Time Travel Omnibus, page 296
The little shopkeeper took a nimble two-step after me. He plucked at my sleeve and I stopped again.
“Eighty dollars, sir. That should be fair.”
“I’m wasting my time,” I told him, “and my money. But I’ll give you forty.”
“Fifty,” said the little shopkeeper.
Fifty bucks, I thought. Fifty bucks. Five hundred beers. A hundred stingers. A new spring coat for my mother-in-law. The last suggestion did it.
“Okay,” I said. “Fifty bucks. Wrap it up. I’ll take it along.”
The shopkeeper beamed . . .
WHEN at last I emerged from the tiny antique shop, it was with the chair in my arms—all wrapped and paid for. I had to cross the road again to get to my car. And my car was parked right beside the roadhouse. And this was a little bit of an event, this purchase of a new piece. And the roadhouse had good stingers. And—I went in.
The lights were all on in my house when I got home. A fact I thought damned peculiar, inasmuch as it was almost midnight. Gwen and her mother made a practice of hitting the downy never later than ten p.m. It never occurred to me that I’d been gone more than eight hours, missed dinner, and never even called. It never occurred to me that the lights were so gaily aglow all because of yours truly.
I had fallen halfway up the front porch steps before I remembered that I’d left the chair in the back of the car. It was easier falling down the steps than up, and pretty soon I’d tugged the antique from the back cushions and was well on my way to getting it up the steps.
The front door opened, then, and I looked up to see Gwen standing there, hands on hips. The expression on her face was just about what you’d expect under the circumstances, only worse.
“Well!” Gwen said. She ground the word out between her teeth, then spat it at me.
“What’re all the lights doing on, m’love? Having a party?” I asked brightly. At that moment my feet betrayed me and got tangled in the chair. I just made the porch in my sprawling lurch, saving my new possession from what would otherwise have been a splintering crash.
“What do you have there besides an alcoholic fog?” Gwen demanded, voice rising.
“Shhhhh!” I put the chair down, looking carefully around the streets. “The neighbors. Do you want them to hear?”
“I don’t care what they hear!” Gwen grated.
“But if they knew how damned good I felt,” I giggled, “they might get insanely jealous!”
I picked up the chair in my arms and started through the door. Gwen moved to one side, staring at me as if deciding on which side of my skull she was going to bury the axe.
And then I saw her mother.
Quiet, sweet-faced, sad-eyed and oh-so-glad to have the chance to be shocked, she stood in the living room staring out at me as if I were Jack the Ripper through special permission of Atilla the Hun.
“Mother-in-law!” I bellowed joyously.
Gwen’s mother retreated several steps, looking for all the world as if she expected my next move to be an attempt at murder.
“I brought you a present!” I boomed happily. “The neatest little gift you ever saw. It’s an antique. I know how well you love antiques.”
Gwen had followed me into the living room, where I’d put down the chair and was starting to remove the wrappings.
“You drunken bum!” she said.
I paused to smile sweetly at her. “But of course.” I went back to unwrapping the chair.
No one said a word. I could hear Gwen’s incredulous gasp and her mother’s shocked but happy squeal of horror. Then I tore the last wrappings from my object d’art. I stepped back from it with a rapturous sigh of admiration and waved my hand in a sweeping gesture.
“Regard,” I told them. “My chair!”
THERE wasn’t a word. You could have skated on the silence.
I looked first at Gwen. Her jaw was grim. Her eyes flashed sparks like a welder’s torch.
“This is the end!” she said grimly. “This is absolutely the last repulsive bit of furniture you are ever going to drag into this house.”
I looked at her mother. Her face was wreathed in Good and Kindliness and firm Disapproval. She wouldn’t have missed this scene for all the world. It was her moment. Tomorrow she could tell Gwen sweetly that she had told her so all along.
“Well?” I demanded. “Well, what do you think?”
Gwen’s mother shook her head sadly.
