Everything but the Squeal

graduation ceremonies. Near the opposite wall stood a Polaroid Spectra System camera on an expensive tripod. Aside from the table there was no furniture.

Set into the wall next to the door were three sets of recessed shelves, probably originally intended to hold canned goods and bottled water but now stacked with cardboard cartons full of odds and ends. One of them held Christmas decorations, little lights to make Birdie's house twinkle, and wrapping paper and ribbons. There were also old athletic shoes, garden supplies, extra detergent, and other homely junk that Birdie had stowed down here now that most people acknowledged that the threat of atomic attack was less pressing than the need to wrap presents, wash dishes, and prune roses.

There were also two doors.

The first led to a closet, no more than four feet by four feet. There were no shelves in it; it was just a tiny room. The door had the same kind of metal bar across its outside, and a small grate had been positioned just above the floor, probably to let in air. A perfect place to lock people in the dark. The children had usually been naked, Marco had said. Naked and freezing in a lightless, comfortless concrete room.

The second door opened into a small bathroom with the kind of awkward plastic toilet they put on boats, and a tiled shower. This was where Aimee had hit high C for the tape recorder while scalding water flowed over her body.

I reclosed the bathroom door and the door to the closet and took a long last look at the room, trying to remember whether I'd moved or changed anything else. Woofers, who had been trembling slightly and keeping very close to me, sat on my right foot. She looked up at me anxiously, ready to go back upstairs.

As I leaned down to pick her up, she got off my foot and stood on her hind legs, doing an eager little dance. She was absurdly light. I wrapped an arm around her and she licked my chin as I headed toward the door.

On impulse, I reached out as I passed the Polaroid and pushed the shutter button. A flash bounced off the white walls and as I strained to get my iris open again the camera went nnnnzzzet and a picture slid out of it. A negative image of my retina slid across the picture's surface as I waited for it to develop, and Woofers squirmed in my arms. Thirty seconds later I was looking at an absolutely white Polaroid except for a hard brown edge running along the bottom of the photo: the white was the wall, and the brown edge was the top of the Formica table.

I stopped worrying about Birdie coming home. The boxes on the shelves beckoned to me, and I put the dog down and rifled through them. Christmas lights, Christmas wrappings, Christmas paper; an old set of silver-backed hairbrushes, odds and ends, decorator trinkets that had outlived their appeal on the tabletops upstairs, a wooden box about eight inches square, with an inlaid lid. Inside the wooden box, cigars. The bows on Woofers' ears came loose with a single tug on each and dangled forlornly on either side of her face. I found a bright preglued red wrapping bow that clashed nicely with the ribbons on her ears, peeled off the backing, and pressed the square of adhesive onto her nose. It held. The transformation was amazing. In a few seconds she'd gone from being Molly Ringwald in PrettyinPink to Bette Davis in WhateverHappenedtoBabyJane? She had the grace to look embarrassed.

When I mussed up her hair, she seemed to enjoy it. She took a couple of passes at the bow on her nose with her front paws, but stopped when I said, “No, Woofers.” By then I was looking at the Polaroid camera. It had everything I wanted, which is to say two more pictures and a time-release button.

I put Woofers on the table, told her to stay, and positioned the lever on the time release. Then I took a cigar out of Birdie's box, pushed the shutter, and went to the table. I patted Woofers on the head as the time release whirred away, lifted her front paws, turned my head away, and pushed the unlit cigar into the middle of her belly. “Coochy-coo,” I said. She was wagging her tail, enjoying the game, when the flash went off.

It hadn't been necessary to turn my head because I was cut off at the shoulders. The image was perfect, a bedraggled, drunk-looking little dog with a big cigar pointed squarely at her lower intestine. I put everything back the way it was, tucked Woofers into my jacket, and left.

Bertram Skinker was going to sweat.

23

The Neutron Bomb

“She's so cute,” Jessica trilled. “Where did you get her?” Morris stood in the doorway behind her, slightly spectral in the daylight. I'd never seen him before without a green glow on his face. He seemed to have brought some of it with him. Jessica or someone had gotten him to wear a shirt with only one pocket for a change, but the one pocket bristled with esoteric writing implements. He held a big white book tucked under his sharp elbow. From where I sat, on the floor playing with Woofers, it looked like an upscale Yellow Pages- the one-hundred-percent-white pages, perhaps, designed for neighborhoods where no one who was yellow-or brown or black, for that matter-lived.

’Tm taking care of her for a friend,” I lied. Woofers pranced from me to Jessica and back, groomed and immac-late in the morning light, the perfect dog for the perfect neighborhood where everything could be found in the white pages, and happy to be the center of attention. I found myself hoping that Birdie missed her more than she missed him.

“Jessica,” I said, “I don't mean to be rude, but I don't actually recall asking you to come over. And do Annie and Wyatt know where you are?”

“Oh, don't be a grump. Of course they do. And wait until you see why we've come. When you write the story of your life, I want credit. Jesus, Morris, come in, won't you? You can't spend your whole life hovering. And close the door.”

Morris did what he was told, muttering something when he turned his back to pull the door shut.

“Say what?” Jessica said. “And tuck in your shirt.”

“I said I get some credit too,” Morris said, blushing horribly and fiddling behind his back. At least the blush filled in his zits.

“Fine, fine,” Jessica said dismissively. “But me first. What's her name?”

“Woofers.”

She wrinkled her nose. “That's terrible. Can't we give her a different name?”

“You can call her Gladys for all I care. What's everybody claiming credit for?”

Jessica looked slyly at Morris and then back at me. “This,” she said, pulling a creased and slightly damp piece of paper out of her belt. She opened it and smoothed it on the floor in front of me, and Woofers, sensing my attention the way a cat can, sat on it. I picked her up and dropped her to one side, eliciting a compassionate squeal from Jessica.

I'd seen the printout before, but not quite in this form. It now looked like this:

Record 1. (April 88-October 88)1. 3088 Compton Blvd., Bellflower, CA 90266 (213) 555-12962. 4 yrs3. Turkey (code name?)4. CURRENT5. ORDERSa. Fingers, 1200 orders, last order 1000 (September 13)b. Parts, 2800 orders, last order 2300 (September 13)c. Paper, 4000 orders, last order 3300 (September 13)d. Drinks, “A” category (no change) (September 11)6. SPECIAL ORDERSa. Page 188, upper right, January 88 (April 22-April 27) JX6b. Page 217, center right, June 87 (May 17-May 22) CP1c. Page 217, center right, January 88 (May 23-May 29) UId. Page 202, upper left, June 87 (unavailable) BXe. Page 226, upper right, January 88 (July I-July 11) BXf. Page 226, upper right, January 88 (July 12-July 18) UIg. Page 217, center left, January 88 (October 1-October 10) BX

“Page numbers?” I asked. “Says who?”

“It's a book,” Jessica said triumphantly. “They're all in a book. It comes out every six months.” Morris took a tentative step forward, eager to put in an introvert's one cent's worth.

“What book?” I asked.

The phone rang.

I waved them into silence and picked it up. “Hello?”

“Mr. Grist?” It was Jane Sorrell. She was trying to push beyond a whisper, but without much success.