The Shrinking Man (17 page)

“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 Center, 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 color 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, stretched 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 estimatingly, 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 hiccuped. 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 gelatine 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.