“I am afraid you have been drinking heavily, Thomas. I have never been so shocked in all my life. But tomorrow, when you are, ah, feeling better, I will accept your apology for this conduct. Although,” she added, “you cannot expect me to plead with Gwen for you this time.”
That was almost too much. Plead with Gwen. The old hypocrite was insinuating that she’d saved me from many a marital smashup by her kindly intercession. I just gaped at her with my mouth open.
Gwen spoke up.
“Mother,” she said grimly, “would you leave me here with Tom? I don’t want you to have to stand this disgraceful scene.”
My dear sweet mother-in-law was obviously reluctant to go. She looked from Gwen to me to the chair.
“Don’t you need my help, Gwen, dear?” she asked.
“Yes,” I piped up. “Be sure to stick around. I might beat your daughter at any moment.”
Gwen’s mother gave me a sad, disappointed look. She shook her head, sighing.
“Obviously Thomas doesn’t know what he’s saying,” she told Gwen. “But I will be in my room if you need me, dear.” She turned and made a lavender-and-old-lace exit.
Gwen turned on me, then, with both barrels.
You’ve heard the routine. Working fingers to the bone. Slaving and toiling to make ends meet. Best years of life. What she ever saw in me. Drunken cad. Impossible bounder. This is the end. Leaving tomorrow. It took five minutes, and she was breathless when she finished.
“I’ll help you pack,” I volunteered sweetly.
Gwen glared at me in astonishment and indignation. Then she stamped out of the room.
I turned back to the chair, patting it kindly on the back.
“Only friend left in the world,” I mumbled. I pulled it around and sat down—on the floor.
I remember feeling extremely glad that both Gwen and her mother were no longer in the room. Had they witnessed that chair-missing sequence, they’d have been even more firmly convinced that I was tighter than Goering’s girdle.
I scrambled quickly to my feet, looking sheepishly around to make certain I hadn’t been seen.
Then I sat down again—on the floor.
I got up more slowly this time. Steady there, I told myself. You aren’t that drunk. You couldn’t be that drunk. You’ve just got a little glow on. That’s all. Just a little glow. Take your time on this one.
I put one hand on the back of the chair, then eased myself around slowly to a sitting position, suspended several inches above the chair seat. Then I released my grip on the back and sat down—on the floor!
This time I knew why. The chair had moved!
I SAT there on the floor, gaping at it incredulously as I realized what had happened. The chair had moved. The chair had moved each time I’d tried to sit down in it. Moved just enough to plank me on the floor!
Of course, if it hadn’t been for that little glow I was feeling, all my common sense would have come to the fore to assure me that the chair couldn’t have moved of its own accord. If I’d been completely cold sober, it would have taken me much longer to digest the incredible truth of the matter.
But now, sitting there on the floor and staring up wide-eyed at the chair, I had absolutely no doubt as to what had actually happened. The impossibility of the thing never occurred to me.
I got up slowly now. Cautiously. I stepped back warily keeping my eye on it.
Once, twice, I circled it. Airily, nonchalantly, as if I didn’t have the slightest idea in the world of trying to sit down on it. It made me think of that march-around-the-chair game, going to Jerusalem, we used to play when we were kids.
Then I stepped in quickly, grabbed the back of the chair tightly with both hands, swung it around, and planked myself down hard—just as it literally wrenched itself from my grasp and shot away sidewards!
I landed on the floor.
For a moment I was too stunned to comprehend what had happened. Missing a chair which skeeters as you’re trying to sit on it is one thing. Feeling it yank itself free of your grasp is quite another.
I must have been making quite a little noise, for now I heard voices, Gwen’s and her mother’s, coming from upstairs. I put my head in my hands, took a deep breath, and got a grip on my sanity. Then I looked up at the chair again.
There it was, planked at least four feet away from the spot where I’d held it when trying to sit down.
Maybe it was just my imagination, but I’d swear the damned thing was leering at me!
