Selected Stories Read online

  I finished developing the negatives, made some prints, glanced at them, decided they weren't a great deal worse than Miss Leon. On an impulse I slipped them in with the pix I was going to take on the rounds next morning.

  By now I'd worked long enough so I was a bit fagged and nervous, but I didn't dare waste enough money on liquor to help that. I wasn't very hungry. I think I went to a cheap movie.

  I didn't think of the Girl at all, except maybe to wonder faintly why in my present womanless state I hadn't made a pass at her. She had seemed to belong to a, well, distinctly more approachable social stratum than Miss Leon. But then of course there were all sorts of arguable reasons for my not doing that.

  Next morning I made the rounds. My first step was Munsch's Brewery. They were looking for a "Munsch Girl." Papa Munsch had a sort of affection for me, though he razzed my photography. He had a good natural judgment about that, too. Fifty years ago he might have been one of the shoestring boys who made Hollywood.

  Right now he was out in the plant pursuing his favorite occupation. He put down the beaded can, smacked his lips, gabbled something technical to someone about hops, wiped his fat hands on the big apron he was wearing, and grabbed my thin stack of pix.

  He was about halfway through, making noises with his tongue and teeth, when he came to her. I kicked myself for even having stuck her in.

  "That's her," he said. "The photography's not so hot, but that's the girl."

  It was all decided. I wondered now why Papa Munsch sensed what the Girl had right away, while I didn't. I think it was because I saw her first in the flesh, if that's the right word.

  At the time I just felt faint.

  "Who is she?" he asked.

  "One of my new models." I tried to make it casual.

  "Bring her out tomorrow morning," he told me. "And your stuff. We'll photograph her here. I want to show you.

  "Here, don't look so sick," he added. "Have some beer."

  Well I went away telling myself it was just a fluke, so that she'd probably blow it tomorrow with her inexperience, and so on.

  Just the same, when I reverently laid my next stack of pix on Mr. Fitch, of Lovelybelt's rose-colored blotter, I had hers on top.

  Mr. Fitch went through the motions of being an art critic. He leaned over backward, squinted his eyes, waved his long fingers, and said, "Hmmm. What do you think, Miss Willow? Here, in this light. Of course the photograph doesn't show the bias cut. And perhaps we should use the Lovelybelt Imp instead of the Angel. Still, the girl . . . Come over here, Binns." More finger-waving. "I want a married man's reaction."

  He couldn't hide the fact that he was hooked.

  Exactly the same thing happened at Buford's Pool and Playground, except that Da Costa didn't need a married man's say-so.

  "Hot stuff," he said, sucking his lips. "Oh, boy, you photographers!"

  I hot-footed it back to the office and grabbed up the card I'd given to her to put down her name and address.

  It was blank.

  I don't mind telling you that the next five days were about the worst I ever went through, in an ordinary way. When next morning rolled around and I still hadn't got hold of her, I had to start stalling.

  "She's sick," I told Papa Munsch over the phone.

  "She at a hospital?" he asked me.

  "Nothing that serious." I told him.

  "Get her out here then. What's a little headache?"

  "Sorry, I can't."

  Papa Munsch got suspicious. "You really got this girl?"

  "Of course I have."

  "Well, I don't know. I'd think it was some New York model, except I recognized your lousy photography."

  I laughed.

  "Well look, you get her here tomorrow morning, you hear?"

  "I'll try."

  "Try nothing. You get her out here."

  He didn't know half of what I tried. I went around to all the model and employment agencies. I did some slick detective work at the photographic and art studios. I used up some of my last dimes putting advertisements in all three papers. I looked at high school yearbooks and at employee photos in local house organs. I went to restaurants and drugstores, looking for waitresses, and to dime stores and department stores, looking at clerks. I watched the crowds coming out of movie theatres. I roamed the streets.

  Evenings I spent quite a bit of time along Pick-up Row. Somehow that seemed the right place.

