The first glimmer of sunlight was a great relief to Matt. As long as it was dark, he felt rather obliged to stay in bed and try to sleep. Whenever he dozed off, however, he found himself in the year-end party room full of corpses he had imagined for fictional purposes, except that at THIS party, naked pink women kept jumping on the shoulders of men wearing ski masks, and riding at him, firing guns. Dream Matt tried to run, but this did no good: skull-faced pipe cleaner dragons twined up his legs.
It was enough to make a morning person out of anyone.
After long consideration of his closet, he decided to dress casual-formal, putting on one more from his collection of white shirts with tiny stripes, but with a sweater over it instead of a jacket. Once his mirror told him he was presentable enough for the Silberwetters, he checked his alarm clock.
He sat down, slapping his hands on his knees. Seven was probably too early to go dropping by.
A stroll to the kitchen for an apple and a can of pop used up a few seconds, but not nearly enough. He took his breakfast back to the typewriter, setting his back to the clock. Almost immediately, he checked his watch. Eight: he would get into action at eight. Eight would give him time to explain, twice, find a cab, and head out there. Even if traffic cooperated and the lights were right, he would hardly get there before nine. Surely anybody who was getting up at all this morning would be up by nine.
What time would Mother get up? He leaned a little toward the door. Then he shook himself and drew out the pages for the current chapter of “Ascent”. He set these down in front of himself, pushed backward from the desk, and tiptoed over to peek out at the door of the other bedroom. Really, this was as bad as Christmas morning.
Glancing at the closet, where he’d hidden the presents, he saw his collection of exhibits from last night’s party. A pen and an impossibly real gun sat on top of the coat. Farther bask, on his dresser, the late Gus Thaxter’s bifocals flashed the morning sun at him, completing the grisly exhibit with a mocking memory of the last time murder (and Ad Silberwetter) had come his way.
Matt walked over to finger the evidence, as he had a dozen times already. The coat had a label to tell him very little, and nothing to tell him more. There were no pockets, which meant no chance to be like his mother’s characters, turning up a book of matches with a nightclub’s address outside and the phone number of a sultry brunette inside. The gun was just a gun to Matt. He checked the safety again, and looked around again for a safer place to put it. Was he likely to get into trouble for just having the thing around?
The pen, he thought, hopefully, might not be a clue at all. Anybody could carry a novelty pen, not just people from Down. Anybody could have dropped it, at any time. Depending on how often that piano got moved, it could have been sitting where he found it for weeks, or months.
He twisted the pen between his fingers. Was Miss Skull someone from Down? Now that the assailant in the coat was not before him, it was impossible to be sure where he had seen that stance, that figure, before.
The word “figure” inevitably brought Ada Silberwetter to mind. She MIGHT be quick enough to have been Miss Skull in ski mask and pocketless coat. She might have known a shortcut to the room with the grand piano. Why would she want to kill him, though? For his failure to lunge at her, drooling, when she stepped out of his closet after Thaxter’s demise? What if he just didn’t keep his date with her this morning?
He shook his head. Now was no time to quit. Miss Skull—who was almost certainly not Ada—would have no way of guessing he’d backed out, and would still come after him. As long as he was going to be a target anyhow, he might as well go on trying to find out what this was all about. Kind of his job anyhow: as an Information Specialist, he was meant to sort through chaos and bring it into something useful.
He set the pen down and touched the gun. The episode was not a total disaster: Matt felt a little puffed up about getting this gun without also getting shot. Unpleasant, but anyhow he hadn’t fainted or gone into hysterics. He had shown a little backbone.
Euphoria was brief. Miss Skull was still at large. She wouldn’t be as easy to fool next time.
Matt set the gun down. Nearly dying was the second most upsetting feature of the attack. (A freelance writer with 7,438 rejection slips had very little to live for, but Matt DID wnt to make it to 7,500.) The worst feature was that the attempt was his first real indication that anybody besides Ada Silberwetter and his mother thought there was anything to investigate. Before last night, there was a chance the whole thing might turn out to be a joke.
Back at the typewriter, once he forced himself back to his chair, the words at his elbow seemed to make very little sense. But that was normal, and there might be some purpose in retyping them anyhow.
Between pages or in difficult passages, between paragraphs, his sleeve came back to expose his watch. Two Minutes. One Minute. At 7:59.31, he pushed himself back from the typewriter. It would take thirty seconds to get his coat out.
By now, sunlight filled the apartment. It was a beautiful day not to go to the Silberwetters’. Even retyping more pages would be a better use of such a nice morning. He could break off around ten and watch his tape of Maria’s wedding on Sesame Street.
There was no sound of movement. Matt sidled down the hall to his mother’s door. Something rustled beyond him.
