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  Something had happened after dinner—he could almost not remember it now; what bursts the balloon, the last puff of air, or the air it already contains? Is the final drop the only factor in the spillingover of a brimming glass? Something about Marie Next Door (Lutie always spoke of her that way, a name like William Jennings Bryan) and a new TV console, and something about Lutie’s chances, ten years ago, of marrying no end of TV consoles, with houses free-and-clear and a car and a coat, and all these chances forsworn for the likes of Joe Fritch. It had been an evening like other evenings, through 10:13 P.M. At 10:14 something silent and scalding had burst in the back of Joe’s throat; he had risen without haste and had left the house. Another man might have roared an epithet, hurled an ashtray. Some might have slammed the door, and some, more skilled in maliciousness, might have left it open so the angry wife, sooner or later, might get up and close it. Joe had simply shambled out, shrinking away from her in the mindless way an amoeba avoids a hot pin. There were things he might have said. There were things he could have said to Barnes, too, time and time again, and to the elevator starter who caught him by the elbow one morning and jammed him into a car, laughing at him through the gate before the doors slid shut. But he never said the things, not to anyone. Why not? Why not?

  “They wouldn’t listen,” he said aloud, and again the sting came back of his nose.

  He stopped, and heeled water out of his left eye with the base of his thumb. This, and the sound of his own voice, brought him his lost sense of presence. He looked around like a child awakening in a strange bed.

  It was a curved and sloping street, quite unlike the angled regimentation of his neighborhood. There was a huge elm arched over the streetlamp a block away, and to Joe’s disoriented eye it looked like a photographic negative, a shadow-tree lit by darkness looming over a shadow of light. A tailored hedge grew on a neat stone wall beside him; across the street was a white picket fence enclosing a rolling acre and the dark mass of just the house he could never own, belonging, no doubt, to someone people listened to. Bitterly he looked at it and its two gates, its rolled white driveway, and, inevitably, the low, long coupé which stood in it. The shape of that car, the compact, obedient, directional eagerness of it, came to him like the welcome answer to some deep question within him, something he had thought too complex to have any solution. For a moment a pure, bright vision overwhelmed and exalted him; his heart, his very bones cried well, of course! and he crossed to the driveway, along its quiet grassy margin to the car.

  He laid a hand on its cool ivory flank, and had his vision again. At the wheel of this fleet-footed dream car, he would meet the morning somewhere far from here. There would be a high hill, and a white road winding up it, and over the brow of that hill, there would be the sea. Below, a beach, and rocks; and there would be people. Up the hill he would hurtle, through and over a stone wall at the top, and in the moment he was airborne, he would blow the horn. Louder, bigger than the horn would be his one bright burst of laughter. He had never laughed like that, but he would, he could, for all of him would be in it, rejoicing that they listened to him, they’d all be listening, up and down the beach and craning over the cliff. After that he’d fall, but that didn’t matter. Nothing would matter, even the fact that his act was criminal and childish. All the “If only—” and “Some day, by God—” wishes, all the “That Barnes—” curses, for all their detail, lacked implementation. But this one, this one—

  The window was open on the driver’s side. Joe looked around; the street was deserted and the house was dark. He bent and slid his hand along the line of the dimly glowing phosphorescence that was a dashboard. Something tinkled, dangled—the keys, the keys!

  He opened the door, got in. He could feel the shift in balance as the splendid machine accepted him like a lover, and they were one together. He pulled the door all but closed, checked it, then pressed it the rest of the way. It closed with a quiet, solid click. Joe grasped the steering wheel in both hands, settled himself, and quelled just the great trumpeting of laughter he had envisioned. Later, later. He reached for the key, turned it.

  There was a soft purring deep under the hood. The window at his left slid up, nudging his elbow out of the way, seating itself in the molding above. The purring stopped. Then silence.

  Joe grunted in surprise and turned the key again. Nothing. He fumbled along the dashboard, over the cowling, under its edge. He moved his feet around. Accelerator, brake. No clutch. A headlight dimmer switch. With less and less caution he pushed, turned and pulled at the controls on the instrument panel. No lights came on. The radio did not work. Neither did the cigarette lighter, which startled him when it came out in his hand. There wasn’t a starter anywhere.

  Joe Fritch, who couldn’t weep, very nearly did then. If a man had a car burglar-proofed with some sort of concealed switch, wasn’t that enough? Why did he have to amuse himself by leaving the keys in it? Even Barnes never thought of anything quite that sadistic.

  For a split second he glanced forlornly at his glorious vision, then forever let it go. Once he sniffed; then he put his hand on the door control and half rose in his seat.

  The handle spun easily, uselessly around. Joe stopped it, pulled it upward. It spun just as easily that way. He tried pulling it toward him, pushing it outward. Nothing.

  He bit his lower lip and dove for the other door. It had exactly the same kind of handle, which behaved exactly the same way. Suddenly Joe was panting as if from running hard.

  Now take it easy. Don’t try to do anything. Think. Think, Joe.

  The windows!

