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  Childe told himself to cut, as if his thoughts were a strip of film. He was exaggerating and also simplifying. Inwardly, he might be an existential antihero, but outwardly he was a man of action, a Shadow, a Doc Savage, a Sam Spade. He smiled again. Truth to tell, he was Herald Sigurd Childe, red-eyed, watery-eyed, drippy-nosed, sickened, wanting to run home to Mother. Or to that image named Sybil.

  Mother, unfortunately, became angry if he did not phone her to ask if he could come over. Mother wanted privacy and independence, and if she did not get it, she expressed herself unpleasantly and exiled him for an indeterminate time.

  He parked the car outside his apartment, ran up the steps, hearing someone cough behind a door as he passed, and unlocked his door. The apartment was a living room, a kitchenette, and a bedroom. Normally, it was bright with white walls and ceilings and creamy woodwork and lightly colored, lightly built furniture. Today, it was gloomy; even the unshadowed places had a greenish tinge.

  Sybil answered the phone before the second ring had started.

  "You must have been expecting me," he said gaily.

  "I was expecting," she said. Her voice was not, however, unfriendly.

  He did not make the obvious reply. "I'd like to come over," he finally said.

  "Why? Because you're hard up?"

  "For your company."

  "You haven't got anything to do. You have to find some way to spend the time."

  "I have a case I'm working on;" he said. He hesitated and then, knowing that he was baiting the hook and hating himself for it, said, "It's about Colben. You read the papers?"

  "I thought that was what you'd be working on. Isn't it horrible?"

  He did not ask her why she was home today. She was the secretary of an advertising agency executive. Neither she nor her boss would have a driving priority.

  "I'll be right over," he said. He paused and then said, "Will I be able to stay a while or will I have to get out after a while? Don't get mad! I just want to know; I'd like to be able to relax."

  "You can stay for a couple of hours or more, if you like. I'm not going anyplace, and nobody is coming--that I know of."

  He took the phone from his ear but her voice was laud enough for him to hear, and he returned it to his ear. "Herald? I really do want you to come!"

  He said, "Good!" and then, "Hell! I've just been thinking of myself! Is there anything I can get you from the store?"

  "No, you know there's a supermarket only three blocks from here. I walked."

  "OK. I just thought you might not have gone out yet or you forgot something you might want me to pick up for you."

  They were both silent for a few seconds. He was thinking about his irritations when they had been married, about how many times he had had to run out to get things that she had forgotten during her shopping. She must be thinking about his recriminations, too; she was always thinking about them when they got together.

  "I'll be right over," he said hurriedly. "So long."

  He hung up and left the apartment. The man was still coughing behind the door. A stereo suddenly blared Strauss Thus Spake Zarathustra downstairs. Somebody protested feebly; the music continued to play loudly. The protests became louder, and there was a pounding on a wall. The music did not soften.

  Herald considered walking the four blocks to Sybil's and then decided against it. He might need to take off suddenly, although there did not seem much chance of it. His answering service was not operating; it had no priority. He did not intend to leave Sybil's number with the police operator or Sergeant Bruin while he was with her. She would get unreasonably angry about this. She did not like to be interrupted by calls while she was with him, at least, not by business calls. That had been one of the things bugging her when they were man and wife. Theoretically, she should not be bothered by such matters now. In practice, which operates more on emotion than logic, she was as enraged as ever. He well knew how enraged. The last time he had been at her apartment, the exchange had interrupted them at a crucial moment, and she had run him out. Since then, he had called several times but had been cooled off. The last time he'd phoned had been two weeks ago.

  She was right in one guess. He was hard up. But he did not expect to be any less so after seeing her. He intended to talk, to talk only, to soothe some troublings and to scare away the loneliness that had come more strongly after seeing the film of Colbert.

