Donald Westlake - Smoke

In the first place, and he couldn't really articulate this very well, but he instinctively understood it, in the first place, this was a matter of class. Not sexual orientation, that wasn't the issue here. What they'd done to Freddie, those two doctors, they would not have done to anybody they considered their equal, and it wouldn't matter if the guy swung this way or that way or both ways or no way at all. They had looked upon Freddie as being underclass or lower class or working class or however they might choose to phrase it, and therefore they could treat him any damn way they wanted because the civilized rules didn't apply.

That's right. The civilized rules only applied to people who talked like them, had their kind of education, read the same newspapers and magazines, had the same attitudes toward things, including the attitudes toward people like Freddie. To know that you've been fucked over not because science needed it, or nobody else was available, or it was the luck of the draw, but only because you're scum, can take some getting used to, and can move a nonviolent guy very near to the edge of the envelope of his MO.

In the second place, Peg. Already, he and she were about to begin a trial separation just because of the way he already was, and figuring this problem had to be temporary and sooner or later he'd be getting back his regular self again. And now what? How could he tell Peg he didn't have a regular self anymore? She'd have to write him off, wouldn't she? Give up on him entirely, find some other guy she could look at over a candlelit table. Leave him completely alone.

He wasn't exactly in a state to meet girls, was he?

Over there by the house, they were coming to the conclusion that he'd gotten away. He couldn't leave the property yet, though, and in any case he was in no hurry to go away from here, to go anywhere, to do anything; not with what he knew now.

He kept roaming, wishing the champagne would hurry up and finish digesting — it hadn't improved his mood, and it kept putting those guys on his trail — and then he came across the swimming pool, out behind the house. He and the champagne could both hide in there, couldn't they, while he waited? They could. Freddie eased himself down into the pool, and morosely began to do laps.

It was Curtis the set designer who saw it. They'd all come back inside, barricaded themselves in here to some degree, and were gathered around the living room trying to decide what to do next.

Was the invisible man still somewhere on the property? If so, did he plan some sort of awful vengeance for what Peter and David had done to him? And if he did have such plans, would he be willing to restrict his vengeance to Peter and David, who after all did deserve the fellow's wrath — "Thank you I don't think" — or would he make the Draconian decision that the friend of his enemy is also his enemy, and thus wreak his awful vengeance indiscriminately on the whole crowd?

"And with thirty-four people more invited for this evening," Robert said. "This is some little contretemps you two brought us, I must say."

"You wanted him to come here," Peter said, and David said, "You all just thought it was going to be fun. "

Curtis didn't like squabbling; he got enough of that in the theater. So he roved the living room while the others bickered, and after a while he picked up the bird-watching binoculars and casually looked through them, adjusting the focus, wondering what sort of bird one might watch in this neighborhood, and all at once he stiffened. "Robert," he said, half-afraid to breathe. "Robert, there's something . . . in the pool."

Freddie loved to swim. His body moved through the buoyant water, resisting him and helping him at the same time, urging him along. Below the surface, he swept along, pushing through the clear slightly warmed water, surfacing only when he needed to breathe, then rolling like a dolphin down again beneath the air.

Time disappeared. The hot thoughts in his brain cooled. He knew he was an adaptable sort of guy, inventive, basically positive. He was giving those qualities their most severe test at the moment, and he was pleased to see his better side coming through. If this is who he had to be from now on, he realized, somehow he'd figure out a way to handle it. The only real insoluble problem he could see was Peg.

What did please him, in this whole mess, was that he hadn't the slightest urge to go back to dope. Not that finding a vein would be at all easy, even if he wanted to; though on the other hand he wouldn't have that much trouble finding his nose. But he didn't want to, not even in this extreme situation, and he was glad to see that in himself. I may be disappearing, he thought to himself, but at least I seem to have grown up.

Out of air. He rolled to the surface, took in a lungful of air, heard the motor sound, and had already slip-slid back down into the moving water when the echo of what he'd just seen and heard came back to him.

The thirteen guys. They were all around the pool, looking at him. And some kind of motor was running.

Staying underwater, Freddie fishtailed on, remembering what Peg had said about being able to see him, or at least find him, in the pool. Time to get out of here. Then, as he thought that, the world around him darkened; not black, but suddenly much dimmer than before. He rolled over onto his back, and couldn't for a second figure out that darkness up there, spreading inexorably from one end of the pool to the other, And then he understood.

The pool cover! The bastards were closing their electrically run pool cover over him!

He swam ahead of the advancing darkness to the far end of the pool, but the second his wet hand touched the top of the coping around the pool's edge half a dozen of the bastards yelled, "There he is! There he is!" And came running, to surround that wet handprint.

Can't get out, not here. Freddie pushed away from the edge as people risked falling in fully dressed to reach for him. He flowed away, faceup, kicking, and here came the pool cover, right over him.

Hell! Hell and blast and damn son of a bitch !

Narrr, said the pool-cover motor, as Freddie quartered beneath it like a goldfish in a too-small aquarium. Click, said the pool-cover motor, and Freddie was completely roofed in, floating in a big room of water with no exits.

"Turn off the heater!" one of the bastards yelled.

Oh, you bastard, Freddie thought, I'll get you for this, I'll get you all for this. The rage that had consumed him, back in the house, when he'd first learned the truth, came back into him now in full force, as though it had never gone away. Go ahead and turn off the heater, he thought, my brain could heat this pool.

"Freddie? Freddie!"

It was one of the doctors, he recognized the voice, the blond baby-fat one, Dr. David Loomis. Freddie was damned if he'd talk to the bastard. To conserve his strength, he moved down to the shallow end of the pool, sat there on the lowest step, his head just below the thick tarp of the cover, and considered his situation.

Not so good. The cover was loose down both long sides of the pool, only fastened tight across the ends, but the bastards were watching the sides, they'd see the cover lump up if he tried to get out, and they'd see his wet prints on the pool surround.

Trapped. And, face it, his brain would not heat the pool. With the cover on, the sun's warmth no longer reached the water. There was no place under here that he could go without being in water. After a while, this was not going to be a pleasant place.

Crap. Freddie rested a wet elbow on a wet knee, cupped a wet chin in his wet palm, and waited.

Martin knelt beside the pool, holding up the edge of the cover so he could look in at the shadowed grotto within. It had been nearly two hours now, and the invisible man had so far refused absolutely to respond. He won't speak, he won't move, he won't do a thing. He just sits there, on the steps at the shallow end.