The Most Beautiful Woman in Town & Other Stories Read online

  Sarah got me down to being 6 inches tall. She carried me to the store in her purse. I could look out at the people through the little air holes she had poked in her purse. I will say one thing for the woman. She still allowed me to have my beer. I drank it by the thimble. A quart would last me a month. In the old days it was gone in 45 minutes. I was resigned. I knew that if she wished to do so she could make me vanish entirely. Better 6 inches than nothing. Even a little life becomes very dear when you near the end of life. So, I amused Sarah. It was all I could do. She made me little clothes and shoes and put me on top of the radio and turned on the music and said, “Dance, little one! Dance, my dunce! Dance, my fool!”

  Well, I couldn’t collect my unemployment compensation so I danced on top of the radio while she clapped her hands and laughed.

  You know, spiders frightened me terribly and flies were the size of giant eagles, and if a cat ever caught me it would torture me like a small mouse. But life was still dear to me. I danced and sang and hung on. No matter how little a man has he will find that he will always settle for less. When I shit on the rug I would get spanked. Sarah put little pieces of paper around and I shit on them. And I ripped off little pieces of that paper to wipe my butt with. It felt like cardboard. I got hemorrhoids. Couldn’t sleep nights. Feelings of inferiority, of being trapped. Paranoia? Anyhow, I felt good when I sang and danced and Sarah let me have my beer. She kept me at an exact six inches for some reason. What the reason was, it was beyond me. As almost everything else was beyond me.

  I made up songs for Sarah, that’s what I called them: Songs for Sarah:

  “o, I’m just a little snot,

  that’s all right until I get hot,

  then there’s nothing to stick it in

  except the fucking head of a pin!”

  Sarah would clap her hands and laugh.

  “if ya wanna be an admir in the queen’s navy

  just be a clark for the fuckin’ nark,

  grow 6 inches tall and when the Queen goes to pee

  you can peek up inter drippin’ pussy … ”

  And Sarah would clap her hands and laugh. Well, that was all right. It had to be …

  But one night something very disgusting happened. I was singing and dancing and Sarah was on the bed, naked, clapping her hands, drinking wine and laughing. I was putting on a good show. One of my best. But, as always, the top of the radio got hot and started burning my feet. I couldn’t stand it anymore.

  “Look, baby,” I said, “I’ve had it. Take me down. Gimme a beer. No wine. You drink that cheapass wine. Gimme a thimble of that good beer.”

  “Sure, sweetie,” she said, “you put on a wonderful show tonight. If Manny and Lincoln had acted as nice as you, they’d be here tonight. But they didn’t sing or dance, they brooded. And worst of all, they objected to the Final Act.”

  “And what was the Final Act?” I asked.

  “Now, sweetie, just drink your beer and relax. I want you to enjoy the Final Act. You are evidently a much more talented person than Manny or Lincoln. I do believe that we can have the Culmination of the Opposites.”

  “O, hell yes,” I said, draining my beer. “Now give me a refill. And just what is the Culmination of the Opposites?”

  “Enjoy your beer, little sweetie, you’ll know soon enough.”

  I finished my beer and then the disgusting thing happened, a most disgusting thing. Sarah picked me up and placed me down between her legs, which she spread open just a bit. Then I was facing a forest of hair. I hardened my back and neck muscles, sensing what was to come. I was jammed into darkness and stench. I heard Sarah moan. Then Sarah began to move me slowly back and forth. As I said, the stench was unbearable, and it was difficult to breathe, but somehow there was air in there — various side-pockets and drafts of oxygen. Now and then my head, the top of my head bumped The Man in the Boat and then Sarah would let out an extra-illuminated moan.

  Sarah began moving me faster and faster. My skin began to burn, it became harder to breathe; the stench became worse. I could hear her panting. It occurred to me that the sooner I ended the thing the less I would suffer. Each time I was rammed forward I would arch my back and neck, tilt everything of me into this hooking curve of a thing, bumping The Man in the Boat.

  Suddenly I was ripped out of that terrible tunnel. Sarah held me up to her face.

  “Come, you damned fiend of a thing! Come!” she demanded.

