After a while he got up shakily and looked around.
The tabletop's expanse was littered with massive paint cans, bottles and jars. Scott walked along their mammoth shapes, stepping over the jagged-toothed edge of a saw blade and racing across its icy surface to the tabletop again.
Orange paint. He strode past the luridly streaked can, the top of his head barely as high as the bottom edge of the can's label. He remembered painting the lawn chairs during one of the many hours he'd spent in the cellar before his last, irrevocable snow-caked plunge into it.
Head back, he gazed up at an orange-spotted brush handle sticking out of an elephantine jar. One day, not so long ago he'd held that handle in his fingers. Now it was ten times as long as he was; a huge, knife pointed length of glossy yellow wood.
There was a loud clicking noise and then the ocean like roar of the oil burner filled the air again. His heartbeat raced, then slowed once more. No, he'd never get used to its thundering suddenness. Well, there'd be only four more days of it, anyway, he thought.
His feet were getting cold; there was no time to waste. Between the barren hulks of paint cans he walked until he'd reached the body-thick rope that hung down in twisted loops from the top of the refrigerator.
A stroke of fortune. He found a crumpled pink rag lying next to a towering brown bottle of turpentine. Impulsively he drew part of it around himself, tucked it under his feet, then sank back into the rest of its wrinkled softness. The cloth reeked of paint and turpentine, but that didn't matter. The held-in warmth of his body began surrounding him comfortingly.
Reclining there, he squinted up at the distant refrigerator top. There was still the equivalent of a seventy-five foot climb to make, and without footholds except for those he could manage to find on the rope itself. He would, virtually, have to pull himself all the way up.
His eyes closed and he lay there for a while, breathing slowly, his body as relaxed as possible. If the hunger pangs had not been so severe, he might have gone to sleep. But hunger was a wavelike pressure at his stomach walls, causing it to rumble emptily. He wondered if it could possibly be as empty as it felt. When he discovered himself beginning to dwell on thoughts of food, of gravy-dripping roasts and broiled steaks inundated with brown-edged mushrooms and onions, he knew it was time to get up. With a last wiggle of his warmed toes, he threw off the smooth covering and stood. That was when he recognized the cloth.
It was part of Louise's slip, an old one that she'd torn up and thrown into the rag box. He picked up a corner of it and fingered its softness, a strange, yearning pain in his chest and stomach that was not hunger.
"Lou." He whispered it, staring at the cloth that had once rested against her warm, fragrant flesh. Angrily he flung away the cloth edge, his face a hardened mask. He kicked at it. Shaken, he turned from the cloth, walked stiffly to the edge of the table, and grabbed hold of the rope. It was too thick to get his hands around; he'd have to use his arms. Luckily, it was hanging in such a way that he could almost crawl up the first section of it.
He pulled down on it as hard as he could to see if it was secure. It gave a trifle, then tautened. He pulled again. There was no further give. That ended any chance of dragging the cracker box off the refrigerator. The box was resting on top of the rope coils up there, and he'd thought it a vague possibility that he might pull it down.
"Well," he said.
And, taking a deep breath, he started climbing again.
He modeled his ascent on the method South Sea natives use in climbing coconut trees, knees high, body arched out, feet gripping at the rope, arms curled around it, fingers clutching. He kept himself moving upward steadily, not looking down.
He gasped and stiffened against the rope spasmodically as it slipped down a few inches, to him, a few feet. Then it stopped and he hung there trembling, the rope swinging back and forth in little arcs. After a few moments the motion stopped and he began climbing again, this time more cautiously. Five minutes later he reached the first loop of the hanging rope and eased himself into it. As if it were a swing, he sat there, holding on tightly, leaning back against the refrigerator.
The surface of it was cold, but his robe was thick enough to prevent the coldness from penetrating to his skin.
He looked out across the broad vista of the cellar kingdom in which he lived. Far across, almost a mile away, he saw the cliff edge, the stacked lawn chairs, the croquet set. His gaze shifted. There was the vast cavern of the water pump, there the mammoth water heater; underneath it one edge of his box-top shield was visible.
His gaze moved and he saw the magazine cover.
It was lying on a cushion on top of the cross-legged metal table that stood beside the one whose top he'd just left. He hadn't noticed the magazine before because the paint cans had blocked it from view. On the cover was the photograph of a woman. She was tall, passably beautiful, leaning over a rock, a look of pleasure on her young face. She was wearing a tight red long-sleeved sweater and a pair of clinging black shorts cut just below the hips.
