The Collection

'We have no one here who fits that description.'

'He delivers my mail every day. He delivers my neigh­bors' mail.'

'Where do you live?' Charlie asked.

'Twelve hundred Glenoaks.'

'Impossible. I deliver there.'

'I've never seen you before in my life!' Jack looked from one man to the other. He was sweating, and he smelled his own perspiration. His mouth was dry, and he tried un­successfully to generate some saliva. 'Something weird's going on here.'

'We'll help you in any way we can, sir,' the postmaster said.

Jack shook his head. 'Forget it,' he said. He turned and strode toward the door. 'Forget I even came by.'

The next day he received no mail at all, though looking out the window, he saw the dwarf happily walking down the other side of the street, delivering to other homes. The next day, the same thing. Jack stayed on the porch the following afternoon, and before he knew it the little man was walking up his sidewalk, whistling, holding a fistful of letters, a cheerful look on his cruel hard face. Jack ran inside the house, locked the door, and dashed into the back bathroom. He sat down on the toilet and remained there for over an hour, until he was sure that the dwarf was gone.

Finally, he washed his face, opened the bathroom door, and walked down the hallway to the living room.

The mail slot opened, two letters fell through, and the slot closed. He heard that low, rough laugh and the quick steps of the dwarf running off the porch.

The gun felt good in his hands. It had been a long time. He had not held a pistol since Vietnam, but using firearms was like riding a bike and he had forgotten nothing. He liked the weight against his palm, liked the smooth way the trig­ger felt against his finger. His aim was probably not as good as it had once been—after all, he had not practiced for al­most thirty years—but it would not need to be that good at the close range at which he planned to use it.

He waited behind the partially open curtains for the mail­man.

And Charlie stepped up the walk.

Jack shoved the pistol in his waistband and yanked open the door. 'Where is he?' he demanded. 'Where's the god­damn dwarf?'

The mailman shook his head, confused. 'I'm sorry, sir. I don't know what you're talking about.'

'The dwarf! The little guy who usually delivers the mail!'

'I'm the mailman on—'

Jack pulled out the gun. 'Where is he, goddamn it?'

'I—I d-don't know, sir.' The mailman's voice was shaking with fear. He dropped the letters in his hand and they fluttered to the walk. 'P-please don't shoot me.'

Jack ran down the porch steps, shoving his way past the mailman, and hopped into his car. With the pistol on the seat beside him where he could easily reach it, he drove up and down the streets of the neighborhood, looking for the small man in the tiny blue postal uniform. He had been driving for nearly ten minutes and had almost given up, the lure of the pistol fading, when he saw the dwarf crossing the street a block and a half ahead. He floored the gas pedal.

And was broadsided by a pickup as he sped through the closest intersection, ignoring the stop sign.

The door crumpled in on him, a single jagged shard of metal piercing his arm. The windshield and windows shat­tered, harmless safety glass showering down on him, but the steering wheel was forced loose and pushed through his chest. In an instant that lasted forever, he felt his bones snap, his organs rupture, and he knew the accident was fatal. He did not scream, however. For some strange reason, he did not scream.

From far off, he heard sirens, and some part of his brain told him that Charlie the mailman had called the police on him, though he knew they would be too late to do any good. Nothing could save him now.

He moved his head, the only part of his body still mobile, and saw another man staggering dazedly toward the side­walk.

And then the dwarf appeared. He was wearing street clothes, not a postal uniform, but he still had on a mailman's hat. There was a look of concern on his face, but it was a false expression, and Jack could sense the glee behind the mask.

'I'll call the paramedics,' the dwarf said, and his voice was not low and rough but high and breathless. He patted his pockets, and Jack suddenly knew what was coming next. He wanted to scream but could not. 'Do you have a quarter for the phone?'

Jack wanted to grab the pistol but could not move his hands. He tried to twist away, but his muscles would not work.

The dwarf smiled as he dug through Jack's pockets. A moment later, he pulled away from the wreckage. He held up a silver coin, dulled by a streak of wet red blood.

Jack closed his eyes against the pain for what seemed like hours, but heard no noise. He opened his eyes.

The dwarf laughed cruelly. He put the quarter in his pocket, tipped his hat, and walked down the street, whistling happily, as the sirens drew closer.

Monteith

How well can one person really know another? It's a question that has been asked often and one that has been addressed by numerous writers over the years. This is my take on it as a child of the suburbs, some­one who grew up in the 1960s, when husbands went off to work each morning and wives stayed home.

***

Monteith.

Andrew stared at the word, wondering what it meant. It was written in his wife's hand, on a piece of her personal­ized stationery, penned with a calligraphic neatness in what looked to be the precise center of the page. There was only the one word, and Andrew sat at the kitchen table, paper in hand, trying to decipher its meaning. Was it the name of a lover? A lawyer? A friend? A coworker? Was it a note? A re­minder? A wish?

Monteith.

He had missed it totally on his first trip through the kitchen, had simply placed his briefcase on the table and hurried to the bathroom. Coming back to pick up his brief­case afterward, he'd seen the note but had not given it any thought, his brain automatically categorizing it as a telephone doodle or something equally meaningless. But the preciseness of the lettering and the deliberate positioning of the word on the page somehow caught his eye, and he found himself sitting down to examine the note.

Monteith.

He stared at the sheet of stationery. The word bothered him, disturbed him in a way he could not quite understand. He had never read it before, had never heard Barbara utter it in his presence, it set off no subconscious alarms of recog­nition, but those two syllables and the aura of sophisticated superiority that their union generated in his mind made him uneasy.

Monteith.

Did Barbara have a lover? Was she having an affair?

That was the big worry, and for the first time he found himself wishing that he had not gotten sick that afternoon, had not taken off early from work, had not come home while Barbara was out.

He stood up, hating himself for his suspicions but unable to make them go away, and walked across the kitchen to the telephone nook in the wall next to the door. He picked up the phone, took the address book out from underneath, and began scanning the pages. There was no 'Monteith' listed under the M's, so he went through the entire alphabet, the entire book to see if Monteith was a first rather than last name, but again he had no luck.

Of course not, he reasoned. If Monteith was her lover, she would not write down his name, address, and phone number where it might be stumbled across. She'd hide it, put it someplace secret.

Her diary.

He closed the address book and stood there for a mo­ment, unmoving. It was a big step he was contemplating.

His jealous imagination and unfounded paranoia was about to lead him into an invasion of his wife's privacy.