  It was strange, or, if not so strange, indicative. He had lived twenty of his thirty-five years in Los Angeles County. Yet he knew only one woman to whom he could really unburden himself and feel relaxed and certain of complete understanding. No. He was wrong. There was not even one woman, because Sybil did not completely understand him, that is, sympathize with him. If she did, she would not now be his ex-wife.

  But Sybil had said the same thing about men in general and about him in particular. It was the human situation--whatever that phrase meant.

  He parked the car in front of her apartment--no trouble finding parking space now--and went into the little lobby. He rang her bell; she buzzed; he went up the steps through the inner door and down the hall to the end. Her door was on the right. He knocked; the door swung open. Sybil was dressed in a floor-length morning robe with large red and black diamond shapes. The black diamonds contained white ankhs, the looped cross of the ancient Egyptians. Her feet were bare.

  Sybil was thirty-four and five feet five inches tall. She had long black hair, sharp black eyebrows, large greenish eyes, a slender straight nose perhaps a little bit too long, a full mouth, a pale skin. She was pretty, and the body under the kimono was well built, although she may have been just a little too hippy for some tastes.

  Her apartment was light, like his, with much white on the walls and ceilings, and creamy woodwork and light and airy furniture. But a tall gloomy El Greco reproduction hung incongruously on the wall; it hovered over everything said and done in the one room. Childe always felt as if the elongated man on the cross was delivering judgment upon him as well as upon the city on the plain.

  The painting was not as visible as usual. There was almost always a blue haze of tobacco--which accounted for the walls and ceiling not being as white as those of his apartment--and today the blue had become gray-green. Sybil coughed as she lit another cigarette, and then she went into a spasm of coughing and her face became blue. He was not upset by this, no more than usual, anyway. She had incipient emphysema and had been advised by her doctor to chop off the smoking two years ago. Certainly, the smog was accelerating her disease, but he could do nothing about it. Still, it was one more cause for quarreling.

  She finally went in to the kitchen for water and came out several minutes later. Her expression was challenging, but he kept his face smooth. He waited until she sat down on the sofa across the room from his easy chair. She ground the freshly lit cigarette out on an ash tray and said, "Oh God! I can't breathe!"

  By which she meant that she could not smoke.

  "Tell me about Colben," she said, and then, "first, could I get you...?"

  Her voice decayed. She was always forgetting that he had quit drinking four years ago.

  "I need to relax," he said. "I'm all out of pot and no chance to get any. You...?"

  "I'll get some," she said eagerly. She rose and went into the kitchen. A panel creaked as it slid back; a minute passed; she came back with two cigarettes of white paper twisted at both ends. She handed him one. He said, "Thanks," and sniffed it. The odor always brought visions of flat-topped pyramids, of Aztec priests with sharp obsidian knives, naked brown men and women working in red clay fields under a sun fiercer than an eagle's glare, of Arab feluccas scudding along in the Indian ocean. Why, he did not know.

  He lit up and sucked in the heavy smoke and held it in his lungs as long as he could. He tried at the same time to empty his mind and body of the horror of this morning and the irritations he had felt since calling Sybil. There was no use smoking if he retained the bad feelings. He had to pour them out, and he could do it--somet
imes. The discipline of meditation that a friend had taught him--or tried to teach him--had sometimes been effective. But he was a detective, and the prosecution of human beings, the tracking down, the immersion in hate and misery, negated the ability to meditate. Nevertheless, stubborn, he had persisted in trying, and he could sometimes empty himself. Or seem to. His friend said that he was not truly meditating; he was using a trick, a technique without essence.

  Sybil, knowing what he was doing, said nothing. A clock ticked. A horn sounded faintly; a siren wailed. Sirens were always wailing nowadays. Then he breathed out and sucked in again and held his breath, and presently the crystallization came. There was a definite shifting of invisible lines, as if the currents of force that thread every centimeter of the universe had rearranged themselves into another, straighter configuration.

