“No,” Gwen answered instantly.
“A three-grain amytal,” Donnie persisted, “would cancel those bennies and still have enough left over to make you nice and dozy. We'd go to sleep together and I wouldn't worry about noises."
“You don't want to go to sleep until you know everyone else is asleep,” Gwen said. “Just like my mother. If I took one of your pills, you'd watch me sleep and you'd gloat."
“Well, isn't that what you do to me?"
“No, I do other things. By myself."
Donnie shrugged resignedly and went back to his chair and magazine.
Gwen wiped the itchy suds off her left hand, and leaving the rest of the dishes soaking, sat down opposite the TV. A curly-haired disk jockey was looking out thoughtfully across a record he was holding:
THE DISK JOCKEY: Some might think it strange that with such divergent tastes in drugs Donnie and Gwen Martin should seek happiness together and in their fashion find it... but life holds many mysteries, my friends. I could mention Jack Sprat and wife. We’ll all hope the Hubbard... oops!... Martin medicine cupboard is never bare. And now we will hear, by the joint request of Mr. and Mrs. Martin—are you out there, Don and Gwennie?—that popular old favorite (glancing down at record) The Insane Asylum Blues!
The music was real gone.
Donnie leaned back from his magazine and looked up at the ceiling. Gwen wondered if he were watching one of the glittering stars he'd named and pointed out to her on one of the rare Saturday nights they got outdoors. But after a while he said, “Benzedrine is an utterly evil drug, worse than coffee. Other drugs soothe and heal, but benzedrine only creates tension and confusion. I'll bet if I ask the Wise Old Crocodile he'll tell me the Devil invented it."
Gwen said, “If we ever went out nights and did anything, maybe I wouldn't need so much benzedrine. Besides, you have your sleeping pills and things."
“You don't need less benzedrine when you go out, you need more,” Donnie asserted unalterably. “And if I ever went out on week nights, I'd get excited and start to drink and you know what would happen. How often do I have to tell you, Woman, that the only reason I take my barbiturates and ‘things’ as you call them, is to keep calm and get enough sleep. If I didn't get enough sleep, I wouldn't be able to stand my job. If I couldn't stand my job, I'd start to drink. And if I started to drink, I'd be back in the Booby Hatch. And since the only reason you're outside is that I'm outside, holding a job, why you'd be back in the Booby Hatch too and they'd put you on tranquilizers and you wouldn't like it at all. So don't criticize my sleeping medicines, Woman. They're a mater of pure necessity whatever the doctors and psychologists say. Whereas your bennies and dexies—"
“We've been through all this before,” Gwen interrupted without rancor.
Donnie nodded owlishly. “Show me half,” he agreed, his words blurring for the first time.
“Besides,” Gwen said, “you're behind schedule."
Donnie squinted at the clock and snapped his fingers. The sound was dull but there was no unsteadiness in his walk as he went to the refrigerator and poured himself two fingers of grape juice. Then he reached down from the top shelf of the cupboard the bottle of paraldehyde and poured himself a glistening tablespoonful. Swift almost as though the intense odor, midway between gasoline and banana oil, leaped to the corners of the half-merged living room and kitchen. Gwen momentarily wrinkled her nose.
Donnie mixed the paraldehyde with the grape juice and licked the spoon. “Here's to the druggists and the one understanding doctor in ten,” he said and took a sip.
Gwen nodded solemnly and swallowed another benzedrine tablet.
Donnie transported his cocktail back to the armchair with great care and did not take his eye off the purple drink until he felt himself firmly anchored. He found his place in the science-fiction lead novelette, but the print began to slip sideways and so as he sipped his stinging drink, he began to imagine the secrets the Wise Old Crock might tell him if he were the young man on the cover.
THE WISE OLD CROCK: Got a hot tip shaping for tonight, son. Three new novas flaring in the next galaxy southeast-by-up and dust cloud billowing out of Andromeda like black lace underwear'. (Dips in his purse.) Drop this silver sphere in your pocket, son. It’s a universal TV pickup on the old crystal-ball principle. It lets you tune in on any scene in the universe. Use it wisely son, for character building as well as delight. Don’t use it to spy on your wife. (Dips again.)Now I want to give you this small black cylinder. Keep it always on your person. It’s a psychic whistle by which you can summon me at all times. All you have to do is concentrate on me, son. Concentrate...
There was a courtroom scene on the TV screen. A lawyer with friendly eyes but a serious brow was talking quietly to the jury, resting his hand on the rail of the box. Gwen had her ears fine-tuned by now and his voice synchronized perfectly with the movements of his lips.
THE FRIENDLY LAWYER: I have no wish to conceal the circumstance that my client met her husband- to-be while they were both patients in a mental hospital. Believe me, folks, some of life’s sweetest romances begin in the nut house. Gwen’s affection inspired Don to win his release, obtain employment as a precision machinist, offer my client marriage upon her release, and shower her with love and the yellow health-tablets, so necessary to her existence, which you have watched her consume during these weary days in court. Needless to remark, this was before Don Martin began traveling in space, where he came under the influence of (sudden scowls)a certain green crocodile, who shall be referred to hereinafter as Exhibit A. Enter it, clerk.
Donnie rose up slowly from the armchair. His drink was finished. He was glaring at the TV.
“The Old Crock wouldn't be seen dead looking at junk like that,” he cried thickly. “He's wired for real- life experience."
Donnie was half of a mind to kick in the picture tube when he looked toward the bedroom doorway and saw the Wise Old Crocodile standing in it, stooping low, his silver purse swinging as it dangled from his crested shoulder. Donnie knew it wasn't an hallucination, only a friendly faint green film on the darkness.
Fixing his huge kindly eyes on Donnie, the Wise Old Crock impatiently uncurled a long tentacle toward the darkness beyond him, as if to say, “Away! Away!” and then faded into it. Donnie followed him in a slow motion like Gwen's underwater ballet, shedding his shoes and shirt on the way. He was pulling his belt from the trouser loops with the air of drawing a sword as he closed the door behind him.
Gwen gave a sigh of pure joy and for a moment even closed her eyes. This was the loveliest time of all the night, the time of the Safe Freedom, the time of the Vigil. She started to roam.
First she thought she'd brush the bread crumbs from the supper table, but she got to studying their pattern and ended by picking them up one by one—she thought of it as a problem in subtraction. The pattern of the crumbs had been like that of the stars Donnie had showed her, she decided afterwards, and she was rather sorry she'd disturbed them. She carried them tenderly to the sink and delicately dusted them onto the cold gray dishwater, around which a few suds still lifted stubbornly, like old foam on an ocean beach. She saw the water glass and it reminded her to take another benzedrine tablet.
Four bright spoons caught her eye. She lifted them one by one, turning them over slowly to find all the highlights. Then she looked through the calendar on the wall, studying the months ahead and all the numbers of the days.