The Year's Best Science Fiction 10

Even as his career progressed and he became a busy, important man, he never forgot the morning run. There were times when he would excuse himself from a party in a crowded nightclub to take his tiger ranging in the park, sprinting beside him in his tuxedo, boiled shirt-front gleaming in the dark. Even as he became bolder, more powerful, he remained faithful.

Until the day he made his biggest deal. His employer had sent him to lunch with Quincy, their biggest customer, with instructions to sell him sixteen gross.

“Quincy,” Benedict said, “You need twenty gross.” They were sitting against a tiger-striped banquette in an expensive restaurant. Quincy, a huge, choleric man, would have terrified him a month before.

“You’ve got your nerve,” Quincy blustered. “What makes you think I want twenty gross?”

For a second Benedict retreated. Then the tiger striping touched a chord in him and he snapped forward. “Of course, you don’t want twenty gross,” he rumbled. “You need them.”

Quincy bought thirty gross. Benedict was promoted to general manager.

New title resting lightly on his shoulders, he gave himself the rest of the afternoon off. He was springing toward the door on cat feet when he was interrupted in midflight by an unexpected silky sound. “Well, Madeline,” he said.

The secretary, dark, silk-skinned, unapproachable until now, had come up beside him. She seemed to be trying to tell him something—something inviting.

On impulse, he said, “You’re coming to dinner with me tonight, Madeline.”

Her voice was like velvet. “I have a date, Eddy—my rich uncle from Cambridge is in town.”

He snorted. “The—uh—uncle who gave you that mink? I’ve seen him. He’s too fat,” and he added in a growl that dissolved her, “I’ll be at your place at eight.”

“Why, Eddy ... All right.” She looked up through furred lashes. “But I should warn you—I am not an inexpensive girl.”

“You’ll cook dinner of course—then we may do the town.” He patted his wallet pocket, and then nipped her ear. “Have steak.”

As he rummaged in his sock drawer that night, his hand hit something hard, and he pulled it out with a crawly, sinking feeling. The microphone—somehow he’d forgotten it this morning. It must have fallen in among his socks while he was dressing, and he’d been without it all day. All day. He picked it up, shaky with relief, and started to slip it into his tuxedo. Then he paused, thinking. Carefully he set it back in the drawer and shut it. He didn’t need it any more. He was the tiger now.

That night, still rosy with drink and the heady sounds of music and Madeline’s breath coming and going in his ear, he went to bed without undressing and slept until it got light. When he woke and padded into the living room in his socks he saw Ben in the corner, diminished somehow, watching him. He had forgotten their run.

“Sorry, old fellow,” he said as he left for work, giving the tiger a regretful pat.

And “Got to hustle,” the next day, with a cursory caress. “I’m taking Madeline shopping.”

As the days went by and Benedict saw more and more of the girl, he forgot to apologize. And the tiger remained motionless in the corner as he came and went, reproaching him.

Benedict bought Madeline an Oleg Cassini.

In the corner of the living room, a fine dust began to settle on Ben’s fur.

Benedict bought Madeline a diamond bracelet.

In the corner, a colony of moths found its way into the heavy fur on Ben’s breast.

Benedict and Madeline went to Nassau for a week. They stopped at an auto dealer’s on their way back and Benedict bought Madeline a Jaguar.

The composition at the roots of Ben’s alert nylon whiskers had begun to give. They sagged, and one or two fell.

It was in the cab, on his way home from Madeline’s apartment, that Benedict examined his checkbook carefully for the first time. The trip and the down payment on the car had brought his accounts to zero. And there was a payment due on the bracelet the next day. But what did it matter? He shrugged. He was a man of power. At the door to his apartment he wrote the cabbie a check, grandly adding an extra five dollars as tip. Then he went upstairs, pausing briefly to examine his tan in a mirror, and went to bed.

He woke at three o’clock in the morning, prey to the shadows and the time of day, uneasy for the first time, and in the cold light of his bed lamp, went through his accounts again. There was less money than he’d realized—he had to go to the bank to cover the check for the cabbie, or the down payment on the Jag would bounce. But he’d written a check for the last installment on the bracelet, and that would be coming in, and the rent was overdue. . . .

He had to have money now. He sat in bed, knees drawn up, musing, and as he thought he remembered the woman he and Ben had frightened that first day, and the money in her purse, and it came to him that he would get the money in the park. He remembered rushing down on the woman, her scream, and in memory that first accidental escapade with the tiger became a daring daylight robbery —hadn’t he spent the money? And as he thought back on it he decided to try it again, beginning to forget that the tiger had been with him and in fact, forgetting as he slipped into a striped sweatshirt and tied a kerchief at his throat that he was not the tiger, so that he went out without even seeing Ben in the corner, running in low, long strides, hurrying to the park.

It was still dark in the park and he paced the walks, light-footed as a cat, expanding in a sense of power as he stalked. A dark figure came through the gates—his prey— and he growled a little, chuckling as he recognized her— the same sad woman—frightened of a tiger—and he growled again, running toward her, thinking, as he bore down on her, I will frighten her again.

“Hey!” she yelled, as he rushed at her and he broke stride because she hadn’t shrunk from him in terror; she was standing her ground, feet a little wide, swinging her handbag.

Eyeing the pocketbook, he circled her and made another rush.

“Hand it over,” he snarled.

“I beg your pardon,” she said coldly, and when he rushed at her with another growl, “What’s the matter with you?”

“The pocketbook,” he said menacingly, hair bristling.

“Oh, the pocketbook.” Abruptly she lifted the purse and hit him on the head.

Startled, he staggered back, and before he could collect himself for another lunge, she had turned with an indignant snort and started out of the park.

It was too light now to look for another victim. He peeled off the sweatshirt and went out of the park in his shirtsleeves, walking slowly, puzzling over the aborted robbery. He was still brooding as he went into a nearby coffee shop for breakfast, and he worried over it as he ate his Texas steak. The snarl hadn’t been quite right, he decided finally, and he straightened his tie and went too early to work.

“The Jaguar company called me,” Madeline said when she came in an hour later. “Your check bounced.”

“Oh?” Something in her eyes kept him from making anything of it. “Oh,” he said mildly. “I’ll take care of it.”

“You’d better,” she said. Her eyes were cold.

Ordinarily he would take this opportunity—before anyone else came in—to bite her on the neck, but this morning she seemed so distant (probably because he hadn’t shaved, he decided) and he went back to his office instead, scowling over several columns of figures on a lined pad.

“It looks bad,” he murmured. “I need a raise.”

His employer’s name was John Gilfoyle—Mr. Gilfoyle, or Sir, to most of his employees. Benedict had learned early that the use of the initials rattled him, and he used them to put himself at an advantage.