Harlan Ellison - Shatterday

It smelled sensational. Some kind of deep-fried bread dough she’d apparently been keeping warm in the oven. I looked at it. The guy who had given me his seat took a bowl full of garlic cloves off the sink and put it down in front of me.

“Bread,” he said. “Rub it with the garlic.”

I reached in, took a piece of langos, burned my fingertips, squeaked, provoked ten smiles, added an eleventh, my own, and rubbed the hot surface with a clove of garlic. It tasted sensational.

Then the old, old woman began rattling off at me. She spoke uninterruptedly for about a minute. In Hungarian. I smiled. I nodded. She stopped and looked at me, waiting for a response. I thought of Arctic tundra.

A man in his fifties, sitting to my left, said, “She asks if you know if Laurie will marry Vic Lamont and if Cookie will go crazy and will Simon Jessup kill Orin Hillyer?”

I stopped chewing. I smiled. I nodded. I looked from one to another of them, hoping someone would take pity on a man lost in the desert.

The old, old woman, hearing what the man in his fifties had said, added a few more words. I looked at the interpreter. He spoke resignedly: “ And will Adam Drake fall in love with Nicole?”

I hoped, with profound desperation, that Mia was neither greedy nor afflicted with the djam karet attendant on ownership of a hooded clitoris.

“I’m sorry,” I said slowly, “but I don’t know what she’s talking about.” I smiled. I nodded.

There was an appreciable drop in temperature around the table. The man in his fifties said something short to the old, old woman. She snorted that special snort translatable in any language as, “Who asked for you, who sent for you; who sent for you, who asked for you?”

And so, every instant anguish, I sat there for the better part of an hour. In Indonesia they have. a name for it: djam karet… the hour that stretches.

Eventually, open covenants having apparently been openly entered into, Other-Than-Mia and Jimmy emerged from the bedroom. It looked like a draw.

I got up at a signal from Jimmy, who drew me aside. I started to whisper my. consternation, but he pressed my bicep for silence. Maybe-Mia took my seat, and began speaking in a low, intense voice. In Hungarian. Or Urdu. Or tongues, maybe. What do I know about glossolalia?

She was about fifteen seconds into the recitation when they all started replying. Eleven gypsies, all going at it like the Russians were invading Evanston. A hailstorm of babble.

Jimmy leaned in and said, “You know the FBI’s list of Ten Most Wanted?”

I nodded. Not happily.

“They just made it to number one.”

“Terrific. I’ll meet you in the car; say my goodbye& for me.”

“Shut up and listen.

“It’s a hype. It’s a publicity dodge. The Feds never put anyone on that list till a week or two before they’re going to make an arrest. That way, they spread it around about all these dangerous felons at large, and a week or so later the Bureau makes a pinch, making it look as if they’re right on top of things. People they can’t find never even get on the list.”

“You’re telling me Jimmy Stewart’s going to break in here any minute with a Thompson submachine gun, is that it?”

“I’m telling you they want to give themselves up; but they’re afraid they’ll get wiped out if they just wait for the Feds to find them.”

“Why don’t they run? God knows they’re in practice.”

“Shut up and listen.

“They want me to be the go-between. To get the press and some responsible local officials in here before they pull the plug.”

“Listen, Jimmy… they pull the plug and you’re liable to lose the baby with the bathwater. I’m referring to me, baby, in case you had any doubts…”

“Take it easy. I did a docudrama about a Chicago psychiatrist for CBS last year…”

I hadn’t heard the word docudrama before. I was looking at him with confusion. He understood my problem and said, “Fictionalized documentary. Semi-real. Touches truth in at least ten places. Anyhow…”

The babble was growing louder. The old, old woman was now silent, watching and listening. The thirty-year-old guy and the fifty-year-old guy were obviously on opposite sides of the question—whatever the question was— and I could see the crowd was about evenly divided. The older guy was with Mia, whatever she was proposing, and I had the certain feeling that if the thirty-year-old guy’s point of view prevailed, that this baby might go down the drain before Jimmy Stewart made one of his rare personal appearances.

“Are you listening to me?” Kerch demanded, squeezing my arm.

“No,” I whispered, “I’m listening to them. Somehow I get the feeling what they’re saying has more to do with my living to a dignified old age.”

“Just shut up and listen, for Christ’s sake!

“Marvin Ziporyn is his name… the psychiatrist. He’s the top shrink for the state. Works with the Cook County authorities. Concert violinist, big social mover, wrote a couple of books; he’s got access to Kup and the Mayor and everybody else.”

I was staring openly now. Hell, anybody could get to the Mayor; but access to Irv Kupcinet, the columnist; well, that was the Big Time.

“So?”

“So I call Marvin, tell him what I’m into, get him to contact Kup, who’ll love it a lot. They pull in a few of the local squires and top cossacks… and Mia and the crowd remand themselves into proper custody.”

“Before Jimmy Stewart breaks in…”

“Right, right.”

“I’ll meet you at the car. Thank the old lady for the bread.” I started toward the door. The thirty-year-old guy erupted from his seat and if there was anything else in that lousy kitchen but the gigantic. 45 in his hairy paw, I didn’t see it. There is a quality about blue-steel gunmetal that gathers all light in a room; like a black diamond.

He was pointing it at me.

I grinned stupidly, placed both palms against the air and tittered like the village idiot. He seemed somewhat mollified and the barrel of the automatic lowered to the vicinity of my crotch. For a moment there it had been like staring into the mouth of the Holland Tunnel, only bigger.

“Damn it, Larry, stop acting like a schmuck. Let Mia handle it. “.

“Her name isn’t Mia.”

“Whatever her name is; let her handle it.”

So I stood there with him, leaning against the wall, for the better part of an hour while the Sanhedrin decided my fate.

Sometime during that hour I asked him, “Who’s Vic Lamont?”

He said, “Who?”

I said, “Vic Lamont.”

He said, “Never heard of him.”

I said, “Will Laurie marry him?”

He said, “What the fuck are you talking about?”

I said, “Will Laurie marry Vic Lamont; will Cookie go crazy; will Simon Somebody-or-other kill Orin Hillyer; will Adam Something-or-other fall in love with Nicole?”

He stared at me.

“The old lady seemed miffed I didn’t know the answers,” I whispered.

He thought about it a minute. Then he said, “The Edge of Night. It’s a soap opera.”

I said, “Why me?”

He said. “Because you’re with me, and Mia told them I’m a famous television writer, and that means you’re a famous television writer, and that means you know what happens to all those characters in the soap operas, because they’re not characters, they’re real people, and I suppose when you’re on the lam the only consistency in your life is the surrogate life of people in soap operas. What’d you tell her?”

“I didn’t tell her anything. I didn’t have the faintest idea what she was talking about.”