The October Country

the big reflection of yourself, shining, and write stories and stories, never going out into the world unless you had to. How might it he then, alone, with the wonderful illusion all in one piece in the room. Would it make you happy or sad, would it help your writing or hurt it? She shook her head back and forth, back and forth. At least this way there would be no one to look down at you. Night after night, perhaps rising secretly at three in the cold morning, you could wink and dance around and smile and wave at yourself, so tall, so tall, so very fine and tall in the bright looking-glass.

A telephone voice said, 'Billie Fine's.'

'Oh, Billie!' she cried.

Night came in over the pier. The ocean lay dark and loud under the planks. Ralph sat cold and waxen in his glass coffin, laying out the cards, his eyes fixed, his mouth stiff. At his elbow, a growing pyramid of burnt cigarette butts grew larger. When Aimee walked along under the hot red and blue bulbs, smiling, waving, he did not stop setting the cards down slow and very slow. 'Hi, Ralph!' she said.

'How's the love affair?' he asked, drinking from a dirty glass of iced water. 'How's Charlie Boyer, or is it Gary Grant?'

'I just went and bought me a new hat,' she said, smiling. 'Gosh, I feel good! You know why? Billie Fine's sending a mirror out tomorrow! Can't you just see the nice little guy's face?'

'I'm not so hot at imagining.'

'Oh, Lord, you'd think I was going to marry him or something.'

'Why not? Carry him around in a suitcase. People say, Where's your husband? All you do is open your bag, yell, Here he is! Like a silver cornet. Take him outa his case any old hour, play a tune, stash him away. Keep a little sandbox for him on the back porch.'

'I was feeling so good,' she said.

'Benevolent is the word.' Ralph did not look at her, his mouth tight. 'Ben-ev-o-lent. I suppose this all comes from me watching him through that knothole, getting my kicks? That why you sent the mirror? People like you run around with tambourines, taking the joy out of my life.'

'Remind me not to come to your place for drinks any more. I'd rather go with no people at all than mean people.'

Ralph exhaled a deep breath. 'Aimee, Aimee. Don't you know you can't help that guy? He's bats. And this crazy thing of yours is like saying, Go ahead, be batty, I'll help you, pal.'

'Once in a lifetime anyway, it's nice to make a mistake if you think it'll do somebody some good,' she said.

'God deliver me from do-gooders, Aimee.'

'Shut up, shut up!' she cried, and then said nothing more.

He let the silence lie a while, and then got up, putting his fingerprinted glass aside. 'Mind the booth for me?'

'Sure. Why?'

She saw ten thousand cold white images of him stalking down the glassy corridors, between mirrors, his mouth straight and his fingers working themselves.

She sat in the booth for a full minute and then suddenly shivered. A small clock ticked in the booth and she turned the deck of cards over, one by one, waiting. She heard a hammer pounding and knocking and pounding again, far away inside the Maze; a silence, more waiting, and then ten thousand images folding and refolding and dissolving, Ralph striding, looking out at ten thousand images of her in the booth. She heard his quiet laughter as he came down the ramp.

'Well, what's put you in such a good mood?' she asked, suspiciously.

'Aimee,' he said, carelessly, 'we shouldn't quarrel. You say tomorrow Billie's sending that mirror to Mr. Big's?'

'You're not going to try anything funny?'

'Me?' He moved her out of the booth and took over the cards, humming, his eyes bright. 'Not me, oh no, not me.' He did not look at her, but started quickly to slap out the cards. She stood behind him. Her right eye began to twitch a little. She folded and unfolded her arms. A minute ticked by. The only sound was the ocean under the night pier, Ralph breathing in the heat, the soft ruffle of the cards. The sky over the pier was hot and thick with clouds. Out at sea, faint glows of lightning were beginning to show.

'Ralph,' she said at last.

'Relax, Aimee,' he said.

'About that trip you wanted to take down the coast-'

'Tomorrow,' he said. 'Maybe next month. Maybe next year. Old Ralph Banghart's a patient guy. I'm not worried, Aimee. Look.' He held up a hand. 'I'm calm.'

She waited for a roll of thunder at sea to fade away.

'I just don't want you mad, is all. I just don't want anything bad to happen, promise me.'

The wind, now warm, now cool, blew along the pier. There was a smell of rain in the wind. The clock ticked. Aimee began to perspire heavily, watching the cards move and move. Distantly, you could hear targets being hit and the sound of the pistols at the shooting gallery.

And then, there he was.

Waddling along the lonely concourse, under the insect bulbs, his face twisted and dark, every movement an effort. From a long way down the pier he came, with Aimee watching. She wanted to say to him, This is your last night, the last time you'll have to embarrass yourself by coming here, the last time you'll have to put up with being watched by Ralph, even in secret. She wished she could cry out and laugh and say it right in front of Ralph. But she said nothing.

'Hello, hello!' shouted Ralph. 'It's free, on the house, tonight! Special for old customers!'

The Dwarf looked up, startled, his little black eyes darting and swimming in confusion. His mouth formed the word thanks and he turned, one hand to his neck, pulling his tiny lapels tight up about his convulsing throat, the other hand clenching the silver dime secretly. Looking back, he gave a little nod, and then scores of dozens of compressed and tortured faces, burnt a strange dark color by the lights, wandered in the glass corridors.

'Ralph.' Aimee took his elbow. 'What's going on?'

He grinned. 'I'm being benevolent, Aimee, benevolent.'

'Ralph,' she said.

'Sh,' he said. 'Listen.'

They waited in the booth in the long warm silence.

Then, a long way off, muffled, there was a scream.

'Ralph!' said Aimee.

'Listen, listen!' he said.

There was another scream, and another and still another, and a threshing and a pounding and a breaking, a rushing around and through the maze. There, there, wildly colliding and ricocheting, from mirror to mirror, shrieking hysterically and sobbing, tears on his face, mouth gasped open, came Mr. Bigelow. He fell out in the blazing night air, glanced about wildly, wailed, and ran off down the pier.

'Ralph, what happened?'

Ralph sat laughing and slapping at his thighs.

She slapped his face. 'What'd you do?'

He didn't quite stop laughing. 'Come on. I'll show you!'

And then she was in the maze, rushed from white-hot mirror to mirror, seeing her lipstick all red fire a thousand times repeated on down a burning silver cavern where strange hysterical women much like herself followed a quick-moving, smiling man. 'Come on!' he cried. And they broke free into a dust-smelling tiny room.

'Ralph!' she said.

They both stood on the threshold of the little room where the Dwarf had come every night for a year. They both stood where the Dwarf had stood each night, before opening his eyes to see the miraculous image in front of him.

Aimee shuffled slowly, one hand out, into the dim room.

The mirror had been changed.

This new mirror made even normal people small, small, small; it made even tall people little and dark and