He followed the sound back to a sun-drenched dining room. All the lights were on, too, but even so, Mrs. Benz had to raise the Miss Skull letters to her nose to read, them while her free hand scribbled something on a legal pad.
Matt scratched his head: he hadn’t heard her come out at all. Surely he’d have heard her in the kitchen.
“Have you had breakfast?”
Her nose continued to brush the page while her right hand scribbled on. “Lots of times.”
He turned around and checked the kitchen. A breakfast half-built sat in various containers on the counter. No silverware: that was it. She could be mighty quiet when she thought he was sleeping late, but to be silent in the silverware drawer called for powers beyond those of ordinary mortals.
Matt poured and stirred what was required and brought a cup, a glass, and a bowl to the table. His mother glanced at them and then turned her nose back against the letter she was studying. “Oh, thank you. Your friend never mentioned anybody named Skull, did she? A real name, I mean: Jenny Skull or Lorelei Skull.”
“Um. No. That would be too easy.”
“Of course.” She set the letter down. “The reader spots that and says, ‘Oh, this is way too easy’ and while he’s patting himself on the back, you slip in the mickey.”
“I see.” Matt nodded gravely. “Any new insights on who really did it?”
“Mm,” she replied. She set the letter down and brought the legal pad to her nose. “You want someone who’s good-naturedly wicked.”
Matt didn’t think he wanted to meet any such people. “Good natured? Thise letters?”
“Well, look.” She waved the legal pad over the stack of correspondence. “It’s all overdone. There’s so much relish in every letter: you can tell Miss Skull thinks she’s the smartest bear in the woods. She’s having so much fun writing the letters I don’t believe she ever really would kill anybody.”
Matt had already decided not to tell her about the character in the coat and ski mask. “You’re just prejudiced in favor of writers.”
She set the legal pad down, sipped at the orange juice, and grimaced. “You know it’s all going to turn out to be a big joke. On New Year’s Eve or April Fool’s Day somebody’s going to admit it and the poor man who died will turn out to be a coincidence.” She tried the orange juice again and shook her head. “All very unsatisfactory for my readers. I’ll need to switch something.”
Closing her eyes, she drained the orange juice and set the glass as far away from her as she could. “Now what do I name her? Carmilla Skull or Camellia Skull? Where did I put my copy of ‘Starnames For Baby’?”
She rummaged in the clutter of papers but found no books. “It must be on the desk. Matt….”
Her eyes came up, and squinted at the coat on his arm, “Where are you off to now?”
Matt shrugged. “Just a little Christmas shopping.”
“Is it that late already? No. Are the stores open yet?”
Matt had not considered that detail when formulating a cover story. “Oh, well, you know…they will be by the time the bus gets there.”
Mrs. Benz nodded. “I wish you’d take me one of these times. I have all those grandchildren to provide for.”
“Maybe next week.”
“It takes thought, you know. Thought and time.” She picked up the legal pad again, apparently just to shake it at him. “You have to get a present good enough to keep them from sulking about Grandma’s dumb presents but not SO good that your children send you hate mail. It’s an art. You just wait ‘til you have grandchildren of your own.”
“I can wait.” Matt thought suddenly of Ada Silberwetter’s step-grandchildren. “Besides, having grandchildren means you’re o-o-o-old.”
Her nostrils flared. “Huh. It takes all kinds to make a world.” She reached for her coffee. “Not YOUR kind, though.”
“Well, you and Miss Skull have fun,” he said, turning to go. “Um, don’t let anybody in while I’m gone. I, er, might not be back in time for lunch. You know what it’s like out there.”
She had picked up a letter. “This is not fair at all,” she said, pushing her nose against the typed words. “It’s like pictures seen at midnight.” She looked from the letter into the upturned palm of her other hand, a mannerism she had picked up from her late husband, who had spent years as a waiter with a pad in that hand. Ever after, when confronted with a thorny problem, Dad would stare at his left hand as though it still contained a piece of paper with all the answers.
Just in case she had not quite caught the gist of what he’d said, Matt said, “Um, so long. Don’t let anybody in.”
“What?” His mother looked up. “Where are you going? Oh, right: Christmas shopping. Well, look for things for my darling grandchildren. Look for things for the other ones, too: they won’t all be darling by the twenty-fifth. Will you be home for lunch, do you think?”
“Um, no. Um, you know what it’s like out there.”
She nodded and picked up another letter. “Murder.”
Matt licked his lips. “Yeah.”
He paused by his bedroom door, pulling on his coat. Then he stood very still before walking into the bedroom. The gun was still there. It was heavy. He checked the mirror. Oh, anybody could tell that pocket was weighted down. He put the gun back.
Outside the apartment, he shoved the Down button and waited. Once he started back for the gun, but then he didn’t. The elevator arrived and it was too late to change his mind.
He relaxed. Now he could worry about more concrete concerns, like how much to tip the cabbie.
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