“That won’t be necessary. I have already notified the proper authorities.”
Walter stepped out onto the porch and into the wisps of fog, Officer Stiltson behind him. He looked around one last time at the neighborhood he knew so well. There was the Pay-Less Corner Grocery, diagonally across the street. He had passed it every night on his return walk to the apartment. And he had worked out his plan on one of those walks. He had worked it out so well; only a few minutes ago he had decided finally to go through with it.
There was the officer’s arrest car, its door flung open, a small cloud of vapor emanating from the exhaust and blending into the fog. And there was a small bright light from the radio inside. Just waiting. Waiting to take him to the Prevention House where he would be locked up and watched and given tests — countless tests with countless questions that he couldn’t hope to answer. No more walks through his old neighborhood. No more choice of whether he wanted to walk or not. Walter Spector: criminal, prisoner.
Walter took a deep breath — and sprinted off the porch and dashed diagonally across the yard. Officer Stiltson calmly and carefully fired three shots at his back, the shots hitting Walter in the left lung, the right lung, and the right kidney; and Walter fell dead.
In the second car across the street Commissioner Lusnet and Chief Detective Karrick watched as Officer Stiltson reloaded his gun.
“Overreaction,” said Karrick, his fingers dug into the armrest. “One shot would have stopped him.”
“My goodness,” said Commissioner Lusnet.
A Night Out with the Boys
by Elsin Ann Gardner[4]
The lights were dim, so low I could hardly make out who was in the room with me. Annoyed, I picked my way to the center where the chairs were. The smoky air was as thick as my wife’s perfume, and about as breathable.
I pulled a metal folding chair out and sat next to a man I didn’t know. Squinting, I looked at every face in the room. Not one was familiar. Damn that Russell! I didn’t belong in the gathering, and he had to have known it.
Adjusting my tie, the wide garish tie Georgia had given me for Christmas, I stared at the glass ashtray in the hand of the man next to me. The low-watt-age lights were reflected in it, making, I thought, a rather interesting pattern. At least, it was more interesting than anything that had happened yet that evening.
I was a fool to have come, I thought, angry. When the letter came the week before, my wife had opened it. As always.
“Look,” she d said, handing me my opened mail. It was a small rectangle of neatly printed white paper.
“It’s from that nice man down the block. It’s an invitation to a meeting of some sort. You’ll have to go.”
“Go? Meeting?” I asked, taking off my overcoat and reaching for the letter.
You are invited, the paper read, to the Annual Meeting of the Brierwood Men’s Club, to be held at the Ram’s Room at Twink’s Restaurant on Monday Evening, January 8, at eight o’clock.
It was signed, Yours in brotherhood, Glenn Russell.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said, “I hardly know the guy. And I’ve never heard of the club.”
“You’re going,” Georgia rasped. “It’s your chance to get in good with the new neighbors. We’ve lived here two whole months and not a soul has dropped in to see us.”
No wonder, I thought. They’ve heard enough of your whining and complaining the times they’ve run into you at the supermarket.
“Maybe,” I said aloud, “people here are just reserved.”
“Maybe people in the east just aren’t as friendly as the people you knew back home,” she said, sneering.
“Oh, Georgia, don’t start that up again! We left, didn’t we? I pulled up a lifetime of roots for you, didn’t I?”
“Are you trying to tell me it was my fault? Because if you are, Mr. Forty-and-Foolish, you’ve got another think coming! It was entirely your fault, and you’re just lucky I didn’t leave you over it.”
“All right, Georgia.”
“Where would you be without Daddy’s money, Mr. Fathead? Where would you be without me?”
“I’m sorry, Georgia. I’m just tired, that’s all.”
She gave a smug little smile and continued. “You are going,” she nodded, making her dyed orange hair shake like an old mop. “Yes, indeed. You can wear your good dark brown suit and that new tie I gave you and—”
And she went on and on, planning my wardrobe, just as she’d planned every minute of my last fourteen years.
So the night of January eighth I was at the Annual Meeting of the Brierwood Men’s Club. What crazy kind of club had a meeting annually? A service club? Fraternal organization?
It was almost eight when the men stopped filing into the room. They were, with hardly an exception, a sad-looking lot. I mean, they looked depressed. A gathering of funeral directors? A club for people who had failed at suicide and were contemplating it again?
“I think this is all of us, men,” Russell said, standing on the dais. “Yes. We can begin. Alphabetical order, as always. One minute each, no more.”
Alphabetical order? One minute?
A sad tired-looking man in his fifties stood up and went to the platform.
“Harry Adams. She, she—”
He wiped his brow nervously, then went on.
“This year has been the worst ever for me. You’ve seen her. She’s so beautiful. I know you think I’m lucky. But I’m not, oh, no. She’s been after me every minute to buy her this, buy her that, so she can impress all the neighbors. I don’t make enough money to be able to do this! But she threatened to leave me and take all I’ve got, which isn’t that much any longer, if I don’t give in.
“So I took out a loan at the bank, told them it was for a new roof, bought her everything she wanted with the money. But it wasn’t enough. She wants more. A full-length mink coat, a two-carat diamond ring. I’ll have to go to another bank and get another loan for my roof. I’m running out of money, I’m running out of roofs—”
“One minute, Harry.”
Dejected, the little man left the platform and another man took his place.
“Joe Browning. She invited her mother to live with us. The old dame moved in last April. I can hardly stand my wife, but now I’ve got two of them. Whining, nagging, in stereo, yet. You can’t imagine how it is, guys! You think you’ve got troubles? You should have the troubles I’ve got. I get home from work five minutes late, I’ve got two of them on my back. I forget my wife’s birthday, my mother-in-law lets me have it. I forget my mother-in-law’s birthday, my wife lets me have it.”
He looked over at Russell, sitting on the platform.
“More?”
“Ten seconds, Joe.”
“I just want to say I can’t stand it at home any longer! I’m not a young man any longer. I—”
“Minute, Joe.”
And then it was another’s turn. I sat there rigid with fascination. What a great idea! Once a year to get together and complain about the wife! Get it out of the system, let it all out. And to think I hadn’t wanted to come!
Some guy named Dorsey spoke next. His wife had eaten herself up to 280 pounds. And Flynn, his wife had gone to thirty doctors for her imagined ills. Herter, his wife refused to wear her false teeth around the house unless they had guests, and Hurd, his wife wouldn’t let him go out with the boys, and Klutz, his wife had wrecked his brand-new sports car three times during the year, and Lemming, his wife gave all his comfortable old clothes to charity, and Morgan, his wife kept going through the house, finding his liquor bottles and pouring them down the sink.