Gary Brandner - The Brain Eaters

It turned out they didn’t have no trouble with people or anything else, unless you counted the bee that stung him on the neck while he was trying to pick some wild strawberries.

It wasn’t until they were heading back to New York that things turned sour. For a couple of days he thought he was coming down with something. Ruby wanted him to stay home and rest, but after what they’d spent on the vacation, he couldn’t afford to keep the cab off the streets. In a couple of days he felt all right again; then, yesterday, the headache started. Just a little one at first, but the fucker kept getting worse, until now DuBois had all he could do to keep from screaming.

Norman Hastings of Fort Worth figured he had the hang now of getting a taxi in New York. You just stepped out into the street and waved the sucker down. You wait on the curb for one to come over to you — a man could starve to death. When the cab stopped, you pushed your way in, and never mind who else was heading for it. Already he had lost a cab in front of Radio City Music Hall to a nicely dressed lady who had knocked him aside as if she were playing tight end for the Cowboys. Norman Hastings was not going to let that happen again.

He saw the empty cab moving slowly along in the traffic and gave him a wave and a fingers-in-the-mouth whistle at the same time. Well, the coon driving the cab just pointed a thumb at the Out of Service sign stuck in the window and looked away.

“Out of service, my ass,” Norman Hastings said under his breath. He started toward the stalled cab; then the driver turned to look at him, and he saw the expression on the broad black face. Norman Hastings forgot all about wanting a cab.

Andrea Keith sat across the table from her new husband and tried very hard to smile as the waiter poured champagne into their glasses. The smile did not come easy, because Andrea had a splitting, grinding headache. She would rather have died than admit it. What would Justin think if on their very wedding night his bride turned up with a headache? Very funny, ha-ha. No, she would tough it out before she let her wedding night become a smutty joke.

It couldn’t have been the champagne. She hadn’t drunk more than a sip or two. Besides, the headache had started the previous day. Tension, she had thought at the time. The excitement of getting married and all. It would go away. But it didn’t go away. It got worse.

Andrea peered over Justin’s shoulder and through the window at the lights of Seattle. The restaurant on top of the Space Needle was one of those revolving affairs. You couldn’t actually feel it turning, but every time you looked out, there was a different view of the city. That probably didn’t help the headache any.

She tried to concentrate on what Justin was saying. Something about his new job in the contracts department at Boeing. Why didn’t he shut his ugly mouth?

My God, where had that thought come from? This was the man she loved. The only man she had ever been to bed with. The man she intended to live with the rest of her life. Her husband.

“Here’s to my wife,” he said, raising his glass to her. “My wife. It still sounds funny, but I like it.”

Andrea grasped her own glass by the stem and tried very hard not to spill any.

“And how about you?” Justin said. “You’ve got a new name to get used to. We’ll have to practice together.”

Andrea made her mouth stretch into something like a smile. She touched her glass to Justin’s and put it down without drinking any. She wondered if they kept any aspirin in the ladies’ room.

“I think I’ll go powder my nose,” she said. To Andrea her voice sounded high and a touch hysterical. Justin did not seem to notice.

“Hurry back,” he said. “I’ll be lonely.”

She did the smile thing again, rose carefully from her chair, and walked between the small, intimate tables toward the rest rooms. It took a great effort to hold herself erect and walk in a slow, ladylike manner. She wanted to burst into a wild, screaming run.

Andrea Olson Keith’s whole life had been ladylike. They had some old yearbooks at the Kappa house, and sometimes she looked at the old pictures of students back in the sixties. Straight hair, patched-together clothes, bare feet. An unwashed, hippie look. Their fists raised for one silly cause or another. She was certainly glad she hadn’t gone to school in those days.

Not that there wasn’t a certain amount of cutting up on campus now. Her Kappa sisters knew how to have a good time. They smoked a little grass and messed around a little, but somehow it always remained ladylike.

Andrea’s parents would probably have preferred that she go on to graduate. But what would be the use? She was twenty, and she knew her own mind. She had never planned to make art her career. It was just a nice clean major. Justin had his degree; he was ambitious and would soon be making enough to support them comfortably.

Andrea could still paint when she felt like it and raise babies and do volunteer things with other well-dressed young wives. Phooey on being a liberated woman. This was exactly the kind of life Andrea wanted.

Grandma Olson had understood that. For some women, taking care of a man and a family was fulfillment enough. The poor old dear had been too crippled with arthritis to come out to the wedding, but Andrea had flown back to Wisconsin to see her.

She had spent a week there on the farm visiting with all the relatives and eating homemade biscuits and pies and heaps of mashed potatoes. She had laughingly said that her wedding dress might not fit when she got back to Seattle.

It had been a wonderful visit. She spent hours wandering over the pasture — the north forty — just as she had done when she was a little girl and her parents went back for vacations. She climbed the same tree, threw rocks in the same creek, and even scratched her knee the way she used to climbing through the same barbed-wire fence.

When it was time to come back, Grandpa Olson had insisted on driving her to Milwaukee to catch the plane, even though she would have willingly taken the bus. It turned out he wanted the chance to talk to her alone. He wasn’t sure his son had told her all the things a bride ought to know, the old man said, and he spoke awkwardly of the intimacies of married life while Andrea nodded gravely and suppressed a smile.

Now, stumbling across the crowded restaurant with her head about to explode, Andrea wished with all her heart that she could transport herself back to the cool, comfortable farmhouse where Grandma could make the pain go away.

Justin Keith swallowed the champagne that was left in his glass and refilled it. He felt wonderful. He was a little worried about Andrea, though. She had barely touched her champagne. Justin hoped there was nothing seriously wrong. Andrea had been acting strange all day. When she returned from the visit to her grandparents, he was afraid she was coming down with the flu. That passed, and she seemed all right until the previous day. When he called that night, Andrea’s mother told him she had a slight headache and was resting. The traditional nervousness of a bride, he supposed.

Well, a bridegroom could be a little nervous, too.

Justin allowed himself to wonder, just for a moment, in the secret part of his mind, if he was doing the right thing. Sure, he loved Andrea, and they were good together, and there wasn’t anybody else he’d rather marry. It was just that he wondered if he should be getting married at all. He was only twenty-two, just starting out in life. Might there not be some adventures ahead that he would have to pass up as a married man?

He pushed away the disloyal thought and tried to concentrate on how warm and snuggly Andrea felt in his arms. At five feet eight, he had always felt small and kind of inadequate among other men. Andrea, a perfectly built five feet one, made him feel like King Kong.