  Sarah was totally drunk on wine and passion. I felt myself being rushed back into the tunnel. She worked me rapidly back and forth. Then suddenly I sucked air into my lungs to increase my size and then I gathered saliva into my jaws and spit it out — once, twice, 3 times, 4, 5, six times, then I stopped … The stench increased beyond all imagination and then, at last, I was lifted out into the air.

  Sarah lifted me into the lamplight and began kissing me all over my head and shoulders.

  “O, my darling! o, my precious little cock! I love you!”

  Then she kissed me with those horrible red and painted lips. I vomited. Then, spent in a swoon of wine and passion, she placed me between her breasts. I rested there and listened to her heart beat. She had taken me off of her damned leash, that silver chain, but it didn’t matter. I was hardly free. One of her massive breasts had fallen to one side and I seemed to be right over the heart. The heart of the witch. If I were the answer to the Population Explosion then why hadn’t she used me as more than a thing of entertainment, a sexual toy? I stretched out there and listened to that heart. I decided that she was a witch. Then I glanced up. Do you know what I saw? A most amazing thing. Up in that little crevice below the headboard. A hat pin. Yes, a hat pin, long, with one of those round purple glass things at the end of it. I walked up between her breasts, climbed her throat, got up on her chin (after much trouble), then walked quietly across her lips, and then she stirred a bit as I almost fell and had to grab to a nostril for support. Very slowly I got up by the right eye — her head was tilted slightly to the left — and then I was up on the forehead, having gone past the temple, and I was up into the hair — very difficult, wading through. Then I stood and stretched — reached up and just managed to grab the hat pin. Coming down was faster but more treacherous. I almost lost my balance several times, carrying that hat pin. One fall and it was over. I laughed several times because it was so ridiculous. The outcome of an office party for the gang, Merry Christmas.

  Then I was down under that massive breast again. I laid the hat pin down and listened again. I listened for the exact sound of the heart. I determined it to be at a spot exactly below a small brown birthmark. Then I stood up. I picked up the hat pin with its purple glass end, beautiful in the lamplight. And I thought, will it work? I was 6 inches tall and I judged the hat pin to be half again longer than I.9 inches. The heart seemed closer than that.

  I lifted the pin and plunged it in. Just below the birthmark.

  Sarah rolled and convulsed. I held to the hat pin. She almost threw me to the floor — which by comparative size seemed a thousand feet or more and would have killed me. I hung on. Her lips formed an odd sound.

  Then she seemed to quiver all over like a woman freezing.

  I reached up and jammed the remaining 3 inches of the pin down into her chest until the beautiful purple glass head of the pin was up against her skin.

  Then Sarah was still. I listened.

  I heard the heart, one two, one two, one two, one two, one two, one …

  It stopped.

  And then with my little killer’s hands, I clutched and gripped the bedsheet and made my way to the floor. I was 6 inches tall and real and frightened and hungry. I found a hole in one of the bedroom screens which faced east and ran from ceiling to floor. I grabbed at the branch of a bush, climbed on, clambered along the branch to the inside of the bush. Nobody knew that Sarah was dead but I. But that had no realistic good. If I were to go on, I would have to have something to eat. But I couldn’t help wondering how my case would be evolved in a court of
law? Was I guilty? I ripped off a leaf and tried to eat it. No good. Hardly. Then I saw the lady in the court to the south set out a plate of catfood for her cat. I crawled out of the bush and worked my way toward the catfood, watching for animals and movements. It tasted worse than anything I had ever eaten but I had no choice. I ate all the catfood I could — death tasted worse. Then I walked over to the bush and climbed back into it.

  There I was, 6 inches tall, the answer to The Population Explosion, hanging in a bush with a bellyful of catfood.

  There are details I don’t want to bore you with. Escapes from cats and dogs and rats. Feeling myself growing bit by bit. Watching them carry Sarah’s body out of there. Going in there and finding myself too small, still, to open the refrigerator door.

  The day the cat almost caught me as I ate at his bowl. I had to break away.