  He looked at Sybil and now he loved her very much, as he had loved her when they were first married. The snarls and knots were yanked loose; they were in a beautiful web which vibrated love and harmony through them with every movement they made. Never mind the inevitable spider.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 4

  He had hesitated to stop her when she kissed him all over his belly, although he knew what was coming. He continued to restrain himself when she took his penis and bent down to place her mouth around the head. He felt the tongue flicking it, shuddered, pushed her head away, though gently, and said, "No!"

  She looked up at him and said, "Why?"

  "I never got around to telling you the fine details of the film," he said.

  "You're getting soft!"

  She sat up in the bed and looked down at him. She was frowning.

  "Have you got a disease?"

  "For God's sake!" he said, and` he sat up, too. "Do you think I'd go to bed with you if I knew I had the syph or the clap? What kind of a question--what kind of a person do you think I am?"

  "I'm sorry," she said. "My God! What's wrong? What did I do?"

  "Nothing. Nothing under most circumstances. But I felt as if my cock was frozen when you...Never mind. Let me explain why I couldn't let you go down on me."

  "I wish you wouldn't use words like that!"

  "OK, my thing, then! Let me tell you."

  She listened with wide eyes. She was leaning on one arm near him. He could see the swollen nipple, which did not seem to dwindle a bit as she listened. It might have increased. Certainly, her eyes were bright, and, despite her expressed horror, she smiled now and then.

  "I really think you'd like to do that to me!" he said.

  "You're always saying something stupid like that," she said. "Even now. Do you hate me so much you can't even get a hard-on."

  "You mean erection, don't you?" he said. "If you can't understand why my penis wanted to crawl into my belly for safety, then you can't understand anything about men."

  "I won't bite," she said, and she grabbed his penis and lunged for it with her mouth wide open and smiling to show all her teeth.

  He jerked himself away, saying, "Don't!"

  "Forget about it, I was just kidding you," she said, and she crawled onto him and began kissing him. She thrust her tongue along his tongue and down his throat so far that he choked. "For God's sake!" he said, turning his head away. "What the hell are you trying to do? I can't breathe!"

  She sat up and almost hissed at him. "You can't breathe! How do you think I breathe when you're shoving that big thing down my throat?. What is the matter?"

  "I don't know," he said. He sat up. "Let's have a few more drags. Maybe things'll straighten out."

  "Do you have to depend upon that to be able to love me?"

  He tried to take her hand in his but she snatched it away.

  "You didn't see it," he said. "Those iron teeth. The blood! Spitting out that bloody flesh! God!"

  "I feel sorry for Colben," she said, "but I don't see what he has to do with us. You never liked him; you were going to get rid of him. And he gave me the creeps. Anyway...oh, I don't know."

  She rolled off the bed, went to the closet, and put on the kimono. She lit a cigarette and at once began coughing. It sounded as if her lungs were full of snot.

  He felt angry, and opened his mouth to say something--what, he did not know, just so it was something that would hurt. But the taste of cunt made him pause. She had a beautiful cunt, the hair was thick and almost blue-black and so soft it felt almost like a seal pelt. She lubricated freely, perhaps too much, but the oil was sweet and clean. And she could squeeze down on his cock as if she had a hand inside it. And then he remembered the thing bulging out the pad over the woman's cunt in the film; and the blood that had been pouring into his penis became slushy and slowly thawed out and drained back into his body.

  Sybil, who had seen the dawning erection, said, "What's wrong now?"

  "Sybil, there's nothing wrong with you. It's me. I'm too upset."

  She sucked in some more smoke and managed to check a cough.

  "You always did bring your work home. No wonder our life became such a hell."

  He knew that that was not true. They had rubbed each other raw for other reasons, the causes of most of which they did not understand. There was, however, no use arguing. He had had enough of that.

  He sat up and swung his legs over the bed and stood up and walked to the chair on which he had piled his clothes.

  "What are you doing?"

  "Some of the smog gotten in your brain?" he said. "It's obvious I'm going to dress, and it's fairly predictable that I'm getting out of here."

