"What is it?" Margo said, from the other side of the room.
"You'd be bored," Vic said, setting aside his piece of berry pie. "It's real, isn't it?" he said. "Yes, you can see under it. No supports. It holds itself out like that."
"She's leaning forward," Ragle said.
"A girl, is it?" Margo said. "Let me look; I won't carp." She came over and stood beside Ragle, and all three of them studied the picture. It was full-page, in color. Of course the rain had stained and faded it, but there was no doubt; the woman was unique.
"And she has such a gentle face," Margo said. "So refined and civilized."
"But sensual," Ragle said.
Under the picture was the caption, _Marilyn Monroe during her visit to England, in connection with the filming of her picture with Sir Laurence Olivier._
"Have you heard of her?" Margo said.
"No," Ragle said.
"She must be an English starlet," Vic said.
"No," Margo said, "it says she's on a visit to England. It sounds like an American name." They turned to the article itself.
The three of them read what remained of the article.
"It talks about her as if she's very famous," Margo said. "All the crowds. People lining the streets."
"Over there," Vic said. "Maybe in England; not in America."
"No, it says something about her fan clubs in America."
"Where did you get this?" Vic said to Ragle.
He said, "In the lots. Those ruins. That you're trying to get the city to clear."
"Maybe it's a very old magazine," Margo said. "But Laurence Olivier is still alive... I remember seeing _Richard the Third_ on TV, just last year."
They looked at one another.
Vic said, "Do you want to tell me what your hallucination is now?"
"What hallucination?" Margo said instantly, glancing from him to Ragle. "Was that what you two were talking about, that you didn't want me to hear?"
After a pause, Ragle said, "I've been having an hallucination, dear." He tried to smile at his sister encouragingly, but her face remained cruel with concern. "Don't look so anxious," he said. "It's not that bad."
"What is it?" she demanded.
He said, "I'm having trouble with words."
At once she said, "Trouble speaking? Oh my god... that's how President Eisenhower was after his stroke."
"No," he said. "That's not what I mean." They both waited, but now that he tried to explain he found it almost impossible. "I mean," he said, "things aren't what they seem."
Then he was silent.
"Sounds like Gilbert and Sullivan," Margo said.
"That's all," Ragle said. "I can't explain it any better."
"Then you don't think you're losing your mind," Vic said. "You don't think it's in you; it's outside. In the things themselves. Like my experience with the light cord."
After hesitating he at last nodded. "I suppose," he said. For some obscure reason he had an aversion toward tying in Vic's experience with his own. They did not appear to him to be similar.
Probably just snobbery on my part, he thought. Margo, in a slow, dreadful voice, said, "Do you think we're being duped?"
"What a strange thing to say," he said.
"What do you mean by that?" Vic said.
"I don't know," Margo said. "But in _Consumer's Digest_ they're always telling you to watch out for frauds and misleading advertising; you know, short weight and that sort of thing. Maybe this magazine, this publicity about this Marilyn Monroe, is all just a big bunch of hot air. They're trying to build up some trivial starlet, pretend everybody has heard of her, so when people hear about her for the first time they'll say, Oh yes, that famous actress. Personally I don't think she's much more than a glandular case." She ceased talking and stood silently, plucking at her ear in a repetitious nervous tic. Her forehead webbed with worry-lines.
"You mean maybe somebody made her up?" Vic said, and laughed.
"Duped," Ragle repeated.
It rang a bell deep inside him. On some sub-verbal level.
"Maybe I won't go away," he said.
"Were you going away?" Margo said. "Nobody feels obliged to let me in on anything; I suppose you were going to leave tomorrow and never come back. Write us a post card from Alaska."
Her bitterness made him uncomfortable. "No," he said. "I'm sorry, dear. Anyhow I'm going to stay. So don't brood about it."
"Were you intending to drop out of your contest?"
"I hadn't decided," he said.
Vic said nothing.
To Vic, he said, "What do you suppose we can do? How do we go about -- whatever we ought to go about?"
"Beats me," Vic said. "You're experienced with research. Files and data and graphs. Start keeping a record of all this. Aren't you the man who can see patterns?"
"Patterns," he said. "Yes, I suppose I am." He hadn't thought about his talent in this connection. "Maybe so," he said.
"String it all together. Collect all the information, get it down in black and white -- hell, build one of your scanners and run it through so you can view it, the way you do."
"It's impossible," he said. "We have no point of reference. Nothing to judge by."
"Simple contradictions," Vic disagreed. "This magazine with an article about a world-famous movie star we haven't heard of; that's a contradiction. We ought to comb the magazine, read every word and line. See how many other contradictions there are, with what we know outside the magazine."
"And the phone book," he said. The yellow section, the business listings. And perhaps, at the Ruins, there was other material.
The point of reference. The Ruins.
five
Bill Black parked his '57 Ford in the reserved slot in the employees' lot of the MUDO -- Municipal Utility District Office -- building. He meandered up the path to the door and inside the building, past the receptionist's desk, to his office.
First he opened the window, and then he removed his coat and hung it up in the closet. Cool morning air billowed into the office. He inhaled deeply, stretched his arms a couple of times, and then he dropped himself into his swivel chair and wheeled it around to face his desk. In the wire basket lay two notes. The first turned out to be a gag, a recipe clipped from some household column describing a way to fix a casserole of chicken and peanut butter. He tossed the recipe into the wastebasket and lifted out the second note; with a flourish he unfolded it and read it.
_Man at the house tried to call Bridgeland, Sherman, Devonshire, Walnut, and Kent field numbers._
I can't believe it, Black thought to himself. He stuck the note in his pocket, got up from his desk and went to the closet for his coat, closed the window, left his office and walked down the corridor and past the receptionist's desk, outside onto the path, and then across the parking lot to his car. A moment later he had backed out onto the street and was driving downtown.
Well, you can't have everything in life perfect, he said to himself as he drove through the morning traffic. I wonder what it means. I wonder how it could have happened.
Some stranger could have stepped in off the street and asked to use the phone. Oh? What a laugh that was.
I give up, he said to himself. It's just one of those deadly things that defies analysis. Nothing to do but wait and see what took place. Who made the call, why, and how.
What a mess, he said to himself.
Across the street from the back entrance of the _Gazette_ building he parked and got out of his car, stuck a dime in the parking meter, and then entered the _Gazette_ offices by the back stairs.
"Is Mr. Lowery around?" he asked the girl at the counter. "I don't think he is, sir," the girl said. She moved toward the switchboard. "If you want to wait, I'll call around and see if they can locate him."
"Thanks," he said. "Tell him it's Bill Black."