Demon Box

If most of his audience was left in the dark by his closing metaphor, this time at least I was certain: it was a parting shot at none but me. He must have recognized me at my table during his talk and at the hippopotamus tank both, probably even on the Sky Ride. His shoulders sagged and he drew a long ragged breath; he was hunched so low that the sound whistled loudly through the mike. His whole body appeared to shake with the effort, like some kind of holy ruin about to collapse before a gale. Then he took off the pitch-dark glasses; the contrasting beam that burned forth was a shock. The temple roof might have been in ruin but the altar still held its fire, blue as the arc from an electric welder, and as painfully bright. Don’t look away if he turns it on you, I told myself. Try to meet it. Sure. Try matching eyes with skull-necklaced Kali. At the first searing touch I bent and focused on the congealing butter sauce around my lobster shell, for whatever unguent the oil might offer.

“So? That is that, yah? Yah, I think so. I thank you all for your attention. Guten Abend und auf wiedersehen! Miss Nichswander?”

When I looked back up she was wheeling him through the velveteen slot.

The Bellevue Revue couldn’t understand why their crazyhouse hilarity received even less laughs than it deserved, which was damned little. My leftover lobster was funnier than they were; I was sorry when the waiter took it away. After the banquet broke up, however, the conventioneers set about dispelling the heavy pall the best way they could, by trying to make light of it. The remainder of the evening was spent drinking hard and listening to a lot of lampoons of the Woofner address. His heavy accent made him easy prey to parody. The joking got so uproarious in the wide-open hospitality suite the La Bouche Laboratories had reserved that kindhearted Dr. Mortimer fretted the old man might hear.

“All this ridicule, this loud laughing—what if the poor fellow happened to come by? It could be injurious to someone in his condition.”

“This isn’t laughing,” Joe said. “This is whistling in the graveyard.”

It was long after midnight before the revelers wore it out and Mortimer got everybody quieted down enough to listen to Dr. Toocter play his harp. It was the perfect soporific. Within minutes people were yawning good nights and stumbling off toward their rooms.

As much as I’d drunk I was sure I’d drop straight off when I hit the bed, but I didn’t. The air of our room seemed too close, the pitchy dark full of racket. The air conditioning throbbed brokenly and Mortimer snored along. I was so tired and dehydrated I could barely think, not even about Woofner. I’ll think about him tomorrow. I’ll look him up in the morning for a quick hello, then get on the first thing I can find flying west. Tonight all I want is a little sleep and a lot of liquid.

On one of my trips to the bathroom to refill my water glass, I met Joe coming out carrying his. He frowned at me from the crack of light.

“Christ, man, do you really feel it that bad?”

“Not quite,” I said. “But I feel it coming.”

Joe took me by the arm and pulled me into the bathroom and shut the door. He gave me a big pink tablet from his shaving kit.

“Remedy number one,” he prescribed, “is to duck it. Before it hits.”

I took the pill without asking any questions. After that I got up only once more, to get rid of some of that liquid. The room was still black but still at last. The broken throbbing had been fixed and Mortimer’s bed was quiet as a church. It seemed I had just lain back down when he shook me awake and told me it was Sunday.

“Sunday?” I squinted at the light. My head hammered. “What happened to Saturday?”

“You looked so wasted we decided to let you rest,” Joe explained. He was drawing open the drapes. In the cruel light my two roommates looked pretty wasted themselves. Mortimer said I must be hungry but there would be time for a bite of breakfast before our flight; we’d better hurry.

I didn’t feel hungry or rested either. I just had a cup of airport coffee and bought a box of Aspergum to have in my shoulder bag—the hammering in my head promised to get louder. Boarding the airplane I confided to Joe that whatever I had ducked seemed to be swinging back for another shot. He sympathized but said that big pink pill had been his last. He gave me a peek in his sample case, though; he’d managed to buy a quart of black rum from one of the Cuban maids.

“Remedy number two: if you can’t duck it, try to keep ahead of it.”

It was a long sober return flight even with the rum. While Mortimer slept, Joe and I drank steadily, trying to keep ahead of the thing. The rum was gone before we got to Denver. Joe looked at the empty bottle mournfully.

“Yuh done somethin’ t’ the booze, Hickey,” he muttered in a thirties dialect. “What yuh done t’ da booze?”

The mutter was for my benefit, but Dr. Mortimer was roused from his doze by the window.

“What’s that, Joe?”