Philip Dick - In Milton Lumky Territory

He stopped the car in the supermarket lot, and while she sat waiting he trudged off and got the can of crêpe suzettes and stood in line, paid, and returned.

“I also have to stop at the drugstore,” she informed him, as they drove on. “This one I’ll have to get myself; it’s not something you can go in and ask for.”

While he double-parked, Susan disappeared at a leisurely rate into the drugstore. A car behind him honked until he was forced to drive off and around the block. When he got back again he saw no sign of her, and he drove around once more. This time he found her waiting and pacing on the sidewalk.

“Where did you go?” she demanded, as she hopped in and slammed the door. “I thought you were going to wait.”

“I couldn’t,” he said.

On her lap she held a long square package wrapped with brown paper and white twine. He averted his eyes from it, feeling melancholy. This peculiar frankness of hers bothered him; it had from the start.

“You’re so quiet,” she said, once later on.

“Tired,” he said. He had bought the can of crêpe suzettes with his own money, and he did not have much money. The arrangement about that still made no sense to him, and it remained to plague him.

“When do you feel you’ll be able to take over?” Susan said.

“Hard to say.”

“In a week?”

“Maybe.”

She sighed. “I hope so. Then I can devote all my time to taking care of Taffy.” With energy, she said, “You see, as soon as I’m in a position to let Mrs. Poppinjay go, I save two hundred and some dollars a month right there. And that’s a lot, even these days. And I’ll feel much healthier, too, when I can be home with her, take her to school and pick her up, and be with her after school.”

“Does that mean you’re not going to be down at the office?” This was the first time he had heard of that. “Two people have to be there. And I can’t do any of the typing and stencil-cutting.” He had watched Zoe doing it, and beyond any doubt it was a full-time job in itself.

“I can do quite a bit at home,” Susan said.

“You’ll have to be down at the office,” he said.

“I’ll be there some.”

He let the subject drop.

“You knew I wanted you to take over,” she said.

“If you let Zoe go,” he said, “you’ll have to spend almost as much time down there as you do now. If we can get anything to sell, that will be one job, that plus the general managing, and then the typing and stencil-cutting will be another. Later on we can probably give up the typing and stencil-cutting, but certainly not right away.”

“Whatever you say,” she said. “You know better than I.” But on the rest of the trip to the house she seemed aloof.

After dinner, while he and Susan were doing the dishes, the phone rang. She dried her hands and went off to answer it.

“For you,” she said, returning. “It’s Milt Lumky.”

He went to the phone and said hello, wondering what Milt wanted.

“Hi,” Milt growled. “I figured I had a good chance of finding you this way. Finished dinner?”

“Yes,” he said, with some resentment.

“How about a beer? I need somebody to talk to. I’ll drop by and we’ll go down town and have a beer.”

“You mean just me? Or me and Susan both?”

Milt said, “Doesn’t she have a little daughter?”

“Yes,” he admitted.

“If you don’t want to just say so,” Milt said. “It was just an idea on the spur of the moment. I’ll be around town a couple more days and then I take off for Pocatello. And then I’ll be back in a week. All I have here is a room with a bath and private entrance. It’s not enough to keep me here. I eat all my meals out.”

“Just a second,” he said. He re-entered the kitchen.

“What did he want?” Susan said. “All he said to me was hello and were you there.”

“He wants me to go downtown and have a beer with him.”

“Oh, he must be feeling lonely. Why don’t you do that? I’m tired anyhow; I think I’ll probably go to bed as soon as Taffy does. I might read awhile in bed or watch TV.”

As he returned to the phone he mulled it over. “Thanks anyhow,” he said to Lumky. “We have a lot of business to talk over. Maybe some other time, and I’ll buy.”

“What!” Lumky said.

He said, “I’ll have to take a rain check on it.”

“What are you, Red or something? Okay, if that’s how you feel. Maybe I can find somebody in Pocatello.”

“I hope this doesn’t mean our relationship is finished,” Bruce said.

“No,” Lumky said. “Probably not.”

They both said good night and hung up.

“I told him no,” he said to Susan. He did not especially feel like sitting around in a bar listening to anyone’s troubles. “I’m happy where I am,” he said, which certainly was true. Down in Reno he had sat around in bars, as lonely as possible; he hoped all that was over. There were, in the world, millions of lonely unattached men drinking beer by themselves. Wanting to tell someone all about it.

“As long as you’re not going,” Susan said, as she finished up the dishes and put away her apron, “I won’t go right to bed. I said that so you’d feel free to come and go as you please. I don’t want you to feel tied down, with me. In that connection I have something I picked up for you this afternoon but I forgot to give it to you.” She went into the living room for her purse. From it she brought forth a door key, which she presented to him. “To the house,” she said. “Oh, and also.” She fished around in the purse and this time produced a key ring on which hung many keys. “To the office,” she said, maneuvering a key from the ring. “See how free and relaxed I feel with you?”

The two keys improved his disposition. They gave him a moment of elation and he said, “I hope you never wish you hadn’t.”

“I know I won’t,” she said. “You wouldn’t let me down, Bruce. It isn’t so hard to tell one way or another about people. We haven’t talked very much about love. Has it been on your mind, though?”

“Somewhat,” he said, feeling clumsy.

“It’s not so much what you tell me,” she said. “Because a person finds himself saying almost anything in a situation where there’s so much involved. It’s what you feel that you don’t say. I’ve never been very articulate. And I don’t demand elaborate expressions of sentiments…if I can’t give it I don’t see that I have any right to ask. I think I can tell what you’re thinking. This gives you. a lot, doesn’t it? I actually know so little about how you used to be, before. I can only guess what you were like before you met me. Were you lonely that night at Peg’s?”

“Yes,” he admitted. “I had driven up from Reno. It’s a lonely trip.” He did not want to say that he went around habitually lonely; for some reason he shrank from conceding that. Perhaps because it would seem that he had been drawn to her through sheer loneliness, and that was not true.

Susan said, “I don’t even know how many girls you’ve been in love with. Or how strongly you get to feel, emotionally I mean. Maybe you’re not one who gets involved with other people very often or for very long. I guess time will tell. I mean about this.”

“Don’t sound depressed,” he said.

“Oh, I’m not depressed. I’ve never given anyone the key to the office before. Except of course Zoe has hers.”

“What about the key to the house?”

“Mrs. Poppinjay has one. Naturally Walt had his key. I know what you mean. No, Bruce.” She said it in a small-girl voice, very low and positive.

At about twelve o’clock they heard something thumping outdoors on the front porch. They had been together in the bedroom, and even though the doorbell did not ring they ceased and returned to the living room, both of them ruffled.