Tony was awash in debris. He was surrounded by books, magazines, expense vouchers, comics, ma.n.u.scripts, and opera records. He was writing a review. Claude peeked at the book"s t.i.tle: _The Corpse"s Delight_, by S. Orbital Ridges. Tony didn"t like it. Feeling that he had been too harsh in his criticism, he concluded: "Excellent sidelights on croquet playing in Wales."
"There," he sighed. "Not always easy to be fair, you know? Taste is such a personal matter.
Now, what can I do for you?"
"We have come to make a deal," Claude stated.
"Flatly incredible!" Tony groaned. His voice seemed to emerge from the depths of his chest. "I had hoped for something more original. McComas and I--""Who is McComas?" Claude interjected.
Tony waved his manicured hand. "I always begin sentences that way. Pay it no mind. Your proposition?"
Claude did not hesitate. He who hesitated, as he had often, observed, was lost. "Do not mistake me for the callow youth I appear to be," he warned. "I am a man of no little experience.
"McComas and I understand that. Get on with it. I know you of old, Claude Adams."
Claude felt a pardonable pride. His reputation, then, had preceded him. "The essence of a good bargain," he said, "is that both sides profit from it."
"I agree with that. It is, indeed a plat.i.tude."
Claude was stung. "I will keep it simple. You are too clever for tricky clauses. I will state my case in plain terms, man to Devil. You will then have no choice."
"McComas and I," Tony said shiftily, "have many choices."
Claude seized the horns, as it were. "Try this one on for size. You are overworked and you are overcrowded. The commies are coming. They will try to organize everything, make you write reviews for the State--"
"McComas won"t stand for it!"
"Perhaps, perhaps. But why face the problem at all? If you permit my companion and Ito leave, I will eliminate the difficulty! I am no slouch at population control, as you know, and I can manipulate culture patterns. It will be like old times. No fuss, no bother, you in your kerchief and me in my cap--"
Tony"s face flushed. "By gad, sir, you interest me! When McComas and I deal, we deal!"
Claude smiled slyly. "There is--uh--a way out of here?"
"There is a way," Tony a.s.sured him. "A bargain, as you say, is a bargain. But it will not be easy."
"It never is," Claude observed. He managed to contain his elation. He knew what was coming. "I am, I a.s.sure you, all ears."
"Oh my," said Tony in that distinctive deep voice of his. The Devil told Claude what he had to do. "There is one teensy condition," he concluded.
"Which is?"
"You must not look behind you on the journey. Remember that! Do not look back."
"I will not forget," Claude promised.
With his robed and hooded companion in tow, Claude took his leave.
The side-wheeler splashed through the miasmic murk of the River Styx. The river, of course, was full of stones.
A bewhiskered sailor leaned over the bow-rail, casting a long knotted line. "Ma-a-a-rk Twai-i-i-in!" he bellowed.
At exactly the proper moment, neither too early nor too late, Claude rolled the dice of destiny.
He looked back.
There was a shudder of silence, a skip in the heartbeat of eternity. Then came a blinding flash.
Thunder boomed. It was like all the thunder there ever was, or ever could be, all wrapped up in the fireflies of an Illinois summer"s twilight.
It rained strawberries.
Claude found the results quite gratifying. He stepped ash.o.r.e on an Earth of desolation. He was up to his armpits in corpses and rotting strawberries.
"Unhappy world," he mused. "The paradox of the Solor System. For rebirth, we require abortion. To live in glory, it is necessary to become one with the worm."
"But what will we _do?_" quavered Cleve.
Claude gave no answer. He had been through this before. However, he was forced to concede that he was facing certain difficulties. He fingered his beanie. The Royal Atom-Arranger had done his work well. Lost and by the wind grieved .
Claude Adams was once more a white-maned old codger. Old, old and suffused with weariness.He noticed that his companion seemed dismayed.
"We must begin again," he intoned finally. He had never been one to shirk his duty, no matter what the odds.
His companion brightened. "It may be," the shrouded figure whispered, "that perhaps I can be of some a.s.sistance."
The ta.s.seled robe fell to the shattered Earth. The hood was coyly slipped from golden curls.
Claude stared at her with surging fatigue. "I should have known," he sighed. "Cleve! You are not Cleve, as advertised, but rather you stand before me as--"
"Eve," she finished. She quivered expectantly.
"Not yet, child," Claude temporized. "Mercy, not yet. This had been a trying day, if day it was."
"When?" Eve pressed.
Claude squared his worn shoulders. He took refuge in his ancient briar, firing up the s.h.a.g tobacco with the wooden stick match he always carried. There was great comfort in familiar things.
"Soon," he puffed. "In all the eons, I have never failed the Earth."
With infinite tenderness, he took her arm.
Together, they soared as though on gossamer wings, touching the grandeur of the silvered Moon, while billions and billions of cosmic stars smiled on the miracle of Creation.