Very slowly, I got up off the floor. I went over to the divan, found a cigarette on the coffee table and lighted it, then sat down. It felt marvelous to be able to sit down on something that didn’t mind.
The voices upstairs had died down, and I heard a door slam hard. I knew that Gwen, by way of going home to mother, was spending the night in her mother’s room.
But I wasn’t concerned with any of that now. The chair was by far the greatest object of my concern. I got up again and walked casually over to it, half expecting it to shy away at my approach.
It didn’t however, and I was able to place my hand gently on its back. Slowly, ever so tenderly, I turned it around so that it faced me. I took my hand from it, then, and turned away—as if to start back to the divan—then wheeled madly and planked my nether extremities frantically on the seat of the chair. Or where the seat of the chair should have been.
Once more I found myself sitting on the floor. I didn’t have to look to know that the chair had skipped aside again. I was finally convinced. The chair would not tolerate being sat on.
Enough was enough. I was beginning to ache all over and one place in particular. If the chair didn’t want me sitting in it, it didn’t want me sitting in it. That was that.
But in spite of my somewhat alcoholic glow, I was very well aware that it was the damnedest impossible situation I had ever encountered. I got up and went over to the divan and sat down again, gratefully. A sort of moody chill was stealing over me.
I SAT there for perhaps half an hour, smoking cigarettes and staring at the chair and wondering what in the hell this was all about and where it was going to end.
My glow was fading fast, now, and I knew that it was the single factor which had kept me from becoming actually afraid of my newly bought antique. There was a very simple solution to this, however, so I called a nearby liquor store and ordered a fifth of my favorite.
The delivery boy arrived with the stuff inside of ten minutes and I was recapturing my glow inside of another fifteen. Another half hour passed and I was developing a belligerent attitude toward the chair. I was finding that I could look it squarely in the eye—so to speak—without a tremor or chill.
“What makes you think you’re better than any other chair?” I would demand loudly at five minute intervals.
“A chair is to sit in. Hasn’t anyone ever told you?” I growled between drinks. “If you expect to stay around here you’re going to have to learn your playsh.”
“Shilly damn attitoosh,” I decided still fifteen minutes later. “ ‘Fraid of a li’l damn chair!”
I remember vaguely that that was about the time that I became physically belligerent. I must have tried to hurl myself into the chair on at least a dozen occasions after that. The thumping and cries and shouting as each succeeding effort failed must have been terrific. I know that the bruises on my body the following morning certainly were.
The rest of the events are too hazy to try to recall precisely. Maudlin emotion took command of me a little later, I know, and I wept bitterly before the chair, demanding to know what it had against me, insisting that I was a good fellow, and trying to buy it a drink. There must have been more efforts on my part to sit in it, and additional loud crashes as I failed.
And then, of course, everything blotted into an indistinguishable pattern . . . until the following morning . . .
GWEN’S voice was saying something, and I opened my eyes to see that she was standing over me, and that I was in my own room and in bed. The expression on her face was alarmingly peculiar. She was smiling sweetly, tenderly!
“How do you feel, dear?” Gwen asked.
I looked at her with bloodshot eyes. My head was splitting. And the twin demons of hangovers, Nausea and Remorse, were in complete command of my body and brain.
“Rotten,” I groaned.
“Silly boy,” Gwen said. “You just had a little too much to drink.”
I tried to sit up, but I couldn’t raise my head. Gwen handed me a glass of something, and I took it feebly.
“Drink it down, dear,” she said.
“What is it?” I groaned.
“Milk and gingerale. It always picks you up.”
With shaking hand, I managed to raise the glass to my lips without spilling too much of it over the covers, and gulped it down. I handed her the glass and stretched back on the pillow again.
“What’s up?” I moaned. “Why are you being so sweet to me?”
Gwen’s smile was honey. “Mother and I talked everything over and we agreed that one of us must have done something to hurt you terribly to make you act the way you did last night.” She paused. “We agreed to let bygones be bygones and start with a clean slate for all of us.”
