While Mortals Sleep_ Unpublished Short Fiction - Kurt Vonnegut [16]
Q: When Verne blew up at you, you didn’t fight back in any way?
A: I just took it. He wasn’t in any mood to be trifled with. It was just as though I was trying to bust up his love life. It was just as though he was having a big love affair with Patty Lee Minot, and I came along and wrecked it. I didn’t say a word back to him, and then Patty Lee Minot came on the line. “Hello?” she said. “This is Harry Barker,” Harry said. He was trying to be smooth and sophisticated. He was lighting a little cigar Verne had given to him. “Long time no see, Melody Arlene,” he said. “Who is this really?” she said. “Is this you, Ferd?”
Q: Who is Ferd?
A: Search me. Some friend of hers who is a practical joker, I guess. Some glamorous, fun-loving New York celebrity. Harry said, “No, this is really Harry. We were married on October fourteenth, eleven years ago, Melody Arlene. Remember?” “If this is really Harry, and I don’t believe it is,” she said, “how come you’re calling me up?” “I thought you might like to know how our daughter is, Melody Arlene,” said Harry. “You never have tried to find out anything about her over all these years. I thought you might like to know how she was doing, since she is the only baby you ever had.”
Q: What did she say to that?
A: She didn’t say anything for a minute. Finally she said, in a very tough, twangy voice, “Who is this? Is this somebody trying to blackmail me? Because if it is, you can go straight to hell. Go ahead and give the whole story to the newspapers, if you want to. I’ve never tried to keep it a secret. I was married when I was sixteen to a boy named Harry Barker. We were both juniors in high school, and we had to get married on account of I was going to have a baby. Tell the whole wide world, for all I care.” And then Harry said, “The baby died, Melody Arlene. Your little baby died two years after you walked out.”
Q: He said what?
A: His and her baby died. Their baby died. She didn’t even know it, never bothered to find out what became of her daughter. This, according to Male Valor magazine, was woman eternal, every red-blooded male’s dream girl. And you know what she said?
Q: No.
A: Sergeant, this Woman Eternal for October said, “That’s a part of my life I’ve blotted out completely. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t care less.”
Q: What was Verne Petrie’s reaction when she said that?
A: No special reaction. His piggy little eyes were all glazed over, and he was showing his teeth and kind of gnashing them. He was off in some wild daydream about himself and Patty Lee Minot.
Q: And then what?
A: And then nothing. She hung up, and that was that. We all hung up, and everybody but Verne looked sick. Harry stood up, and he shook his head. “I wish to God I’d had more sense than to call her up,” he said. “Here’s your twenty bucks, Harry,” said Verne. “No thanks,” said Harry. He was like a man in a bad dream. “I don’t want it now,” he said. “It would be like money from her.” Harry looked down at his hands. “I built her a house, a nice little house. Built it with my own hands,” he said. He started to say something else, but he changed his mind. He shuffled out of the office, still looking at his hands. For about the next half hour, it was like a morgue around the office. Everybody felt lousy—everybody but Verne. I looked over at Verne, and he had the magazine open to the picture of Patty Lee Minot again. He caught my eye, and he said to me, “That lucky son of a gun.”
Q: Who was a lucky son of a gun?
A: Harry Barker was a lucky son of a gun, because he’d been married to that wonderful woman on the bed. “That lucky son of a gun,” Verne said. “Boy,” he said, “since I’ve heard her voice on the telephone, she’s one doll baby I’d give a thousand dollars to kiss.”
Q: And then you let him have it?
A: Right.
Q: With his own telephone? On top of his head?
A: Right.
Q: Knocking him cold?
A: I knocked Verne Petrie colder than a mackerel, because it came to me all in a flash that Verne Petrie was what was wrong with the world.
Q: What is wrong with the world?
A: Everybody