  The fifth afternoon I knew I was licked. Papa Munsch's deadline—he'd given me several, but this was it—was due to run out at six o'clock. Mr. Fitch had already canceled.

  I was at the studio window, looking out at Ardleigh Park.

  She walked in.

  I'd gone over this moment so often in my mind that I had no trouble putting on my act. Even the faint dizzy feeling didn't throw me off.

  "Hello," I said, hardly looking at her.

  "Hello," she said.

  "Not discouraged yet?"

  "No." It didn't sound uneasy or defiant. It was just a statement.

  I snapped a look at my watch, got up and said curtly, "Look here, I'm going to give you a chance. There's a client of mine looking for a girl your general type. If you do a real good job you may break into the modeling business.

  "We can see him this afternoon if we hurry." I said. I picked up my stuff. "Come on. And next time, if you expect favors, don't forget to leave your phone number."

  "Uh, uh," she said, not moving.

  "What do you mean?" I said.

  "I'm not going to see any client of yours."

  "The hell you aren't," I said. "You little nut, I'm giving you a break."

  She shook her head slowly. "You're not fooling me, baby, you're not fooling me at all. They want me."

  And she gave me the second smile.

  At the time I thought she must have seen my newspaper ad. Now I'm not so sure.

  "And now I'll tell you how we're going to work," she went on. "You aren't going to have my name or address or phone number. Nobody is. And we're going to do all the pictures right here. Just you and me."

  You can imagine the roar I raised at that. I was everything—angry, sarcastic, patiently explanatory, off my nut, threatening, pleading.

  I would have slapped her face off, except it was photographic capital.

  In the end all I could do was phone Papa Munsch and tell him her conditions. I know I didn't have a chance, but I had to take it.

  He gave me a really angry bawling out, said "no" several times and hung up.

  It didn't faze her. "We'll start shooting at ten o'clock tomorrow," she said.

  It was just like her, using that corny line from the movie magazines.

  About midnight Papa Munsch called me up.

  "I don't know what insane asylum you're renting this girl from," he said, "but I'll take her. Come around tomorrow morning and I'll try to get it through your head just how I want the pictures. And I'm glad I got you out of bed!"

  After that it was a breeze. Even Mr. Fitch reconsidered and after taking two days to tell me it was quite impossible, he accepted the conditions too.

  Of course you're all under the spell of the Girl, so you can't understand how much self-sacrifice it represented on Mr. Fitch's part when he agreed to forego supervising the photography of my model in the Lovelybelt Imp or Vixen or whatever it was we finally used.

  Next morning she turned up on time according to her schedule, and we went to work. I'll say one thing for her, she never got tired and she never kicked at the way I fussed over shots. I got along okay except I still had the feeling of something being shoved away gently. Maybe you've felt it just a little, looking at her picture.

  When we finished I found out there were still more rules. It was about the middle of the afternoon. I started down with her to get a sandwich and coffee.

  "Uh uh," she said, "I'm going down alone. And look, baby, if you ever try to follow me, if you ever so much as stick your head out that window when I go, you can hire yourself another model."<
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  You can imagine how all this crazy stuff strained my temper—and my imagination. I remember opening the window after she was gone—I waited a few minutes first—and standing there getting some fresh air and trying to figure out what could be back of it, whether she was hiding from the police, or was somebody's ruined daughter, or maybe had got the idea it was smart to be temperamental, or more likely Papa Munsch was right and she was partly nuts.

  But I had my pix to finish up.

  Looking back it's amazing to think how fast her magic began to take hold of the city after that.

  Remembering what came after, I'm frightened of what's happening to the whole country—and maybe the world. Yesterday I read something in Time about the Girl's picture turning up on billboards in Egypt.

  The rest of my story will help show you why I'm frightened in that big general way. But I have a theory, too, that helps explain, though it's one of those things that's beyond that "certain point." It's about the Girl. I'll give it to you in a few words.

