The Changed Man Read Free Page B

thing on the window, this creature—”
    The man looked at him coldly, but his eyes danced with anger. No, not anger. Fear. Howard realized the man was afraid of him.
    â€œThis is a decent place,” the man said softly. “You can take your creatures and your booze and your pink stinking elephants and that’s a hundred bucks for the window, a hundred bucks right now, and you can get out of here in an hour, an hour, you hear? Or I’m calling the police, you hear?”

    â€œI hear.” He heard. The man left when Howard counted out five twenties. The man seemed careful to avoid touching Howard’s hands, as if Howard had become, somehow, repulsive. Well, he had. To himself, if to no one else. He closed the door as soon as the man was gone. He packed the few belongings he had brought to the apartment in two suitcases and went downstairs and called a cab and rode to work. The cabby looked at him sourly, and wouldn’t talk. It was fine with Howard, if only the driver hadn’t kept looking at him through the mirror—nervously, as if he was afraid of what Howard might do or try. I won’t try anything, Howard said to himself, I’m a decent man. Howard tipped the cabby well and then gave him twenty to take his bags to his house in Queens, where Alice could damn well keep them for a while. Howard was through with the tenement—that one or any other.
    Obviously it had been a nightmare, last night and this morning. The monster was only visible to him, Howard decided. Only the chair and the glass had fallen from the fourth floor, or the manager would have noticed.
    Except that the baby had landed on the truck, and might have been real, and might be discovered in New Jersey or Pennsylvania later today.
    Couldn’t be real. He had killed it last night and it was whole again this morning. A nightmare. I didn’t really kill anybody, he insisted. (Except the dog. Except Father, said a new, ugly voice in the back of his mind.)
    Work. Draw lines on paper, answer phone calls, dictate letters, keep your mind off your nightmares, off your family, off the mess your life is turning into. “Hell of a good party last night.” Yeah, it was, wasn’t it? “How are you today, Howard?” Feel fine, Dolores, fine—thanks to you. “Got the roughs on the IBM thing?” Nearly, nearly. Give me another twenty minutes.
“Howard, you don’t look well.” Had a rough night. The party, you know.
    He kept drawing on the blotter on his desk instead of going to the drawing table and producing real work. He doodled out faces. Alice’s face, looking stern and terrible. The face of Stu’s ugly wife. Dolores’s face, looking sweet and yielding and stupid. And Rhiannon’s face.
    But with his daughter Rhiannon, he couldn’t stop with the face.
    His hand started to tremble when he saw what he had drawn. He ripped the sheet off the blotter, crumpled it, and reached under the desk to drop it in the wastebasket. The basket lurched, and flippers snaked out to seize his hand in an iron grip.
    Howard screamed, tried to pull his hand away. The child came with it, the leg flippers grabbing Howard’s right leg. The suction pad stung, bringing back the memory of all the pain last night. He scraped the child off against a filing cabinet, then ran for the door, which was already opening as several of his co-workers tumbled into his office demanding, “What is it! What’s wrong! Why did you scream like that!”
    Howard led them gingerly over to where the child should be. Nothing. Just an overturned wastebasket, Howard’s chair capsized on the floor. But Howard’s window was open, and he could not remember opening it. “Howard, what is it? Are you tired, Howard? What’s wrong?”
    I don’t feel well. I don’t feel well at all.
    Dolores put her arm around him, led him out of the room. “Howard, I’m worried about