“What the Hell,” said the voice of Mr. Bermingham, from somewhere up there, “are you doing in my office?”
I opened my eyes, and he was quite right. I was in Mr. Bermingham’s office. The sun was streaming through Mr. Bermingham’s Venetian blinds, and Mr. Bermingham was standing over me with a selection of the switchblade knives in his hands.
I don’t know how Everyman reacts to this sort of situation. I guess I ran about average. I pushed myself up on one elbow and blinked at him.
“Spastic,” he muttered to himself “Well?”
I cleared my throat. “I, uh, I think I can explain this.”
He was hung over and shaking. “Go ahead! Who the devil are you?”
“Well, my name is Dupoir.”
“I don’t mean what’s your name, I mean- Wait a minute. Dupoir?”
“Dupoir.”
“As in $14,752.03?”
“That’s right, Mr. Bermingham.”
“You!” he gasped. “Say, you’ve got some nerve coining here this way. I ought to teach you a lesson.”
I scrambled to my feet. Mighty thews rippling, I tossed back my head and bellowed the death challenge of the giant anthropoids with whom I had been raised.
Bermingham misunderstood. It probably didn’t sound like a death challenge to him. He said anxiously, “If you’re going to be sick, go in there and do it. Then we’re going to straighten this thing out.”
I followed his pointing finger. There on one side of the foyer was the door marked Staff Washroom, and on the other the door to the street through which I had carried- him. It was only the work of a second to decide which to take. I was out the door, down the steps, around the corner and hailing a fortuitous cab before he could react.
By the time I got to the house that Mr. Klaw wanted so badly to take away from us it was 7:40 on my watch. There was no chance at all that Shirl would still be asleep. There was not any very big chance that she had got to sleep at all that night, not with her faithful husband for the first time in the four years of our marriage staying out all night without warning, but no chance at all that she would be still in bed. So there would be explaining to do. Nevertheless I insinuated my key into the lock of the back door, eased it open, slipped ghost-like through and gently closed it behind me.
I smelled like a distillery, I noticed, but my keen, jungletrained senses brought me no other message. No one was in sight or sound. Not even Butchie was either chattering or weeping to disturb the silence.
I slid silently through the mud-room into the half-bath where I kept a spare razor. I spent five minutes trying to convert myself into the image of a prosperous young executive getting ready to be half an hour late at work, but it was no easy job. There was nothing but soap to shave with, and Butchie had knocked it into the sink. What was left was a blob of jelly, sculpted into a crescent where the dripping tap had eroded it away. Still, I got clean, more or less, and shaved, less.
I entered the kitchen, and then realized that my jungle-trained senses had failed to note the presence of a pot of fresh coffee perking on the stove. I could hear it plainly enough. Smelling it was more difficult; its scent was drowned by the aroma of cheap booze that hung in the air all around me.
So I turned around and yes, there was Shirl on the stairway, holding Butchie by one hand like Maureen O’Sullivan walking Cheeta. She wore an expression of unrelieved tragedy.
It was clearly necessary to give her an explanation at once, whether I had one or not. “Honey,” I said, “I’m sorry. I met this fellow I hadn’t seen in a long time, and we got to talking. I know we should have called. But by the time I realized the tune it was so late I was afraid I’d wake you up.”
“You can’t wear that shut to the office,” she said woefully. “I ironed your blue and gray one with the white cuffs. It’s in the closet.”
I paused to analyze the situation. It appeared she wasn’t angry at all, only upset-which, as any husband of our years knows, is 14,752.03 times worse. In spite of the fact that the reek of booze was making me giddy and fruit flies were buzzing around, Shirl’s normally immaculate kitchen, I knew what I had to do. “Shirl,” I said, falling to one knee, “I apologize.”
That seemed to divert her. “Apologize? For what?”
“For staying out all night.”
“But you explained all that. You met this fellow you hadn’t seen in a long time, and you got to talking. By the time you realized the time it was so late you were afraid you’d wake me up.”
“Oh, Shirl,” I cried, leaping to my feet and crushing her in my mighty thews. I would have kissed her, but the reek of stale liquor seemed even stronger. I was afraid of what close contact might do, not to mention its effect on Butchie, staring up at me with a thumb and two fingers in his mouth. We Dupoirs never do anything by halves.
But there was a tear in her eye. She said, “I watched Butchie, honestly I did. I always do. When he broke the studio lamp I was watching every minute, remember? He was just too fast for me.”
I didn’t have any idea what she was talking about. That is not an unfamiliar situation in our house, and I have developed a technique for dealing with it. “What?” I asked,
“He was too fast for me,” Shirl said woefully. “When he dumped his vitamins into his raisins and oatmeal I was right there. I went to get some paper napkins, and that was when he did it. But how could I know it would nun the plastics bin?”
I went into Phase Two. “What plastics bin?”
“Our plastics bin.” She pointed. “Where Butchie threw the stuff.”
At once I saw what she meant. There was a row of four plastic popup recycling bins in our kitchen, one for paper, one for plastics, one for glass and one for metals. They were a credit to us, and to Mr. Horgan and to the Fourteenth Floor. However, the one marked “plastics” was not a credit to anyone any more. It had sprung a leak. A colorless fluid was oozing out of the bottom of it and, whatever it was, it was deeply pitting the floor tiles.
I bent closer and realized where the reek of stale booze was coming from: out of the juices that were seeping from our plastics bin.
“What the devil?” I asked.
Shirl said thoughtfully, “If vitamins can do that to plastic, what do you suppose they do to Butchie’s insides?”
“It isn’t the vitamins. I know that much.” I reached in and hooked the handle of what had been a milk jug, gallon size. It was high-density polythene and about 400 percent more indestructible than Mount Rushmore. It was exactly the kind of plastic jug that people who loved buzzards better than babies have been complaining about finding bobbing around the surf of their favorite bathing beaches, all the world over.
Indestructible or not, it was about 90 percent destroyed. What I pulled out was a handle and part of a neck. The rest drizzled off into a substance very like the stuff I had shaved with. Only that was soap, which one expects to dissolve from time to time. High-density polythene one does not.
The fruit flies were buzzing around me, and everything was very confusing. I was hardly aware that the front doorbell had rung until I noticed that Shirl had gone to answer it.
What made me fully aware of this was Mr. Bermingham’s triumphant roar: “Thought I’d find you here, Dupoir! And who are these people-your confederates?”
Bermingham had no terrors for me. I was past that point. I said, “Hello, Mr. Bermingham. This confederate is my wife, the littler one here is my son. Shirl, Butchie-Mr. Bermingham. Mr. Bermingham’s the one who is going to take away our house.”
Shirl said politely, “You must be tired, Mr. Bermingham. I’ll get you a cup of coffee.”
Garigolli to Home Base
Chief,
I admit it, we’ve excreted this one out beyond redemption. Don’t bother to reply to this. Just write us off.