Nelson Algren - The New Black Mask Quarterly (№ 1)

I was still sputtering when the wire went dead. Jason glanced at me, and looked away. “Bet you could use a drink. Always helps at a time like this.”

“Thanks, but I guess not,” I said. “If you’ll be kind enough to drive me home...”

He did so, mumbling vague words of sympathy (for just what, he didn’t know). At my house, with its crumbling veranda and untended lawn, he pressed a fifty-dollar bill into my hand.

“Get your phone reconnected, okay? No, I insist! And I’m sorry things are so bad for you. Damned shame.”

I thanked him humbly, assuring him that I would do as he said.

By the time Mrs. Olmstead arose and began preparing breakfast, I had had two more callers, both crankily sympathetic as, like Jason, they brought word of a dire emergency.

I went with them, of course. How could I refuse? Or explain? And what if there actually was an emergency? There was always a chance, a million-to-one chance, that my caller might have a message of compelling importance. So it was simply impossible — impossible for me, at least — to ignore the summons.

The result was the same each time. An abusive demand to pay up or to suffer the ugly consequences.

I accepted some weak, lukewarm coffee from Mrs. Olmstead; I even ate a piece of her incredible toast and a bite or two of the scrambled eggs she prepared, which, preposterous as it seems, were half-raw but overcooked.

Ignoring Mrs. Olmstead’s inquiries about my “emergency” calls, I went up to my room and surrendered to a few hours of troubled rest. I came back downstairs shortly after noon, advised Mrs. Olmstead that I would fix my own lunch and that she should do as she pleased. She trudged down the road to the bus stop, going I knew not where nor cared. I cleaned myself up and dressed, not knowing what I was going to do, either. And not caring much.

From the not-too-distant distance came a steady rumbling and clattering and rattling; the to-and-fro passage of an an almost unbroken parade of trucks. Through the many gabled windows, their shutters opened to the spring breeze, came the sickishly-pungent perfume of what the trucks were carrying.

I laughed. Softly, sadly, wonderingly. I jumped up, slamming a fist into my palm. I sat back down and got up again. Aimlessly left the room to wander aimlessly through the house. Through the library with its threadbare carpet and its long, virtually empty bookshelves. Through the lofty drawing room, its faded tapestry peeling in tatters from the walls. The grand ballroom, its parquet floor declining imperceptibly but ominously with the vast weight of a rust-ruined pipe-organ.

I came out onto the rear veranda, where glass from shattered window’s splattered over the few unsalable items of furniture that remained. Expensive stained glass, bright with color.

I stood looking off into that previously mentioned, not-too-distant distance. It was coming closer; it had come quite a bit closer since yesterday, it seemed to me. And why not, anyway, as rapidly as those trucks were dumping their burden?

At present, I was merely — merely! — in the environs of a garbage dump. But soon it would be right up to my back door. Soon, I would be right in the middle of the stinking, rat-infested horror.

And maybe that was as it should be, hmm? What better place for the unwanted, unneeded, and worthless?

Jesus! I closed my eyes, shivering.

I went back through the house and up to my bedroom. I glanced at myself in a full-length mirror, and I doubt that I looked as bad as my warped and splotched reflection. But still I cursed and groaned out loud.

I flung off my clothes and showered vigorously. I shaved again, doing it right instead of half-assed. And then I began rummaging through my closets, digging far back in them and uncovering items I had forgotten.

An hour later, after some work with Mrs. Olmstead’s steam iron, some shoe polish, and a buffing brush, I again looked at myself. And warped as it was, the mirror told me my efforts were well spent indeed.

The handmade shoes were eternally new, ever magnificent, despite their age. The cambric shirt from Sulka and the watered-silk Countess Mara tie were new — long-ago Christmas presents which I had only glanced at and returned to their gift box. And a decade had been wonderfully kind to the Bond Street suit, swinging full circle through fads and bringing it back in style again.

I frowned, studying my hair.

The shagginess was not too bad, not unacceptable, but a trim was certainly in order. The gray temples and the gray streak down the center were also okay, a distinguished contrast for the jet blackness. However that yellowish tinge that gray hair shittily acquires was not all right. I needed to see a truly good hair man, a stylist, not the barbe-college cruds that I customarily went to.

I examined my wallet — twelve dollars plus the fifty Jason had given me. So I could properly finish the job I had started, hair and all. And the wonders it would do for my frazzled morale to look decent again, the way Britton Rainstar had to look... having so little else but looks.

But if I did that, if I didn’t make at least a token payment to Amicable Finance—!

The phone rang. It had not been disconnected, as Jason had assumed. Calling me at other numbers was simply part of the “treatment.”

I picked up the phone and identified myself.

A cheery man’s voice said that he was Mr. Bradley, Amicable comptroller. “You have quite a large balance with us, Mr. Rainstar. I assume you’ll be dropping in today to settle up?”

I started to say that I was sorry, that I simply couldn’t pay the entire amount, as much as I desired to. “ But I’ll pay something; that’s a promise , Mr. Bradley. And I’ll have the rest within a week — I swear I will! J-just don’t do anything. D-don’t hurt me. Please, Mr. Bradley.”

“Yes, Mr. Rainstar? What time can I expect you in today?”

“You can’t,” I said.

“How’s that?” His voice cracked like a whip.

“Not today or any other day. You took my car. I repaid your loan in full, and you still took my car. Now—”

“Late charges, Rainstar. Interest penalties. Repossession costs. Nothing more than your contract called for.”

I told him he could go fuck for what the contract called for. He could blow it out his ass. “And if you bastards pull any more crap on me, any more of this calling me to the phone in the middle of the night...”

“Call you to the phone?” He was laughing at me. “Fake emergency calls? What makes you think we were responsible?”

I told him why I thought it; why I knew it. Because only Amicable Finance was lousy enough to pull such tricks. Others might pimp for their sisters at a nickel a throw, but they weren’t up to Amicable’s stunts.

“So here’s some advice for you, you liver-lipped asshole! You fuck with me any more, and it’ll be shit in the fan! Before I’m through with you, you’ll think lightning struck a crapper...!”

I continued a minute or two longer, growing more elaborate in my cursing. And, not surprisingly, I had quite a vocabulary of curses. Nothing is sacred to children, just as anything unusual is an affront to them, a challenge which cannot be ignored. And when you have a name like Britton Rainstar, you are accepted only after much fighting and cursing.

I slammed down the phone. Frightened stiff by what I had done, yet somehow pleased with myself. I had struck back for a change. For once in a very long time, I had faced up to the ominous instead of ignoring or running from it.

I fixed the one drink I had in the house, a large drink of vodka. Sipping it, feeling the dullness go out of my heart, I decided that I would by god get the needful clone with my hair. I would look like a man, by god, not the Jolly Green Giant, when Amicable Finance started giving me hell.