Amphiskios

Chapter I Four Are Chosen

Howard Loomis glanced down at the dashboard clock and cursed the long-winded customer who had delayed him for over two hours. His sample cases packed the back seat. He had already reported to the sales manager that he would spend the night in Alexandria, seventy miles away.

He yawned, lit a cigarette and ran the window down, hoping the cold air would keep sleep away. He was a thin and nervous young man with a mobile mouth, a receding hairline and driving ambition.

He began to think of the prospects in Alexandria then as sleep welled up over him. His hands relaxed on the wheel. He awakened with a start as his front right wheel went off onto the shoulder. The big car swerved and he fought it back under control.

It was a clear cold night — below freezing. It had rained during the afternoon but the road was dry.

He decided to increase his speed, depending on the added responsibility to keep him awake.

In the white glow of his headlights he saw a bridge ahead — a bridge over railroad tracks.

The tires whined on the concrete, changed tone as they hit the steel tread of the bridge.

The bridge was coated with thin clear ice.

As the back end began to swing Howard Loomis bit down on his lower lip, fighting both panic and sheer disbelief that this could be happening to him.

The back end swung in the other direction and there was a grinding smash as it tore through the side railing.

The big car tipped. Howard Loomis caught a glimpse of the steel tracks far below. Ridiculously the thought that he could not live through the fall was intermingled with the thoughts of the potential customers in Alexandria.

There was the spinning silence of the fall, the sickening lunge through space, and…

The third show was coming up and she knew that it would be rough and unpleasant. During the second show a drunk who fancied himself a comic, after chanting, “Take it off!” had come out onto the floor to offer assistance. There would be more drunks for the third show.

Her name was Mary Callahan — Maurine Callaix on the bill — and she was a tall girl with the blue-black hair, milky skin and blue eyes of her race.

She was checking the concealed hooks in her working dress when Sally, the new singer, came into the dressing room and stood watching her.

“How can you do it, Mary?” she asked.

“Do what, kid?”

“I mean, get out there in front of all those people and—”

Mary smiled tightly. “It’s just a business. I was the gal who was going to knock them dead in ballet. But I grew too big. It doesn’t bother me any more.”

Sally looked at her, shook her head and said, “I could never do it.”

Mary Callahan stared at the smaller girl for a moment. Mary Callahan thought of the last three years, of the ten months’ hospital bill her mother had accumulated while dying, of the money for milk and meat and bread for the twin nephews.

“I hope you don’t have to do it. Ever.”

“How about Rick?” Sally asked.

Mary Callahan frowned. “The guy worries me. I don’t know what gave him the idea that I was his prize package. He’s a hophead, dearie. He stopped me at the door tonight and I had to slap him across the teeth to get by him.”

“Was that safe?” Sally asked.

“He hasn’t got the nerve to try anything. I hope.”

She got the call and went on, pausing just off the floor for the blue spot to pick her up, then walking on in a slow half dance to the sultry beat of the tom-tom, wearing the mechanical lascivious smile, reaching gracefully for the first concealed snap on the evening gown.

When Rick came into the glow of the spot the music faltered and stopped.

Mary Callahan watched his hand, watched the gun.

Suddenly she knew that he would shoot She saw his pinpoint pupils, the twisted mouth, the stained teeth.

She saw the gun come up. She looked down the barrel, saw his finger whiten on the trigger, saw the first orange-red bloom of the flower of death and…

Joe Gresham padded across the I beam, his eyes fixed on the upright opposite him. He had learned three years before that when you’re on the high iron you never look at your feet. Because then you’d see the cars below, like beetles, the people like small slow bugs, and something would happen to your stomach.

He was a sun-hardened man, with wide shoulders, knotted hands and an impassive though good-humored face.

Above him he heard the rivets clanking into the bucket, the buck of the hammer. The sun was bright.

When he heard the shout, he stopped dead. The red-hot rivet struck him just above the right ear.

For long seconds he fought for balance, gave up, tried to drop in such a way that his hands would clasp the girder on which he had been walking.

But he had waited too long, and his hands merely slapped the girder.

He spun down through the warm morning air and it was as though the earth spun slowly around him. Each time he saw the street it was startlingly closer. And as he fell he thought, “This isn’t happening to me. This can’t be the end of Joe Gresham!”

And…

Stacey Murdock took three more smooth crawl strokes, rolled over onto her back and looked back at the lake shore, at the vast white house, the wide green lawns.

She grinned as she wondered if the two muscle-men her father had hired were still sitting in the house waiting for her to get up. Nothing could be more ridiculous than Daddy’s periodic kidnaping scares. Why kidnaping was out of fashion! Even when the gal in question would one day inherit more millions than she had fingers and toes.

Stacey was a trim, small girl with pale blond hair, a rather sallow face and a wide, petulant mouth.

The party last night had been a daisy. The cold water of the lake felt good. Best thing in the world for a hangover.

She had climbed down, dressed in a terricloth robe, from the terrace outside her bedroom window. She could see the robe on the dock, glinting white in the sun.

It was so much more pleasant to swim without a suit.

Her soaked hair plastered her forehead. She pushed it aside, rolled over and began her long, effortless crawl out into the big lake. The waves were a bit higher way out and sometimes when she rolled her face up to breathe, one would slap her in the face.

Suddenly she felt the churn of nausea. The hangover was worse than she thought. But messy to be sick out in the water like this.

She floated for a time as the feeling got worse. When the paroxysms started, she doubled over, unable to catch her breath, unable to straighten out. She coughed under water and it made a strange bubbling by her ears. Then, stupidly, she had to breathe and she strangled on the water she was sucking into her lungs.

She had no idea where the surface was, and she was climbing up an endless green ladder with arms as limp as wet doth and then there was a softness of music in her ears and it was so much easier and more delicious just to lie back and relax and sleep and…