Fritz Leiber: The Sinful Ones

Marcia wouldn’t go off and leave the door like that.

The bedroom door was open. He crossed to it, his footsteps soundless on the thick carpet. He stopped.

Marcia was sitting on an upholstered stool before a big-mirrored dressing table. Over a chair to one side a gray silk dressing gown was thrown. She was wearing absolutely nothing. A squashed cigarette was smoldering in a tiny silver ash tray. She was lacquering her nails.

That was all. But to Carr it seemed that he had blundered into one of those elaborately realistic department store window displays. He almost expected to see faces peering in the dark window, seven stories up.

Modern bedroom in rose and smoke. Seated mannequin at vanity table. Perhaps a placard, party in script: “Point up your Pinks with Gray.”

He stood there stupidly, a step short of the doorway, saying nothing, making no move.

In the mirror her eyes seemed to meet his. He couldn’t believe that she was unaware of his presence. He had never know her so brazenly immodest.

She went on lacquering her nails.

She might be angry with him for coming up without the obligatory phone call. But it wasn’t like Marcia to choose this queer way of showing her displeasure—and herself.

Or was it? Was she deliberately trying to tease him?

He watched her face in the mirror. It was this one he had forgotten, all right. There were the firm lips, the cool forehead framed by reddish hair, the fleeting quirks of expression—not the ones he was most used to, but definitely hers.

Yet recognition did not bring the sense of absolute certainty it should. Something was lacking—the feeling of a reality behind the face, animating it.

She finished her nails and held them out to dry.

A sharp surge of uneasiness went through Carr. This was nonsensical, he told himself. He must move or speak.

She sat more erect and drew back her shoulders. A faint, admiring and self-satisfied smile settled into her lips. With the pads of her fingertips, still being careful about the polish, she lightly stroked her breasts—upward, almost unnecessarily. Her smile grew dreamy.

The finger-pads closed in on the aureoles and pinched the small nipples. He thought he could see them stiffen.

He felt himself stiffen.

His throat was constricted and his legs felt numb. And looking at her, tauntingly nude, teasingly erotic, he took a forward step. She had no right to tempt him so—

And then all of a sudden it came back: the awful feeling he’d had that afternoon. It stopped him in his tracks.

What if Marcia weren’t really alive at all, not consciously alive, but just part of the dance of mindless atoms, a clockworks show that included the whole world, except himself? Merely by coming a few minutes ahead of time, merely by omitting to shave, he had broken the clockwork rhythm. That was why the clerk hadn’t spoken to him, that was why the elevator hadn’t worked when he’d first pushed the button, that was why the fat man had ignored him, that was why Marcia didn’t greet him. It wasn’t time yet for those little acts in the clockworks show.

The creamy telephone tinkled. Lifting it gingerly, fingers stiffly spread, the figure at the vanity held it to her ear a moment and said, “Certainly. Send him up.”

She inspected her nails, waved them, regarded her reflection in the glass, reached for the gray negligee, and—her smile at herself in the mirror became mischievous and (there was the suggestion of a conspiratorial wink) a touch cruel. She drew back her hand, crossed it over the other across her knees, and sat there primly upright, “marking time.” But her smile continued to dance.

Through the open door Carr could hear the drone of the rising cage.

The cage stopped. There was the soft jolt of its automatic door opening. Carr waited for footsteps. They didn’t come.

That was his elevator, he thought with a shudder, the one he was supposed to come up in.

Suddenly Marcia turned. “Darling,” she said, rising quickly.

The hairs on the back of his neck lifted. She wasn’t looking straight at him, he felt, but at something behind him. She was watching him come through the living room. And she seemed to be quietly enjoying the surprise she knew her nakedness would give him.

Then he realized that she was really looking at him, and that this was Marcia’s face to the life, a face vital with awareness, just as he remembered it, and that everything else had been his stupid imagination, and why the devil had he been surprised at her not noticing him sooner when he’d sneaked in so silently?

The surge of relief made his knees shake.

He put out his arms. “Marcia!”

As Carr was about to kiss her, Marcia moved back from him smoothly, hands on his shoulders, inspecting his face.

“You’re looking well,” she said. “Mix us some drinks while I slip into a dress.”

She coolly departed and shut the bedroom door behind him.

Carr located a bottle of rye in the kitchen. Before doing anything else he had a straight shot. The little experience had certainly shaken him up. It was like, but worse than, those moments in childhood when everything seems strangely vivid and at the same time unreal. Chalk on a blackboard. Being outside and through a window watching adults reading newspapers in a living room at night.

He put a tray of ice in the sink to melt, hunted up ginger ale for himself. Marcia of course would take water, not too much.

He’d mention his experience to her, jokingly. On second thought, he wouldn’t. At least not right off. Sometimes Marcia wasn’t interested in the subjective. More practical. People, money, the latest news—things like that. Jobs.

He frowned unhappily, remembering her phone call.

He took a long time making the drinks, but the bedroom door was still shut when he brought them out. He sat down, holding them, not touching his. It was a bit like waiting in an office.

When Marcia came in he jumped up, smiling. “Say, are we going to the Pendletons’ party Friday? Should be interesting.”

She nodded. “You’re meeting Keaton Fisher there.”

He tried not to hear that.

Marcia sampled her drink. She had put on a black slip, but no bra. She sat down on the couch.

“Is it all right?” he asked.

“Of course,” she said. “Carr, this idea of Keaton’s—”

“Say, Marcia,” he began moving over so that he stood in front of her, “the queerest thing happened to me this afternoon.”

“—is a remarkable one,” she concluded.

He gave up. “Well, what is it exactly?” he asked, starting to sit down close beside her. But she swung around toward him, so that he had to take the other end of the couch, leaving a business-like distance between them.

“In the first place, this is confidential,” she began. “Keaton asked me not to tell anyone. You’ll have to pretend you’re getting it from him first hand, Friday night.” She paused. “It’s an editorial counseling service.”

“What’s that?”

“You’ll take ailing magazines of all sorts, newspapers, trade journals, etcetera, analyze them and their difficulties, conduct surveys of readers and advertisers, reshape their policies and modernize their methods, pump them full of new ideas—in short, sell them the advice that will put them on their feet.”

Carr tried to look thoughtful. Marcia swept on, “Keaton has his plans all laid. He’s gone into it very carefully. He’s spotted some likely first clients—badly edited publications he knows it’ll be easy to improve. That way you’ll get a reputation right from the start. Once the circulation of those first publications begins to climb, watch the others flock to you! Even if you have to lose money to turn the trick, it will be worth it.”