Image of the Beast / Blown

  shine in quiet green glades and wisdom like milk from

  full flowing breasts. Certainly not green milk. White

  creamy milk of tenderness and good sense.

  Childe smiled. The Great Romanticist. He not only

  looked like Lord Byron, he thought like him. Reincarna-

  tion come. George Gordon, Lord Byron, reborn as a

  private eye and without a club foot. One thing about a

  club mind, it didn't show. Not at first. But the limp

  became evident to others who had to walk with him day

  after day.

  The Private Eyes of the novels. They were simple

  straightforward men with their minds made up—all black

  and white—vengeance is mine, saith Lord Hammer—

  true heroes with whom the majority of readers had no

  trouble identifying.

  This was strange, because the antiheroes of the existen-

  tial novels were supposed to be representative of the

  modern mind, and they certainly were uncertain. The

  antithero got far more publicity, far more critical trumpet-

  ing, than the simple, stable, undoubting private eye, the

  hero of the masses.

  Childe told himself to cut, as if his thoughts were a

  strip of film. He was exaggerating and also simplifying.

  Inwardly, he might be an existential antihero, but out-

  wardly he was a man of action, a Shadow, a Doc Savage,

  a Sam Spade. He smiled again. Truth to tell, he was

  Herald Sigurd Childe, red-eyed, watery-eyed, drippy-

  nosed, sickened, wanting to run home to Mother. Or to

  that image named Sybil.

  Mother, unfortunately, became angry if he did not

  phone her to ask if he could come over. Mother wanted

  privacy and independence, and if she did not get it, she

  expressed herself unpleasantly and exiled him for an

  indeterminate time.

  He parked the car outside his apartment, ran up the

  steps, hearing someone cough behind a door as he passed,

  and unlocked his door. The apartment was a living room,

  a kitchenette, and a bedroom. Normally, it was bright

  with white walls and ceilings and creamy woodwork and

  lightly colored, lightly built furniture. Today, it was

  gloomy; even the unshadowed places had a greenish

  tinge.

  Sybil answered the phone before the second ring had

  started.

  "You must have been expecting me," he said gaily.

  "I was expecting," she said. Her voice was not, how-

  ever, unfriendly.

  He did not make the obvious reply. "I'd like to come

  over," he finally said.

  "Why? Because you're hard up?"

  "For your company."

  "You haven't got anything to do. You have to find

  some way to spend the time."

  "I have a case I'm working on," he said. He hesitated

  and then, knowing that he was baiting the hook and

  hating himself for it, said, "It's about Colben. You read

  the papers?"

  "I thought that was what you'd be working on. Isn't

  it horrible?"

  He did not ask her why she was home today. She

  was the secretary of an advertising agency executive.

  Neither she nor her boss would have a driving priority.

  "I'll be right over," he said. He paused and then said,

  "Will I be able to stay a while or will I have to get out

  after a while? Don't get mad! I just want to know; I'd

  like to be able to relax."

  "You can stay for a couple of hours or more, if you

  like. I'm not going anyplace, and nobody is coming—

  that I know of."

  He took the phone from his ear but her voice was

  laud enough for him to hear, and he returned it to his ear.

  "Herald? I really do want you to come!"

  He said, "Good!" and then, "Hell! I've just been think-

  ing of myself! Is there anything I can get you from the

  store?"

  "No, you know there's a supermarket only three

  blocks from here. I walked."

  "OK. I just thought you might not have gone out yet

  or you forgot something you might want me to pick up

  for you."

  They were both silent for a few seconds. He was

  thinking about his irritations when they had been married,

  about how many times he had had to run out to get

  things that she had forgotten during her shopping. She

  must be thinking about his recriminations, too; she was

  always thinking about them when they got together.

  "I'll be right over," he said hurriedly. "So long."

  He hung up and left the apartment. The man was

  still coughing behind the door. A stereo suddenly blared

  Strauss' Thus Spake Zarathustra downstairs. Somebody

  protested feebly; the music continued to play loudly. The

  protests became louder, and there was a pounding on a

  wall. The music did not soften.

  Herald considered walking the four blocks to Sybil's

  and then decided against it. He might need to take off

  suddenly, although there did not seem much chance of it.

  His answering service was not operating; it had no prior-

  ity. He did not intend to leave Sybil's number with the

  police operator or Sergeant Bruin while he was with her.

  She would get unreasonably angry about this. She did not

  like to be interrupted by calls while she was with him, at

  least, not by business calls. That had been one of the

  things bugging her when they were man and wife. Theo-

  retically, she should not be bothered by such matters

  now. In practice, which operates more on emotion than

  logic, she was as enraged as ever. He well knew how

  enraged. The last time he had been at her apartment, the

  exchange had interrupted them at a crucial moment, and

  she had run him out. Since then, he had called several

  times but had been cooled off. The last time he'd phoned

  had been two weeks ago.