  You know how modern advertising gets everybody's mind set in the same direction, wanting the same things, imagining the same things. And you know the psychologists aren't so skeptical of telepathy as they used to be.

  Add up the two ideas. Suppose the identical desires of millions of people focused on one telepathic person. Say a girl. Shaped her in their image.

  Imagine her knowing the hidden-most hungers of millions of men. Imagine her seeing deeper into those hungers than the people that had them, seeing the hatred and the wish for death behind the lust. Imagine her shaping herself in that complete image, keeping herself as aloof as marble. Yet imagine the hunger she might feel in answer to their hunger.

  But that's getting a long way from the facts of my story. And some of those facts are darn solid. Like money. We made money.

  That was the funny thing I was going to tell you. I was afraid the Girl was going to hold me up. She really had me over a barrel, you know.

  But she didn't ask for anything but the regular rates. Later on I insisted on pushing more money at her, a whole lot. But she always took it with that same contemptuous look, as if she were going to toss it down the first drain when she got outside.

  Maybe she did.

  At any rate, I had money. For the first time in months I had money enough to get drunk, buy new clothes, take taxicabs. I could make a play for any girl I wanted to. I only had to pick.

  And so of course I had to go and pick—

  But first let me tell you about Papa Munsch.

  Papa Munsch wasn't the first of the boys to try to meet my model but I think he was the first to really go soft on her. I could watch the change in his eyes as he looked at her pictures. They began to get sentimental, reverent. Mama Munsch had been dead for two years.

  He was smart about the way he planned it. He got me to drop some information which told him when she came to work, and then one morning he came pounding up the stairs a few minutes before.

  "I've got to see her, Dave," he told me.

  I argued with him, I kidded him. I explained he didn't know just how serious she was about her crazy ideas. I pointed out he was cutting both our throats. I even amazed myself by bawling him out.

  He didn't take any of it in his usual way. He just kept repeating, "But, Dave, I've got to see her."

  The street door slammed.

  "That's her," I said, lowering my voice. "You've got to get out."

  He wouldn't, so I shoved him in the darkroom. "And keep quiet," I whispered. "I'll tell her I can't work today."

  I knew he'd try to look at her and probably come busting in, but there wasn't anything else I could do.

  The footsteps came to the fourth floor. But she never showed at the door. I got uneasy.

  "Get that bum out of there!" she yelled suddenly from beyond the door. Not very loud, but in her commonest voice.

  "I'm going up to the next landing," she said, "And if that fat-bellied bum doesn't march straight down to the street, he'll never get another pix of me except spitting in his lousy beer."

  Papa Munsch came out of the darkroom. He was white. He didn't look at me as he went out. He never looked at her pictures in front of me again.

  That was Papa Munsch. Now it's me I'm telling about. I talked about the subject with her, I hinted, eventually I made my pass.

  She lifted my hand off her as if it were a damp rag.

  "Nix, baby," she said. "This is working time."

  "But afterward . . . " I pressed.

  "The rules still hold." And I got what I think was the fifth smile.

  It's hard to believe, but she never budged an inch from that crazy line. I mustn't make a pass at her in the office, because our work was very important and she loved it and there mustn't be any distractions.

  And I couldn't see her anywhere else, because if I tried to, I'd never snap another picture of her—and all this with more money coming in all the time and me never so stupid as to think my photography had anything to do with it.

  Of course I wouldn't have been human if I hadn't made more passes. But they always got the wet-rag treatment and there weren't any more smiles.

  I changed. I went sort of crazy and light-headed—only sometimes I felt my head was going to burst. And I started to talk to her all the time. About myself.

  It was like being in a constant delirium that never interfered with business. I didn't pay attention to the dizzy feeling. It seemed natural.

  I'd walk around and for a moment the reflector would look like a sheet of white-hot steel, or the shadows would seem like armies of moths, or the camera would be a big black coal car. But the next instant they'd come all right again.

