The Stand

reception was better than no reception at all. Finally he said he might go out and see some of the city.

“That’s a good idea,” she said with obvious relief. “I’m going to take a nap. You’re a good boy, Larry.”

So he had gone down the narrow stairs (the elevator was still broken) and onto the street, feeling guilty relief. The day was his, and he still had some cash in his pocket.

But now, in Times Square, he didn’t feel so cheerful. He wandered along, his wallet long since transferred to a front pocket. He paused in front of a discount record store, transfixed by the sound of his own voice coming from the battered overhead speakers. The bridge verse.

I didn’t come to ask you to stay all night

Or to find out if you’ve seen the light

I didn’t come to make a fuss or pick a fight

I just want you to tell me if you think you can

Baby, can you dig your man?

Dig him, baby—

Baby, can you dig your man?

That’s me, he thought, looking vacantly in at the albums, but today the sound depressed him. Worse, it made him homesick. He didn’t want to be here under this gray washtub sky, smelling New York exhaust, one hand constantly playing pocket pool with his wallet to make sure it was still there. New York, thy name is paranoia. Suddenly where he wanted to be was in a West Coast recording studio, making a new album.

Larry quickened his step and turned in at an arcade. Bells and buzzers jangled in his ears; there was the amplified, ripping growl of a Deathrace 2000 game, complete with the unearthly, electronic screams of the dying pedestrians. Neat game, Larry thought, soon to be followed by Dachau 2000. They’ll love that one. He went to the change booth and got ten dollars in quarters. There was a working phone kiosk next to the Beef’n Brew across the street and he direct-dialed Jane’s Place from memory. Jane’s was a poker parlor where Wayne Stukey sometimes hung out.

Larry plugged quarters into the slot until his hand ached, and the phone began to ring three thousand miles away.

A female voice said, “Jane’s. We’re open.”

“To anything?” he asked, low and sexy.

“Listen, wise guy, this isn’t… hey, is this Larry?”

“Yeah, it’s me. Hi, Arlene.”

“Where are you? Nobody’s seen you, Larry.”

“Well, I’m on the East Coast,” he said cautiously. “Somebody told me there were bloodsuckers on me and I ought to get out of the pool until they dropped off.”

“Something about a big party?”

“Yeah.”

“I heard about that,” she said. “Big spender.”

“Is Wayne around, Arlene?”

“You mean Wayne Stukey?”

“I don’t mean John Wayne—he’s dead.”

“You mean you haven’t heard?”

“What would I hear? I’m on the other coast. Hey, he’s okay, isn’t he?”

“He’s in the hospital with this flu bug. Captain Trips, they’re calling it out here. Not that it’s any laughing matter. A lot of people have died with it, they say. People are scared, staying in. We’ve got six empty tables, and you know Jane’s never has empty tables.”

“How is he?”

“Who knows? They’ve got wards and wards of people and none of them can have visitors. It’s spooky, Larry. And there are lot of soldiers around.”

“On leave?”

“Soldiers on leave don’t carry guns or ride around in convoy trucks. A lot of people are really scared. You’re well off out where you are.”

“Hasn’t been anything on the news.”

“Out here there’s been a few things in the papers about getting flu boosters, that’s all. But some people are saying the army got careless with one of those little plague jars. Isn’t that creepy?”

“It’s just scare talk.”

“There’s nothing like it where you are?”

“No,” he said, and then thought of his mother’s cold. And hadn’t there been a lot of sneezing and hacking going on in the subway? He remembered thinking it sounded like a TB ward. But there were plenty of sneezes and runny noses to go around in any city. Cold germs are gregarious, he thought. They like to share the wealth.

“Janey herself isn’t in,” Arlene was saying. “She’s got a fever and swollen glands, she said. I thought that old whore was too tough to get sick.”

“Three minutes are up, signal when through,” the operator broke in.

Larry said: “Well, I’ll be coming back in a week or so, Arlene. We’ll get together.”

“Fine by me. I always wanted to go out with a famous recording star.”

“Arlene? You don’t by any chance know a guy named Dewey the Deck, do you?”

“Oh!” she said in a very startled way. “Oh wow! Larry!”

“What?”

“Thank God you didn’t hang up! I did see Wayne, just about two days before he went into the hospital. I forgot all about it! Oh, gee!”

“Well, what is it?”

“It’s an envelope. He said it was for you, but he asked me to keep it in my cash drawer for a week or so, or give it to you if I saw you. He said something like ‘He’s goddam lucky Dewey the Deck isn’t collecting it instead of him.’”

“What’s in it?” He switched the phone from one hand to the other.

“Just a minute. I’ll see.” There was a moment of silence, then ripping paper. Arlene said, “It’s a savings account book. First Commercial Bank of California. There’s a balance of… wow! Just over thirteen thousand dollars. If you ask me to go somewhere dutch, I’ll brain you.”

“You won’t have to,” he said, grinning. “Thanks, Arlene. Hang on to that for me, now.”

“No, I’ll throw it down a storm-drain. Asshole.”

“It’s so good to be loved.”

She sighed. “You’re too much, Larry. I’ll put it in an envelope with both our names on it. Then you can’t duck me when you come in.”

“I wouldn’t do that, sugar.”

They hung up and then the operator was there, demanding three more dollars for Ma Bell. Larry, still feeling the wide and foolish grin on his face, plugged it willingly into the slot.

He looked at the change still scattered on the phone booth’s shelf, picked out a quarter, and dropped it into the slot. A moment later his mother’s phone was ringing. Your first impulse is to share good news, your second is to club someone with it. He thought—no, he believed—that this was entirely the former. He wanted to relieve both of them with the news that he was solvent again.

The smile faded off his lips little by little. The phone was only ringing. Maybe she had decided to go in to work after all. He thought of her flushed, feverish face, and of her coughing and sneezing and saying “Shit!” impatiently into her handkerchief. He didn’t think she would have gone in. The truth was, he didn’t think she was strong enough to go in.

He hung up and absently removed his quarter from the slot when it clicked back. He went out, jingling the change in his hand. When he saw a cab he hailed it, and as the cab pulled back into the flow of traffic it began to spatter rain.

The door was locked and after knocking two or three times he was sure the apartment was empty. He had rapped loud enough to make someone on the floor above rap back, like an exasperated ghost. But he would have to go in and make sure, and he didn’t have a key. He turned to go down the stairs to Mr. Freeman’s apartment, and that was when he heard the low groan from behind the door.