The sign in
the window said: SCHOOLTEACHER FOR SALE, DIRT CHEAP; and, in small letters: CAN
COOK, SEW, AND IS HANDY AROUND THE HOUSE.
She made
Danby think of desks and erasers and autumn leaves; of books and dreams and
laughter. The proprietor of the little second-hand store had adorned her with a
gay-colored dress and had slipped little red sandals on her feet, and she stood
in her upright case in the window like a life-size doll waiting for someone to
bring her to life.
Danby tried
to move on down the spring street to the parking lot where he kept his Baby
Buick. Laura probably had his supper all dialed and waiting on the table for him
and she would be furious if he was late. But he went right on standing where he
was, tall and thin, his youth not quite behind him, still lingering in his
brown, wistful eyes, showing faintly in the softness of his cheeks.
His inertia
annoyed him. He'd passed the store a thousand times on his way from the parking
lot to his office and on his way from his office to the parking lot, but this
was the first time he'd ever stopped and looked in the window.
But wasn't
this the first time the window had ever contained something that he wanted?
Danby tried
to face the question. Did he want a schoolteacher? Well, hardly. But Laura
certainly needed someone to help her with the housework, and they couldn't
afford an automatic maid, and Billy certainly could stand some extra-TV
tutoring, with the boxtop tests coming up, and—
And—and her
hair made him think of September sunlight, her face, of a September day. A
September mist settled around him, and all of a sudden his inertia left him and
he began to walk—but not in the direction he had intended to go …
"How
much is the schoolteacher in the window?" he asked.
Antiques of
every description were scattered about the interior of the store. The
proprietor was a little old man with bushy white hair and gingerbread eyes. He
looked like an antique himself.
He beamed
at Danby's question. "You like her, sir? She's very lovely."
Danby's
face felt warm. "How much?" he repeated.
"Forty-nine ninety-five, plus five dollars for the case."
Danby could
hardly believe it. With schoolteachers so rare, you'd think the price would go
up, not down. And yet, less than a year ago, when he'd been thinking of buying
a rebuilt third-grade teacher to help Billy with his TV-schoolwork, the
lowest-priced one he could find had run well over a hundred dollars. He would
have bought her even at that, though, if Laura hadn't talked him out of it.
Laura had never gone to realschool and didn't
understand.
But
forty-nine ninety-five! And she could cook and sew, too! Surely Laura wouldn't
try to talk him out of buying this one—
She
definitely wouldn't if he didn't give her the chance.
"Is—is
she in good condition?"
The
proprietor's face grew pained. "She's been completely overhauled, sir. Brand new batteries, brand new motors. Her tapes are good
for another ten years yet, and her memory banks will probably last forever.
Here, I'll bring her in and show you."
The case
was mounted on castors, but it was awkward to handle. Danby helped the old man
push it out of the window and into the store. They stood it by the door where
the light was brightest.
The old man
stepped back admiringly. "Maybe I'm old-fashioned," he said,
"but I still say that teleteachers will never
compare to the real thing. You went to realschool,
didn't you, sir?"
Danby
nodded.
"I
thought so. Funny the way you can always tell."
"Turn
her on, please," Danby said.
The
activator was a tiny button, hidden behind the left ear lobe. The proprietor
fumbled for a moment before he found it; then there was a little click!, followed by a soft, almost inaudible, purring sound.
Presently, color crept into the cheeks, the breast began to rise and fall; blue
eyes opened—
Danby's
fingernails were digging into the palms of his hands. "Make her say
something."
"She
responds to almost everything, sir," the old man said. "Words,
scenes, situations … If you decide to take her and aren't satisfied, bring her
back and I'll be glad to refund your money." He faced the case "What
is your name?" he asked.
"Miss
Jones." Her voice was a September wind.
"Your occupation?"
"Specifically,
I'm a fourth-grade teacher, sir, but I can substitute for first, second, third,
fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grades, and I'm well-grounded in the
humanities. Also, I'm proficient in household chores, am a qualified cook, and
can perform simple tasks, such as sewing on buttons, darning socks, and
repairing rips and tears in clothing."
"They
put a lot of extras in the later models," the old man said in an aside to
Danby. "When they finally realized that teleducation
was here to stay, they started doing everything they could to beat the cereal
companies. But it didn't do any good." Then: "Step outside your case,
Miss Jones. Show us how nice you walk."