  I think sometimes I was scared to death of her. She'd seem the strangest, horriblest person in the world.

  But other times . . .

  And I talked. It didn't matter what I was doing—lighting her, posing her, fussing with props, snapping my pix—or where she was—on the platform, behind the screen, relaxing with a magazine—I kept up a steady gab.

  I told her everything I knew about myself. I told her about my first girl. I told her about my brother Bob's bicycle. I told her about running away on a freight and the licking Pa gave me when I came home.

  I told her about shipping to South America and the blue sky at night. I told her about Betty. I told her about my mother dying of cancer. I told her about being beaten up in a fight in an alley behind a bar. I told her about Mildred. I told her about the first picture I ever sold. I told her how Chicago looked from a sailboat. I told her about the longest drunk I was ever on. I told her about Marsh-Mason. I told her about Gwen. I told her about how I met Papa Munsch. I told her about hunting her. I told her about how I felt now.

  She never paid the slightest attention to what I said. I couldn't even tell if she heard me.

  It was when we were getting our first nibble from national advertisers that I decided to follow her when she went home.

  Wait, I can place it better than that. Something you'll remember from the out-of-town papers—those maybe-murders I mentioned. I think there were six.

  I say "maybe" because the police could never be sure they weren't heart attacks. But there's bound to be suspicion when heart attacks happen to people whose hearts have been okay, and always at night when they're alone and away from home and there's a question of what they were doing.

  The six deaths created one of those "mystery poisoner" scares. And afterward there was a feeling that they hadn't really stopped, but were being continued in a less suspicious way.

  That's one of the things that scares me now.

  But at that time my only feeling was relief that I'd decided to follow her.

  I made her work until dark one afternoon. I didn't need any excuses, we were snowed under with orders. I waited until the street door slammed, then I ran down. I was wearing rubber-soled shoes. I'd slipped on a dark coat she'd never seen me in, and a dark hat.

  I stood in the doorway until I spotted her. She w
as walking by Ardleigh Park toward the heart of town. It was one of those warm fall nights. I followed her on the other side of the street. My idea for tonight was just to find out where she lived. That would give me a hold on her.

  She stopped in front of a display window of Everly's department store, standing back from the glow.

  She stood there looking in.

  I remembered we'd done a big photograph of her for Everly's, to make a flat model for a lingerie display. That was what she was looking at.

  At the time it seemed all right to me that she should adore herself, if that was what she was doing.

  When people passed she'd turn away a little or drift back farther into the shadows.

  Then a man came by alone. I couldn't see his face very well, but he looked middle-aged. He stopped and stood looking in the window.

  She came out of the shadows and stepped up beside him.

  How would you boys feel if you were looking at a poster of the Girl and suddenly she was there beside you, her arm linked with yours?

  This fellow's reaction showed plain as day. A crazy dream had come to life for him.

  They talked for a moment. Then he waved a taxi to the curb. They got in and drove off.

  I got drunk that night. It was almost as if she'd known I was following her and had picked that way to hurt me. Maybe she had. Maybe this was the finish.

  But the next morning she turned up at the usual time and I was back in the delirium, only now with some new angles added.

  That night when I followed her she picked a spot under a street lamp, opposite one of the Munsch Girl billboards.

  Now it frightens me to think of her lurking that way.

  After about twenty minutes a convertible slowed down going past her, backed up, swung in to the curb. I was closer this time. I got a good look at the fellow's face. He was a little younger, about my age.

  Next morning the same face looked up at me from the front page of the paper. The convertible had been found parked on a side street. He had been in it. As in the other maybe-murders, the cause of death was uncertain.

  All kinds of thoughts were spinning in my head that day, but there were only two things I knew for sure.

  That I'd got the first real offer from a national advertiser, and that I was going to take the Girl's arm and walk down the stairs with her when we quit work.