Shock III Part 17

She s.h.i.+vered in his arms. "You do hurt me," she whispered.

He held her close and stroked her hair. He kissed her gently on the lips, the cheeks, the eyes. He told her again and again how much he loved her.

He tried to ignore the smell.

Instantly, his eyes were open and he was listening. He stared up sightlessly into the darkness. Why had he woken up? He turned his head and reached across the mattress. As he touched her, Adeline stirred a little in her sleep.

Norman twisted over on his side and wriggled close to her. He pressed against the yielding warmth of her body, his hand slipping languidly across her hip. He lay his cheek against her back and started drifting downward into sleep again.

Suddenly, his eyes flared open. Aghast, he put his nostrils to her skin and sniffed. An icy barb of dread hooked at his brain; my G.o.d, what's wrong? He sniffed again, harder. He lay against her, motionless, trying not to panic.

If his senses of taste and smell were atrophying, he could understand, accept. They weren't, though. Even as he lay there, he could taste the acrid flavour of the coffee that he'd drunk that night. He could smell the faint odour of mashed-out cigarettes in the ashtray on his bedside table. With the least effort, he could smell the wool of the blanket over them.

Then why? She was the most important thing in his life. It was torture to him that, in bits and pieces, she was fading from his senses.

It had been a favourite restaurant since their days of courts.h.i.+p.

They liked the food, the tranquil atmosphere, the small ensemble which played for dining and for dancing. Searching in his mind, Norman had chosen it as the place where they could best discuss this problem. Already, he was sorry that he had. There was no atmosphere that could relieve the tension he was feeling; and expressing.

"What else can it be?" he asked, unhappily. "It's nothing physical." He pushed aside his untouched supper. "It's got to be my mind."

"But why, Norman?"

"If I only knew," he answered.

She put her hand on his. "Please don't worry," she said.

"How can I help it?" he asked. "It's a nightmare. I've lost part of you, Adeline."

"Darling, don't," she begged, "I can't bear to see you unhappy"

"I am unhappy," he said. He rubbed a finger on the tablecloth. "And I've just about made up my mind to see an a.n.a.lyst." He looked up. "It's got to be my mind," he repeated. "And- d.a.m.nit!-I resent it. I want to root it out."

He forced a smile, seeing the fear in her eyes.

"Oh, the h.e.l.l with it," he said. "I'll go to an a.n.a.lyst; he'll fix me up. Come on, let's dance."

She managed to return his smile.

"Lady, you're just plain gorgeous," he told her as they came together on the dance floor.

"Oh, I love you so," she whispered.

It was in the middle of their dance that the feel of her began to change.

Norman held her tightly, his cheek forced close to hers so that she wouldn't see the sickened expression on his face.

And now it's gone?" finished Dr. Bernstrom. Norman expelled a burst of smoke and jabbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. "Correct," he said, angrily.

"When?"

"This morning," answered Norman. The skin grew taut across his cheeks. "No taste. No smell." He shuddered fitfully "And now no sense of touch."

His voice broke. "What's wrong?" he pleaded. "What kind of breakdown is this?"

"Not an incomprehensible one," said Bernstrom.

Norman looked at him anxiously. "What then?" he asked. "Remember what I said: it has to do only with my wife. Outside of her-"

"I understand," said Bernstrom.

"Then what is it?"

"You've heard of hysterical blindness."

"Yes."

"Hysterical deafness."

"Yes, but-"

"Is there any reason, then, there couldn't be an hysterical restraint of the other senses as well?"

"All right, but why?"

Dr. Bernstrom smiled.

"That, I presume," he said, "is why you came to see me."

Sooner or later, the notion had to come. No amount of love could stay it. It came now as he sat alone in the living room, staring at the blur of letters on a newspaper page.

Look at the facts. Last Wednesday night, he'd kissed her and, frowning, said, "You taste sour, honey." She'd tightened, drawn away. At the time, he'd taken her reaction at its obvious value: she felt insulted. Now, he tried to summon up a detailed memory of her behaviour afterward.

Because, on Thursday morning, he'd been unable to taste her at all.

Norman glanced guiltily toward the kitchen where Adeline was cleaning up. Except for the sound of her occasional footsteps, the house was silent.

Look at the facts, his mind persisted. He leaned back in the chair and started to review them.

Next, on Sat.u.r.day, had come that dankly fetid stench. Granted, she should feel resentment if he'd accused her of being its source. But he hadn't; he was sure of it. He'd looked around the kitchen, asked her if she'd put the garbage out. Yet, instantly, she'd a.s.sumed that he was talking about her.

And, that night, when he'd woken up, he couldn't smell her.

Norman closed his eyes. His mind must really be in trouble if he could justify such thoughts. He loved Adeline; needed her. How could he allow himself to believe that she was, in any way, responsible for what had happened?

Then, in the restaurant, his mind went on, unbidden, while they were dancing, she'd, suddenly, felt cold to him. She'd suddenly felt-he could not evade the word-pulpy.

And, then, this morning- Norman flung aside the paper. Stop it! Trembling, he stared across the room with angry, frightened eyes. It's me, he told himself, me! He wasn't going to let his mind destroy the most beautiful thing in his life. He wasn't going to let- It was as if he'd turned to stone, lips parted, eyes widened, blank. Then, slowly-so slowly that he heard the delicate crackling of bones in his neck-he turned to look toward the kitchen. Adeline was moving around.

Only it wasn't footsteps he heard.

He was barely conscious of his body as he stood. Compelled, he drifted from the living room and across the dining alcove, slippers noiseless on the carpeting. He stopped outside the kitchen door, his face a mask of something like revulsion as he listened to the sounds she made in moving.

Silence then. Bracing himself, he pushed open the door. Adeline was standing at the opened refrigerator. She turned and smiled.

"I was just about to bring you-" She stopped and looked at him uncertainly. "Norman?" she said.

He couldn't speak. He stood frozen in the doorway, staring at her.

"Norman, what is it?" she asked.

He s.h.i.+vered violently.

Adeline put down the dish of chocolate pudding and hurried toward him. He couldn't help himself; he shrank back with a tremulous cry, his face twisted, stricken.

"Norman, what's the matter?"

"I don't know," he whimpered.

Again, she started for him, halting at his cry of terror. Suddenly, her face grew hard as if with angry understanding.

"What is it now?" she asked. "I want to know."

He could only shake his head.

"I want to know, Norman!"

"No." Faintly, frightenedly.

She pressed trembling lips together. "I can't take much more of this," she said. "I mean it, Norman."

He jerked aside as she pa.s.sed him. Twisting around, he watched her going up the stairs, his expression one of horror as he listened to the noises that she made. Jamming palsied hands across his ears, he stood s.h.i.+vering uncontrollably. It's me! he told himself again, again; until the words began to lose their meaning-me, it's me, it's me, it's me!

Upstairs, the bedroom door slammed shut. Norman lowered his hands and moved unevenly to the stairs. She had to know that he loved her, that he wanted to believe it was his mind. She had to understand.

Opening the bedroom door, he felt his way through the darkness and sat on the bed. He heard her turn and knew that she was looking at him.

"I'm sorry," he said, "I'ma sick."

"No," she said. Her voice was lifeless.

Norman stared at her. "What?"

"There's no problem with other people, our friends, tradesmena" she said. "They don't see me enough. With you, it's different. We're together too often. The strain of hiding it from you hour after hour, day after day, for a whole year, is too much for me. I've lost the power to control your mind. All I can do is-blank away your senses one by one."

"You're not-"

"-telling you those things are real? I am. They're real. The taste, the smell, the-and what you heard tonight."

He sat immobile, staring at the dark form of her.

"I should have taken all your senses when it started," she said. "It would have been easy then. Now it's too late."

"What are you talking about?" He could barely speak.

"It isn't fair!" cried her voice. "I've been a good wife to you! Why should I have to go back? I won't go back! I'll find somebody else. I won't make the same mistake next time!"

Norman jerked away from her and stood on wavering legs, his fingers clutching for the lamp.

"Don't touch it!" ordered the voice.

The light flared blindingly into his eyes. He heard a thras.h.i.+ng on the bed and whirled. He couldn't even scream. Sound coagulated in his throat as he watched the shapeless ma.s.s rear upward, dripping decay.

"All right!" the words exploded in his brain with the illusion of sound. "All right, then know me!"

All his senses flooded back at once. The air was clotted with the smell of her. Norman recoiled, lost balance, fell. He saw the mouldering bulk rise from the bed and start for him. Then his mind was swallowed in consuming blackness and it seemed as if he fled along a night-swept hall pursued by a suppliant voice which kept repeating endlessly, "Please! I don't want to go back! None of us want to go back! Love me, let me stay with you! love me, love me, love mea"

XI a" MISS STARDUST.

Dear Harry:.

How are things in the baked bean industry? Cracky good, I trust a" as we used to say in those halcyon days of yore when thou and mou were dripping young ichor over our public relations courses at ye olde M.U.

I swan things should be cracky good, what with your future intact and paid-for Cadillac. Second-rank publicity man for Altshuler's Boston Beauties. Kid, you're living.

As for me a" nothing. I'm on the ropes from this dang Miss Stardust contest. I s'pose you've read some accounts of the debacle by our comrades-in-legs, the roving reporters. Well, buddy, the inside tale is still to be wagged. So I'm waggin'. List.

To begin with, as they prose in Victorian ghost stories, I have my little agency, single, entrepreneurish and struggling. I have no complaints. There are my steady customers a" Garshbuller's Candied Dental Floss, Los Alamos Insect Bombs, The Blue Underwear Company, and, but of course, the ever popular Mae Bushkins Imperial Foundations. All said clients guaranteed to knock me out a steady if nonstratopsheric return.

So what happens? You remember that joker from my home town I told you about once, Gad Simpkins? You know, the one who was going to parachute down a mine shaft? The one who was going to walk tightrope across a burning Bessemer converter? Sure you do.

What happens but the jerk decides to swim the English Channel backstroke. d.a.m.n fool thing to try in any man's book, but that was Gad to the socks. Always one for a new twist.

Well, to cut short the prelims, Gad doesn't know a soul. He's small potatoes, strictly a benchwarmer in the minor leagues. He comes to me. Joe, he says, you got to handle my publicity for the swim. This is dynamite, he says to me. I look him over. Change your brand, I tell him. He retires.

But comes two plot thickeners. For one, Los Alamos Insect Bombs is kaput, after one of its larger items blows up a customer's seven-room house and adjoining garage, while he and family are out to the movies.

Result: A a" One less client. B a" Enough loss to create one wry look on the kisser of my beloved, which says as clearly as if she'd intoned the words in her gravelly snarl: 'Penury. It's upon us!'

This is the first thing. The second is edging on the subtler side, but still enough to egg me on. I am getting sick of dental floss and foundations and blue underwear. I am tired of catering to torsos and teeth. I want a little magic in my latter days. Besides the fact, as I say, that I covet a little needed jack to improve my low-caste status at Home Sweet Home.

But enough of that. Sufficient to say that I give the job a run for its money. All the tricks of the trade, from squibs to bits of semi-droll fluff in The New Yorker magazine. I get Gad on the radio, he desports like the idiot he is. You know the rest. Good solid publicity, interest s...o...b..lling, project going strong. Is it my fault Gadstone Simpkins swims into a rock twenty yards out from the Gallic sh.o.r.eline?