Doug Allyn - v108 n03-04_1996-09-10

He thought about how he would behave when they found her body. He wouldn’t overdo his grief. Everyone in White Mills knew the Noones were hardly a loving couple. He would be more shocked than tearful. He had warned Trina about that shaky ladder a dozen times. In fact, he mentioned it in front of Irma Goodwin when they picked out new curtains in her dry goods store. “You’re not hanging these until we get a new ladder,” Tommy had said.

It was time. He leaned into the microphone and said: “It’s two o’clock, folks, but it’s still Noone time, and time for more of your favorite Golden Oldies...”

The old tape reel was already in position. He flicked a switch to start it rotating, then slipped into a light topcoat. It was close to seventy degrees outdoors, but he felt the need for outer covering.

He was sure the treelined road between the studio and his house would be deserted. He could walk to his front door in less than eight minutes. If he met anyone, he would simply postpone his errand for another day. He liked to think of it as an “errand.”

When he arrived, Trina was sweeping the front porch. She looked at him in surprise.

“What are you doing home?”

He smiled. “Come inside and I’ll show you.”

She followed him. Sure enough, the curtains had been hung; the ladder leaned against the wall.

“They look great,” he said. “Only you shouldn’t have used that old ladder. You could have fallen and gotten a concussion.”

Before she knew what was happening, Tommy gave her that concussion. With her body arranged in front of the window, he ripped a curtain off its rod and put one end in her hand. Then he left. This time, he was far more careful about being seen.

It was just two-thirty when the last recording ended. It sounded like Frankie Avalon, but he wasn’t sure. “It’s two-thirty,” he said lovingly into the microphone, “but it’s still Nooooone time!” He stretched out the name longer than usual. But then, he felt better, stronger than usual.

He’d expected to be the one to call the police, but Ed Joseph, delivering the dry cleaning, peeked through the window when Trina didn’t answer the doorbell.

“Oh my God,” Tommy said to the solemn group around the dead woman. “What happened?” He looked at the curtain clutched in her hand, the old ladder with its wobbly rungs. “She fell, didn’t she? I warned her, but she wouldn’t listen!”

“Don’t think it happened that way,” Officer Buck Potter said, a man usually far more genial. “I think you killed her, Tommy.”

“Are you crazy, Buck? You know where I was all afternoon!”

“Sure do,” Potter said, and there were handcuffs in his big fists.

Why was Noone arrested? See The Final Paragraph (p. 285).

Continued from page 172

“We heard your broadcast,” Buck Potter said. “So we knew you had to be someplace else. You shouldn’t have left the weather report on that old tape, Tommy. Don’t think we’re expecting five inches of snow in June.”

© 1996 by Dennis Palumbo

When Dennis Palumbo appeared in EQMM’s Department of First Stories in 1978, his “day job” was Hollywood screenwriter for such notable films as My Favorite Year and the TV series Welcome Back, Kotter. After a long absence from short story writing, Mr. Palumbo, now a psychotherapist, is back with a tale that pays homage to the Blackwidower tales of the late Isaac Asimov.

I’d made the popcorn, as always, but at least Fred brought the beers.

“Can’t be a meeting of the Smart Guys Marching Society without some brewskis,” he said, letting the bottles rattle noisily as he dropped the bag on my new coffee table.

“Hey, watch it!” I lunged for the bowl of cheese whirls, now perched precariously at table’s edge.

Bill, munching peanuts, reached past my hand for the framed photo. “You got it framed!” he said — or, rather, mumbled. A lone peanut escaped his mouth, bounced off the throw rug, and scurried under the sofa.

“It’s a goddam feeding frenzy around here.” I was crouched by the sofa, reaching under for the peanut. All I came up with was a fistful of dustballs.

Bill looked at Fred, smirking. “Is he a good boy or what?”

“I happen to like a clean house,” I said, wiping my hand with a napkin.

“Lemme see the picture,” Fred was saying, craning to see over Bill’s shoulder. It was the Polaroid we’d taken with the auto shutter last week of the four of us — me, Bill, Fred, and Mark. Not a pretty sight. We looked like the chorus of a musical called Forty-Something: assorted beards, glasses, and receding hairlines, in sneakers, shorts, and one particularly vivid Hawaiian shirt.

“Whew,” Fred said, wincing at our smiling, casual poses. “It’s a good thing we’re smart.”

“That’s open to debate,” Mark growled, coming in the porch door, laden with grocery bags. His dark glasses, dark hair, and military-stiff bearing — a legacy of his career as an Intelligence officer turned journalist — were softened as always for me by his willingness to drop a few actual bucks for some real eats.

“My favorite Smart Guy!” Bill exclaimed, bouncing up to take bags from Mark. “Cold cuts, slaw... now we’re in business.”

“Look, are we here to eat or talk?” Fred looked concerned. A lawyer by trade, but philosopher by avocation, he rarely let our monthly discussions stray from what he liked to call “the big issues” — life, death, truth, etc. The usual suspects. He stroked his neat beard thoughtfully. “Today we’re doing Middle East policy, right?”

“I hope not,” Bill said, settling back on the sofa. He had the trim, wiry frame of a marathon runner, which in fact he was. “I brought a great Atlantic Monthly article about health care.”

He pulled copies of the magazine article from his back pocket, passed them around. A long-time actor and theater director, he had a tendency to try to control the flow and content of our discussions. With little success, I might add.

“What happened to the Middle East?” Fred complained.

Mark shrugged. “Don’t look at me. I was nowhere near there all week.”

“Ha. Ha.” Bill nodded toward the pages in our hands. “We’re doin’ health care.”

As a psychotherapist, with years of experience handling conflicts, I decided it was time to apply my professional skills to the impasse.

“We’ll flip a coin,” I said, doing so. Unfortunately, it bounced off the table and, with a perversity I’d swear was deliberate, rolled under the sofa.

Mark looked glum. “It’s gonna be a long afternoon.”

Let me explain. The Smart Guys Marching Society began as an impromptu bull session a couple of years before, when the four of us (and our wives and kids) were barbecuing in my backyard.

It was a typical Southern California day, the smog doing a slow dissolve over the Hollywood Hills. Lazy Sunday conversation turned into impassioned debate, the four of us guys huddled around the smoking grill. Women and children were scattered about, doing real life, while we grappled with such pragmatic concerns as Roman military strategy, foreign aid, and the merits of certain dead film directors.

“Can you believe these guys?” Bill ranted to his wife, throwing up his hands. “They think Sturges is overrated!” She stared back at him, unblinking.

We decided to make it a formal event, every Sunday afternoon. Stag. We didn’t plan it that way — our wives simply had the good sense not to want to come.

“I have better things to do,” Mark’s wife reportedly told him.