’d worked out between us, the one that meant—All right, play it any way you want, you bum. And I grinned at h
im.

  Harry went into his motion, pumped once, twice . . .

  I was watching the ball so I didn’t see. The first thing that got to me was Harry’s scream ringing out over all the noise of the crowd. I jumped up with my heart jolting and the ball bounced off my chest guard. Women in the stands were screaming too. And, as I stood, I saw Harry paralyzed out there on the mound and staring at his arm.

  It was lying on the ground. Still twitching.

  Mirror, Mirror . . .

  This is one of those stories that begins as it ends. Except, of course, that identical words can mean two different things when their context alters. And the words are these:

  She was one of those women who sit endlessly before mirrors and adore themselves. Let these silver backed glasses be considered the pool of Narcissus and you have pretty much the case of it. For should the truth out, these women who pose their hours away love nothing but themselves. Let there be husbands and homes and duties, yes—but let there be a wrinkle and the rest is forgotten in fretfulness and vain dismay. Give them largesse of affection, kindness, understanding, love—then give them praise about their looks and the subtler gifts will be ignored.

  Such a woman then was Valerie Castle whose private sun rose and fell on matters facial. That she was married bore relation more to sustenance than to romance. She cared far more for tubes and jars of cosmetic application than for her husband John, a plain man inclined to bovine temper and unassailable adoration of his wife.

  For she was a splendid figure of a woman and John counted himself joyously among those legions who serve as carpets for the beautiful. It is not that John Castle was stupid. His relative mark on finance belied this apparentness. He was merely indulgent to that point from which, once arrived at, no woman lets any man return.

  Here then the elements: A husband puffing faithfully on the fire of his wife’s vanity.

  Here then the story.

  One morning Valerie Castle awoke from fitful slumber, trembling with the memory of a dream. The scene still clung with vivid fingers to her mind—Her, ugly with such ugliness as only women fearful of their beauty can imagine, forced to bear the cross of observation from a body of women through whose silent ranks she was compelled to walk—slowly.

  She lay supine, the picture of beauty perturbed; aggravated to the very core by these nightly repetitions of a dream so unwholesome. It was most unfair, this rack of visions, this terrible release of fears from mental attic rooms. The unconscious mind, it was a beast to dally so with apprehensions.

  Valerie Castle drew pretty fingers into pretty fists and sulked on mind’s inhumanity to mind. Then her azure eyes grew full with fright. Was there significance to this—these similar dreams? Was she, perhaps unknowing it, looking at events to come?

  A shudder ran down her milk white limbs. Nonsense, she abjured her scant used ration; it was only nerves sitting­ uneasy on a beleaguered throne of loveliness. Did not the concert pianist tremble for his hands, the artist for his eyes? Natural fear, no more. Should not beauty tremble lest, through horrible accident, she become the beast instead?

  Of course; that was settled. Perhaps a few brief visits to an analyst to dismiss the tension and bring slumber once again. Something of that nature at any rate. She’d see, she’d see.

  That annoyance taken in count, Valerie Castle rustled shimmering hair on pillow and eyed the clock.

  Disturbed surprise lifted her well plucked eyebrows. Almost twelve already and not one iota of preparation yet for Mrs. Rigney’s afternoon bridge and social tea. A sound of harried resolution sounded beneath Valerie’s cold creamed neck. She simply had to retire earlier, that was all. Her lubricated lips grew firm. It was John with his exhausting, endlessly visiting business connections that made life so trying and adequate sleep so hard to acquire.

  I knew a woman once, thought Valerie, who was the beauty of her time; nationally noted, the enchantress of all men who had known her.

  Well, that woman retained her stunning grace only so long as she slept twelve full hours a night in her own private bed. Once she had married and fallen heir to an hour consuming husband, her famous charm degraded markedly; she became that basest of the base—a sacrificing wife.

  Well, by the heavens, nothing like that would ever happen to Valerie Castle! Let John but breathe the first syllable of a demand and he’d see sparks from her.

  She nodded once in violent agreement with herself. Sound, completely sound. A woman should look after her­self first; who else was there that cared? From genesis to exodus each woman stood upon a lonely battlefield, in combat for her rights. No kinsman succored, no liege raised arms in selfless aid and each apparent champion revealed himself a mercenary in the end.

  Settled; done and done. Again the sky blue eyes of Valerie Castle moved, this time settling on the window of her world—a mirror; her personal hand mirror this. For moments she allowed her gaze to stir caressing on the convoluted tracery of silver which exacting craft had fashioned on its back. A stunning work of artisan detail, full worthy in its finished grace of all the beauty its other side reflected.

