Here Comes Civilization: The Complete Science Fiction of William Tenn Volume II (24 page)

He walked away happily, snapping his fingers at surrounding counters whose female custodians were all leaning disturbingly in the same Bommertropism. "Let's straighten up, girls; let's be brisk and meet the Business Day. And, at that," he mused, as he toddled back to his office to insult the first batch of manufacturers' representatives, "at that, it looks like a banner day in dicers, graters, and peelers."

How right he was, he did not begin to suspect until shortly before lunch hour, when the chief stock clerk burst in on him and screamed, "You gotta put more men on, Humphries. The stock department can't carry the load!"

"Load? Which load?"

"The load to and from Bommer's counter, that's which load!" The chief stock clerk threw away a handful of hair and danced around the desk. "I have all my men assigned to that one counter, not a man on inventory, not a man receiving, and as fast as we get the stuff to him, he sells it. Why didn't you tell me you were going to have a giveaway sale on dicers, graters, and peelers? I'd've ordered more stuff from the warehouse instead of having to yip at them every half-hour. I'd've asked Cohen in modernistic furniture or Blake in children's sport clothes to lend me a coupla men!"

Humphries shook his head, "There's no sale in dicers, graters, and peelers, not a giveaway sale, nor a seasonal sale nor even a plain bargain sale. Get a grip on yourself, man; let's not fall apart under unexpected pressure. Let's take a look and find out what is what."

He opened the door of his office and immediately exhibited the formal technique of standing aghast. Housewares was jammed with a gasping, surging mass of females, aimed at the dicers, graters, and peelers counter. Irving Bommer was completely hidden behind a flood of permanent waves and crazily perched hats but, from time to time, an empty carton would sail out of what Humphries approximated as his geographic position and a thin, cracked voice could be heard calling: "Get me more dicers, Stock, get me more! I'm running out. They're getting restless!" Every other counter on the floor was deserted—by clerks as well as customers.

Bellowing, "Hold them, Bommer; hold them, boy!" the buyer shot his cuffs and charged in. As he worked his way past women clasping whole cartons of potato peelers to their laboring breasts, he observed that the peculiar odor emanating from Bommer was now noticeable even at a distance. And it had grown stronger, more pungent...

—|—

Irving Bommer looked like a man who had gone down into the Valley of the Shadow and had seen much more there to fear than such picayune things as Evil. His collar was open, his tie flapped over one shoulder, his glasses hung from the opposite ear, his eyes were streaked madly with red, and sweat bubbled from him so furiously that his clothes appeared to have been recently withdrawn from an enthusiastic washing machine.

He was very badly frightened. While he had wares with which to distract them, the adoration was relatively passive. But as soon as his stock ran low, the women began to concentrate on his person again. There was no obvious rivalry among them; they merely pushed against each other to get a better view. In the beginning, he had told a few to go home and they had obeyed; now, though they seemed willing to do as he told them in every other respect, they absolutely refused to leave his presence. The affection they displayed had become more insistent, more determined—and more united. Dimly, he realized that this was due to his prodigious rate of perspiration—the sweat mixed with the love potion and diluted it still more, spread his odor still further abroad.

And the caresses! He had never known how painful a feminine touch could be. Every time he reeled down the counter to fill an order, hands—dozens of them—would reach out and stroke his arms, his chest, any part of his body that was accessible. Multiplied by the three hours it had been going on, the gentle touches had begun to feel like so many roundhouse punches.

He almost wept when Humphries slid into the counter by his side. "You got to get me more stock, Mr. Humphries," he babbled. "All I got left are eggplant graters and a few cabbage dicers. When they go, I go."

"Steady, boy, steady there," the buyer told him. "This is our test; let's meet it like a man. Are we going to be an effective, dependable clerk, or a reed that no large retailer dares lean upon? Where are those salesgirls? They should be behind the counter, helping you. Well, it'll be a while before we get another shipment. Let's take a break; let's try to interest them in towel racks and toiletware."

"Hey," an arm encased in mouton reached across the counter and tapped Humphries on the shoulder. "Move, I can't see him."

"One moment, madam, let's not get impatient," Humphries began brightly, then stopped before the murderous look in the woman's eyes. She—and the others around her, he noticed—looked quite capable of shoving a Hollywood Dream Slicer into his heart without tremor. He gulped and tried to shoot his cuffs.

"Look, Mr. Humphries, can I go home?" Irving asked him tearfully. "I don't feel at all well. And now that the stock is gone, there's not much point in my sticking around."

"Well," the buyer considered, "we can't say that we haven't had a busy day, can we now? And if we don't feel well, we don't feel well. Of course, we can't expect pay for the afternoon, but we can go home."

Irving said, "Gee, thanks." He started for the counter exit, but Humphries caught him by the elbow.

