Harlan Ellison - Shatterday

“I thought we had all that settled?” she reminded him.

He ran an all-seeing finger across her high cheekbone. “If you were scrawny like a Keane painting, you could be a model with a face like that.”

“I’m part Indian. My grandfather on my mother’s side. I could even—” she slapped his hand away from there, “—speak a little Sioux when I was a kid.” She slapped his hand a second time. “Please, Arlo.” She stood up suddenly. “I’d better check, make sure my things are dry by now.”

“Stay. I’ll be good. Word of honor.”

“I know about your honor. Tarnished.”

“I’ve never spoken to an Indian before. An Amerindian, as a matter of cold fact. Talk some Sioux to me.”

She took a step toward the bathroom, he grabbed her hand and she let him. “I don’t remember any.”

“It’s just like English, isn’t it?” Nonsense syllables. He was gibbering, and they both knew what was happening. “I mean, you leave out a few of the small words and put ‘um’ at the end of the others? Me wantum you?”

She laughed. He stood up and tried to hold her, but she did a fast two-step.

“I have the feeling,” she said, imbedding a restraining finger in his chest (the fingernail was long, painted, and hurt like hell), “that I’m being turned into a tease. And I’m not. Maybe I’m not as bright as I ought to be, but… oh hell, I refuse to defend myself.” Her voice softened. “Thanks for the omelet, I’ve got to get dressed. If my roommate wakes up and I’m not back she’ll call the safe and loft squad, or whoever it is they call when a girl’s been broken and entered.”

They looked at each other for a long moment, over a distance that she increased geometrically as the micro-instants elapsed. When she had attained a distance of several light-years, there in the dim living room, she turned away and went to the bathroom.

Consider now: all that firm girlstuff, busily hooking bra under breasts, pulling it around so the cups are in front, pulling it up, stuffing and handling gingerly; stepping into, putting on, pulling over, adjusting to, smoothing out, hooking on, slipping into. While over there, beyond lath and plaster, Arlo, Great White Hunter, coming to a rapid boil. Knowing now was the penultimate moment. And in some ways the best moment of all, for now was all anticipation without even the slightest disappointment. Now she was perfect, unflawed, and the best since Helen of Troy (and what’s she doing now?).

She came out of the bathroom, gathered everything she needed, and as he made to rise, put out a palm against the air between them. He sank back. She smiled with genuine affection, nodded slightly as if to say it could never be, oh my Heathcliff, and went to the door.

No exit lines.

She turned the knob and pulled the door inward.

Quietly now, Arlo: “Do me one small favor before you go?” She turned and looked at him, wide open now that safety was a mere threshold away. He got up and went to the bookshelf near the kitchen. He took down a large Royal Doulton toby jug of Dick Turpin the Highwayman, and shook a key out of it.

Anastasia didn’t move from the doorway. She merely watched as he moved smoothly across the room to the coin case, inserted the key in the lock, turned it, opened the glass top and removed something. He closed the case, relocked it, returned the key to the toby jug, and came to her, there in the doorway.

“Everybody grows up sometime,” he said. “I’m going to have to sell this collection some day, probably some day soon. My Healey’s about ready for Medicare. So what I’d like you to do for me—”

He hesitated, beat beat beat, then offered his hand to her, opening the fist. The penny lay there against his palm, and she stopped breathing.

He was humble about it. Truly humble. “I remember Dad coming home with this one. He was like a kid with a new toy. A guest on shipboard had given it to him in exchange for some well-made pêche flambée. Turned out to be rare.”

“I can’t!” she said absolutely.

He went on swiftly. “Oh, it’s not as expensive as—say, a 1909 ‘S’ mint Indian Head, or some of the English pennies—but it’s pretty rare. Something about they pulled it off the counters soon after it was minted. I want you to have it. Please.”

“I can’t!”

“Please.” He put the penny in her hand. She held it as though it was stuck together of dust and spiderwebs, just looking at it down there, blazing and glowing in her palm. “It was my Dad’s, then it was mine, and now it’s yours. You can’t refuse a gift someone gives you like that.”

“But why? Why me?”

“Because,” he shrugged as a little boy might shrug, “you’re nice people. Make it into a pin or something.”

He closed her fingers around it. “Now, good night. I’ll be talking to you.”

He walked away from her and switched on the television set. It was a test pattern. He sat down and watched it for a moment, and then he heard the door close. When he turned at the sound, he was all awareness at that instant, she was still in the room, leaning against the door, fist closed over the wonder that lay therein, watching him.

Arlo woke just after one o’clock the next day. The scent of her perfume still occupied the other side of the bed. He stretched, kicked the sheet off his naked legs, and said to the familiar ceiling, “My, that was nice.”

He showered and put the coffee on.

Then, as he finished dressing, he opened the little drawer beneath his cufflink box—the drawer you might not realize was there unless you were specifically looking for a little drawer right there in that particular cufflink box—and in anticipation of the coming evening, removed one of the three remaining old pennies (the last of fourteen he had bought in the batch) and carried it into the living room. As he unlocked the coin case, he made a mental note to stop down at the coin shop and pick up another batch of old pennies. He was running low.

He relocked the case, and was returning the key to the toby jug, when the phone rang.

He picked it up and said, “Hi,” and got venom poured right into his ear.

“You bastard! You lying, low, thieving, seducing sonofabitch! You miserable con artist! You plague-bearer, you Typhoid Mary; you Communist fag ratfink bastard!”

“Hi.”

“You low scum dog, you. You crud. Of all the low, rotten, ugly, really outright evil demeaning stinky things a creep fascist right-wing louse could pull, that was the most vile, nauseating, despicable, hideous—”

“Hi, Anastasia. What’s new?”

“What’s new, you shit? I’ll tell you what’s new! Among other things, that coin of your dear old Daddy’s is new. New enough to be worth exactly one lousy cent. Not a rare! Not a valuable! Not a nothing, that’s what’s new!”

Horror coursed through Arlo’s strangled words. “Wh—what?” He coughed, choked, swallowed hard. “What’re you talking about? Whaddaya mean? Tell me… tell me, dammit!”

Her voice was less steamy. There was an edge of doubt now. “I took it down today, there’s a numismatist in the office building where I work —”

Affront lived in his shock. “You what?!? You had my father’s penny appraised? You did that? What kind of a person—”

“Listen, don’t try to make me the heavy, Arlo! It wasn’t valuable at all. It was just a miserable old penny like a million others, and you got me into bed with it, that’s what! You lied to me!”

Softly, he crept in between her rebuilding attack. “I don’t believe it.”

“Well, it’s true.”

“No.”

“Yes, yes, and yes! Worth a penny. Period.”