  On his door there were two buttons; on the other, one. He tried them all. “I can’t get out,” he whispered. “I can’t—” Suddenly he spun one of the door handles. He fluttered his hands helplessly and looked out into the welcome, open dark. “Can’t!” he cried.

  “That’s right,” said a voice. “You sure can’t.” The sting at the base of Joe Fritch’s nose—that was one of the unexpressed, inexpressible pains which had plagued him ever since he was a boy. Now came the other.

  It was a ball of ice, big as a fist, in his solar plexus; and around this ball stretched a membrane; and the ball was fury, and the membrane was fear. The more terrified he became, the tighter the membrane shrank and the more it hurt. If ever he were frightened beyond bearing, the membrane would break and let the fury out, and that must not, must not happen, for the fury was so cold and so uncaring of consequence. This was no churning confusion—there was nothing confused about it. There was only compression and stretching and a breaking point so near it could be felt in advance. There was nothing that could be done about it except to sit quite still and wait until it went away, which it did when whatever caused it went away.

  This voice, though, here in the car with him, it didn’t go away. Conversationally, it said, “Were you thinking of breaking the glass?”

  Joe just sat. The voice said, “Look in the glove compartment.” It waited five seconds, and said, “Go ahead. Look in the glove compartment.”

  Trembling, Joe reached over and fumbled the catch of the glove compartment. He felt around inside. It seemed empty, and then something moved under his fingers. It was a rectangle of wood, about six inches by three, extremely light and soft. Balsa. “I used to use a real piece of glass as a sample,” said the voice, “but one of you fools got to bashing it around and broke two of his own fingers. Anyway, that piece of wood is exactly as thick as the windshield and windows.” It was nearly three quarters of an inch think. “Bulletproof is an understatement. Which reminds me,” said the voice, stifling a yawn, “if you have a gun, for Pete’s sake don’t use it. The slug’ll ricochet. Did you ever see the wound a ricocheted bullet makes?” The yawn again. “S’cuse me. You woke me up.”

  Joe licked his lips, which made him shudder. The tongue and lip were so dry they scraped all but audibly. “Where are you?” he whispered.

  “In the house. I always take that question as a compliment. You’re hearing me on t
he car radio. Clean, hm-m-m? Flat to twenty-seven thousand cycles. Designed it myself.”

  Joe said, “Let me out.”

  “I’ll let you out, but I won’t let you go. You people are my bread and butter.”

  “Listen,” said Joe, “I’m not a thief, or a … or a … or anything. I mean, this was just a sort of wild idea. Just let me go, huh? I won’t ever … I mean, I promise.” He scraped at his lip with his tongue again and added, “Please, I mean, please.”

  “Where were you going with my car, Mister I’m-not-a-thief?”

  Joe was silent.

  A sudden blaze of light made him wince. His eyes adjusted, and he found it was only the light over the porte-cochere which bridged the driveway where it passed the house. “Come on inside,” said the voice warmly.

  Joe looked across the rolling lawn at the light. The car was parked in the drive near the street; the house was nearly two hundred feet away. Catch ten times as many with it parked way out here, he thought wildly. And, I thought Barnes was good at making people squirm. And, Two hundred feet, and him in the house. He can outthink me; could he outrun me? “What do you want me inside for?”

  “Would it make any difference how I answered that question?”

  Joe saw that it wouldn’t. The voice was calling the shots now, and Joe was hardly in the position to make any demands. Resignedly he asked, “You’re going to call the police?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  A wave of relief was overtaken and drowned in a flood of terror. No one knew where he was. No one had seen him get into the car. Being arrested would be unpleasant, but at least it would be a known kind of unpleasantness. But what lay in store for him in this mysterious expensive house?

  “You better just call the police,” he said. “I mean, have me arrested. I’ll wait where I am.”

  “No,” said the voice. It carried a new tone, and only by the change did Joe realize how—how kind it had been before. Joe believed that single syllable completely. Again he eyed the two hundred feet. He tensed himself, and said, “All right. I’ll come.”

  “Good boy,” said the voice, kind again. “Sleep sweet.” Something went pfffft! on the dashboard and Joe’s head was enveloped in a fine, very cold mist. He fell forward and hit his mouth on the big V emblem in the hub of the steering wheel. A profound astonishment enveloped him because he felt the impact but no pain.

  He blacked out.

  There was a comfortable forever during which he lay in a dim place, talking lazily, on and on. Something questioned him from time to time, and perhaps he knew he was not questioning himself; he certainly didn’t care. He rested in an euphoric cloud, calmly relating things he thought he had forgotten, and while an objective corner of his mind continued to operate, to look around, to feel and judge and report, it was almost completely preoccupied with an astonished delight that he could talk about his job, his marriage, his sister Anna, even about Joey—whom he’d killed when he and Joey were ten years old—without either the self-pitying twinge of unshed tears nor the painful fear which contained his rage.