She walked
once around the drab room, her little red sandals twinkling over the dusty
floor, her dress a gay little rainfall of color. Then she returned and stood
waiting by the door.
Danby found
it difficult to talk. "All right," he said finally. "Put her
back in her case. I'll take her."
* * *
"Something for me, Dad?" Billy shouted. "Something
for me?"
"Sure
thing," Danby said, trundling the case up the walk and lifting it onto the
diminutive front porch. "For your mother, too."
"Whatever
it is, it better be good," Laura said, arms folded in the doorway.
"Supper's stone cold."
"You
can warm it up," Danby said. "Watch out, Billy!"
He lifted
the case over the threshold, breathing a little hard, and shoved it down the
short hall and into the living room. The living room was preempted by a
pink-coated pitchman who had invited himself in via the 120" screen and
who was loudly proclaiming the superiority of the new 2061 Lincolnette
convertible.
"Be
careful of the rug!" Laura said.
"Don't
get excited, I'm not going to hurt your rug," Danby said. "And will
somebody please turn off TV so we can hear ourselves think!"
"I'll
turn it off, Dad." Billy made nine-year-old strides across the room and
killed the pitchman, pink coat and all.
Danby
fumbled with the cover of the case, aware of Laura's breath on the back of his
neck. "A schoolteacher!" she gasped, when it finally came open. "Of all the things for a grown man to bring home to his wife!
A schoolteacher."
"She's
not an ordinary schoolteacher," Danby said. "She can cook, she can
sew, she—she can do just about anything. You're always saying you need a maid.
Well, now you've got one. And Billy's got someone to help him with his
TV-lessons."
"How much?" For the first time Danby realized what a narrow face his wife had.
"Forty-nine ninety-five."
"Forty-nine ninety-five! George, are you crazy? Here I've been saving
our money so we could turn in our Baby B. for a new Cadillette,
and you go throwing it away on an old broken-down schoolteacher. What does she
know about teleducation? Why, she's fifty years
behind the times!"
"She's
not going to help me with my TV-lessons!" Billy said, glowering at the
case. "My TV-teacher said those old android teachers weren't good for
anything. They—they used to hit kids!"
"They
did not!" Danby said. "And I should know, because I went to realschool all the way to the eighth grade." He turned
to Laura. "And she's not broken down, either, and she's not fifty years
behind the times, and she knows more about real education than your teleteachers ever will! And like I said, she can sew, she
can cook—"
"Well,
tell her to warm up our supper then!"
"I
will!"
He reached
into the case, depressed the little activator button, and, when the blue eyes
opened, said: "Come with me, Miss Jones," and led her into the
kitchen.
He was
delighted at the way she responded to his instructions as to which buttons to
push, which levers to raise and lower, which indicators to point at which numerals—
Supper was off the table in a jiffy and back on again in the wink of an eye,
all warm and steaming and delectable.
Even Laura
was mollified. "Well …," she said.
"Well,
I guess!" Danby said. "I said she could cook, didn't I? Now you won't
have to complain any more about jammed buttons and broken fingernails
and—"
"All
right, George. Don't rub it in."
Her face
was back to normal again, still a little on the thin side, of course, but that
was part of its attractiveness under ordinary circumstances; that, and her
dark, kindling eyes and exquisitely made-up mouth. She'd just had her breasts
built up again and she really looked terrific in her new gold and scarlet loungerie. Danby decided he could have done far worse. He
put his finger under her chin and kissed her. "Come on, let's eat,"
he said.
For some
reason, he'd forgotten about Billy. Glancing up from the table, he saw his son
standing in the doorway, staring balefully at Miss Jones, who was busy with the
coffee.
"She's
not going to hit me!" Billy said, answering Danby's glance.
Danby
laughed. He felt better, now that half the battle was won. The other half could
be taken care of later. "Of course she's not going to hit you," he
said. "Now come over and eat your supper like a good boy."
"Yes,"
Laura said, "and hurry up. Romeo and Juliet is on the Western Hour, and I don't want to miss a minute of
it."
Billy
relented. "Oh, all right!" he said. But he gave Miss Jones a wide
berth as he walked into the kitchen and took his place at the table.
* * *
Romeo
Montague twisted a cigarette with deft fingers, put it between
sombrero-shadowed lips and lit it with a kitchen match. Then he guided his
sleek palomino down the moonlit hillside to the Capulet ranch house.
