Time Out of Joint

"Bridgeland 3-4465," he said.

  "Just a moment, sir," the operator said.

  He waited.

  "I’m sorry, sir," the operator said. "Would you please look up that number again?"

  "Why?" he said.

  "Just a moment, sir," the operator said, and at that point the line went dead. No one was on the other end; he heard the absence of a living substance there. He waited, but nothing happened.

  After a time he hung up, waited, and dialed the number again.

  This time he got the squalling siren-sound, up and down in his ear, deafening him. The racket that indicated that he had misdialed.

  Choosing other numbers he dialed. Each time he got the racket. Misdial. Finally he closed the phone book, hesitated, and dialed for the operator.

  "Operator."

  "I’m trying to call Bridgeland 3-4465," he said. He could not tell if she was the same operator as before. "Would you get it for me? All I get is the misdial signal."

  "Yes sir. Just a moment sir." A long pause. And then, "What was that number again, sir?"

  He repeated it.

  "That number has been disconnected," the operator said.

  "Would you check on some others for me?" he asked.

  "Yes sir."

  He read off the other numbers from the page. Each one had been disconnected.

  Of course. An old phone book. Obviously. It was true; probably it was a discarded series in its entirety.

  He thanked her and hung up.

  So nothing had been proved or learned.

  An explanation might be that these numbers had been assigned to several towns nearby. The towns had incorporated, and a new number system installed. Perhaps when the switch to dial phones was made, only recently, a year or so ago.

  Feeling foolish, he walked back into the kitchen.

  The magazines had begun to dry, and he seated himself with one of them on his lap. Fragments broke away as he turned the first page. A family magazine, first an article on cigarettes and lung cancer ... then an article on Secretary Dulles and France. Then an article by a man who had trekked up the Amazon with his children. Then stories, Westerns and detectives and adventures in the South Seas. Ads, cartoons. He read the cartoons and put the magazine down.

  The next magazine had more pictures in it; something like Life. But the paper was not as high-quality as the Luce publications’ paper. Still, it was a first-line magazine. The cover was gone, so he could not tell if it was Look; he guessed that it was Look or one he had seen a couple of times called Ken.

  The first picture-story dealt with a hideous train-wreck in Pennsylvania. The next picture-story—

  A lovely blond Norse-looking actress. Reaching up, he moved the lamp so that it cast more light on the page.

  The girl had heavy hair, well-groomed and quite long. She smiled in an amazingly sweet manner, a jejune but intimate smile that held him. Her face was as pretty as any he had seen, and in addition she had a deep, full, sensual chin and neck, not the rather ordinary neck of most starlets but an adult, ripe neck, and excellent shoulders. No hint of boniness, nor of fleshiness. A mixture of races, he decided. German hair. Swiss or Norwegian shoulders.

  But what really held him, held him in a state of near-incredulity, was the sight of the girl’s figure. Good grief, he said to himself. And what a pure-looking girl. How could she be so developed?

  And she seemed happy to show it. The girl leaned forward, and most of her bosom spilled out and displayed itself. It looked to be the smoothest, firmest, most natural bosom in the world. And very warm-looking, too.

  He did not recognize the girl’s name. But he thought, There’s the answer to our need of a mother. Look at that.

  "Vic," he said, getting up with the magazine and carrying it into the living room. "Take a look at this," he said, putting it down in Vic’s lap.

  "What is it?" Margo said, from the other side of the room.

  "You’d be bored," Vic said, setting aside his piece of berry pie. "It’s real, isn’t it?" he said. "Yes, you can see under it. No supports. It holds itself out like that."

  "She’s leaning forward," Ragle said.

  "A girl, is it?" Margo said. "Let me look; I won’t carp." She came over and stood beside Ragle, and all three of them studied the picture. It was full-page, in color. Of course the rain had stained and faded it, but there was no doubt; the woman was unique.

  "And she has such a gentle face," Margo said. "So refined and civilized."

  "But sensual," Ragle said.

