Everything's Eventual

   He got out of the shower and walked, dripping, across his bedroom on the second floor. There was still enough shampoo in his hair to make him look as if it had turned white while he was dozing—as if his dream of Judy Diment had turned it white.

   Why did I ever stop at that yard sale? he asked himself, but for this he had no answer. He supposed no one ever did.

   The rumbling sound grew louder as he approached the window overlooking the driveway—the driveway that glimmered in the summer moonlight like something out of an Alfred Noyes poem.

   As he brushed aside the curtain and looked out, he found himself thinking of his ex-wife, Sally, whom he had met at the World Fantasy Convention in 1978. Sally, who now published two newsletters out of her trailer home, one called Survivors, one called Visitors. Looking down at the driveway, these two titles came together in Kinnell's mind like a double image in a stereopticon.

   He had a visitor who was definitely a survivor.

   The Grand Am idled in front of the house, the white haze from its twin chromed tailpipes rising in the still night air. The Old English letters on the back deck were perfectly readable. The driver's-side door stood open, and that wasn't all; the light spilling down the porch steps suggested that Kinnell's front door was also open.

   Forgot to lock it, Kinnell thought, wiping soap off his forehead with a hand he could no longer feel. Forgot to reset the burglar alarm, too . . . not that it would have made much difference to this guy.

   Well, he might have caused it to detour around Aunt Trudy, and that was something, but just now the thought brought him no comfort.

   Survivors.

   The soft rumble of the big engine, probably at least a 442 with a four-barrel carb, reground valves, fuel injection.

   He turned slowly on legs that had lost all feeling, a naked man with a headful of soap, and saw the picture over his bed, just as he'd known he would. In it, the Grand Am stood in his driveway with the driver's door open and two plumes of exhaust rising from the chromed tailpipes. From this angle he could also see his own front door, standing open, and a long man-shaped shadow stretching down the hall.

   Survivors.

Survivors and visitors.

   Now he could hear feet ascending the stairs. It was a heavy tread, and he knew without having to see that the blond kid was wearing motorcycle boots. People with DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR tattooed on their arms always wore motorcycle boots, just as they always smoked unfiltered Camels. These things were like a national law.

   And the knife. He would be carrying a long, sharp knife—more of a machete, actually, the sort of knife that could strike off a person's head in a single stroke.

   And he would be grinning, showing those filed cannibal teeth.

   Kinnell knew these things. He was an imaginative guy, after all.

   He didn't need anyone to draw him a picture.

   'No,' he whispered, suddenly conscious of his global nakedness, suddenly freezing all the way around his skin. 'No, please, go away.' But the footfalls kept coming, of course they did. You couldn't tell a guy like this to go away. It didn't work; it wasn't the way the story was supposed to end.

   Kinnell could hear him nearing the top of the stairs. Outside, the Grand Am went on rumbling in the moonlight.

   The feet coming down the hall now, worn bootheels rapping on polished hardwood.

   A terrible paralysis had gripped Kinnell. He threw it off with an effort and bolted toward the bedroom door, wanting to lock it before the thing could get in here, but he slipped in a puddle of soapy water and this time he did go down, flat on his back on the oak planks, and what he saw as the door clicked open and the motorcycle boots crossed the room toward where he lay, naked and with his hair full of Prell, was the picture hanging on the wall over his bed, the picture of the Road Virus idling in front of his house with the driver's- side door open.

   The driver's-side bucket seat, he saw, was full of blood. I'm going outside, I think, Kinnell thought, and closed his eyes.

Lunch at the Gotham Cafe

One day when I was in New York, I walked past a very nicelooking restaurant. Inside, the maitre d' was showing a couple to their table. The couple was arguing. The maitre d' caught my eye and tipped me what may have been the most cynical wink in the universe. I went back to my hotel and wrote this story. For the three days it was in work, I was totally possessed by it. For me what makes it go isn't the crazy maitre d' but the spooky relationship between the divorcing couple. In their own way, they're crazier than he is. By far.

One day I came home from the brokerage house where I worked and found a letter—more of a note, actually— from my wife on the dining room table. It said she was leaving me, that she was pursuing a divorce, that I would hear from her lawyer. I sat on the chair at the kitchen end of the table, reading this communication over and over again, not able to believe it. After awhile I got up, went into the bedroom, and looked in the closet. All her clothes were gone except for one pair of sweatpants and a joke sweatshirt someone had given her, with the words RICH BLONDE printed on the front in spangly stuff.

   I went back to the dining room table (which was actually at one end of the living room; it was only a four-room apartment) and read the six sentences over again. It was the same, but looking into the half-empty bedroom closet had started me on the way to believing what it said. It was a chilly piece of work, that note. There was no 'Love' or 'Good luck' or even 'Best' at the bottom of it. 'Take care of yourself ' was as warm as it got. Just below that she had scratched her name, Diane.

   I walked into the kitchen, poured myself a glass of orange juice, then knocked it onto the floor when I tried to pick it up. The juice sprayed onto the lower cabinets and the glass broke. I knew I would cut myself if I tried to pick up the glass—my hands were shaking— but I picked it up anyway, and I cut myself. Two places, neither deep. I kept thinking that it was a joke, then realizing it wasn't. Diane wasn't much of a joker. But the thing was, I didn't see it coming. I didn't have a clue. I didn't know if that made me stupid or insensitive. As the days passed and I thought about the last six or eight months of our two-year marriage, I realized I had been both.

   That night I called her folks in Pound Ridge and asked if Diane was there. 'She is, and she doesn't want to talk to you,' her mother said. 'Don't call back.' The phone went dead in my ear.

Two days later I got a call at work from Diane's lawyer, who introduced himself as William Humboldt, and, after ascertaining that he was indeed speaking to Steven Davis, began calling me Steve. I suppose that's a little hard to believe, but it's what happened. Lawyers are so bizarre.

   Humboldt told me I would be receiving 'preliminary paperwork' early the following week, and suggested I prepare 'an account overview prefatory to dissolving your domestic corporation.' He also advised me not to make any 'sudden fiduciary movements' and suggested that I keep all receipts for items purchased, even the smallest, during this 'financially difficult passage.' Last of all, he suggested that I find myself a lawyer.