  She was right in one guess. He was hard up. But he

  did not expect to be any less so after seeing her. He

  intended to talk, to talk only, to soothe some troublings

  and to scare away the loneliness that had come more

  strongly after seeing the film of Colben.

  It was strange, or, if not so strange, indicative. He had

  lived twenty of his thirty-five years in Los Angeles

  County. Yet he knew only one woman to whom he could

  really unburden himself and feel relaxed and certain of

  complete understanding. No. He was wrong. There was

  not even one woman, because Sybil did not completely

  understand him, that is, sympathize with him. If she did,

  she would not now be his ex-wife.

  But Sybil had said the same thing about men in

  general and about him in particular. It was the human

  situation—whatever that phrase meant.

  He parked the car in front of her apartment—no

  trouble finding parking space now—and went into the lit-

  tle lobby. He rang her bell; she buzzed; he went up the

  steps through the inner door and down the hall to the

  end. Her door was on the right. He knocked; the door

  swung open. Sybil was dressed in a floor-length morning

  robe with large red and black diamond shapes. The black

/>   diamonds contained white ankhs, the looped cross of the

  ancient Egyptians. Her feet were bare.

  Sybil was thirty-four and five feet five inches tall. She

  had long black hair, sharp black eyebrows, large green-

  ish eyes, a slender straight nose perhaps a little bit too

  long, a full mouth, a pale skin. She was pretty, and the

  body under the kimono was well built, although she may

  have been just a little too hippy for some tastes.

  Her apartment was light, like his, with much white

  on the walls and ceilings, and creamy woodwork and

  light and airy furniture. But a tall gloomy El Greco re-

  production hung incongruously on the wall; it hovered

  over everything said and done in the one room. Childe

  always felt as if the elongated man on the cross was de-

  livering judgment upon him as well as upon the city on

  the plain.

  The painting was not as visible as usual. There was al-

  most always a blue haze of tobacco—which accounted

  for the walls and ceiling not being as white as those of

  his apartment—and today the blue had become gray-

  green. Sybil coughed as she lit another cigarette, and

  then she went into a spasm of coughing and her face

  became blue. He was not upset by this, no more than

  usual, anyway. She had incipient emphysema and had

  been advised by her doctor to chop off the smoking two

  years ago. Certainly, the smog was accelerating her dis-

  ease, but he could do nothing about it. Still, it was one

  more cause for quarreling.

  She finally went into the kitchen for water and came

  out several minutes later. Her expression was challenging,

  but he kept his face smooth. He waited until she sat

  down on the sofa across the room from his easy chair.

  She ground the freshly lit cigarette out on an ash tray

  and said, "Oh God! I can't breathe!"

  By which she meant that she could not smoke.

  "Tell me about Colben," she said, and then, "first,

  could I get you ... ?"

  Her voice decayed. She was always forgetting that he

  had quit drinking four years ago.

  "I need to relax," he said. "I'm all out of pot and no

  chance to get any. You ... ?"

  "I'll get some," she said eagerly. She rose and went

  into the kitchen. A panel creaked as it slid back; a min-

  ute passed; she came back with two cigarettes of white

  paper twisted at both ends. She handed him one. He

  said, "Thanks," and sniffed it. The odor always brought

  visions of flat-topped pyramids, of Aztec priests with

  sharp obsidian knives, naked brown men and women

  working in red clay fields under a sun fiercer than an

  eagle's glare, of Arab feluccas scudding along in the

  Indian ocean. Why, he did not know.

  He lit up and sucked in the heavy smoke and held it

  in his lungs as long as he could. He tried at the same

  time to empty his mind and body of the horror of

  this morning and the irritations he had felt since calling

  Sybil. There was no use smoking if he retained the

  bad feelings. He had to pour them out, and he could do

  it—sometimes. The discipline of meditation that a friend

  had taught him—or tried to teach him—had sometimes

  been effective. But he was a detective, and the prosecu-

  tion of human beings, the tracking down, the immer-

  sion in hate and misery, negated the ability to meditate.

  Nevertheless, stubborn, he had persisted in trying,

  and he could sometimes empty himself. Or seem to. His

  friend said that he was not truly meditating; he was us-

  ing a trick, a technique without essence.

  Sybil, knowing what he was doing, said nothing. A

  clock ticked. A horn sounded faintly; a siren wailed.

  Sirens were always wailing nowadays. Then he breathed

  out and sucked in again and held his breath, and pres-

  ently the crystallization came. There was a definite shift-

  ing of invisible lines, as if the currents of force that

  thread every centimeter of the universe had rearranged

  themselves into another, straighter configuration.