"Guess
I better be a mite keerful," he soliloquized.
"These hyar Capulets,
being sheepherders an' hereditary enemies o' my fambly,
who are noble cattlemen, would gun me down afore I knowed
what happened if'n they got the chance. But this gal
I met at the wrassle tonight is worth a mite o'
danger."
Danby
frowned. He had nothing against rewriting the classics, but it seemed to him
that the rewrite men were overdoing the cattlemen-sheepmen
deal. Laura and Billy didn't seem to mind, however. They were hunched forward
in their viewchairs, gazing raptly at the 120"
screen. So maybe the rewrite men knew what they were doing at that.
Even Miss
Jones seemed interested … but that was impossible, Danby quickly reminded
himself. She couldn't be interested. No matter how intelligently her blue eyes
might be focused on the screen, all she was doing, really, was sitting there
wasting her batteries. He should have taken Laura's advice and turned her off—
But somehow
he just hadn't had the heart. There was an element of cruelty in depriving her
of life, even temporarily.
Now there
was a ridiculous notion, if ever a man had one. Danby shifted irritably in his viewchair, and his irritation intensified when he realized
that he'd lost the thread of the play. By the time he regained it, Romeo had scaled the wall of the Capulet rancho, had
crept through the orchard, and was standing in a gaudy garden beneath a low
balcony.
Juliet
Capulet stepped onto the balcony via a pair of anachronistic french doors. She was wearing a white cowgirl—or sheepgirl—suit with a thigh-length skirt, and a
wide-brimmed sombrero crowned her bleached blond tresses. She leaned over the
balcony railing, peered down into the garden. "Where y'all at, Rome?"
she drawled.
"Why,
this is ridiculous!" Miss Jones said abruptly. "The words, the
costumes, the action, the place— Everything's
wrong!"
Danby
stared at her. He remembered suddenly what the proprietor of the secondhand
store had said about her responding to scenes and situations as well as words.
He'd assumed, of course, that the old man had meant scenes and situations
directly connected with her duties as a teacher, not all scenes and situations.
An annoying
little premonition skipped through Danby's mind. Both Laura and Billy, he
noticed, had turned from their visual repast and were regarding Miss Jones with
disbelieving eyes. The moment was a critical one.
He cleared
his throat. "The play isn't really 'wrong,' Miss Jones," he said.
"It's just been rewritten. You see, nobody would watch it in the original,
and if no one watched it, what would be the sense of anyone sponsoring
it?"
"But
did they have to make it a Western?"
Danby
glanced apprehensively at his wife. The disbelief in her eyes had been replaced
by furious resentment. Hastily he returned his attention to Miss Jones.
"Westerns
are the rage now, Miss Jones," he explained. "It's sort of a revival
of the early TV period. People like them, so naturally sponsors sponsor them
and writers go way out of their way to find new material for them."
"But Juliet in a cowgirl suit! It's beneath the standards of even the lowest
medium of entertainment."
"All right, George, that's enough." Laura's voice was cold. "I
told you she was fifty years behind the times. Either turn
her off or I'm going to bed!"
Danby
sighed, stood up. He felt ashamed somehow as he walked over to where Miss Jones
was sitting and felt for the little button behind her left ear. She regarded
him calmly, her hands resting motionless on her lap, her breathing coming and
going rhythmically through her synthetic nostrils.
It was like
committing murder. Danby shuddered as he returned to his viewchair.
"You and your schoolteachers!" Laura said.
"Shut
up," Danby said.
He looked
at the screen, tried to become interested in the play. It left him cold. The
next program featured another play—a whodunit entitled Macbeth. That one left
him cold, too. He kept glancing surreptitiously at Miss Jones. Her breast was
still now, her eyes closed. The room seemed horribly empty.
Finally he
couldn't stand it any longer. He stood up. "I'm going for a little
ride," he told Laura, and walked out.
* * *
He backed
the Baby B. out of the drivette and drove down the
suburban street to the boulevard, asking himself over and over why an antique
schoolteacher should affect him so. He knew it wasn't merely nostalgia, though
nostalgia was part of it—nostalgia for September and realschool
and walking into the classroom September mornings and seeing the teacher step
out of her little closet by the blackboard the minute the bell rang and hearing
her say, "Good morning, class. Isn't it a beautiful day for studying our
lessons?"