  I was then 8 or ten inches tall. I was growing. I even scared pigeons. When you scare pigeons you know that you are getting there. I simply ran down the street one day, hiding along the shadows of buildings and down beneath hedges and the like. I kept running and hiding until I got outside a supermarket and I hid under a newspaper stand just outside the entrance to the store. Then, as a big woman walked up and the electric door opened, I walked in behind her. One of the clerks at a checkstand looked up as I walked in behind the woman:

  “Hey, what the hell’s that?”

  “What?” a customer asked him.

  “I thought I saw something,” said the clerk, “maybe not. I hope not.”

  I somehow sneaked back to the storeroom without being seen. I hid behind some cartons of baked beans. That night I came out and had a fine feed. Potato salad, pickles, ham on rye, potato chips and beer, plenty of beer. It became about the same routine. Each day, all day, I hid in the storeroom and at night I’d come out and have a party. But I was growing and hiding was becoming more difficult. I got to watching the manager put the money in the safe each night. He was the last to leave. I counted the pauses as he put the money away each night. It seemed to be — 7 right, 6 left, 4 right, 6 left, 3 right, open. I went over to the safe each night and tried the numbers. I had to make a kind of stairway out of empty cartons in order to get up to the dial. It didn’t seem to work but I kept trying. Each night, I mean. Meanwhile I was growing fast. Perhaps I was 3 feet tall. The store had a small clothing section and I had to keep going into the larger sizes. The population problem was returning. Then one night the safe opened. I had 23 thousand dollars in cash. I must have hit them the night before banking time. I took the key the manager used in order to get out without the burglar alarm ringing. Then I walked down the street and got a week’s worth of lodging at the Sunset Motel. I told the lady I worked as a midget in the movies. It just seemed to bore her.

  “No television or loud noises after ten p.m. That’s our rule here.”

  She took my money, gave me a receipt and closed her door.

  The key said room 103. I hadn’t even looked at the room. The doors said 98, 99, 100, 101, I was walking north toward the Hollywood Hills, toward those mountains behind them, with the great and golden light of the Lord shining upon me, growing.

  THE FUCK MACHINE

  it was a hot night in Tony’s, you didn’t even think of fucking. just drink cool beer. Tony coasted a couple down to me and Indian Mike, and Mike had the money out. I let him buy the first round. Tony rang it up, bored, looked around — 5 or six others staring into their beers, dolts. so Tony walked down to us.

  “what’s new, Tony?” I asked.

  “ah, shit,” said Tony.

  “at ain’t new.”

  “shit,” said Tony.

  “ah shit,” said Indian Mike.

  we drank at our beers.

  “what do you think of the moon?” I asked Tony.

  “shit,” said Tony.

  “yeah,” said Indian Mike, “guy’s an asshole on earth he’s an asshole on the moon. makes no difference.”

  “they say there’s probably no life on Mars,” I said.

  “so what?” asked Tony.

  “oh shit,” I said. “2 more beers.”

  Tony coasted them down, then walked down for his money. rang it up. walked back. “shit it’s hot. I wish I were deader than yesterdays Kotex.”

  “where do men go when they die, Tony?”

  “shit. who cares?”

  “don’t you believe in the Human Spirit?”

  “a bagga bullshit!”

  “how about Che? Joan of Arc? Billy the Kid? all those?”

  “a bagga bullshit!”

  we drank our beers, thinking about it.

  “look,” I said, “I gotta take a piss.”

  I walked back to the urinal and there, as usual, was Petey the Owl.

  I took it out and began to piss.

  “you sure got a little dick,” he told me.

  “when I’m pissing or meditating, yeh. but I’m what you call the super-stretch type. when I’m ready to go, each inch I got now equals six.”

  “that’s good then, if you ain’t lying. cause I see two inches showing.”

  “I just show the head.”

  “I’ll give you a dollar to suck your cock.”

  “that ain’t much.”

  “you’re showing more than head. you’re showing every bit of string you got.”

  “fuck you, Pete.”

  “you’ll be back when you run out of beer money.”

  I walked back on out.

  “2 more beers,” I ordered.

  Tony went through his routine. came back.