  He checked the impulse to say, "Forever!" It sounded so childish. But it could be true.

  She said nothing. She swayed back and forth with her eyes closed for a minute, then, after opening them, spun around and walked into the living room. A minute later, he followed her. She was on the divan and glaring at him.

  "I haven't had such a ball ache since I was a teenager and came home from my first necking party," he said. He did not know why he said it; certainly, he did not expect her to feel sorry for him, and to do something about it. Or did he?

  "Necking party? You're sure dating yourself, old man!"

  She looked furious. Unfortunately, fury did not make her beautiful.

  Yet, he hated to leave; he had a vague feeling that he was somehow at fault.

  He took one step toward her and stopped. He was going to kiss her, but it was force of habit that pushed him.

  "Good-by," he said. "I really am sorry, in a way."

  "In a way!" she screamed. "Now isn't that just like you! You can't be all sorry or all righteously indignant or all right or all wrong! You have to be half-sorry. You...you...half-assed half-man!"

  "And so we leave exotic Sybil-land," he said, as he swung the door open. "It sinks slowly into the smog of fantastic Southern California, and we say aloha, farewell, adieu, and kiss my ass!"

  Sybil sprang out of the chair with a scream and came at him with fingers hooked to catch his face with her nails. He caught them and shoved her back so that she staggered against the sofa. She caught herself and then yelled, "You asshole! I hate you! I had a choice to make! I let you come here, instead of Al! I wanted you, not him! He was strictly second-choice, and a bad second at that! You think you're hard up, you don't know what hard up is! I've turned down lots of men because I kept hoping every night you'd call me! I'd eat you up; you'd be days getting out of here. I'd love you, oh, how I'd love you! And now this, you stinking bastard! Well, I'm going to call Al, and he's going to get everything I was going to give you and more! More! More! Do you understand that, you?"

  He understood that he could still feel jealous. He felt like punching her and then waiting for Al and kicking him downstairs.

  But it would be no good trying to make up with her. Not now. Actually, not ever, but he wasn't quite ready to believe this. Not down there where certainty dwelt.

  Trying to grasp what ruined their love was like trying to close your fingers on a handful of smog.

  He strode through the door and, k
nowing that she expected him to slam it behind him, did not.

  Perhaps it was this that drove her to the last barbarism:

  She stepped into the hall and shouted, "I'll suck his cock! I'll suck his cock, you!"

  He turned and shouted, "You're no lady!" and spun around and walked off.

  Outside, in the biting veils of gray-green, he laughed until he coughed raspingly, and then he cried. Part of the tears was engendered by the smog, part by his grief and rage. It was sad and heart-rending and disgusting and comical. One-upmanship was all right, but the one-upman actually upped it up his own one.

  "When the hell is she going to grow up?" he groaned, and then, "When the hell am I? When will the Childe become father to the man?"

  Dante was thirty-five, midway in his life's journey, when he went astray from the straight road and woke to find himself alone in a dark wood.

  But he obtained a professional guide, and he had at least once been on the straight road, the True Way.

  Childe did not remember having been on the straight road. And where was his Virgil? The son of a bitch must be striking for higher pay and shorter hours.

  Every man his own Virgil, Childe said, and, coughing (like Miniver Cheevy), pushed through the smog.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 5

  Somebody had broken the left front window of the Olds while he was with Sybil. A glance at the front seat showed him why. The gas mask was gone. He cursed. The mask had cost him fifty dollars when he purchased it yesterday, and there were no more to be had except in the black market. The masks were selling for two hundred or more dollars, and it took time to locate a seller.

  He had the time, but he did not have the cash in hand and he doubted that his check would be accepted. The banks were closed, and the smog might disappear so suddenly that he would not need the mask and would stop payment of the check. There was nothing to do except use a wet handkerchief and a pair of goggles he had worn when he had a motorcycle. That meant he must return to his apartment.