But he'd
never liked school any more than the other kids had, and he knew that September
stood for something else besides books and autumn dreams. It stood for
something he had lost somewhere along the line, something indefinable,
something intangible; something he desperately needed now—
Danby
wheeled the Baby B. down the boulevard, twisting in and around the scurrying automobilettes. When he turned down the side street that
led to Friendly Fred's, he saw that there was a new stand going up on the
corner. A big sign said: KING-SIZE CHARCOAL HOTS—HAVE A REAL HOT DOG GRILLED
OVER A REAL FIRE! OPEN SOON!
He drove
past, pulled into the parking lot beside Friendly Fred's, stepped out into the
spring-starred night, and let himself in by the side door. The place was
crowded, but he managed to find an empty stall. Inside, he slipped a quarter
into the dispenser and dialed a beer.
He sipped
it moodily when it emerged in its sweated paper cup. The stall was stuffy and
smelt of its last occupant—a wino, Danby decided. He wondered briefly how it
must have been in the old days when bar-room privacy
was unheard of and you had to stand elbow to elbow with the other patrons and
everybody knew how much everybody else drank and how drunk everybody else got. Then
his mind reverted to Miss Jones.
There was a
small telescreen above the drink-dispenser, and
beneath it were the words: GOT TROUBLE? TUNE IN FRIENDLY FRED, THE
BARTENDER-HE'LL LISTEN TO YOUR WOES (only 25¢ for 3 minutes). Danby slipped a
quarter in the coin slot. There was a little click and the quarter rattled in
the coin return cup and Friendly Fred's recorded voice said, "Busy right
now, pal. Be with you in a minute."
After a
minute and another beer, Danby tried again. This time the two-way screen lit up
and Friendly Fred's pink-jowled, cheerful face
shimmered into focus. "Hi, George. How's it goin'?"
"Not too bad, Fred. Not too bad."
"But
it could be better, eh?"
Danby
nodded. "You guessed it, Fred. You guessed it." He looked down at the
little bar where his beer sat all alone. "I … I bought a schoolteacher,
Fred," he said.
"A schoolteacher!"
"Well,
I admit it's a kind of odd thing to buy, but I thought maybe the kid might need
a little help with his TV-lessons—boxtop tests are
coming up pretty soon, and you know how kids feel when they don't send in the
right answers and can't win a prize. And then I thought she—this is a special
schoolteacher, you understand, Fred-I thought she could help Laura around the
house. Things like that …"
His voice
trailed away as he raised his eyes to the screen. Friendly Fred was shaking his
friendly face solemnly. His pink jowls waggled. Presently: "George, you
listen to me. You get rid of that teacher. Y'hear me, George? Get rid
of her. Those android teachers are just as bad as the real old-fashioned
kind—the kind that really breathed, I mean. You know what, George? You won't
believe this, but I know. They usta hit kids. That's
right. Hit them—" There was a buzzing noise, and the screen started to
flicker. "Time's up, George. Want another
quarter's worth?"
"No
thanks," Danby said. He finished his beer and left.
* * *
Did
everybody hate schoolteachers? And, if so, why didn't everybody hate teleteachers, too?
Danby
pondered the paradox all next day at work. Fifty years ago it had looked as
though android teachers were going to solve the educational problem as
effectively as reducing the size and price of the prestige-cars at the turn of
the century had solved the economic problem. But while android teachers had
certainly obviated the teacher shortage, they'd only pointed up the other
aspect of the problem—the school shortage. What good did it do to have enough
teachers when there weren't enough classrooms for them to teach in? And how
could you appropriate enough money to build new schools when the country was in
constant need of newer and better superhighways?
It was
silly to say that the building of public schools should have priority over the
building of public roads, because if you neglected the country's highways you
automatically weakened the average citizen's penchant to buy new cars, thereby
weakening the economy, precipitating a depression, and making the building of
new schools more impracticable than it had been in the first place.
When you
came right down to it, you had to take your hat off to the cereal companies. In
introducing teleteachers and teleducation,
they had saved the day. One teacher standing in one room, with a blackboard on
one side of her and a movie screen on the other, could hold classes for fifty
million pupils, and if any of those pupils didn't like the way she taught, all
he had to do was switch channels to one of the other teleducational
programs sponsored by one of the other cereal companies. (It was up to each
pupil's parents, of course, to see that he didn't skip classes, or tune in on
the next grade before he passed the previous grade's boxtop
tests.)