  Fingers curled in satiny languor, Valerie Castle stretched an ivory arm. The canons of beauty demanded this ritual of critical regard promptly at the rising hour. No negligence was sanctioned, no laxity indulged. Loveliness must never be remiss is this, its primal duty. Devout, reverent, Valerie Castle obeyed the edicts of appearance.

  Now the mirror passed in transit, now two perfect eyes beheld.

  Now the cook, preparing breakfast biscuits, dropped a bowl of snow white batter on the floor, the maid gasped loudly and the right cheek of the butler twitched.

  That suddenly had a scream of horror filled the house.

  “I really thought my heart would stop it was so hideous,” she said.

  “You say it wasn’t you in the mirror?”

  The chapeaued trio sat apart in confidential huddle, their voices soft in stealthy conversation. Valerie Castle, firmly center staged, replied.

  “It wasn’t me,” she said, “I don’t know who it was. It was a guignol face, a horrid face, one of scarred distortion. The mouth curled up and down as though one side were smiling while the other frowned. A grisly patch of skin covered a third of one eye. The nose, in shape and hue, was very like a potato, newly dug. And the lips . . .”

  Tea cups stood ignored, glacéd cakes neglected as the pair of women eyed a shuddering Valerie Castle.

  “A frightening incident,” said one.

  “My sister once,” the other said, “had a similar experience. She invariably saw reflected in all water the features of her Pekingese dog who had died quite horribly beneath the hooves of a runaway horse.”

  “What shall I do?” a distraught Valerie Castle asked. “It fills me with terror. I dare not look into another mirror lest I see that face again.”

  “You haven’t looked into a mirror since you saw it?” asked one of the women.

  “No,” said Valerie Castle. “I fear to.”

  “But you say it did not last,” the woman pointed out. “You say that following a moment’s appearance, the face disintegrated as it were and there you saw your own again.”

  “Yes,” said Valerie Castle, “that is true.”

  “Then it is nothing but an aberration,” said the woman. “To be dealt with by a proper analyst.”

  Said the other woman, “Did the face resemble yours at all?”

  “Please,” said Valerie Castle.

  “I mean,” the woman hastily amended, “as you might appear following terrible catastrophe.”

  Valerie leaned forward, beauty petrified.

  “It is what I fear,” she confessed in hollow voice. “What I cannot dismiss from mind.”

  “I do not believe in such nonsense,” said the other woman. “Aberration of the psyche, no more. Work for an analyst, not a medium.”

  “I want to believe that,” Valerie said. “I want desperately to believe that.”

  “I shall give you the name o
f my personal analyst,” the woman declared. “I shall phone him this evening to let him know you are coming. But for now . . . your purse mirror.”

  “I dare not,” murmured Valerie Castle, white gloved fingers trembling.

  “You must,” said the woman. “You know your face has not changed. To look is a requisite of cure. Face the problem and the problem loses face. It is a truism taught to me by Doctor Mott who is my analyst. Come, your mirror.”

  Slowly, shaking with premonitional chills, Valerie Castle opened up her purse and closed tense fingers on the mirror edge.

  “Courage,” said one woman.

  “I could never look,” said the other.

  Valerie Castle did.

  Although the maid might try as she proferred the cherry tarts, she could not half erase the look of most offensive curiosity from her face. As might be expected however, Valerie noted with disgust, John made not the slightest note of it. But then John was never of the sensitive variety. Bluntly unaware, that was his proper labeling.

  Such waspish reflections stung at Valerie Castle’s mind as she jabbed indifferent fork into her tart. I will not have the help surveying me with uncivil eyes, she thought, probing their scalpel glances in my back and whispering among themselves.

  “This tart is admirable,” said Mr. Castle.

  Just because I screamed in my fright they eye me much as though my mind were visibly crumbling. I see no reason to abide the utter vulgarity of their inspection; I am not upon exhibit for their churlish eyes.

  “This tart is admirable, my dear,” said Mr. Castle.

  The face I saw was nothing but a fleeting aberration, that is certain; a mental spot to be removed tomorrow morning by the analyst. The proof is clear: I saw no face except my own in the mirror from my purse. And, since that moment, I have looked in twenty different mirrors in this very house, seeing only what I always see, the pattern of my private features.

  “My dear?”

  For that single cry am I to be abused by loutish gapes? I find the situation more than . . .

  “Dear?”

  “What is it?” asked a petulant Valerie Castle.

  “This tart is admirable. Did you think of it yourself?”

  “Why do you ask me such a foolish question?” she replied. “You know I don’t go near the kitchen.”