Thinner

Chapter Ten

He made the appointment for the metabolic series through Houston, who sounded less optimistic after hearing that Halleck's steady weight-loss had continued and that he was, in fact, down twenty-nine pounds since his physical the month before.

'There still may be a perfectly normal explanation for all this,' Houston said, calling back with the appointment and the information three hours later, and that told Halleck all he needed to know. The perfectly normal explanation, once the odds-on favorite in Houston's mind, had now become the dark horse.

'Uh-huh,' Halleck said, looking down at where his belly had been. He never would have believed you could miss the gut that jutted out in front of you, the gut that had eventually gotten big enough to hide even the tips of your shoes – he'd had to lean and peer to find out if he needed a shine or not – especially he never would have believed it if you'd told him such a thing was possible while he was climbing a flight of stairs after too many drinks the night before, clutching his briefcase grimly, feeling a dew of sweat on his forehead, wondering if this was the day the heart attack was going to come, a paralyzing pain on the, left side of his chest which suddenly broke free and ripped down his left arm. But it was true; he missed his damn gut. In some weird way he couldn't understand even now, that gut had been a friend.

'If there's still a normal explanation,' he said to Houston, 'what is it?'

'This is what those guys are going to tell you,' Houston said. 'We hope.'

The appointment was at the Henry Glassman Clinic, a small private facility in New Jersey. They would want him there for three days. The estimated cost of his stay and the menu of tests they expected to run on him made Halleck very glad he had complete medical coverage.

'Send me a get-well card,' Halleck said bleakly, and hung up.

His appointment was for May 12 – a week away. During the days between, he watched himself continue to erode, and he strove to contain the panic that nibbled slowly away at his resolve to play the man.

'Daddy, you're losing too much weight,' Linda said uneasily at dinner one night – Halleck, sticking grimly by his guns, had downed three thick pork chops with applesauce. He'd also had two helpings of mashed potatoes. With gravy. 'If it's a diet, I think it's time you quit it.'

'Does it look like I'm dieting?' Halleck said, pointing at his plate with his fork, which dripped gravy.

He spoke mildly enough, but Linda's face began to work and a moment later she fled from the table, sobbing, her napkin pressed to her face.

Halleck looked bleakly at his wife, who looked bleakly back at him.

This is the way the world ends, Halleck thought inanely. Not with a bang but a thinner.

'I'll talk to her,' he said, starting to get up.

'If you go see her looking like you do right now, you'll scare her to death,' Heidi said, and he felt that surge of bright metallic hate again.

186. 183. 181. 180. It was as if someone – the old Gypsy with the rotting nose, for instance – was using some crazy supernatural eraser on him, rubbing him out, pound by pound. When had he last weighed 180? College? No … probably not since he had been a senior in high school.

On one of his sleepless nights between the fifth of May and the twelfth, he found himself remembering an explanation of voodoo he had once read – it works because the victim thinks it works. No big supernatural deal; simply the power of suggestion.

Perhaps, he thought, Houston was right and I'm thinking myself thin … because that old Gypsy wanted me to. Only now I can't stop. I could make a million bucks writing a response to that Norman Vincent Peale book … call it The Power of Negative Thinking.

But his mind suggested the old power-of-suggestion idea was, in this case at least, a pile of crap. All that Gypsy said was 'Thinner.' He didn't say 'By the power vested in me I curse you to lose six to nine pounds a week until you die.' He didn't say 'Eenie-meenie-chili-beanie, soon you will need a new Niques belt or you will be filing objections in your Jockey shorts.' Hell, Billy, you didn't even remember what he said until after you'd started to lose the weight.

Maybe that's just when I became consciously aware of what he said, Halleck argued back. But …

And so the argument raged.

If it was psychological, though, if it was the power of suggestion, the question of what he was going to do about it remained. How was he supposed to combat it? Was there a way he could think himself fat again? Suppose he went to a hypnotist – hell, a psychiatrist! – and explained the problem. The shrink could hypnotize him and plant a deep suggestion that the old Gypsy man's curse was invalid. That might work.

Or, of course, it might not.

Two nights before he was scheduled to check into Glassman Clinic, Billy stood on the scales looking dismally down at the dial – 179 tonight. And as he stood looking down at the dial, it occured to him in a perfectly natural way – the way things so often occur to the conscious mind after the subconscious has mulled them over for days and weeks that the person he really ought to talk to about these crazy fears was Judge Cary Rossington.

