The pains ceased.
M. Munigant was the man to help him. He must be! If the sight of his gilt-lettered name could cause so titanic a reaction in the deepness of Harris’s body, why, of course M. Munigant must be just the man.
But, not today. Each time he tried to return to that office, the terrible pains laid him low. Perspiring, he had to give up, and stagger into a cocktail bar for respite.
Moving across the dim room of the cocktail lounge, he wondered briefly if a lot of blame couldn’t be put on M. Munigant’s shoulders; after all, it was Munigant who’d first drawn such specific attention to his skeleton, and brought home the entire psychological impact of it! Could M. Munigant be using him for some nefarious purpose? But what purpose? Silly to even suspect him. Just a little doctor. Trying to be helpful. Munigant and his jar of breadsticks. Ridiculous. M. Munigant was okay, okay.
There was a sight within the cocktail lounge to give him hope. A large fat man, round as a butterball, stood drinking consecutive beers at the bar. Now there was a successful man. Harris repressed a desire to go up, clap the fat man’s shoulder, and inquire as to how he’d gone about impounding his bones. Yes, the fat man’s skeleton was luxuriously closeted. There were pillows of fat here, resilient bulges of it there, with several round chandeliers of fat under his chin. The poor skeleton was lost, it could never fight clear of that blubber; it may have tried once — but now, overwhelmed, not a bony echo of the fat man’s supporter remained.
Not without envy, Harris approached the fat man as one might cut across the bow of an ocean liner. Harris ordered a drink, drank it, and then dared to address the fat man:
‘Glands?’
‘You talking to me?’ asked the fat man.
‘Or is there a special diet?’ wondered Harris. ‘I beg your pardon, but, as you see, I’m down. Can’t seem to put on any weight. I’d like a stomach like that one of yours. Did you grow it because you were afraid of something?’
‘You,’ announced the fat man, ‘are drunk. But — I like drunkards.’ He ordered more drinks. ‘Listen close. I’ll tell you —
‘Layer by layer,’ said the fat man, ‘twenty years, man and boy, I built this.’ He held his vast stomach like a globe of the world, teaching his audience its gastronomical geography. ‘It was no overnight circus. The tent was not raised before dawn on the wonders installed within. I have cultivated my inner organs as if they were thoroughbred dogs, cats and other animals.
My stomach is a fat pink Persian tom slumbering, rousing at intervals to purr, mew, growl, and cry for chocolate titbits. I feed it well, it will almost sit up for me. And, my dear fellow, my intestines are the rarest pure-bred Indian anacondas you ever viewed in the sleekest, coiled, fine and ruddy health. Keep ‘em in prime, I do, all my pets. For fear of something? Perhaps.’
This called for another drink for everybody.
‘Gain weight?’ The fat man savoured the words on his tongue. ‘Here’s what you do; get yourself a quarrelling bird of a wife, a baker’s dozen of relatives who can flush a covey of troubles out from behind the veriest molehill. Add to these a sprinkling of business associates whose prime motivation is snatching your last lonely quid, and you are well on your way to getting fat. How so? In no time you’ll begin subconsciously building fat betwixt yourself and them.
A buffer epidermal state, a cellular wall. You’ll soon find that eating is the only fun on earth. But one needs to be bothered by outside sources. Too many people in this world haven’t enough to worry about, then they begin picking on themselves, and they lose weight. Meet all of the vile, terrible people you can possibly meet, and pretty soon you’ll be adding the good old fat!’
And with that advice, the fat man launched himself out into the dark tide of night, swaying mightily and wheezing.
‘That’s exactly what Dr. Burleigh told me, slightly changed,’ said Harris thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps that trip to Phoenix, now, at this time — ‘
The trip from Los Angeles to Phoenix was a sweltering one, crossing, as it did, the Mojave desert on a broiling yellow day. Traffic was thin and inconstant, and for long stretches there would not be a car on the road for miles ahead or behind. Harris twitched his fingers on the steering-wheel. Whether or not Creldon, in Phoenix, lent him the money he needed to start his business, it was still a good thing to get away, to put distance behind.
The car moved in the hot sluice of desert wind. The one Mr. H. sat inside the other Mr. H. Perhaps both perspired. Perhaps both were miserable.