It was beyond my powers of concentration. I was too sick, too weak, to figure it out.
“Do you want me to take your little friend out of bed and downstairs?” Gwen asked with a sweet, understanding smile.
My heart did a terrible flip-flop.
“What?” I choked hoarsely, turning my aching skull far enough to look beside me. And then I saw it, tucked neatly under the covers, its top resting on the pillow next to mine. The chair!
“You must have grown enormously fond of your chair last night,” Gwen laughed kindly.
I closed my eyes and shuddered. The memory of my unsuccessful battle to seat myself in the chair returned.
“I’ll get up in a little while,” I muttered. “I’ll be all right. Leave the chair here.”
“Are you sure there isn’t anything I can do for you, dear?” Gwen asked.
I shook my head, and it almost fell off.
“No. I’ll be all right.”
“Will you want breakfast?” Gwen asked.
I was smart enough not to try to shake my head. “No,” I muttered, chilled by the thought. “No. I’ll get along without breakfast.”
It was then that my mother-in-law poked her head into my room.
“Well, well,” she simpered sweetly. “Are you feeling bad, Thomas?”
I turned red eyes on her, but didn’t answer. Gwen moved to the door.
“Whenever you feel like it, dear, get up,” she said. “If you want anything, just call.”
I groaned an affirmative answer, and she left. I could hear her voice and that of her mother’s murmuring conversationally as they went downstairs. Then I turned my head for another look at the chair.
IN the cold light of morning it seemed peaceable enough. Aside from the fact that it looked rather ludicrous tucked neatly under the sheets, there seemed nothing about it which would indicate its peculiar aversion to being sat upon. In fact, it looked like nothing more than an antique chair.
I began to wonder just how drunk I’d really been. I knew that I could recall most of the night’s events with fair clarity, but such recollection wasn’t any guarantee that I hadn’t been boiled enough to have imagined that the chair wouldn’t let me sit in it. I could think of at least three or four occasions when I’d been certain that I was fairly sober, only to find out later that my own estimate of my lucid poise was greatly at variance with that of the people who’d been with me.
Somehow I managed to get up. I stood there clutching the bedpost while the inside of my head pounded like kettle drums and the room seemed to sway madly back and forth. And then a small degree of steadiness returned. The pick-me-up which Gwen had been thoughtful enough to provide was taking hold.
In the bathroom I gargled noisily, eliminating the wads of cotton which had grown beneath my tongue. Then a cold, brisk shower, a vigorous scalp massage which threatened to tear off the top of my head, and a none too steady shave, all did their bit toward returning me to a somewhat remorseful degree of normalcy.
I was able, then, to walk back into the bedroom and remove the chair from the bed. Something prevented my trying to seat myself in it immediately. Perhaps it was merely the thought of the floor jarring I might get and what it would do to my hangover.
I stood there for a little while, staring at the chair and doing a lot of foggy rationalizing. By now I was pretty damned well convinced that whatever had happened concerning the chair the night before was nothing but the result of my terrific binge. My hangover was all the final conviction I needed on this score.
“God,” I muttered, “and I thought it moved!”
I shook my aching head slowly, despairingly, pondering on the weird effects of alcohol on the human mind. The impulse to sit in the chair was quickly stifled by a counter impulse which told me not to make myself ridiculous by dignifying my mad imaginings of the night before.
“Of course it didn’t move,” I muttered, absolutely convinced that it didn’t by now. “And if I plank myself down in it I’d only be capping last night’s damn foolishness with the supreme proof of my mental incompetence. I hope I haven’t reached the stage where I have to prove to myself that the impossible never happened.”
And having so neatly tied up all the loose ends of some very loose reasoning, I began to get dressed.
Once dressed, I left the chair in the bedroom and went downstairs. Gwen was happily at work in the kitchen, and had left another glass of milk and gingerale on the dining-room table next to the morning paper. Her mother was evidently in her room, for I didn’t see her around.