But the
best part of the whole ingenious system was the happy fact that the cereal
companies paid for everything, thereby absolving the taxpayer of one of his
most onerous obligations and leaving his pocketbook more amenable to sales tax,
gas tax, tolls, and car payments. And all the cereal companies asked in return
for their fine public service was that the pupils—and
preferably the parents, too—eat their cereal.
So the
paradox wasn't a paradox after all. A schoolteacher was an anathema because she
symbolized expense; a teleteacher was a respected
public servant because she symbolized the large economy-size package. But the
difference, Danby knew, went much deeper.
While
schoolteacher-hatred was partly atavistic, it was largely the result of the
propaganda campaign the cereal companies had launched when first putting their
idea into action. They were responsible for the widespread myth that android
schoolteachers hit their pupils, and they still revived that myth occasionally
just in case there was anybody left who still doubted it.
The trouble
was, most people were teleducated and therefore
didn't know the truth. Danby was an exception. He'd been born in a small town,
the mountainous location of which had made TV reception impossible, and before
his family migrated to the city he'd attended realschool.
So he knew that schoolteachers didn't hit their pupils.
Unless Androids, Inc. had distributed one or two deficient models by
mistake. And
that wasn't likely. Androids, Inc. was a pretty efficient corporation. Look at
what excellent service station attendants they made. Look at what fine
stenographers, waitresses, and maids they put on the market.
Of course,
neither the average man starting out in business nor the average householder
could afford them. But—Danby's thoughts did an intricate hop, skip, and a
jump—wasn't that all the more reason why Laura should be satisfied with a
makeshift maid?
But she
wasn't satisfied. All he had to do was take one look at her face when he came
home that night, and he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that she wasn't
satisfied.
He had never
seen her cheeks so pinched, her lips so thin. "Where's Miss Jones?"
he asked.
"She's
in her case," Laura said. "And tomorrow morning you're going to take
her back to whoever you bought her from and get our forty-nine ninety-five
refunded!"
"She's
not going to hit me again!" Billy said from his Indian squat in front of
the TV screen.
Danby
whitened. "Did she hit him?"
"Well,
not exactly," Laura said.
"Either
she did or she didn't," Danby said.
"Tell
him what she said about my TV-teacher!" Billy shouted.
"She
said Billy's teacher wasn't qualified to teach horses."
"And
tell him what she said about Hector and Achilles!"
Laura
sniffed. "She said it was a shame to make a cowboy-and-Indian melodrama
out of a classic like the Iliad and call it education."
The story
came out gradually. Miss Jones apparently had gone on an intellectual rampage
from the moment Laura had turned her on in the morning to the moment Laura had
turned her off. According to Miss Jones, everything in the Danby household was
wrong, from the teleducation programs Billy watched
on the little red TV set in his room and the morning and afternoon programs
Laura watched on the big TV set in the living room, to the pattern of the
wallpaper in the hallway (little red Cadillettes
rollicking along interlaced ribbons of highways), the windshield picture window
in the kitchen, and the dearth of books.
"Can
you imagine?" Laura said. "She actually thinks books are still being
published!"
"All I
want to know," Danby said, "is did she hit him?"
"I'm
coming to that—"
About three
o' clock, Miss Jones had been dusting in Billy's room. Billy was watching his
lessons dutifully, sitting at his little desk as nice and quiet as you please,
absorbed in the efforts of the cowboys to take the Indian village of Troy, when
all of a sudden Miss Jones swept across the room like a mad woman, uttered her
sacrilegious remark about the alteration of the Iliad, and turned off the set
right in the middle of the lesson. That was when Billy had begun to scream and
when Laura had burst into the room and found Miss Jones gripping his arm with
one hand and raising her other hand to deliver the blow.
"I got
there in the nick of time," Laura said. "There's no telling what she
might have done. Why, she might have killed him!"
"I
doubt it," Danby said. "What happened after that?"
"I
grabbed Billy away from her and told her to go back to her case. Then I shut
her off and closed the cover. And believe me, George Danby,
it's going to stay closed! And like I said, tomorrow morning you're going to
take her back—if you want Billy and me to go on living in this house!"
