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What's the matter, girl? he said soothingly.
Then he reached for her and she grabbed his hand in her jaws. She jerked and shook his arm painfully. He slapped at her but she held. He kicked at her and fell. He yanked a drawer and the lamp table tipped. His gun clattered onto the floor.
She let him go.
The skin was badly torn. He pressed it with his handkerchief. I guess that does it, doesn't it? You and me are finished.
He let his hand bleed under the cold water of the kitchen tap. He couldn't move his fingers. He came out of the kitchen with the bite wrapped.
I mean, do you think I could live with that? Huh?
She looked at him mistrustingly.
He threw his things in the back of the jeep, brushed off snow, and started it. His dog leapt at the jeep windows, scratching the paint, then barked at the caking tires. He put the gun on the seat beside him, and the rubber mask over it. In his rearview mirror he could see her chasing him.
He could brake and throw the jeep into reverse. There'd be a bump and a screech from her. She'd lie in his tracks, shaking with agony. He could then back up over her. The jeep would raise and lower.
He did not do that. But he drove away thinking nothing was too awful for her. She deserved the worst.
He swerved his jeep to the front of a small grocery store. He shut off the engine. He rested his forehead on the steering wheel for a minute, then put on his rubber mask.
His dog slept on the bed in the cabin.
The Sun So Hot I Froze to Death
Everyone is busy here. My wife, Susannah, is wearing a string bikini and a straw hat as she cultivates her victory garden, polishes the watermelon, claws at anthills with a pitchfork. The kid is at his swimming lessons inhaling chlorine and water again. Our housegirl, Mutt, is being joyfully molested in her basement room. And I have a science-fiction story rolled into my typewriter and pages next to it that are just okay. We're big on summer projects.
Along the sill of my window are the ragged tops of green trees and the gray Long Island Sound. All above that is blue. On my desk is an expensive briefcase I haven't shut, emphatic letters I haven't opened, masterpieces I'll never read. The first line of my short story is: “There was once a good guy who was held prisoner by stupid beings on another planet for three years.”
It seems like longer. My hero is despondent. He's skin-your-nose sad. At one point a top-dog Tripid suggests he stop brooding, forget whatever's making him so gosh-darn miserable—they talk like that on Planet Dumb—and compile a list of all the reasons he has to be happy despite everything. It's a tremendous success. It turns out my hero is pleased about a lot of things. There's plenty of parking spaces for his car, somehow his socks are always clean, the Tripids serve him buttered popcorn that never seems to creep down between the sofa cushions.
The list really cheers him up.
So: I find my wife desirable. The kid wants to be an astronaut. Mutt gives me a wink now and then. Besides this glorious summer house, I have a six-room apartment in the city that's right on a subway stop. I play squash at noon and haven't chipped a tooth yet. I have only a little trouble sleeping. I am not a writer by profession. Susannah always manages to bring out the best in my performance. I can mix a great martini without a jigger, haggle with garage mechanics, dig burnt muffins out of a toaster without unplugging it. And there are no euphemisms in this house, no toodles or potties or number twos—it's “Dad, my penis is caught in the zipper!” that the kid screams down the hall.
But.
The plumbing is bad here. When most people flush their toilet, it makes a ferocious sound like Wush! Ours goes wickle wickle. In my own house I'm ashamed to go to the bathroom. Also, the drain in the tub doesn't suck anymore. Hair and scum and a squashed water beetle float around in a pool when the shower's on. To wash your feet you have to close your eyes. And the double sink in the kitchen. Whenever Mutt lets out the dishwater, a soup of vegetables and eggshells churns up on the other side. “Dad,” the kid yells. “The sink's throwing up again.”
Mutt diets and tans, drinks tea and reeks with lotions. She wastes away on her lounge chair with aluminum foil angling sunlight at her as she poises a glaring reflector underneath her chin. Her bones are like Tinkertoys. My wife wails, “Please please eat something, dear. We're responsible for your well-being.”
“Food's such a bore,” she says. “I mean, it's just so redundant.” When it rains, she makes out with the boy from the lawn service. Even when she's gone, her room groans with pleasure.
Meanwhile the kid is terrified of everything. Phone calls upset him, he runs howling from the room when I turn on the nightly news, the Sunday comics give him bad dreams. “Kid, kid,” I say painfully. “How can you expect to go to prep school if you're constantly terrified? How can you ever expect to be a daddy?” Sometimes I hear the screech as his bed is shoved against the door.
As I already said, I find Susannah desirable. I like watching her bend over. I'm aroused when she files her nails. When she sneezes, she makes a delicate little choo. Her lipstick sometimes wavers off her mouth, but even that I find appealing. She likes to zip up my pants. She is, however, continually racked with tears. I have been called to gasoline stations and supermarkets to find her slumped and sobbing on the floor. In her sleep she murmurs, “Caveat emptor.”
In “The Prisoner of Planet Dumb,” my hero is captured by tiny people, Tripids, with huge brown heads, big mustaches, ears, noses, glasses, funny little hats. They look like Mr. Potato Head. The kid's got one growing roots. They tumble out of the spacecraft, trip on toys carelessly left in the yard, run smack into a fire hydrant; one takes a shot at a glowering swing set while three others shout out warnings to the banged-up garbage cans. The rest apprehend my poor hero and carry him into the saucer “like the coach after a winning season.”
Once on the planet, my hero is put in an enormous office, completely alone. Wooden secretaries sit at the desks with big balloons under their sweaters and postage stamps glued to their tongues. Typewriters clatter, telephones ring, a watercooler hums. Daily he's given someone else's cheese Danish with his coffee. Each day at ten the same company newsletter circulates, warning of manpower cuts and the need for expense-account receipts. Each day at four there's an office party with streamers and horns. Giggling and kissing noises are piped in; the elevator is stopped between floors; a wife phones for her husband and a big voice yells, “He just left!”
My hero is fed three times a day but the meals aren't nutritionally balanced. One of the Tripid researchers discovered that the average American male consumes sixty apples per year, eight cloves, seventy-two pounds of flour, thirty-nine ounces of pepper, et cetera. So on his first day there he's issued ninety pounds of sugar to eat and a tin each of nutmeg and paprika. The second day he's given twenty-three pepperoni pizzas and a market basket of oysters. The third day, four hundred and twelve grade-A medium eggs. And so on. They infect him with athlete's foot and earaches. They give him colds that just seem to keep hanging on. They find out his body temperature is ninety-eight point six, so the office is kept at ninety-eight point six. He drinks holy water from Lourdes and wine made from spinach leaves. He's got memory implants of Paris in the spring, a Yankee game that was rained out, someone else's senior prom in Spokane, Washington. They think my hero is perfectly happy.
This story's about sloppy research.
My poor hero is very unhappy. They sense that because he fails to initial their memos and is letting his subscriptions lapse. They dispatch their best physicians, who spray him with an oil that prevents foods from sticking to the skillet. They put corn plasters on his toes and prop up his jaw with a neck brace. They slip him feminine napkins, antacids and pertussives, pills for lower back pain. He remains disconsolate. Several of them try to talk to him, make him open up, but they all sound like potatoes, and my hero can't understand them. Finally he's examined by a physician who learned the English language in a Milwaukee bar. He slaps my hero on the back and sh
outs, “Whatchu say, you goof? Da wife letcha outa da houze?”