APPOINTMENT WITH EDDIE.
by Charles Beaumont
It was one of those bars that strike you blind when you walk in out of the sunlight, but I didn"t need eyes, I could see him, the way deaf people can hear trumpets. It was Shecky, all right. But it also wasn"t Shecky.
He was alone.
I"d known him for eight years, worked with him, traveled with him, lived with him; I"d put him to bed at night and waked him up in the morning; but never, in all that time, never once had I seen him by himself--not even in a bathtub. He was plural. A mult.i.tude of one. And now, the day after his greatest triumph, he was alone, here, in a crummy little bar on Third Avenue.
There was nothing to say, so I said it. "How are you, Sheck?"
He looked up and I could tell he was three-quarters gone. That meant he"d put away a dozen Martinis, maybe more. But he wasn"t drunk. "Sit down," he said, softly, and that"s when I stopped worrying and started getting scared. I"d never heard Shecky talk softly before. He"d always had a voice like the busy signal. Now he was practically whispering.
"Thanks for coming." Another first: "Thanks" from Shecky King, to me. I tried to swallow but suddenly my throat was dry, so I waved to the waiter and ordered a double scotch. Of course, my first thought was, he"s going to dump me. I"d been expecting it for years. Even though I"d done a good job for him, I wasn"t the biggest agent in the business, and to Shecky the biggest always meant the best. But this wasn"t his style. I"d seen him dump people before and the way he did it, he made it seem like a favor.Always with Shecky the knife was a present, and he never delivered it personally. So I went to the second thought, but that didn"t make any better sense. He was never sick a day in his life. He didn"t have time. A broad? No good. The trouble didn"t exist that his lawyers, or I, couldn"t spring him out of in ten minutes.
I decided to wait. It took most of the drink.
"George," he said, finally, "I want you to lay some candor on me." You know the way he talked.
"I want you to lay it on hard and fast. No thinking. Dig?"
"Dig," I said, getting dryer in the throat.
He picked up one of the five full Martini gla.s.ses in front of him and finished it in one gulp.
"George," he said, "am I a success?"
The highest-paid, most acclaimed performer in show business, the man who had smashed records at every club he"s played for five years, who had sold over two million copies of every alb.u.m he"d ever cut, who had won three Emmys and at least a hundred other awards, who had, in the opinion of the people _and_ the critics, reached the top in a dozen fields--this man, age thirty-six, was asking me if he was a success.
"Yes," I said.
He killed another Martini. "Candorsville?"
"The place." I thought I was beginning to get it. Some critic somewhere had shot him down. But would he fall in here? No. Not it. Still, it was worth a try.
"Who says you aren"t?"
"n.o.body. Yet."
"Then what?"
He was quiet for a full minute, I could hardly recognize him sitting there, an ordinary person, an ordinary scared human being.
Then he said, "George, I want you to do something for me."
"Anything," I said. That"s what I was being paid for: anything.
"I want you to make an appointment for me."
"Where at?"
"Eddie"s."
"Who"s Eddie?"
He started sweating. "A barber," he said.
"What"s wrong with Mario?"
"Nothing"s wrong with Mario."
It wasn"t any of my business. Mario Cabianca had been Shecky"s personal hair stylist for ten years, he was the best in the business, but I supposed he"d nicked The King or forgotten to laugh at a joke. It wasn"t important. It certainly couldn"t have anything to do with the problem, whatever it was. I relaxed a little.
"When for?" I asked.
"Now," he said. "Right away."
"Well, you could use a shave."
"Eddie doesn"t shave people. He cuts hair. That"s all."
"You don"t need a haircut."
"George," he said, so soft I could barely hear him, "I never needed anything in all my life like I need this haircut."
"Okay. What"s his number?"
"He hasn"t got one. You"ll have to go in."
Now he was beginning to shake. I"ve seen a lot of people tremble, but this was the first time I"d seen anybody shake.
"Sheck, are you germed up?"
"No." The Martini sloshed all over his cashmere coat. By the time it got to his mouth only the olive was left. "I"m fine. Just do this for me, George. Please. Do it now.""Okay, take it easy. What"s his address?"
"I can"t remember." An ugly sound boiled out of his throat, I guess it was a laugh. "Endsburg! I can"t remember. But I can take you there." He started to get up. His belly hit the edge of the table. The ashtrays and gla.s.ses tipped over. He looked at the mess, then at his hands, which were still shaking, and he said, "Come on."
"Sheck." I put a hand on his shoulder, which n.o.body does. "You want to tell me about it?"
"You wouldn"t understand," he said.
On the way out, I dropped a twenty in front of the bartender. "Nice to have you, Mr. King," he said, and it was like somebody had turned the volume up on the world. "Me and my old lady, y"know, we wouldn"t miss your show for anything." "Yeah," a guy on the last stool said. "G.o.d bless ya, buddy!"
We walked out into the sun. Shecky looked dead. His face was white and glistening with sweat.