Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories

“And do you have any pets?”

“No. I like things to be clean and neat. I never could see what the big deal was about animals.” He smiled, remembering. “My grandmother had a tomcat, though. We didn’t get along.”

Something in his voice made Ms. Erinyes look up, but all she said was, “I see that you were raised by your grandmother from the age of two.”

“What does it matter?” Carl Wallin was annoyed. “I thought women would be more interested in what kind of car I drive.”

“A 1977 AMC Concord?” Ms. Erinyes laughed merrily. “Well, some of them will be willing to overlook this, perhaps.”

Carl’s lips tightened. “Look, I don’t make a lot of money, okay? I work as a file clerk in an insurance office. But I’m going to night school to learn about these stinking computers, which is what you have to do to get a job anymore. I figure I’ll be doing a lot better someday. Besides, I don’t want a lousy gold digger.”

“Nobody does. Or they think they don’t. We have to wonder, though, when sixty-year-old gentlemen come in again and again asking for ninety-eight-pound blondes younger than twenty-eight.” She grinned. “We tell them to skip the question about hobbies and substitute a list of their assets.”

“I don’t need a movie star.”

“Well, that brings us to the big question. Just what kind of companion are you looking for?”

“Like it says on the form. A nice girl. She doesn’t have to be Miss America, but I don’t want anyone who-” He groped for a polite phrase, eyeing Ms. Erinyes with alarm.

“No, you don’t want somebody like me,” said Ms. Erinyes smoothly, as if there had been no offense taken. “I assure you that I don’t play this game, Mr. Wallin. I just watch. You want someone slender.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want one of those arty types either. You know, the kind with dyed black hair and claws for fingernails. The foreign-film-and-white-wine type. They make me puke.”

“We are not shocked to hear it,” said Ms. Erinyes solemnly.

Carl suspected that she was teasing him, but he saw no trace of a smile. “She should be clean and neat, and, you know, feminine. Not too much makeup. Not flashy. And not one of those career types, either. It’s okay if she works. Who doesn’t, these days? But I don’t want her thinking she’s more important than me. I hate that.”

For the first time, Ms. Erinyes looked completely solemn. “I think we can find the woman you are looking for,” she said. “There’s a rather special girl. We haven’t succeeded in matching her before, but this time… Yes, I think you’ve told me enough. One last question: have you always lived in this city?”

Carl looked puzzled. “Yes, I have. Why?”

“You didn’t go off to college-no, I see here that you didn’t attend college. No stint in the armed forces?”

“Nope. Straight out of high school into the rat race,” said Carl. “But why do you ask? Does it matter?”

“Not to the young lady, perhaps,” said Ms. Erinyes carefully. “But I like to have a clear picture of our clients before proceeding. Well, I think I have everything. It will take a day or two to process the information, and after that we’ll send you a card in the mail with the young lady’s name and phone number. It will be up to you to take it from there.”

Carl reached for his wallet, but the director shook her head. “You pay on your way out, Mr. Wallin. It’s our policy.”

He stared at the numbers on the apartment door, trying to swallow his rage. Being nervous always made him angry for some reason. But what was there to be anxious about? His shirt was clean; his shoes were shined; he had cash. He looked fine. A proper little gentleman, as Granny used to say when she slicked his hair down for church. But he didn’t want to think about Granny just now.

Who did this woman think she was, this Patricia Bissel, making him dress up for her inspection, and dangling rejection over his head? That’s all dating was. It was like some kind of lousy job interview: getting all dressed up and going to meet a total stranger who judges you without knowing you at all. He clenched his teeth at the thought of Patricia Bissel, who was probably sneering at him right now from behind her nice safe apartment door with the little peephole. His palms were sweating.

Carl leaned against the wall and took a few steadying breaths. Take it easy, he told himself. He had never even seen Patricia Bissel. She was just a name on a card from the dating service. He had thought that they were supposed to send you a couple of choices, maybe some background information about the person, but all that was on the card was just the name: Patricia Bissel.

It had taken him two days to get up the nerve to call her, and then her line had been busy. Playing hard to get, he thought. Damned little tease. Women liked making you sweat. When he had finally got through, he’d talked for less than a minute. Just long enough to tell her that the dating service had sent him, and to let her hem and haw and then suggest a meeting on Friday night at eight. Her place. It had taken her three tries to give the directions correctly.

She hadn’t asked anything about him, and he couldn’t think of anything about her that he wanted to know. Nothing that she could tell him anyway. He’d decide for himself when he saw her.

He was one minute early. He liked to be precise. That way she would have no excuse for keeping him waiting when he rang the bell, because they had agreed on eight o’clock. She couldn’t pretend not to be ready and keep him hanging around in the hall like a kid waiting to be let out of the closet. Like a poor, shaking kid waiting for his granny to let him out of the closet, and trying so hard not to cry, because if she heard him, she’d make him stay in there another half hour, and he had to go to the bathroom so bad… She had to let him out-in.

The door opened. He saw his fist still upraised, and he wondered how long he had pounded on it, or if she had just happened to open it in time. He tried to smile, mostly out of relief that the waiting was over. The woman smiled back.

She wasn’t exactly pretty, this Patricia Bissel, but she was slender. To the dating service people, that probably counted for a lot; real beauties did not need to use such desperate means to meet someone. Neither did successful guys. Maybe she was a bargain, considering. She was several inches shorter than he, with dull brown hair, worn indifferently long, and mild brown eyes behind rimless granny glasses. She offered a fleeting smile and a movement of her lips that might have been hello, and he edged past her into the shabby apartment, muttering his name, in case she hadn’t guessed who he was. Women could be really dense.

Carl glanced around at the battered sofa beneath the unframed kitten poster and the drooping plants on the metal bookcase. He didn’t see any dust, though. He sat down in the vinyl armchair, nodding to himself. He didn’t take off his coat and gloves because she hadn’t offered to hang them up for him. She probably just threw things anywhere, the slut.

Patricia Bissel hunched down in the center of the sofa, twisting her hands. “You’re not the first,” she said in a small voice.

Carl looked as if he hadn’t heard.

“Not the first one the dating service has sent over, I mean. I just thought I’d try it, but I’m not sure it’ll do any good. I don’t meet many people where I work. I’m a bookkeeper, and the only other people in my office are two other women-both grandmothers.”

Carl tried to look interested. “Did your co-workers suggest the dating service to you?”

She blushed. “No. I didn’t tell them. I didn’t tell anybody. Did you?”

“No.” What a stupid question, he thought. As if a man would admit to anybody that he had to have help in finding a woman. Why, if a man let people know a thing like that, they’d think he was some kind of spineless bed- wetting wimp who ought to be locked in a dark closet somewhere, and…

She kept lacing her fingers and twisting them, and she would only glance at him, never meeting his eyes. She was so tiny and quiet, it was hard to tell how old she was.

“You live here with your folks?” he asked.

“No. Daddy died, and Mama got married again. I don’t see her much. But it’s okay. We weren’t ever what you call close. And I don’t mind being by myself. I know I could have a nicer place if I had a roommate to chip in, but this is all right for me. I don’t mind that it isn’t fancy. A kitten would be nice, though.” She sighed. “They don’t allow pets.”

“No,” said Carl. He thought animals were filthy, disease-ridden vermin. They were sly and hateful, too. His granny’s cat scratched him once and drew blood, just because he tried to pet it, but he had evened that score.

Patricia was still talking in her mousy little whine. “Would you like to see my postcards? I have three albums of postcards, mostly animals. Some of them are kind of old. I get postcards at yard sales sometimes…” The whine