  Someone moved into his range of vision, someone with a stranger’s face and a manner somehow familiar. He had something shiny in his hand. He advanced and bent over him, and Joe felt the nip of a needle in his upper arm. He lay quietly then, not talking because he had finished what he had to say, not moving because he was so comfortable, and began to feel warm from the inside out. That lasted for another immeasurable time. Then he detected movement again, and was drawn to it; the stranger crossed in front of him and sat down in an easy chair. Their faces were about at the same level, but Joe was not on an easy chair. Neither was it a couch. It was something in between. He glanced down and saw his knees, his feet. He was in one of those clumsy-looking superbly comfortable devices known as a contour chair. He half-sat, half-reclined in it, looked at the other man and felt just wonderful. He smiled sleepily, and the man smiled back.

  The man looked too old to be thirty, though he might be. He looked too young for fifty, though that was possible, too. His hair was dark, his eyebrows flecked with gray—a combination Joe thought he had never seen before. His eyes were light—in this dim room it was hard to see their color. The nose was ridiculous: it belonged to a happy fat man, and not someone with a face as long and lean as this one. The mouth was large and flexible; it was exactly what is meant by the term “generous,” yet its lips were thin, the upper one almost non-existent. He seemed of average height, say five, ten or eleven, but he gave the impression of being somehow too wide and too flat. Joe looked at him and at his smile, and it flashed across his mind that the French call a smile sourire, which means literally “under a laugh”; and surely, in any absolute scale of merriment, this smile was just exactly that. “How are you feeling?”

  “I feel fine,” said Joe. He really meant it.

  “I’m Zeitgeist,” said the man.

  Joe was unquestioningly aware that the man knew him, knew all about him, so he didn’t offer his name in return. He accepted the introduction and after a moment let his eyes stray from the friendly face to the wall behind him, to some sort of framed document, around to the side where a massive bookcase stood. He suddenly realized that he was in a strange room. He snapped his gaze back to the man. “Where am I?”

  “In my house,” said Zeitgeist. He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. “I’m the man whose car you were stealing. Remember?”

  Joe did, with a rush. An echo of his painful panic struck him, made him leap to his feet, a reflex which utterly failed. Something caught him gently and firmly around the midriff and slammed him back into the contour chair. He looked down and saw a piece of webbing like that used in aircraft safety belts, but twice as wide. It was around his waist and had no buckle; or if it had, it was behind and under the back of the chair, well out of his reach.

  “It’s O.K.,” Zeitgeist soothed him. “You didn’t actually steal it, and I understand perfectly why you tried. Let’s just forget that part of it.”

  “Who are you? What are you trying to do? Let me out of this thing!” The memory of this man approaching him with a glittering hypodermic returned to him. “What did you do, drug me?”

  Zeitgeist crossed his legs again and leaned back. “Yes, several times, and the nicest part of it is that you can’t stay that excited very long just now.” He smiled again, warm.

  Joe heaved again against the webbing, lay back, opened his mouth to protest, closed it helplessly. Then he met the man’s eyes again, and he could feel the indignation and fright draining out of him. He suddenly felt foolish, and found a smile of his own, a timid, foolish one.

  “First I anaesthetized you,” said Zeitgeist informatively, apparently pursuing exactly the line of thought brought out by Joe’s question, “because not for a second would I trust any of you to come across that lawn just because I asked you to. Then I filled you full of what we’d call truth serum if this was a TV play. And when you’d talked enough I gave you another shot to pull you out of it. Yes, I drugged you.”

  “What for? What do you want from me, anyway?”

  “You’ll find out when you get my bill.”

  “Bill?”

  “Sure. I have to make a living just like anybody else.”

  “Bill for what?”

  “I’m going to fix you up.”

  “There’s nothing the matter with me!”

  Zeitgeist twitched his mobile lips. “Nothing wrong with a man who wants to take an expensive automobile and kill himself with it?”

  Joe dropped his eyes. A little less pugnaciously, he demanded, “What are you, a psychiatrist or something?”

  “Or something,” laughed Zeitgeist. “Now listen to me,” he said easily. “There are classic explanations for people doing the things they do, and you have a textbook full. You were an undersized kid who lost his mother early. You were brutalized by a big sister who just wouldn’t be a mother to you. When you were ten you threw one of your tantrums and crowded another kid, and he slippe
d on the ice and was hit by a truck and killed. Your sister lambasted you for it until you ran away from home nine years later. You got married and didn’t know how to put your wife into the mother-image, so you treated her like your sister Anna instead; you obeyed, you didn’t answer back, you did as little as possible to make her happy because no matter how happy she got you were still subconsciously convinced it would do you no good. And by the way, the kid who was killed had the same name as you did.” He smiled his kindly smile, wagged his head and tsk-tsked. “You should see what the textbooks say about that kind of thing. Identification: you are the Joey who was killed when you got mad and hit him. Ergo, don’t ever let yourself get mad or you’ll be dead. Joe Fritch, you know what you are? You’re a mess.”

  “What am I supposed to say?” asked Joe in a low voice. Had he run off at the mouth that much? He was utterly disarmed. In the face of such penetrating revelation, anger would be ridiculous.

  “Don’t say anything. That is, don’t try to explain—I already understand. How’d you like to get rid of all that garbage? I can do that for you. Will you let me?”