  Under the picture was the caption, Marilyn Monroe during her visit to England, in connection with the filming of her picture with Sir Laurence Olivier.

  "Have you heard of her?" Margo said.

  "No," Ragle said.

  "She must be an English starlet," Vic said.

  "No," Margo said, "it says she’s on a visit to England. It sounds like an American name." They turned to the article itself.

  The three of them read what remained of the article.

  "It talks about her as if she’s very famous," Margo said. "All the crowds. People lining the streets."

  "Over there," Vic said. "Maybe in England; not in America."

  "No, it says something about her fan clubs in America."

  "Where did you get this?" Vic said to Ragle.

  He said, "In the lots. Those ruins. That you’re trying to get the city to clear."

  "Maybe it’s a very old magazine," Margo said. "But Laurence Olivier is still alive ... I remember seeing Richard the Third on TV, just last year."

  They looked at one another.

  Vic said, "Do you want to tell me what your hallucination is now?"

  "What hallucination?" Margo said instantly, glancing from him to Ragle. "Was that what you two were talking about, that you didn’t want me to hear?"

  After a pause, Ragle said, "I’ve been having an hallucination, dear." He tried to smile at his sister encouragingly, but her face remained cruel with concern. "Don’t look so anxious," he said. "It’s not that bad."

  "What is it?" she demanded.

  He said, "I’m having trouble with words."

  At once she said, "Trouble speaking? Oh my god ... that’s how President Eisenhower was after his stroke."

  "No," he said. "That’s not what I mean." They both waited, but now that he tried to explain he found it almost impossible. "I mean," he said, "things aren’t what they seem."

  Then he was silent.

  "Sounds like Gilbert and Sullivan," Margo said.

  "That’s all," Ragle said. "I can’t explain it any better."

  "Then you don’t think you’re losing your mind," Vic said. "You don’t think it’s in you; it’s outside. In the things themselves. Like my experience with the light cord."

  After hesitating he at last nodded. "I suppose," he said. For some obscure reason he had an aversion toward tying in Vic’s experience with his own. They did not appear to him to be similar.

  Probably just snobbery on my part, he thought.

  Margo, in a slow, dreadful voice, said, "Do you think we’re being duped?"

  "What a strange thing to say," he said.

  "What do you mean by that?" Vic said.

  "I don’t know," Margo said. "But in Consumer’s Digest they’re always telling you to watch out for frauds and misleading advertising; you know, short weight and that sort of thing. Maybe this magazine, this publicity about this Marilyn Monroe, is all just a big bunch of hot air. They’re trying to build up some trivial starlet, pretend everybody has heard of her, so when people hear about her for the first time they’ll say, Oh yes, that famous actress. Personally I don’t think she’s much more than a glandular case." She ceased talking and stood silently, plucking at her ear in a repetitious nervous tic. Her forehead webbed with worry-lines.

  "You mean maybe somebody made her up?" Vic said, and laughed.

  "Duped," Ragle repeated.

  It rang a bell deep inside him. On some sub-verbal level.

  "Maybe I won’t
go away," he said.

  "Were you going away?" Margo said. "Nobody feels obliged to let me in on anything; I suppose you were going to leave tomorrow and never come back. Write us a post card from Alaska."

  Her bitterness made him uncomfortable. "No," he said. "I’m sorry, dear. Anyhow I’m going to stay. So don’t brood about it."

  "Were you intending to drop out of your contest?"

  "I hadn’t decided," he said.

  Vic said nothing.

  To Vic, he said, "What do you suppose we can do? How do we go about—whatever we ought to go about?"

  "Beats me," Vic said. "You’re experienced with research. Files and data and graphs. Start keeping a record of all this. Aren’t you the man who can see patterns?"

  "Patterns," he said. "Yes, I suppose I am." He hadn’t thought about his talent in this connection. "Maybe so," he said.

  "String it all together. Collect all the information, get it down in black and white—hell, build one of your scanners and run it through so you can view it, the way you do."

  "It’s impossible," he said. "We have no point of reference. Nothing to judge by."

  "Simple contradictions," Vic disagreed. "This magazine with an article about a world-famous movie star we haven’t heard of; that’s a contradiction. We ought to comb the magazine, read every word and line. See how many other contradictions there are, with what we know outside the magazine."

  "And the phone book," he said. The yellow section, the business listings. And perhaps, at the Ruins, there was other material.

  The point of reference. The Ruins.

  FIVE

  Bill Black parked his ’57 Ford in the reserved slot in the employees’ lot of the MUDO—Municipal Utility District Office—building. He meandered up the path to the door and inside the building, past the receptionist’s desk, to his office.

  First he opened the window, and then he removed his coat and hung it up in the closet. Cool morning air billowed into the office. He inhaled deeply, stretched his arms a couple of times, and then he dropped himself into his swivel chair and wheeled it around to face his desk. In the wire basket lay two notes. The first turned out to be a gag, a recipe clipped from some household column describing a way to fix a casserole of chicken and peanut butter. He tossed the recipe into the wastebasket and lifted out the second note; with a flourish he unfolded it and read it.

  Man at the house tried to call Bridgeland, Sherman, Devonshire, Walnut, and Kentfield numbers.

  I can’t believe it, Black thought to himself. He stuck the note in his pocket, got up from his desk and went to the closet for his coat, closed the window, left his office and walked down the corridor and past the receptionist’s desk, outside onto the path, and then across the parking lot to his car. A moment later he had backed out onto the street and was driving downtown.

  Well, you can’t have everything in life perfect, he said to himself as he drove through the morning traffic. I wonder what it means. I wonder how it could have happened.

  Some stranger could have stepped in off the street and asked to use the phone. Oh? What a laugh that was.

  I give up, he said to himself. It’s just one of those deadly things that defies analysis. Nothing to do but wait and see what took place. Who made the call, why, and how.

  What a mess, he said to himself.

  Across the street from the back entrance of the Gazette building he parked and got out of his car, stuck a dime in the parking meter, and then entered the Gazette offices by the back stairs.

  "Is Mr. Lowery around?" he asked the girl at the counter.

  "I don’t think he is, sir," the girl said. She moved toward the switchboard. "If you want to wait, I’ll call around and see if they can locate him."

  "Thanks," he said. "Tell him it’s Bill Black."

  The girl tried various offices and then said to him, "I’m sorry, Mr. Black. They say he hasn’t come in yet, but he ought to be in soon. Do you want to wait?"

  "Okay," he said, feeling glum. He threw himself down on a bench, lit a cigarette, and sat with his hands folded.

  After fifteen minutes he heard voices along the hall. A door opened and the tall, lean, baggy-tweed figure of Stuart Lowery put in its appearance. "Oh, hello Mr. Black," he said in his reasonable fashion.

  "Guess what was waiting for me in my office," Bill Black said. He handed Lowery the note. Lowery read it carefully.

  "I’m surprised," Lowery said.

  "Just a freak accident," Black said. "One chance in a billion. Somebody printed up a list of good restaurants and stuck it in his hat, and then he got into one of the supply trucks and rode on in, and while he was unloading stuff from the truck the list fell out of his hat." A notion struck him. "Unloading cabbages, for instance. And when Vic Nielson started to carry the cabbages into the storage locker, he saw the list and said to himself, Just what I need; a list of good restaurants. So he picked it up, carried it home, and pasted it on the wall by the phone."

  Lowery smiled uncertainly.

  "I wonder if anyone wrote down the numbers he called," Black said. "That might be important."

  "Seems to me that one of us will have to go over to the house," Lowery said. "I wasn’t planning to go again until the end of the week. You could go this evening."

  "Do you suppose we could have been infiltrated by some traitor?"

  "Successful approach," Lowery said.

  "Yes," he said.

  "Let’s see if we can find out."

  "I’ll drop over tonight," Black said. "After dinner. I’ll take over something to show Ragle and Vic. By then I can whip up some sort of thing." He started to leave and then he said, "How’d he do on his entries for yesterday?"

  "Seemed to be all right."

  "He’s getting distraught again. The signs are all there. More empty beer cans on the back porch, a whole bagful of them. How can he guzzle beer and work at the same time? I’ve watched him at it for three years, and I don’t understand it."

  Dead-pan, Lowery said, "I’ll bet that’s the secret. It’s not in Ragle; it’s in the beer."

  Nodding good-bye, Black left the Gazette building.

  On the drive back to the MUDO building, one thought kept returning to him. There was just that one possibility that he could not face. Everything else could be handled. Arrangements could be made. But—

  Suppose Ragle was becoming sane again?

  That evening, after he left the MUDO building, he stopped by a drugstore and searched for something to buy. At last his attention touched on a rack of ballpoint pens. He tore several of the pens loose and started out of the store with them.

  "Hey, mister!" the clerk said, with indignation.

  "I’m sorry," Black said. "I forgot,’.’ That certainly was true; it had slipped his mind, for a moment, that he had to go through the motions. From his wallet he took some bills, accepted change, and then hurried out to his car.

  It was his scheme to show up at the house with the pens, telling Vic and Ragle that they had been mailed to the waterworks as free samples but that city employees weren’t allowed to accept them. You fellows want them? He practiced to himself as he drove home.

  The best method was always the simple method.

  Parking in the driveway he hopped up the steps to the porch and inside. Curled up on the couch, Junie was sewing a button on a blouse; she ceased working at once and looked up furtively, with such a flutter of guilt that he knew she had been out strolling with Ragle, holding hands and exchanging vows.

  "Hi," he said.

  "Hi," Junie said. "How’d it go at work today?"

  "About the same."

  "Guess what happened today."

  "What happened today?"

  Junie said, "I was down at the launderette picking up your clothes and I ran into Bernice Wilks, and we got to talking about school—she and I went to Cortez High together—and we drove downtown in her car and had lunch, and then we took in a show. And I just got back. So dinner is four frozen beef pies." She eyed him appr
ehensively.

  "I love beef pies," he said.

  She got up from the couch. In her long quilted skirt and sandals and wide-collared blouse with the medal-sized buttons she looked quite charming. Her hair had been put up artfully, a coil tied at the back in a classical knot. "You’re real sterling," she said, with relief. "I thought you’d be mad and start yelling."

  "How’s Ragle?" he said.

  "I didn’t see Ragle today." "Well," he said reasonably, "how was he last time you saw him?"

  "I’m trying to remember when I last saw him."

  "You saw him yesterday," he said.

  She blinked. "No," she said.

  "That’s what you said last night."

  Doubtfully, she said, "Are you sure?"

  This was the part that annoyed him; not her slipping off into the hay with Ragle, but her making up sloppy tales that never hung together and which only served to create more confusion. Especially in view of the fact that he needed very badly to hear about Ragle’s condition.

  The folly of living with a woman picked for her affability.... She could be counted on to blunder about and do the right thing, but when it came time to ask her what had happened, her innate tendency to lie for her own protection slowed everything to a halt. What was needed was a woman who could commit an indiscretion and then talk about it. But too late to reshape it all, now.

  "Tell me about old Ragle Gumm," he said.

  Junie said, "I know you have your evil suspicions, but they only reflect projections of your own warped psyche. Freud showed how neurotic people do that all the time."

  "Just tell me, will you," he said, "how Ragle is feeling these days. I don’t care what you’ve been up to."

  That did the trick.

  "Look," Junie said, in a thin, deranged voice that carried throughout the house. "What do you want me to do, say I’ve been having an affair with Ragle, is that it? All day long I’ve been sitting here thinking; you know what about?"

  "No," he said.

  "I possibly might leave you, Bill. Ragle and I may go somewhere together."

  "Just the two of you? Or along with the Little Green Man?"

  "I suppose that’s a slur on Ragle’s earning capacity. You want to insinuate that he can’t support both himself and I."