Rossington was a tit-grabber when he was drunk, but he was a fairly sympathetic and understanding guy when he was sober … up to a point, at least. Also, he was relatively close-mouthed. Halleck supposed it was possible that at some drunken party or other (and as with all the other constants of the physical universe – sunrise in the east, sunset in the west, the return of Halley's Comet you could be certain that somewhere in town after nine P.M, people were guzzling manhattans, fishing green olives out of martinis, and, quite possibly, grabbing the tits of other men's wives), he might be indiscreet about ole Billy Halleck's paranoid-schizo ideas regarding Gypsies and curses, but he suspected that Rossington might think twice about spilling the tale even while in his cups. It was not that anything illegal had been done at the hearing; it had been a textbook case of municipal hardball, sure, but no witnesses had been suborned, no evidence had been eighty-sixed. It was a sleeping dog just the same, though, and old shrewdies like Cary Rossington did not go around kicking such animals. It was always possible – not likely, but fairly possible – that a question concerning Rossington's failure to disqualify himself might come up. Or the fact that the investigating officer hadn't bothered to give Halleck a breathalyzer test after he'd seen who the driver was (and who the victim was). Nor had Rossington inquired from the bench as to why this fundamental bit of procedure had been neglected. There were other inquiries he could have made and had not.

No, Halleck believed his story would be safe enough with Cary Rossington, at least until the matter of the Gypsies dwindled away a bit in time … five years, say, or seven. Meantime, it was this year Halleck was concerned about. At the rate he was going, he would look like a fugitive from a concentration camp before the summer was over.

He dressed quickly, went downstairs, and pulled a light jacket out of the closet.

'Where are you going?' Heidi asked, coming out of the kitchen.

'Out,' Halleck said. 'I'll be back early.'

Leda Rossington opened the door and looked at Halleck as if she had never seen him before – the overhead light in the hall behind her caught her gaunt but aristocratic cheekbones, the black hair which was severely pulled back and showing just the first traces of white (No, Halleck thought, not white, silver … Leda's never going to have anything as plebeian as white hair), the lawn-green Dior dress, a simple little thing that had probably cost no more than fifteen hundred dollars.

Her gaze made him acutely uncomfortable. Have I lost so much weight she doesn't even know who I am? he thought, but even with his new paranoia about his personal appearance he found that hard to believe. His face was gaunter, there were a few new worry lines around his mouth, and there were discolored pouches under his eyes from lack of sleep, but otherwise his face was the same old Billy Halleck face. The ornamental lamp at the other end of the Rossington dooryard (a wrought-iron facsimile of an 1880's New York streetlamp, Horchow Collection, $687 plus mailing) cast only a dim wash of light up this far, and he was wearing his jacket. Surely she couldn't see how much weight he'd lost … or could she?

'Leda? It's Bill. Bill Halleck.'

'Of course it is. Hello, Billy.' Still her hand hovered below her chin, half-fisted, touching the skin of her upper throat in a quizzical, pondering gesture. Although her features were incredibly smooth for her fifty-nine years, the face lifts hadn't been able to do much for her neck; the flesh there was loose, not quite wattled.

She's drunk, maybe. Or … He thought of Houston, tidily tucking little Bolivian snowdrifts up his nose. Drugs? Leda Rossington? Hard to believe of anyone who can bid a two no-trump with a strictly ho-hum hand … and then make it good. And on the heels of that: She's scared. Desperate. What's this? And does it tie in somehow with what's happening to me?

That was crazy, of course … and yet he felt an almost frenzied need to know why Leda Rossington's lips were pressed so tight, why, even in the dim fight and despite the best cosmetics money could buy, the flesh under her eyes looked almost as baggy and discolored as the flesh under his own, why the hand that was now fiddling at the neckline of her Dior dress was quivering slightly. Billy and Leda Rossington considered each other in utter silence for perhaps fifteen seconds … and then spoke at exactly the same time.

'Leda, is Cary -' 'Cary's not here, Billy. He's'

She stopped. He made a gesture for her to go on.

'He's been called back to Minnesota. His sister is very ill.'

'That's interesting,' Halleck said, 'since Cary doesn't have any sisters.'

She smiled. It was an attempt at the well-bred, pained sort of smile polite people save for those who have been unintentionally rude. It didn't work; it was merely a pulling of the lips, more grimace than smile.

'Sister, did I say? All of this has been very trying for me – for us. His brother, I mean. His -'

'Leda, Cary's an only child,' Halleck said gently. 'We went over our sibs one drunk afternoon in the Hastur Lounge. Must have been … oh, four years ago. The Hastur burned down not long after. That head. shop, the King in Yellow, is there now. My daughter buys her jeans there.'