  He looked at Sybil and now he loved her very much,

  as he had loved her when they were first married. The

  snarls and knots were yanked loose; they were in a

  beautiful web which vibrated love and harmony through

  them with every movement they made. Never mind the

  inevitable spider.

  4

  He had hesitated to stop her when she kissed him all over

  his belly, although he knew what was coming. He con-

  tinued to restrain himself when she took his penis and

  bent down to place her mouth around the head. He felt

  the tongue flicking it, shuddered, pushed her head away,

  though gently, and said, "No!"

  She looked up at him and said, "Why?"

  "I never got around to telling you the fine details of

  the film," he said.

  "You're getting soft!"

  She sat up in the bed and looked down at him. She

  was frowning.

  "Have you got a disease?"

  "For God's sake!" he said, and he sat up, too. "Do

  you think I'd go to bed with you if I knew I had the

  syph or the clap? What kind of a question—what kind

  of a person do you think I am?"

  "I'm sorry," she said. "My God! What's wrong?

  What did I do?"

  "Nothing. Nothing under most circumstances. But I

  felt as if my cock was frozen when you … Never mind.

  Let me explain why I couldn't let you go down on me."

  "I wish you wouldn't use words like that!"

  "OK, my thing, then! Let me tell you."

  She listened with wide eyes. She was leaning on one

  arm near him. He could see the swollen nipple, which

  did not seem to dwindle a bit as she listened. It might

  have increased. Certainly, her eyes were bright, and,

  despite her expressed horror, she smiled now and then.

  "I really think you'd like to do that to me!" he said.

  "You're always saying something stupid like that," she

  said. "Even now. Do you hate me so much you can't

  even get a hard-on."

  "You mean erection, don't you?" he said. "If you

  can't understand why my penis wanted to crawl into

  my belly for safety, then you can't understand anything

  about men."

  "I won't bite," she said, and she grabbed his penis and

  lunged for it with her mouth wide open and smiling to

  show all her teeth.

  He jerked himself away, saying, "Don't!"

  "Forget about it, I was just kidding you," she said,

  and she crawled onto him and began kissing him. She

  thrust her tongue along his tongue and down his throat

  so far that he choked. "For God's sake!" he said, turning

  his head away. "What the hell are you trying to do? I

  can't breathe!"

  She sat up and almost hissed at him. "You can't

  breathe! How do you think I breathe when you're shov-

  ing that big thing down my throat? What is the matter?"

  "I don't know," he said. He sat up. "Let's have a few

  more drags. Maybe things'll straighten out."

  "Do
you have to depend upon that to be able to love

  me?"

  He tried to take her hand in his but she snatched it

  away.

  "You didn't see it," he said. "Those iron teeth. The

  blood! Spitting out that bloody flesh! God!"

  "I feel sorry for Colben," she said, "but I don't see

  what he has to do with us. You never liked him; you were

  going to get rid of him. And he gave me the creeps.

  Anyway … oh, I don't know."

  She rolled off the bed, went to the closet, and put on

  the kimono. She lit a cigarette and at once began

  coughing. It sounded as if her lungs were full of snot.

  He felt angry, and opened his mouth to say some-

  thing—what, he did not know, just so it was something

  that would hurt. But the taste of cunt made him pause.

  She had a beautiful cunt, the hair was thick and almost

  blue-black and so soft it felt almost like a seal pelt.

  She lubricated freely, perhaps too much, but the oil was

  sweet and clean. And she could squeeze down on his cock

  as if she had a hand inside it. And then he remembered

  the thing bulging out the pad over the woman's cunt in

  the film, and the blood that had been pouring into his

  penis became slushy and slowly thawed out and drained

  back into his body.

  Sybil, who had seen the dawning erection, said,

  "What's wrong now?"

  "Sybil, there's nothing wrong with you. It's me. I'm

  too upset."

  She sucked in some more smoke and managed to

  check a cough.

  "You always did bring your work home. No wonder

  our life became such a hell."

  He knew that that was not true. They had rubbed

  each other raw for other reasons, the causes of most of

  which they did not understand. There was, however, no

  use arguing. He had had enough of that.

  He sat up and swung his legs over the bed and stood

  up and walked to the chair on which he had piled his

  clothes.

  "What are you doing?"

  "Some of the smog gotten in your brain?" he said.

  "It's obvious I'm going to dress, and it's fairly predic-

  table that I'm getting out of here."

  He checked the impulse to say, "Forever!" It sounded

  so childish. But it could be true.

  She said nothing. She swayed back and forth with her

  eyes closed for a minute, then, after opening them,

  spun around and walked into the living room. A minute