Skeleton Crew

' 'A Fomit,' he said, nodding. 'Okay, Henry. I'll be sure to tell him that.'

'My headache was very bad. I could hardly even see. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was already wondering how I was going to tell Reg and wondering how Reg was going to take it.

' 'I'll put in the purchase order myself, if I can find out who to send it to,' I said. 'Reg might have some ideas. A dozen Fornits. Get them to dust this place with fomus from end to end. Shut off the fucking power, all of it.' I was walking around his office and Jimmy was staring at me with his mouth open. 'Shut off all the power, Jimmy, you tell them that. Tell Sam that. No one can think with' all that electrical interference, am I right?'

' 'You're right, Henry, one hundred percent. You just go on home and get some rest, okay? Take a nap or something.'

' 'And Fornits. They don't like all that interference. Radium, electricity, it's all the same thing. Feed them bologna. Cake. Peanut butter. Can we get requisitions for that stuff?' My headache was this black ball of pain behind my eyes. I was seeing two of Jimmy, two of everything. All of a sudden I needed a drink. If there was no fornus, and the rational side of my mind assured me there was not, then a drink was the only thing in the world that would get me right.

' 'Sure, we can get the requisitions,' he said.

' 'You don't believe any of this, do you, Jimmy?' I asked.

' 'Sure I do. It's okay. You just want to go home and rest a little while.'

' 'You don't believe it now,' I said, 'but maybe you will when this rag goes into bankruptcy. How in the name of God can you believe you're making rational decisions when you're sitting less than fifteen yards from a bunch of Coke machines and candy machines and sandwich machines?' Then I really had a terrible thought.

'And a microwave oven!' I screamed at him. 'They got a microwave oven to heat the sandwiches up in!'

'He started to say something, but I didn't pay any attention. I ran out. Thinking of that microwave oven explained everything. I had to get away from it. That was what made the headache so bad. I remember seeing Janey and Kate Younger from the ad department and Mert Strong from publicity in the outer office, all of them staring at me. They must have heard me shouting.

'My office was on the floor just below. I took the stairs. I went into my office, turned off all the lights, and got my briefcase. I took the elevator down to the lobby, but I put my briefcase between my feet and poked my fingers in my ears. I also remember the other three or four people in the elevator looking at me rather strangely.' The editor uttered a dry chuckle. 'They were scared. So to speak. Cooped up in a little moving box with an obvious madman, you would have been scared, too.'

'Oh, surely, that's a little strong,' the agent's wife said.

'Not at all. Madness has to start somewhere. If this story's about anything—if events in one's own life can ever be said to be about anything —then this is a story about the genesis of insanity. Madness has to start somewhere, and it has to go somewhere. Like a road. Or a bullet from the barrel of a gun. I was still miles behind Reg Thorpe, but I was over the line. You bet.

'I had to go somewhere, so I went to Four Fathers, a bar on Forty-ninth. I remember picking that bar specifically because there was no juke and no color TV and not many lights. I remember ordering the first drink. After that I don't remember anything until I woke up the next day in my bed at home. There was puke on the floor and a very large cigarette burn in the sheet over me. In my stupor I had apparently escaped dying in one of two extremely nasty ways—choking or burning. Not that I probably would have felt either.'

'Jesus,' the agent said, almost respectfully.

'It was a blackout,' the editor said. 'The first real bona fide blackout of my life—but they're always a sign of the end, and you never have very many. One way or the other, you never have very many. But any alcoholic will tell you that a blackout isn't the same as passing out. It would save a lot of trouble if it was. No, when an alky blacks out, he keeps doing things. An alky in a blackout is a busy little devil. Sort of like a malign Fornit. He'll call up his ex-wife and abuse her over the phone, or drive his car the wrong way on the turnpike and wipe out a carload of kids. He'll quit his job, rob a market, give away his wedding ring. Busy little devils.

'What / had done, apparently, was to come home and write a letter. Only this one wasn't to Reg. It was to me. And / didn't write it—at least, according to the letter I didn't.'

'Who did?' the writer's wife asked.

'Bellis.'

'Who's Bellis?'

'His Fornit,' the writer said almost absently. His eyes were shadowy and faraway.

'Yes, that's right,' die editor said, not looking a bit surprised. He made the letter in the sweet night air for them again, indenting at the proper points with his finger.

' 'Hello from Bellis. I am sorry for your problems, my friend, but would like to point out at the start that ypu are not the only one with problems. This is no easy job for me. I can dust your damned machine with fornus from now unto forever, but moving the KEYS is supposed to be your job. That's what God made big people FOR. So I sympathize, but that's all of the sympathy you get.

' 'I understand your worry about Reg Thorpe. I worry not about Thorpe but my brother, Rackne. Thorpe worries about what will happen to him if Rackne leaves, but only because he is selfish. The curse of serving writers is that they are all selfish. He worries not about what will happen to Rackne if THORPE leaves. Or goes el bonzo seco. Those things have apparently never crossed his oh-so-sensitive mind. But, luckily for us, all our unfortunate problems have the same short-term solution, and so I strain my arms and my tiny body to give it to you, my drunken friend. YOU may wonder about long-term solutions; I assure you there are none. All wounds are mortal. Take what's given. You sometimes get a little slack in the rope but the rope always has an end. So what. Bless the slack and don't waste breath cursing the drop. A grateful heart knows that in the end we all swing.

' 'You must pay him for the story yourself. But not with a personal check. Thorpe's mental problems are severe and perhaps dangerous but this in no way indicates stupidity.' ' The editor stopped here and spelled: