Night Gallery 1 (3 page)

"—And then forever being picked up by doomed ships," the ship's doctor said to the Captain as they sat in his cabin. An early-morning light filtered through the porthole as the night gave way to day.

The Captain sat behind his desk and folded his hands behind his head. "Justice, of the poetic sort," he said, smiling.

"He believes it," the ship's doctor said.

The Captain's smile was fixed. "Does he, now? He believes it." He leaned farther back in his chair. "Very fanciful," he said. "Altogether bizarre." Then he put his hands down on top of the desk. "Except for a very notable flaw. If this is
his
damnation,
his
punishment for an act of cowardice "

"He believes that it is," the ship's doctor interrupted.

The Captain shook his head. "So we take a torpedo and share his punishment?" He smiled. "Not exactly fair, you'll admit, since none of us have done anything to make us damned and doomed, eh?"

"It doesn't work that way," the ship's doctor said, as if pleading a case. "He tells me that when the torpedo hits only
he'll
be aware of it. We're only here to . . . to people the scene, so to speak."

The Captain rose from behind the desk, the smile gradually fading. "So. And following that logic, it means that you and I are—"

"Phantoms," the ship's doctor said. "Phantoms, Captain. Ghosts of what we were."

The Captain walked over to the porthole and stared out at the brightening sky. "Now, that's interesting," he said. "Especially interesting in light of the fact that I don't feel at all like a phantom. To the contrary, doctor, I feel—"

He turned as he spoke, and whatever words were to follow were choked off and left deep inside his throat.

He was alone in the room. There was no ship's doctor. Inside his mind the machinery of logic roared and pulsated; the mental process that manufactured rationale, that explained away the impossible, that offered up the clues, the excuses, the reasons to explain the totally unexplainable.

The room was empty.

The ship's doctor had disappeared.

And the machinery in the Captain's head stripped gears and went off in screaming tangents, thoughts colliding with thoughts and terror laying claim to the debris. Like some kind of partially destroyed robot, he forced his legs over to the ship's phone on the wall and tried to reach the bridge.

"Bridge, this is the Captain. Come in, bridge. This is the Captain, bridge. Come in—"

Three decks above him the bridge was empty of men. The dials of the instruments moved; the ship's phone undulated gently on its hook; the needle of the giant compass above the Helmsman's wheel moved left and right in sporadic little stops and gos.

And then the Captain's cabin was empty.

The survivor forced himself through empty passageways, down silent decks, into cavernous salons and mausoleumlike dining rooms. When he reached the deck, he went directly to the rail and looked out at the quiet sea. And then he saw it. A tiny black broom handle sticking up above the water.

"Periscope," he screamed. "Periscope off the starboard bow!"

He looked wildly up and down the empty deck.

"Periscope," he screamed again, "off the starboard bow!"

He raced up a ladderway to the deck above him. And then he saw the torpedo. It slivered through the water at a breathless speed, leaving a wake of frosty bubbles. Then another torpedo, and still a third. His world exploded into a flash of blinding whiteness. He felt an incredible pain, and then for a time he felt nothing at all.

The ocean liner, gleaming white and graceful as a porpoise, sped swiftly across the quiet sea.

On the bridge came the voice of a Lookout through the ship's speaker. "Object dead ahead," the metallic voice rasped.

The men on the bridge lifted up binoculars and peered through the glass.

"Incredible," said the Officer of the Watch.

"What is it?" asked the Quartermaster.

"A ship's boat," the Officer of the Watch answered. "Appears to be . . . one survivor."

A tall, gray-bearded Captain entered the bridge. "Any sign of life?" he asked.

"One survivor, sir," the Officer of the Watch responded, "but—"

"But what?"

The Officer of the Watch took off his binoculars and handed them to the Captain. "You'd best look for yourself, sir."

The Captain lifted the binoculars and peered through the glass. "That can't be," he said in a quiet little voice. He lowered the binoculars, then turned toward the Officer of the Watch. "Get a small boatman and lower him immediately. We'll stop for a recovery." Again he raised the binoculars. "I think someone must be playing a joke. You read the name of the bow, Carlos?"

The Officer of the Watch gulped. "Yes, sir, I do. It reads . . . 'The Lusitania,' sir."

The Captain took a deep breath. "The
Lusitania
," he said. "Sunk—forty-odd years ago. And this is one of her lifeboats?" He shook his head, rejecting the entire thing. "Stop engines," he ordered.

"Stop engines," the Quartermaster repeated.

"Starboard, two degrees," the Captain said to the Helmsman.

The Helmsman, following his compass, turned the wheel slightly to the right and felt a combination chill and sweat. He had to wipe the perspiration from his brow where little rivulets of water were dripping down from his seaman's cap a cap which read "S.S. Andrea Doria."

There was a ship's whistle, and then the grinding halt of the engines; and in the little lifeboat the survivor looked toward the approaching rescuers. He wondered how long it would be this time. And how would the death come. Then he felt the jar and scrape of the other boat hitting the gunwales of his own. He fainted as eager arms reached out to pull him to what they thought was safety.

His mother was a cooch dancer, his father a carnival donicker, and he arrived on earth a squalling, protesting lard-ass—fat and ugly, screaming around the clock, as if someone had already told his fortune and whispered it into his mother's womb for him to hear.

His last name was Slatsky—and they named him Jacob. But no one ever called him by name, even as an infant. They called him "Fats"—always as a description and never as an endearment.

By the time he was five, his infant ugliness had taken root in his piggish little face and obese little body. When he was ten, his father abandoned his mother. When he was fifteen, his mother deserted him. And by the time he was twenty, he had forsaken his name and become Jackie Slater.

Jackie Slater. A balding, baggy-pants fat man who did stand-up monologues in third-rate "nightclubs"—smelly little places with broken neon signs—and he would stand in front of a cheap and distorting microphone, wheezing out broad burlesque in between arthritic acrobats and over-the-hill, big-thighed dancing girls, playing to bored boozers who had either heard his jokes or didn't want to hear them.

Jackie Slater. An overweight thief of other people's material, trying to be Jackie Gleason, Sam Levenson, or Joe Miller; trying to be anybody and everybody just to squeeze out laughter from the grim dark silhouettes sitting at tables beyond the spotlight. He was bad. A coaxer and a cajoler. A classless clown, freakish but not funny. Gross. Wheedling. Desperately cute. A hippopotamus in ruffled panties, waddling around the stage, sweating his life away in one-nighters.

Myron's Mecca was a roadhouse outside of Corning, New York. On the walls were faded murals from the Arabian Nights, looking like bad cartoons. The two waitresses, dressed as harem girls, looked like two crone rejects from a long-dead Sultan; the bartender wore a Shriner's fez with a bare spot underneath a beaded scimitar with the faded lettering "Scranton, Pa." The place smelled of stale beer mixed occasionally with the wafting salty scent of a fresher liquid when the door leading to the rest rooms was opened and closed. Beaded curtains had been hung behind a six-foot-square platform which served as a stage, and there was a dissonant four-piece combo, now mercifully silent as Jackie Slater stood on the stage, clutching a microphone and dying.

"You like this suit? It's a chopped-liver gray. Nice fit? My girl friend says it looks more like a convulsion.''

Silence in the audience. A half-dozen bored drunks. One short, staccato burst of laughter, and then a highpitched female giggle. On Jackie's pale, perspiring, uncooked dough face, a hopeful half-smile, quickly erased. The man had poured a drink down the dress of a peroxide bimbo and laughed. The bimbo had giggled.

"Yessir—more like a convulsion," Jackie perspired and repeated and milked.

"It is—you ain't," said a man at the bar, and the bartender chuckled.

Jackie gripped the microphone fighter. "Just the other day," he said, "I met some very good friends of mine out in front of the Plaza in New York. That's where I was living at the time. Out in front of the Plaza."

Silence from the audience, then somebody coughed. Somebody else overturned a glass.

"Yessir," Jackie repeated, "that's where I was living at the time—out in front of the Plaza."

"We heard you the first time, fat man," yelled the man at the bar. Then he turned to the bartender. "When do the dames dance?"

The bartender scratched his forehead underneath the fez. "Anytime now."

The heckler looked toward Jackie. "What does it take to get him off? A lynching?"

The bartender grinned. "He's great for all the other acts. He makes 'em look so good."

"I believe it," said the man. He cupped his hands in front of his mouth and yelled toward Jackie. "Hey, klutz you can get off now. The trained seal just recuperated.''

Jackie smiled a sick smile and waved. There was always one; always one smart ass in the audience. Usually drunk. Usually big. Always belligerent. Jackie looked around the room. His smile was a suspended, crooked thing—like a billboard that had slipped. And he waddled around, back and forth, holding on to the microphone, slipping the back of his hands together, grunting like a seal. Oh, God, why didn't they laugh? And even as he probed for the next gag, the cheapness of the place rose up in front of his eyes in waves. It was as if his entire world was Myron's Mecca, and the giggling broad, the two loaded Teamsters, the bored bartender, and the former Pacific Fleet champion sitting at the bar were his own private ghosts, hired to haunt him through eternity. They were always the same And his performance was always the same. Tonight was like all the others A long line of funerals. He did a little half-step, yanked up on the microphone cord, pointed a finger at the half-sleeping combo, then turned to face the eight people in the room. "And now," he shrieked, "ladies and gentlemen—four of the most beautiful, talented ladies you've ever met in your life—"

"Jesus, it's about time," yelled the man at the bar.

"Here they are," said Jackie, ignoring him. "The Finger Lakes Fandangos."

The combo, chords apart, spewed out a ragged fanfare.

Jackie bowed low at imaginary applause, took another little dancing half-step, deposited the microphone in its stand, and walked off the stage and through a side door that led to the rest rooms and his own dressing room. The Finger Lakes Fandangos passed him en route—eight sagging tits in sequins.

The voice of the man at the bar drowned out the combo. "Oh, Jesus. Out goes the hippo— in come the dogs!"

Jackie walked down the dark, narrow corridor to the tiny little cubicle set between "Men" and "Women." He opened the door and went inside. From either side came the sound of flushing through the thin walls, mixed with the snores of his agent, Jules Kettleman, who lay asleep on the threadbare sofa.

Jules was a gaunt, bony little man with a perpetually startled look in his eyes. He awoke with a start and sat up. "How'd it go?" he asked.

Jackie sat down heavily in front of a cracked mirror on a rickety card chair—the only other furniture in the room. He averted his reflection in the mirror and forced a smile. "For a first shot . . . for a first shot, maybe not so bad. I'm gonna rework it a little bit before the next show."

He rose and banged his head on the yellow bulb that hung by a naked wire. It swung back and forth, sending out little shadows of light and dark that played hide-and-seek with the jowled flesh of his face. He was conscious of Jules stating at him, and there was a long and deadly silence.

"Goddamn it—
say
it."

"Say wot? Whaddya wanna hear, Jackie?"

Jackie turned to him. "It would've been nice to hear you push a coupla laughs out there. Or maybe bang your hands together a few times. Honest to God, Jules—I'm playin' in front of Forest Lawn—and you're in here like it was a federal law to be horizontal after the sun goes down."

He turned back toward his reflection, his bald dome, with the eight or ten straggling hair strands, glistening in the yellow light—like an ivory ruin with weeds coming up through the cracks.

"Didn't go over so well, huh?" Jules's voice was soft and knowing.

"That's the only tomb with a stage in it," Jackie said as he sat back down in the chair.

"That's the only stage with a corpse on it," a new voice said.

Jackie turned in the squeaking chair to look toward the open door.

Myron Mishkin stood there. He was the owner. He entered the room a dyspeptic-looking tall man in a funeral-parlor-blue suit who took the step into the room like a man walking into a sewer, afraid to touch anything.

Jules started to sweat. "He warms up slow, Mr. Mishkin."

"It's a hundred and two out there," Mishkin said. "This guy couldn't warm up in a boiler room."

Jackie tried to laugh. It turned his voice ragged. "That's a tough audience, Mr. Mishkin. You'll give me that, won't you?"

"I'll tell ya what I'll give ya," Mishkin said through a barely lit cigar in his teeth. "Papers to walk. Do the last show, then cut."

"You said three weekends—" Jules began, slightly whining.

Mishkin turned to him. "That was before I heard him. You
are
his agent isn't that the idea?"

"Twenty-four years, Mr. Mishkin." Jules tried to say it proudly.