He stared at the enormous figure of the woman. She was looking at him, smiling. It was strange, he thought as he sat there, bare feet dangling in space. He hadn't been conscious of sex for a long time. His body had been something to keep alive, no more-something to feed and clothe and keep warm. His existence in the cellar, since that winter day, he been devoted to one thing, survival. All subtler gradations of desire had been lost to him. Now he had found the fragment of Louise's slip and seen the huge photograph of the woman.
His eyes ran lingeringly over the giant contours of her body, the high, swelling arches of her breasts, the gentle hill of her stomach, the long, curving taper of her legs.
He couldn't take his eyes off the woman. The sunlight was glinting on her dark auburn hair. He could almost sense the feeling of it, soft and silk like. He could almost feel the perfumed warmth of her flesh, almost feel the curved smoothness of her legs as mentally he ran his hands along them. He could almost feel the gelatinous give of her breasts, the sweet taste of her lips, her breath like warm wine trickling in his throat.
He shuddered helplessly, swaying on his loop of rope. "Oh, God," he whispered. "Oh, God, God, God." There were so many hungers.
When he came out of the bathroom, damply warm from a shower and shave, he found Lou sitting on the living room couch, knitting. She'd turned off the television set and there was no sound but the infrequent swish of cars passing in the street below.
He stood in the doorway a moment, looking at her.
She was wearing a yellow robe over her nightgown. Both garments were made of silk, clinging to the jut of her rounded breasts, the broadness of her hips, the smooth length of her legs. Electric pricklings coursed the lower muscles of his stomach. It had been so long, cancelled endlessly by medical tests and work and the weight of constant dread.
Lou looked up, smiling. "You look so nice and clean," she said. It was not the words or the look on her face; but suddenly he was terribly conscious of his size. Lips twitching into the semblance of a smile, he walked over to the couch and sat down beside her, instantly sorry that he had.
She sniffed. "Mmm, you smell nice," she said. She was referring to his shaving lotion. He grunted quietly, glancing at her clean featured face, her wheat-coloured hair drawn back into a ribbon-tied horse's tail.
"You look nice," he said. "Beautiful."
"Beautiful!" she scoffed. "Not me."
He leaned over abruptly and kissed her warm throat. She raised her left hand and stroked his cheek slowly.
"So nice and smooth," she murmured.
He swallowed. Was it just ego-flattened imagination, or was she actually talking to him as if he were a boy? His left hand, which had been lying across the heat of her leg, drew back slowly, and he looked at the white, glaze-skinned band across the bottom of its third finger. He'd been forced to take the ring off almost two weeks before because the finger had become too thin.
He cleared his throat. "What are you making?" he asked disinterestedly.
"Sweater for Beth," she answered.
"Oh."
He sat there in silence while he watched her skillful manipulation of the long knitting needles. Then, impulsively, he laid his cheek against her shoulder. Wrong move, his mind said instantly. It made him feel even smaller, like a young boy leaning on his mother. He stayed there, though, thinking it would be too obviously awkward if he straightened up immediately. He felt that even rise and fall of her breathing as he rested there, a tense, unresolved sensation in his stomach.
"Why don't you go to sleep?" Lou asked quietly.
His lips pressed together. He felt a cold shudder move down his back.
"No," he said.
Imagination again? Or was his voice as frail as it sounded to him, as devoid of masculinity. He stared somberly at the V-neck of her robe, at the flesh-walled valley between her breasts, and his fingers twitched with his repressed desire to touch her.
"Are you tired?" she asked.
"No." It sounded too harsh. "A little," he amended.
"Why don't you finish up the ice cream?" she asked, after a pause. He closed his eyes with a sigh. Imagination it might be, but that didn't prevent him from feeling like a boy, indecisive, withdrawn, much as though he'd conceived the ridiculous notion that he could somehow arouse the physical desire of this full-grown woman.
"Shall I get it for you?" she asked.
"No!" He lifted his head from her shoulder and fell back heavily against a pillow, staring morosely across the room. It was a cheerless room. Their furniture was still stored in Los Angeles and they were using Marty's attic castoffs. A depressing room, the walls a dark forest green, pictureless, only one window with ugly paper drapes, a pale, thread-worn rug hiding part of the scratched floor.
"What is it, darling?" she asked.
"Nothing."
"Have I done something?"
"No."
"What, then?"
"Nothing, I said."
"All right," she said quietly.
Was she unaware of it? Granted it was torture for her to be living with terrible anxiety, hoping each second to get that phone call from the Center, a telegram, a letter, and the message never coming. Still...