* * *
Danby felt
sick all evening. He picked at his supper, languished through part of the
Western Hour, glancing every now and then, when he was sure Laura wasn't
looking, at the case standing mutely by the door. The heroine of the Western
Hour was a dance hall girl—a 32-24-38 blonde named Antigone.
Seemed that her two brothers had killed each other in a gunfight, and the local
sheriff—a character named Creon—had permitted only
one of them a decent burial on Boot Hill, illogically insisting that the other
be left out on the desert for the buzzards to pick at. Antigone
couldn't see it that way at all, and she told her sister Ismene
that if one brother rated a respectable grave, so did the other, and that she, Antigone, was going to see that he got one, and would Ismene please lend her a hand? But Ismene
was chicken, so Antigone said, All right, she'd take
care of the matter herself; then an old prospector named Teiresias
rode into town and—
Danby got
up quietly, slipped into the kitchen, and let himself out the back door. He got
behind the wheel and drove down to the boulevard, then up the boulevard, with
all the windows open and the warm wind washing around him.
The hot-dog
stand on the corner was nearing completion. He glanced at it idly as he turned
into the side street. There were a number of empty stalls at Friendly Fred's,
and he chose one at random. He had quite a few beers, standing there at the
lonely little bar, and he did a lot of thinking. When he was sure his wife and
son were in bed, he drove home, opened Miss Jones' case, and turned her on.
"Were
you going to hit Billy this afternoon?" he asked.
The blue
eyes regarded him unwaveringly, the lashes fluttering at rhythmic intervals,
the pupils gradually adjusting themselves to the living-room lamp Laura had
left burning. Presently: "I am incapable of striking a human, sir. I
believe the clause is in my guarantee."
"I'm
afraid your guarantee ran out some time ago, Miss Jones," Danby said. His
voice felt thick and his words kept running together. "Not that it
matters. You did grab his arm though, didn't you?"
"I had
to, sir."
Danby
frowned. He swayed a little, weaved back into the living room on rubbery legs.
"Come over and sit down and tell me about it, Mish—Miss Jones," he
said.
He watched
her step out of her case and walk across the room. There was something odd
about the way she walked. Her step was no longer light, but heavy; her body no
longer delicately balanced, but awry. With a start, he realized that she was
limping.
She sat
down on the couch and he sat down beside her. "He kicked you, didn't
he?" he said.
"Yes, sir. I had to hold him back or he'd have kicked me again."
There was a
dull redness filling the room, coalescing before his eyes. Then, subtly, the
redness dissipated before the dawning realization that here in his hand lay the
very weapon he had needed: the psychological bludgeon with which he could quell
all further objection to Miss Jones.
But a
little of the redness still remained and it was permeated with regret.
"I'm terribly sorry, Miss Jones. Billy's too aggressive, I'm afraid."
"He
could hardly help being so, sir. I was quite astonished today when I learned
that those horrid programs that he watches constitute his entire educational
fare. His teleteacher is little more than a semicivilized M.C. whose primary concern is selling his
company's particular brand of cornflakes. I can understand now why your writers
have to revert to the classics for ideas. Their creativity is snuffed out by
clichés while still in its embryo stage."
Danby was
enchanted. He had never heard anyone talk that way before. It wasn't her words
so much. It was the way she said them, the conviction that her voice carried
despite the fact that her "voice" was no more than a deftly-built speaker geared to tapes that were in turn
geared to unimaginably intricate memory banks.
But sitting
there beside her, watching her lips move, seeing her
lashes descend every so often over her blue, blue eyes, it was as though
September had come and sat in the room. Suddenly a feeling of utter peace
engulfed him. The rich, mellow days of September filed one by one past his eyes
and he saw why they were different from other days. They were different because
they had depth and beauty and quietness; because their blue skies held promises
of richer, mellower days to come—
They were
different because they had meaning …
The moment
was so poignantly sweet that Danby never wanted it to end. The very thought of
its passing racked him with unbearable agony and instinctively he did the only
physical thing he could do to sustain it.
He put his
arm around Miss Jones' shoulder.
She did not
move. She sat there quietly, her breast rising and falling at even intervals,
her long lashes drifting down now and again like dark, gentle birds winging
over blue limpid waters—
"The
play we watched last night," Danby said. "Romeo and
Juliet—why didn't you like it?"
"It was
rather horrible, sir. It was a burlesque, really—tawdry, cheap, the beauty of
the lines corrupted and obscured."
"Do
you know the lines?"
