“Yehudi,” I said.
“Tell Yehudi to do it, and it’s done. Sure, you do it, but you don’t know that you do, so it doesn’t hurt. And it gets done quicker.”
“You blur,” I said.
He held up his glass and looked through it at the electric light. It was empty. The glass, not the electric light. He said, “You blur.”
“Who?”
He didn’t answer. He seemed to be swinging, chair and all, in an arc about a yard long. It made me dizzy to look at him, so I closed my eyes, but that was worse so I opened them again.
I said, “A story?”
“Sure.”
“I got to write a story,” I said, “but why should I? I mean, why not let Yehudi do it?”
I went over and put on the headband. No extraneous remarks this time, I told myself. Stick to the point.
“Write a story,” I said.
I nodded. Nothing happened.
But then I remembered that, as far as I was supposed to know, nothing was supposed to happen. I walked over to the typewriter desk and looked.
There was a white sheet and a yellow sheet in the typewriter, with a carbon between them. The page was about half filled with typing and then down at the bottom were two words by themselves. I couldn’t read them. I took my glasses off and still I couldn’t, so I put them back on and put my face down within inches of the typewriter and concentrated. The words were “The End.”
I looked over alongside the typewriter and there was a neat, but small pile of typed sheets, alternate white and yellow.
It was wonderful. I’d written a story. If my subconscious mind had anything on the ball, it might be the best story I’d ever written.
Too bad I wasn’t quite in shape to read it. I’d have to see an optometrist about new glasses. Or something.
“Charlie,” I said, “I wrote a story.”
“When?”
“Just now.”
“I didn’t see you.”
“I blurred,” I said. “But you weren’t looking.”
I was back sitting on the bed. I don’t remember getting there.
“Charlie,” I said, “it’s wonderful.”
“What’s wonderful?”
“Everything. Life. Birdies in the trees. Pretzels. A story in less than a second! One second a week I have to work from now on. No more school, no more books, no more teacher’s sassy looks! Charlie, it’s wonderful!”
He seemed to wake up. He said, “Hank, you’re just beginning to see the possibilities. They’re almost endless, for any profession. Almost anything. ”
“Except,” I said sadly, “Lili St. Cyr and Esther Williams.”
“You’ve got a one-track mind.”
“Two-track,” I said. “I’d settle for either. Charlie, are you positive— ”
Wearily, “Yes.” Or that was what he meant to say; it came out “Mesh.”
“Charlie,” I said. “You’ve been drinking. Care if I try? ”
“Shoot yourself.”
“Huh? Oh, you mean suit yourself. O.K., then I’ll—”
“Thass what I shaid,” Charlie said. “Suit yourshelf.”
“You did not.”
“What did I shay, then?”
I said, “You shaid—I mean said: ‘Shoot yourself.’”
Even Jove nods.
Only Jove doesn’t wear a headband like the one I still had on. Or maybe, come to think of it, he does. It would explain a lot of things.
I must have nodded, because there was the sound of a shot. I let out a yell and jumped up, and Charlie jumped up too. He looked sober.
He said, “Hank, you had that thing on. Are you—?”
I was looking down at myself and there wasn’t any blood on the front of my shirt. Nor any pain anywhere. Nor anything. I quit shaking. I looked at Charlie; he wasn’t shot either. I said, “But who—? What—?”
“Hank,” he said. “That shot wasn’t in this room at all. It was outside, in the hallway, or on the stair.”
“On the stair?” Something prickled at the back of my mind. What about a stair? I saw a man upon the stair, a little man who was not there. He was not there again today. Gee, I wish he’d go away.
“Charlie,” I said. “It was Yehudi! He shot himself because I said ‘shoot yourself’ and the pendulum swung. You were wrong about it being an—an automatonic autosuggestive whatzit. It was Yehudi doing it all the time. It was—”
“Shut up,” he said.
But he went over and opened the door and I followed him and we went out in the hallway.
There was a decided smell of burnt powder. It seemed to come from about halfway up the stairs because it got stronger as we neared that point.