He looked at her full body again, feeling breath catch in him uncontrollably. It wasn't just physical desire; it was so much more. It was the dread of tomorrows without her. It was the horror of his plight, which no words could capture.
For it wasn't a sudden accident removing him from her life. It wasn't a sudden illness taking him, leaving the memory of him intact, cutting him from her love with merciful swiftness. It wasn't even a lingering sickness. At least then he'd be himself and, although she could watch him with pity and terror, at least she would be watching the man she knew.
This was worse, far worse.
Month after month would go by, almost a year of them still if the doctors didn't stop it. A year of living together day by day, while he shrank. Eating meals together, sleeping in the same bed together, talking together, while he shrank. Caring for Beth and listening to music and seeing each other every day, while he shrank. Each day a new incident, a new hideous adjustment to make. The complex pattern of their relationship altered day by day, while he shrank.
They would laugh, unable to keep a long face every single moment of every single day. There would be laughter, perhaps, at some joke, a forgetful moment of amusement. Then suddenly the horror would rush over them again like black ocean across a dike, the laughter choked, the amusement crushed. The trembling realization that he was shrinking covering them again, casting a pall over their days and nights.
"Lou."
She turned to face him. He leaned over to kiss her, but he couldn't reach her lips. With an angry, desperate motion he pushed up on one knee on the couch and thrust his right hand into the silky tangle of her hair, fingertips pressing at her skull. Pulling back her head with a tug, he jammed his lips on hers and forced her back against the pillow.
Her lips were taut with surprise. He heard her knitting thud on the floor, heard the liquid rustle of silk as she twisted slightly in his grip. He ran a shaking hand across the yielding softness of her breasts. He pulled away his parted lips and pressed them against her throat, slowly raking teeth across the warm flesh.
"Scott!" she gasped.
The way she said it seemed to drain him in an instant. A barren chill covered him. He drew back from her, feeling almost ashamed. His hands fell from her body.
"Honey, what is it?" she said.
"You don't know, do you?" He was shocked by the trembling sound of his own voice. His hands went up quickly to his cheeks and he saw in her eyes that she suddenly knew.
"Oh, sweetheart" she said, bending forward. Her warm lips pressed at his. He sat there stiffly. The caress and the tone of voice and the kiss, they were not the passionate caress and tone and kiss of a woman who craved her husband's want. They were the sounds and touches of a woman who felt only loving pity for a poor creature who desired her.
He turned away.
"Honey, don't," she begged, taking hold of his hand. "How could I know? There hasn't been a bit of love-making between us in the last two months; not a kiss or an embrace or-"
"There wasn't exactly time for it," he said.
"But that's the whole point," she said. "How could I help but be surprised? Is it so odd?"
His throat contracted with a dry, clicking sound.
"I suppose," he said, barely audible.
"Oh, honey." She kissed his hand. "Don't make it sound as if I turned you away." He let breath trickle out slowly from his nostrils.
"I guess it... would be rather grotesque, anyway," he said, trying to sound detached. "The way I look. It'd be like-"
"Honey, please." She wouldn't let him finish. "You're making it worse than it is."
"Look at me," he said. How much worse can it get?"
"Scott. Scott." She pressed his small hand to her cheek. "If only I could say something to make it all right."
He stared past her, unable to meet her eyes. "It's not your fault," he said.
"Oh, why don't they call! Why don't they find it?" He knew then that his desire was impossible. He'd been a fool even to think of it.
"Hold me, Scott," she said.
He sat motionless for a few seconds, chin down, the fixed dullness of his eyes sealing the mask of defeat that was his face. Then he drew back his right hand and slid it behind her; it seemed as if the hand would never reach her other side. His stomach muscles flexed in slowly. He wanted to get up from the couch and leave. He felt puny and absurd beside her, a ludicrous midget who had planned the seduction of a normal woman. He sat there stiffly, feeling the warmth of her body through the silk. And he'd rather have died than tell her that the weight of her arm across his shoulders was hurting him.
"We could... work it out," she suggested in a different voice. "We-" His head twisted back and forth in erratic motions as though he were looking for escape. "Oh, stop it, will you? Let it go. Forget it. I was a fool to..."
His right hand pulled back and clamped tensely on the knuckles of his left hand. He squeezed until it hurt. "Just let it go," he said. "Let it go."
"Honey, I'm not just saying it to be nice," she protested. "Don't you think I-"
"No, I don't!" he answered sharply. "And you don't either."
"Scott, I know you're hurt, but..."
"Please, forget it." His eyes were shut, and the words came softly, warningly through clenched teeth. She was still. He breathed as though he were suffocating. The room was a crypt of futility to him.
"All right," she whispered then.
He bit his lower lip. He said. "Have you written your parents?"
"My parents?" He knew she was staring at him curiously.
"I think it might be wise," he said, holding his voice in careful check. He shrugged ineffectually. "Find out about staying with them. You know."
"I don't know, Scott."
"Well... don't you think it's a good idea to make some recognition of the facts?"
"Scott, what are you trying to do?"
He lowered his chin to hide the quick swallowing movement in his throat. "I'm trying," he said, "to plan some disposition of you and Beth in the event-"
"Disposition! What are we-"
"Will you stop interrupting me?"
"You said disposition! What are we, bric-a-brac to be disposed of?"
"I'm trying to be realistic about this!"
"You're trying to be cruel about it! Just because I didn't know that you-"
"Oh, stop it, stop it. I can see there's no point in trying to be realistic."
"All right, we'll be realistic," she said, face tense with repressed anger. "Are you suggesting that I leave you and take Beth with me? Is that your idea of being realistic?"
His hands twitched in his lap.
"And what if they don't find it?" he said. "What if they never find it?"
"You think I should leave you, then," she said.
"I think it might be a good idea," he said.
"Well, I don't!"
And she was crying, hands spread across her face, tears trickling out between the fingers. He sat there feeling numbed and helpless, looking at her trembling shoulders.
"I'm sorry, Lou," he said. He didn't sound it.
She couldn't answer; her throat and chest were too tight with breath shaking sobs.
"Lou. I..." He reached out a lifeless hand and put it on her leg. "Don't cry. I'm not worth that." She shook her head as if at a great, unanswerable problem. She sniffed and brushed at her tears.
"Here," he muttered, handing her the handkerchief from his robe pocket. She took it without a word and pressed it against her wet cheeks.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"You have nothing to be sorry for," he said. "It's me. I got angry because I felt foolish and stupid." And now, he thought, he was inclined in the other direction, toward self-castigation, toward self-indulgent martyrdom. The mind troubled was capable of manifold inversions.
"No." She pressed his fingers briefly. "I had no right to-" She let the sentence hang. "I'll try to be more understanding."
For a moment her gaze rested on the white skinned patch where his wedding ring had been. Then, with a sigh, she rose.
"I'll get ready for bed," she said.
He watched her walk across the room and disappear into the hallway. He heard her footsteps, then the clicking of the lock on the bathroom door. With slow-motion actions he got on his feet and went into the bedroom.
He lay there in the darkness, staring at the ceiling.
Poets and philosophers could talk all they wanted about a man's being more than fleshly form, about his essential worth, about the immeasurable stature of his soul. It was rubbish.
Had they ever tried to hold a woman with arms that couldn't reach around her? Had they ever told another man they were as good as he, and said it to his belt buckle?
She came into the bedroom, and in the darkness he heard the crisp rustle of her robe as she took it off and put it across the foot of the bed. Then the mattress gave on her side as she sat down. She drew her legs up and he heard her head thump back softly on her pillow. He lay there tensely, waiting for something.
After a moment there was a whispering of silk and he felt her reaching hand touch his chest.
"What's that?" she asked softly.
He didn't say.
She pushed up on her elbow. "Scott, it's your ring," she said. He felt the thin chain cutting slightly into the back of his neck as she fingered the ring. "How long have you been wearing it?" she said.
"Since I took it off," he said.
There was a moment's silence. Then her love-filled voice broke over him.
"Oh, darling!" Her arms slipped demandingly around him, and suddenly he felt the silk-filmed heat of her body pressing against him. Her lips fell searchingly on his, and her fingertips drew in like cat claws on his back, sending spicy tingles along the flesh.
And suddenly it was back, all the forced-down hunger in him exploding with a soundless, body-seizing violence. His hands fled across her burning skin, clutching and caressing. His mouth was an open shiver under hers. The darkness came alive, a sabled aura of heat crawling on their twining limbs. Words were gone; communication had become a thing of groping pressures, a thing felt in their blood, in the liquid torments rising, sweetly fierce. Words were needless. Their bodies spoke a surer language. And when, too soon, it had ended and the night had fallen black and heavy on his mind, he slept, content, in the warm encirclement of her arms. And for the measure of a night there was peace, there was forgetfulness. For him.