"Some of them."
"Say
them. Please."
"Yes, sir. At the close of the balcony scene, when the two lovers are parting,
Juliet says, 'Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I
shall say good night till it be morrow.' And Romeo
answers: 'Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy
breast! Would I were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest!' Why did they leave
that out, sir? Why?"
"Because
we're living in a cheap world," Danby said, surprised at his sudden
insight, "and in a cheap world, precious things
are worthless. Shay—say the lines again, please, Miss Jones."
"'Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say
good night till it be morrow—'"
"Let
me finish." Danby concentrated. "'Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace—'"
"'—in
thy breast—'"
"'Would
I were sleep and peace, so—'"
"'—sweet—'"
"'—so sweet to rest!'"
Abruptly,
Miss Jones stood up. "Good evening, madam," she said.
Danby
didn't bother to get up. It wouldn't have done any good. He could see Laura
well enough, anyway, from where he was sitting. Laura
standing in the living-room doorway in her new Cadillette
pajamas and her bare feet that had made no sound in their surreptitious descent
of the stairs. The two-dimensional cars that comprised the pajama
pattern stood out in vermilion vividness and it was as though she was lying
down and letting them run rampant over her body, letting them defile her
breasts and her belly and her legs …
He saw her
narrow face and her cold pitiless eyes, and he knew it would be useless to try
to explain, that she wouldn't—couldn't—understand. And he realized with sudden
shocking clarity that in the world in which he lived September had been dead
for decades, and he saw himself in the morning, loading the case into the Baby
B. and driving down the glittering city streets to the little secondhand store
and asking the proprietor for his money back, and he saw himself afterwards,
but he had to look away, and when he looked away he saw Miss Jones standing
incongruously in the gaudy living room and heard her saying, over and over like
a broken, bewildered record, "Is something wrong, madam? Is something
wrong?"
* * *
It was
several weeks before Danby felt whole enough to go down to Friendly Fred's for
a beer. Laura had begun speaking to him by then, and the world, while not quite
the same as it had once been, had at least taken on some of the aspects of its
former self. He backed the Baby B. out of the drivette
and drove down the street and into the multicolored boulevard traffic. It was a
clear June night and the stars were crystal pinpoints high above the
fluorescent fire of the city. The hot dog stand on the corner
was finished now, and open for business. Several customers were standing
at the gleaming chrome counter and a waitress was turning sizzling wieners over
a chrome charcoal brazier. There was something familiar about her gay rainfall
of a dress, about the way she moved; about the way the gentle sunrise of her
hair framed her gentle face— Her new owner was leaning
on the counter some distance away, chatting with a customer.
There was a tightness in Danby's chest as he parked the Baby B. and
got out and walked across the concrete apron to the counter-a tightness in his
chest and a steady throbbing in his temples. There were some things you
couldn't permit to happen without at least trying to stop them, no matter what
the price for trying to stop them involved.
He had
reached the section of the counter where the owner was standing, and he was
about to lean across the polished chrome and slap the smug fat face, when he
saw the little cardboard sign propped against the chrome mustard jar, the sign
that said, MAN WANTED …
A hot-dog stand was a long way from being a September
classroom, and a schoolteacher dispensing hot-dogs could never quite compare to
a schoolteacher dispensing dreams; but if you wanted something badly enough,
you took whatever you could get of it, and were thankful for even that …
"I
could only work nights," Danby said to the owner. "Say from six to
twelve—"
"Why,
that would be fine," the owner said. "I'm afraid I won't be able to
pay you much at first, though. You see, I'm just starting out and—"
"Never
mind that," Danby said. "When do I start?"
"Why,
the sooner the better."
Danby
walked around to where a section of the counter raised up on hidden hinges and
he stepped into the stand proper and took off his coat. If Laura didn't like the
idea, she could go to hell, but he knew it would be all right because the
additional money he'd be making would make her dream—the Cadillette
one—come true.
He donned
the apron the owner handed him and joined Miss Jones in front of the charcoal
brazier. "Good evening, Miss Jones," he said. She turned her head and
the blue eyes seemed to light up and her hair was like the sun coming up on a
hazy September morning. "Good evening, sir," she said, and a
September wind sprang up in the June night and blew through the stand and it
was like going back to school again after an endless empty summer.
The End
© 1957 by
Mercury Press, originally appeared in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science
Fiction, October 1957.