Harlan Ellison - No Doors, No Windows

“I understand perfectly, darling. Perfectly.” Bonnie almost purred. Benny’s eyes narrowed. She didn’t sound angry.

“It was fun while it lasted, Bonnie, that’s it.” He tried to goad her into frenzy, trying to extract from her a tiny measure of anguish for the degradation she had heaped on him for the blackmailing hours in her bed of pain.

But Bonnie was soft as one of Dali’s watches. “Benny, my sweet, I understand completely. I’m sorry I misused you. Well, I’ll just sign off now, darling.”

There was a golden pause.

“Oh, yes,” Bonnie added, almost as an afterthought, “you know my friend Theo, at the Amusement Center? He also sends his hellos and goodbyes. Night-night, darling.” And she was gone.

He was still holding the phone as the switchboard girl came back on. “Mr. Mogelson? Today’s papers are here, sir. Do you want me to send them in with Diane?”

Benny answered yes, absently, and hung up the phone, still perplexed by Bonnie’s call. No fury? No threats? There was something wrong. That woman had ruined better men than him for less than what he had done to her. She was infamous in Hollywood; the most vindictive shrike going. And that comment about Theo, at the penny arcade. Now what the hell did she mean by that …?

The office door opened and Diane came in, depositing a stack of daily papers on Benny’s desk. “I’m leaving now, Mr. Mogelson,” she said. “My afternoon with the dentist.” She smiled at him with her almost complete set of capped teeth. Benny nodded absently; he was still thinking about Bonnie.

“Oh, there’s a paper there from Miss Prentiss’ office, Mr. Mogelson,” she added, hand on doorknob. “It came over by special messenger a few minutes ago.”

Benny had hurriedly rummaged through the paper seeking Bonnie’s column before the office door had closed behind the secretary. He found it and scanned down the column till he found the item:

For T-Men curious about phony restaurateur Orson Heller’s income tax, a reliable tipster informs this columnist that a careful study of safety deposit boxes in the Farmers’ Trust, the Surety National and the Seaforth Savings & Loan under the respective names Seymour Sunson, Walter Moon and Kenneth Starzl will reveal interesting results. Mr. Heller’s current enterprise, the shabbily renovated Barbary Coast boîte , fails to purchase for this gentleman the respectability denied him by a career as checkered as his tablecloths.

Benny’s mouth was dry as chalk-dust. It was impossible. He had read the item before she had sent it to the newspaper. She couldn’t possibly have changed it. The edition had gone to bed a day ahead of time, standard procedure for syndicated columnists, and there was no way of calling it back. He grabbed up a newsstand copy of the paper from the desk, and turned to the column. He’d been right. It was as she had sent it in.

Then what was this other, deadly, item?

He had no more time to wonder about it; the door to the office opened, and Orson Heller and Candy came into the room softly. “Leave!” Candy jabbed a finger at the tailor.

The tailor took one look at Candy, at the set of his yellow teeth against his lower lip, and nearly swallowed the pins in his mouth. He looked up at Benny Mogelson. “I said: leave,” Candy repeated. The tailor left, hurriedly.

Benny found himself staring at the blued-steel bulk of a .38 Police Special, the cumbersome cylinder of a silencer marring its smooth muzzle length. “Orson, baby, I —”

“I got this by special messenger, fifteen minutes ago, Benny buddy,” Orson said gently, handing across the folded edition of Bonnie’s newspaper.

One glance told Benny it was the bogus edition, and all at once, clearly and quickly, he knew what Bonnie had done. Theo, at the penny arcade, printed up dummy newspapers. The kind hick tourists bought, with jazzy headlines like HARRY SMITH HITS HOLLYWOOD, GIRLS TAKE TO THE HILLS!

And before Heller could get to Bonnie, she would somehow let him know it had been a gag, and get the real, the street, edition to him, saying Benny had thought it would be a funny bit, for his eyes only … or some-such drivel. But it would work; Heller would think ten times before giving Bonnie — as big as she was on the scene — a hard time.

But that wouldn’t save Benny.

It would be too late, then.

“Orson, baby, sweetie, listen, I —”

“I’ve told you, Benny, don’t call me those names,” Heller said companionably.

The silencer chugged once, asthmatically.

Benny was spun backward, against the desk, and as he hit the floor, as the light began to flicker and dim, he realized they would never find his body. He would be gone, like most of the other men Heller had hit. Bonnie had fouled him good. Very good.

Today, Orson Heller had gotten his two inches in the daily edition.

And by tomorrow, Benny Mogelson would have gotten six feet, or possibly full fathom five.

And as the light went further and further away, finally fading out entirely, he contemplated the ultimate irony of his career; that Benny Mogelson would never, never even get his two inches in tomorrow’s column. The obituary column.

All you need to know about me is that I was maybe, just possibly, there’s a good chance, you’d better believe it, going down for the third time in the sea of life.

That was the way it was for me — maybe — the night I met Holdie Karp. First time I set eyes on her, coming across the room at that phonyass literary coke-spoon party, I knew we’d get down together. Didn’t need any vibrations, didn’t need any sparring, didn’t need any games people play; there was enough heat coming off her to shatter my thermostat.

Denny Zucker introduced us. Denny was the lively arts editor of The Flash , an underground newspaper. Both Holdie Karp and I had written for him, and he knew we hadn’t met. “Johnny, this is Holdie Karp. Holdie, I want you to meet Johnny Noone.”

What a thrump of joy: not only did she have a considerable talent, but she was fine to behold, too. She was a writer, with a lot of clout. At one and the same instant we lunged at each other, me saying, “Hey, I read that piece you did on swinging singles in the Valley,” and her saying, “Hey, I read that piece you did on William DeVane,” and both of us coming in on harmony, “Jeezus, you can write!”

Then we stood there grinning at each other.

A week later, prior commitments being what they are, we wound up in bed.

She was a big lady and inventive and we both enjoyed the hell out of it. I was performing like the headline attraction in a Cuban Superman act. Ordinarily, I’m okay in bed … nothing to rent a Sunset Strip billboard to crow about, but Holdie brought out the best in me, a lot of which I hadn’t even known was in there. It went on for hours and hours, till the bed was soaked with sweat, and we ran out of baby oil to slop all over us. Oh, it was fine, just fine.

Couple of nights later I took her to a play. It was a bad play, and we dug it like mad because we both sat there knowing the other was hating it in precisely the same way, and when it was intermission we went out for a smoke. I lit her cigarette, and she lit mine; and we looked at each other and then looked at the poster of the play in the show-window of the theater; at the star and the director posing for the camera, looking like a pair of bats without a guano pile; and we broke up laughing. We split at once, went back to my place, broke apart long enough to use the two typewriters in my apartment to write our reviews of the play for our respective editors, and then fell into bed. We rolled around and around and laughed and did it every whichway we could think of, just to thumb our noses at bats and their bum plays.