He didn't know why he was going on; in some vague way he supposed it might set her at ease if he did. But now, in the light from the hall and the dimmer light from the wrought-iron yard lamp, he saw the bright track of a single tear running from her right eye almost to the corner of her mouth. And the arc below her left eye glimmered. As he watched, his words tangling in each other and coming to a confused stop, she blinked twice, rapidly, and the tear overflowed. A second bright track appeared on her left cheek.

'Go away,' she said. 'Just go away, Billy, all right? Don't ask questions. I don't want to answer them.'

Halleck looked at her, and saw a certain implacability in her eyes, just below the swimming tears. She had no intention of telling him where Cary was. And on an impulse he didn't understand either then or later, with absolutely no forethought or idea of gain, he pulled down the zipper of his jacket and held it open, as if flashing her. He heard her gasp of surprise.

'Look at me, Leda,' he said. 'I've lost seventy pounds. Do you hear me? Seventy pounds!'

'That doesn't have anything to do with me!' she cried in a low, harsh voice. Her complexion had gone a sick clay color; spots of rouge stood out on her face like the spots of color on a clown's cheeks. Her eyes looked raw. Her lips had drawn back from her perfectly capped teeth in a terrorized snarl.

'No, but I need to talk to Cary,' Halleck persisted. He came up the first step of the porch, still holding his jacket open. And I do, he thought. I wasn't sure before, but I am now. 'Please tell me where he is, Leda. Is he here?'

Her reply was a question, and for a moment he couldn't breathe at all. He groped for the porch rail with one numb hand.

'Was it the Gypsies, Billy?'

At last he was able to pull breath into his locked lungs. It came in a soft whoop.

'Where is he, Leda?'

'Answer my question first. Was it the Gypsies?'

Now that it was here – a chance to actually say it out loud -he found he had to struggle to do so. He swallowed -swallowed hard – and nodded. 'Yes. I think so. A curse. Something like a curse.', He paused. 'No, not something like. That's bullshit equivocation. I think I've had a Gypsy curse laid on me.'

He waited for her to shriek derisive laughter – he had heard that reaction so often in his dreams and in his conjectures – but her shoulders only slumped and her head bowed. She was such a picture of dejection and sorrow that in spite of his fresh terror, Halleck felt poignant, almost painful empathy for her – her confusion and her terror. He climbed the second and third porch steps, touched her arm gently … and was shocked by the bright hate on her face when she raised her head. He stepped back suddenly, blinking … and then had to grab for the porch railing to keep from tumbling off the steps and landing on his pratt. Her expression was a perfect reflection of the way he had momentarily felt about Heidi the other night. That such an expression should be directed against him he found both inexplicable and frightening.

'It's your fault!' she hissed at him. 'All your fault! Why did you have to hit that stupid Gypsy cunt with your car? It's all your fault!'

He looked at her, incapable of speaking. Cunt? He thought confusedly. Did I hear Leda Rossington say 'cunt'? Who would have believed she even knew such a word? His second thought was: You've got it all wrong, Leda, it was Heidi, not me … and she's just great. In the pink. Feeling her oats. Hitting on all cylinders. Kicking up dickens. Taking …

Then Leda's face changed: she looked at Halleck with a calmly polite expressionlessness.

'Come in,' she said.

She brought him the martini he'd asked for in an oversize glass -two olives and two tiny onions were impaled on the swizzle stick, which was a tiny gold-plated sword. Or maybe it was solid gold. The martini was very strong, which Halleck did not mind at all … although he knew from the drinking he'd done over the last three weeks that he'd be on his ass unless he went slow; his capacity for booze had shrunk along with his weight.

Still, he took a big gulp to start with and closed his eyes with gratitude as the booze exploded warmth out from his stomach. Gin, wonderful high-calorie gin, he thought.

'He is in Minnesota,' she said dully, sitting down with her own martini. It was, if anything, bigger than the one she had given to Billy. 'But not visiting relatives. He's at the Mayo Clinic.'

'The Mayo -'

'He's convinced it's cancer,' she went on. 'Mike Houston couldn't find anything wrong, and neither could the dermatologists he went to in the city, but he's still convinced it's cancer. Do you know that he thought it was herpes at first? He thought I'd caught herpes from someone.'

Billy looked down, embarrassed, but he needn't have done so. Leda was looking over his right shoulder, as if reciting her tale to the wall. She took frequent birdlike sips at her drink. Its level sank slowly but steadily.

'I laughed at him when he finally brought it out. I laughed and said, “Cary, if you think that is herpes, then you know less about venereal diseases than I do about thermodynamics.” I shouldn't have laughed, but it was a way to … to relieve the pressure, you know. The pressure and the anxiety. Anxiety? The terror.'