  “it’s so hot, I think I’m going crazy,” he said.

  “the heat just makes you realize your true self,” I told Tony.

  “wait a minute! you calling me a nut?”

  “most of us are. but it’s kept a secret.”

  “all right, saying your bullshit is straight, how many sane men are there on earth? are there any?”

  “a few.”

  “how many?”

  “out of the billions?”

  “yeh. yeh.”

  “well, I’d say 5 or 6.”

  “5 or 6?” said Indian Mike. “well, suck my cock!”

  “look,” said Tony. “how do you know I’m nuts? how do we get away with it?”

  “well, since we are all insane there are only a few to control us, far too few, so they just let us run around insane. that’s all they can do at this moment. for a while I thought they might find some place to live in outer space while they destroyed us. but now I know that the insane control space also.”

  “how do you know?”

  “because they planted an American flag on the moon.”

  “suppose the Russians had planted a Russian flag on the moon?”

  “same thing,” I said.

  “then you’re impartial?” Tony asked.

  “I am impartial to all degrees of madness.”

  we became quiet. kept drinking. and Tony too, began pouring himself scotch and waters. he could. he owned the place.

  “jesus, it’s hot,” said Tony.

  “shit, yeh,” said Indian Mike.

  then Tony began talking. “insanity,” said Tony, “ya know, there’s something very insane going on at this very minute!”

  “sure,” I said.

  “no, no, no … I mean right HERE at my place!”

  “yeh?”

  “yeh. it’s so crazy, sometimes I get scared.”

  “tell me all about it, Tony,” I said, always ready for somebody else’s bullshit.

  Tony leaned real close. “I know a guy’s got a fuck-machine. no crazy sex magazine shit. like you see in the ads. hot water bottles with replaceable cornbeef pussies, all that nonsense. this guy has really put it together. a German scientist, we got to him, I mean our govt. did before the Russians could grab him. now keep it quiet.”

  “sure, Tony, sure …”

  “Von Brashlitz. our govt. tried to get him interested in SPACE. no go. a brilliant old guy, but he just has
this FUCK MACHINE in mind. at the same time he thinks he’s some kind of an artist, calls himself Michelangelo at times … they pensioned him off at $500.00 a month to kind of keep him alive enough to stay outa the nuthouses. they watched him a while, then got a little bored or forgot, but they kept the checks coming, and now and then an agent would talk to him ten or twenty minutes a month, write a report that he was still crazy, then leave. so he just drifted around from town to town, dragging this big red trunk behind him. finally one night he come in here and begins drinking. tells me that he is just a tired old man, needs a real quiet place to do his research. I kept putting him off. lotta nuts come in here, ya know.”

  “yeh,” I said.

  “then, man, he kept getting drunker and drunker, and he laid it down to me. he had designed a mechanical woman who could give a man a better fuck than any woman created throughout the centuries! plus no kotex, no shit, no arguments!”

  “I been looking,” I said, “for a woman like that all my life.”

  Tony laughed. “every man has. I thought he was crazy, of course, until one night after closing I went down to his rooming house with him and he took the FUCK MACHINE out of the red trunk.”

  “and?”

  “it was like going to heaven before you died.”

  “let me guess the rest,” I asked Tony.

  “guess.”

  “Von Brashlitz and his FUCK MACHINE are upstairs at your place right now.”

  “uh huh,” said Tony.

  “how much?”

  “twenty bucks a piece.”

  “20 bucks to fuck a machine?”

  “he’s outdone whatever Created us. you’ll see.”

  “Petey the Owl will blow me for a buck.”

  “Petey the Owl is o.k. but he ain’t no invention that beats the gods.”

  I shoved over my 20.

  “so help me, Tony, if this is some crazy kind of hot-weather gag, you’ve lost your best customer!”

  “like you said earlier, we’re all crazy anyhow. it’s up to you.”

  “right,” I said.

  “right,” said Indian Mike, “and here’s my 20.”

  “I only get 50 percent, ya gotta understand. the rest goes to Von Brashlitz. 500 buck pension ain’t much with inflation and taxes, and Von B. drinks schnapps like crazy.”