"Would you check on some others for me?" he asked.
"Yes sir."
He read off other numbers from the page. Each one had been disconnected.
Of course. An old phone book. Obviously. It was true; probably it was a discarded series in its entirety.
He thanked her and hung up.
So nothing had been proved or learned.
An explanation might be that these numbers had been assigned to several towns nearby. The towns had incorporated, and a new number system installed. Perhaps when the switch to dial phones was made, only recently, a year or so ago.
Feeling foolish, he walked back into the kitchen.
The magazines had begun to dry, and he seated himself with one of them on his lap. Fragments broke away as he turned the first page. A family magazine, first an article on cigarettes and lung cancer... then an article on Secretary Dulles and France. Then an article by a man who had trekked up the Amazon with his children. Then stories, Westerns and detectives and adventure in the South Seas. Ads, cartoons. He read the cartoons and put the magazine down.
The next magazine had more pictures in it; something like _Life_. But the paper was not as high-quality as the Luce publications' paper. Still, it was a first-line magazine. The cover was gone, so he could not tell if it was _Look_; he guessed that it was _Look_ or one he had seen a couple of times called _Ken_.
The first picture-story dealt with a hideous train-wreck in Pennsylvania. The next picture-story--
A lovely blond Norse-looking actress. Reaching up, he moved the lamp so that it cast more light on the page.
The girl had heavy hair, well-groomed and quite long. She smiled in an amazingly sweet manner, a jejune but intimate smile that held him. Her face was as pretty as any he had seen, and in addition she had a deep, full, sensual chin and neck, not the rather ordinary neck of most starlets but an adult, ripe neck, and excellent shoulders. No hint of boniness, nor of fleshiness. A mixture of races, he decided. German hair. Swiss or Norwegian shoulders.
But what really held him, held him in a state of near-incredulity, was the sight of the girl's figure. Good grief, he said to himself. And what a pure-looking girl. How could she be so developed?
And she seemed happy to show it. The girl leaned forward, and most of her bosom spilled out and displayed itself. It looked to be the smoothest, firmest, most natural bosom in the world. And very warm-looking, too.
He did not recognize the girl's name. But he thought, There's the answer to our need of a mother. Look at that.
"Vic," he said, getting up with the magazine and carrying it into the living room. "Take a look at this," he said, putting it down in Vic's lap.
"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.