'Mike Houston gave him creams that didn't work, and the dermatologists gave him creams that didn't work, and then they gave him shots that didn't work. I was the one that remembered the old Gypsy, the one with the half-eaten nose, and the way he came out of the crowd at the flea market in Raintree the weekend after your hearing, Billy. He came out of the crowd and touched him … he touched Cary. He put his hand on Cary's face and said something. I asked Cary then, and I asked him later, after it had begun to spread, and he wouldn't tell me. He just shook his head.'

Halleck took a second gulp of his drink just as Leda set her glass, empty, on the table beside her.

'Skin cancer,' she said. 'He's convinced that's what it is because skin cancer can be cured ninety percent of the time. I know the way his mind works – it would be funny if I didn't, wouldn't it, after living with him for twenty-five years, watching him sit on the bench and make real-estate deals and drink and make real-estate deals and chase other men's wives and make real-estate deals and … Oh, shit, I sit here and wonder what I would say at his funeral if someone gave me a dose of Pentothal an hour before the services. I guess it would come out something like – He bought a lot of Connecticut land which is now shopping centers and snapped a lot of bras and drank a lot of Wild Turkey and left me a rich widow and I lived with him through the best years of my life and I've had more fucking Blackglama mink coats than I ever had orgasms, so let's all get out of here and go to a roadhouse somewhere and dance and after a while maybe somebody will get drunk enough to forget I've had my fucking chin tied up behind my fucking ears three fucking times, twice in fucking Mexico City and once in fucking Germany and snap my fucking bra." Oh, fuck it. Why am I telling you all this?'

'The only things men like you understand are humping, plea-bargaining, and how to bet on pro-football games.'

She was crying again. Billy Halleck, who now understood the drink she had now almost finished was far from her first of the evening, shifted uncomfortably in his chair and took a big gulp of his own, drink. It banged into his stomach with untrustworthy warmth.

'He's convinced it's skin cancer because he can't let himself believe in anything as ridiculously old-world, as superstitious, as penny-dreadful-novel as Gypsy curses. But I saw something deep down in his eyes, Billy. I saw it a lot over the last month or so. Especially at night. A little more clearly every night. I think that's one of the reasons he left, you know. Because he saw me seeing it.

'Refill?'

Billy shook his head numbly and watched her go to the bar and mix herself a fresh martini. She made extremely simple martinis, he saw; you simply filled a glass with gin and tumbled in a couple of olives. They left twin trails of bubbles as they sank to the bottom. Even from where he was sitting, all the way across the room, he could smell the gin.

What was it with Cary Rossington? What had happened to him? Part of Billy Halleck most definitely did not want to know. Houston had apparently made no connection between what was happening to Billy and what was happening to Rossington -why should he have? Houston didn't know about the Gypsies. Also, Houston was bombing his brain with big white torpedoes on a regular basis.

Leda came back and sat down again.

'If he calls and says he's coming back,' she told Billy calmly, 'I'm going to our place on Captiva. It will be beastly hot this time of year, but if I have enough gin, I find I barely notice the temperature. I don't think I could stand to be alone with him anymore. I still love him – yes, in my way, I do – but I don't think I could stand it. Thinking of him in the next bed … thinking he might … might touch me . . .' She shivered. Some of her drink spilled. She drank the rest all at once and then made a thick blowing sound, like a thirsty horse that has just drunk its fill.

'Leda, what's wrong with him? What's happened?'

'Happened? Happened? Why, Billy dear, I thought I'd told you, or that you knew somehow.'

Billy shook his head. He was starting to believe he didn't know anything.

'He's growing scales. Cary is growing scales.'

Billy gaped at her.

Leda offered a dry, amused, horrified smile, and shook her head a little.

'No – that's not quite right. His skin is turning into scales. He has become a case of reverse evolution, a sideshow freak. He's turning into a fish or a reptile.'

She laughed suddenly, a harsh, cawing shriek that made Halleck's blood run cold: She's tottering on the brink of madness, he thought – the revelation made him colder still. I think she'll probably go to Captiva no matter what happens. She'll have to get out of Fairview if she wants to save her sanity. Yes.

Leda clapped both hands over her mouth and then excused herself as if she had burped – or perhaps vomited – instead of laughed. Billy, incapable of speaking just then, only nodded and got up to make himself a fresh drink after all.

She seemed to find it easier to talk now that he wasn't looking at her, now that he was at the bar with his back turned, and Billy purposely lingered there.