Donald sat quietly in his chair, smiling.
His parents rode with him in the rear seat of Dr. Smith's car. The hospital wanted her to take an ambulance, and two burly attendants, but she convinced them that this was better. Donald sat between his parents, in his strait jacket. His father rested his head wearily against the side window. His mother sat erect, alert, hands clenched.
They pulled out from the underground entrance of the hospital and moved up the ramp. Mercury vapor lamps illuminated the long roadway to the front gates, the road beyond.
As they rolled out from beneath the lights, the night closed in, and Donald saw the stars.
They were there, up through the rear window! He tilted his head back—and there, through his one eye, they waited and sang to him. Leo was falling, but in its place was Hercules with his club, Ras Algethi and Marfik and Ruticulus, swirling from their places toward him. Reaching their tendril fingers out. Trying, finally, to get to him.
He leaned back, and his father said, 'Doctor!'
Dr. Smith braked the car. His mother shrieked, 'Donald! No!' and put her hands on him. But he was clawing through the straps of the strait jacket, thrashing and crying and arching up and back toward the rear window.
The stars—all the stars!—wound into a whirlpool and tore down at him. His blood sang.
Dr. Smith opened the front door of the car, and ran back toward the hospital, shouting for help to the guard at the front gate.
The guard began to run toward her.
'Donald!' his mother pleaded.
He was fighting his way out of the jacket, biting and pushing. His father's and mother's hands on him would not stop him.
And then he was out of the jacket! The straps flew away, hitting his father and mother, and he thrust his hands mightily up, punching out through the back glass of the car, kicking himself up off the back seat. He felt his arms go through the glass, which shattered around him in a thousand tiny beads of glasslike stars.
The star bits flowed down towards him—twirling, dancing, rushing like a vortex.
'Donald, stop this immediately!' Dr. Smith shouted, stopping before the car with the startled guard.
'He's crazy!' the guard shouted, fumbling for his gun.
Donald climbed out onto the trunk of the car. Shreds of the strait jacket fell away as the swirling bright orange red white star atoms rolled down out of the night and rammed toward him—Aldebaren and Sirium and Thuban and Aifrik and Deneb:
He felt the tendrils of their fingers on his face—and then felt something more—finally! Yes!—of a vast straining, a movement behind the heavens—
The guard aimed and fired his gun wildly, and Dr. Smith looked up and gasped, 'Oh my God—'
The sky was filled with light—
Here they came.
Bags
Miss Debicker was not prone to self-pity, but something about this cloudy morning waiting outside the Grand Central luncheonette, and the bottom of her coffee cup, made her think briefly of the last twenty-five years of loneliness, and her lack of companionship. But I am successful, she thought, and immediately felt better.
On her way out of Grand Central she stopped at one of the large newsstands to buy a magazine in which one of her articles had been reprinted, and encountered a bag lady. The woman sat just inside one of the entranceways to the terminal; she was dirty and disheveled, mumbling to herself, and clutching a plastic shopping bag to her breast. Miss Debicker turned away, and hurried outside. That's what failure is, she thought.
It came as a bit of surprise, then, when she arrived at her office to find that her next assignment was to do a story on bag people. She took an instant dislike to the subject, and let her editor know it.
He told her, in his soft-spoken manner, that he thought the assignment was a good one. Bag people were defensive and hard to talk to, and though some of them appeared to be nothing more than destitute or winos there seemed to be some sort of bond—a hobo-like code of living—that linked them together. 'There's a good story in that,' he said. 'And their numbers seem to be growing.'
'Sounds more like coincidence,' Miss Debicker said.
'That's for you to find out. There's an alcove by one of the Grand Central subway entrances where the better known bag ladies in the area are supposed to live.' Miss Debicker didn't mention that she had seen one of them that morning. She was told her story would be due in a few days.
It took her fifteen minutes to get to Grand Central Station and, after arguing with the cab driver over the fare, she was unable to find the woman. Then, after twenty minutes of wandering around Grand Central, she discovered the alcove her editor had mentioned. It was a dark niche cut into the wall. She hesitated a moment, then walked into the darkness.
A woman, possibly the same one she had seen that morning, was crouched in the farthest corner, her shopping bag clasped to the rags covering her chest. In the half light her eyes looked glazed.
Miss Debicker bent over the woman and turned on her tape recorder. The woman looked up suddenly and her eyes seemed to focus on her with an animal wariness. Miss Debicker wished she had a flashlight.
'What are you doing here?' she asked, and felt her voice swallowed by the dust and darkness.
There was no answer, only that wary look.
'I'd like to be your friend,' she said, as if talking to an idiot child. The woman pulled back deeper into the darkness.
Miss Debicker fumbled in her shoulder bag and drew out her cigarette lighter. She flicked it on and moved closer, over the woman. 'How long have you lived like this?'
The woman threw out an arm, 'Get back,' she said in a harsh whisper. 'Go away.'
Miss Debicker took a deep breath and, fumbling for her wallet, drew out a ten-dollar bill. 'This is for the interview,' she said. 'Just answer my questions and I'll leave you alone.' The woman stared at the bill but did not take it. Miss Debicker thrust it closer. 'Just for seeing what's in the bag, your clothes and things. You can buy wine.'
'Go away.'
Miss Debicker sighed, returned the bill to her shoulder bag, and walked away. At the mouth of the alcove she turned to look at the bag lady.
'You have no love,' the woman said.
Miss Debicker was startled; but quickly reached into her shoulder bag and dropped the ten dollar bill behind her as she re-entered daylight.
On another gray morning Miss Debicker took her subway train downtown, but at 591 Street, the train was stopped with the doors opened. Eventually the doors slid shut, and the train began to move. At that point the conductor announced over the P.A. system that the train would now travel on 81 Avenue, due to trouble on the line. Miss Debicker shook her head, tight-lipped. The train stopped at Times Square and she got off.