On a curve, the inside Mr. H. suddenly constricted the outer flesh, causing him to jerk forward on the hot steering wheel.
The car plunged off the road into deepest sand. It turned half over.
Night came on, a wind rose, the road was lonely and silent with little traffic. Those few cars that passed went swiftly on their way, their view obstructed. Mr. Harris lay unconscious until very late he heard a wind rising out of the desert, felt the sting of little sand needles on his cheeks, and opened his eyes.
Morning found him gritty-eyed and wandering in thoughtless, senseless circles, having, in his delirium, gotten away from the road. At noon he sprawled in the poor shade of a bush. The sun struck into him with a keen sword edge, cutting through to his — bones. A vulture circled.
Harris’s parched lips cracked open, weakly. ‘So that’s it?’ he whimpered, red-eyed, bristle-cheeked. ‘One way or another you’ll wreck me, walk me, starve me, thirst me, kill me.’ He swallowed dry burrs of dust. ‘Sun cook off my flesh so you can peek forth. Vultures lunch and breakfast from me, and then there you’ll lie, grinning. Grinning with victory. Like a bleached xylophone strewn and played by vultures with an ear for odd music. You’d like that. Freedom.’
He walked on through a landscape that shivered and bubbled in the direct pour of sunlight; stumbling, falling flat, lying to feed himself little mouths of flame. The air was blue alcohol flame, and vultures roasted and steamed and glittered as they flew in glides and circles. Phoenix. The road. Car. Water. Safety.
‘Hey!’
Somebody called from way off in the blue alcohol flame.
Mr. Harris propped himself up.
‘Hey!’
The call was repeated. A crunching of footsteps, quick.
With a cry of unbelievable relief, Harris rose, only to collapse again into the arms of someone in a uniform with a badge. . .
The car tediously hauled, repaired, Phoenix reached, Harris found himself in such an unholy state of mind that the business transaction was more a numb pantomime than anything else. Even when he got the loan and held the money in his hand it meant nothing.
This Thing within him like a hard white sword in a scabbard tainted his business, his eating, coloured his love for Clarisse, made it unsafe to trust an automobile; all in all this Thing had to be put in its place before he could have love for business or anything. That desert incident had brushed too closely.
Too near the bone, one might say with an ironic twist of one’s mouth. Harris heard himself thanking Mr. Creldon, dimly, for the money. Then he turned his car and motored back across the long miles, this time cutting across to San Diego, so that he would miss that desert stretch between El Centro and Beaumont. He drove north along the coast. He didn’t trust that desert. But — careful! Salt waves boomed, hissing on the beach outside Laguna. Sand, fish and crustacéa would cleanse his bones as swiftly as vultures. Slow down on the curves over the surf.
If anything happened, he wanted cremation. The two of them’d burn together that way. None of this graveyard burial stuff where little crawling things eat and leave nothing but unmantled bone! No, they’d burn. Damn Him! He was sick. Where could he turn? Clarisse? Burleigh? Munigant, Bone specialist? Munigant. Well?
‘Darling!’ trilled Clarisse, kissing him, so he winced at the solidness of her teeth and jaw behind the passionate exchange. ‘Darling,’ he said, slowly, wiping his lips with his wrist, trembling.
‘You look thinner; oh, darling, the business deal — ?’
‘It went through. Yeah, it went through. I guess. Yeah, it did,’ he said.
She enthused. She kissed him again. Lord, he couldn’t even enjoy kisses any more because of this obsession. They ate a slow, falsely cheerful dinner, with Clarisse laughing and encouraging him. He studied the phone, several times he picked it up indecisively, then laid it down. His wife walked in, putting on her coat and hat. ‘Well, sorry, but I have to leave now,’ she laughed, and pinched him lightly on the cheek. ‘Come on now, cheer up! I’ll be back from Red Cross in three hours. You lie around and snooze. I simply have to go.’
When Clarisse was gone, Harris dialled the phone, nervously.
‘M. Munigant?’
The explosions and the sickness in his body after he set the phone down were unbelievable. His bones were racked with every kind of pain, cold and hot, he had ever thought of or experienced in wildest nightmare. He swallowed all the aspirin he could find in an effort to stave off the assault; but when the doorbell finally rang an hour later, he could not move, he lay weak and