He coughed. "Just thought I'd tell you, Bommer, that that odor isn't offensive at all. Quite pleasant, in fact. Hope I didn't offend you by my thoughtless remark about your bathing."

"No, that's all right. You didn't offend me."

"I'm glad. I shouldn't like to offend you. I want you to like me, Bommer, I want you to feel that I'm your friend. Really, I—"

—|—

Irving Bommer fled. He dodged through the female multitude, and everywhere they moved back to make way for him, everywhere they reached out and touched—just touched!—some part of his pain-flooded anatomy.

He broke free long enough to get into the service elevator and shivered at the hungry, despairing moan that went up when the elevator doors closed in the earnest faces of the advance guard. As he descended, he heard a girlish voice sing out: "I know where he lives, everybody! I'll take you to his home!"

They were so damned cooperative, he groaned. He'd always dreamed of being a male god, but he'd never anticipated that one of a god's characteristics is that he is worshipped unselfishly.

He ran out of the elevator on the ground floor and hailed a taxi, observing that the girl operator had followed him out unswervingly and was also getting one. As he gave frenzied directions to the driver, he saw that all over the street women were climbing into cabs and commandeering buses.

"Hurry, hurry," he chattered at the driver. "Fast, fast, fast."

"I'm doing the best I can, fella," the man told him over his shoulder. "I observe traffic regulations. Which is more than I can say for those dumb dames back there."

Peeping despairingly through the rear window, Irving Bommer saw a complete disregard of red lights, arm-flailing policemen, and intersecting traffic as the cars behind him charged on. Every time his driver stopped, they picked up more motorized femininity.

And yet the sweat poured out of him more luxuriantly than ever as his fear increased, and yet the effluvium of Irving Bommer spread more widely through the streets.

He'd take a bath when he got home—that's what he'd do—he'd take a shower with some strong soap and wash the awful stuff off. But he'd have to hurry.

The taxi's brakes shrieked with the effort of gripping the wheels. "There you are, mister. This is as far as I can go. Some sort of riot going on."

As he paid the driver, Irving Bommer looked ahead and winced. The street was black with women.

The bottle of aftershave lotion—that's what it was. There was an open nozzle on it, and some of the odor had seeped out. The bottle was nearly full, so it must have been quite powerful. Still, if just leakage could do this...

The women stood about in the street, in the yard, in the alleyway, their faces turned up to his room like dogs who had treed a possum. They were very patient, very quiet, but every once in a while a sigh would start up and swell to the volume of shell-fire.

"Listen," he told the driver. "Wait for me. I may be back."

"That I can't promise. Don't like the looks of the mob."

Irving Bommer pulled his jacket over his head and ran for the entrance of his boarding-house. Faces—startled, happy faces—began turning in his direction.

"That's him!" he heard Mrs. Nagenbeck's hoarse voice. "That's our wonderful Irving Bommer!"

"Heem! Heem!" That was the gypsy woman. "The 'ansome wan!"

"Make way there," he yelled roughly. "Get out of my way." Reluctantly, adoringly, the mob moved back and made a path for him. He pushed the front door open just as the first of the pursuing vehicles roared around the corner.

There were women in the hall, there were women in the parlor and the dining room, there were women all the way up the stairs to his room. He pushed past them, past their swimming eyes and agonizing caresses, and unlocked the door of his room. He slammed it shut.

"Got to think, think," he patted his wobbling head with a feverish hand. A bath wouldn't be enough, not while the huge bottle of aftershave lotion remained to disseminate its fearful contents. Pour it down the drain? It would mix with water, dilute still further. Besides, he might get female sewer rats charging at him next. No, the potion had to be destroyed. How?
How?

The furnace in the cellar. There was alcohol in the aftershave lotion, and alcohol burned. Burn the stuff, then take a shower fast, not using puerile soap but something truly effective like lye—or sulphuric acid. The furnace in the cellar!

He plumped the bottle under his arm like a football. Outside, he could hear a hundred automobile horns honking, a thousand female voices sighing and muttering of their love. In the distance, very faintly, was the sound of police sirens and the disgusted, amazed voice of the law, trying to move that which was thoroughly determined to be immovable.

The moment he unlocked the door, he felt he had made a mistake. Women poured in as if the combination of the potion, his perspiration and the seeping bottle were absolutely irresistible.

"Back," he roared. "Get back! I'm coming through!"

More slowly than before, more reluctantly, they let him out. He fought his way to the head of the stairs, his body twisting and writhing every time a soft hand wavered in his direction. "Clear the stairs, dammit, clear the stairs!"

Some retreated, others didn't. But he could go down. Holding the bottle tightly, he started forward. A young, barely nubile girl extended her arms lovingly. He threw his body to one side. Unfortunately, his right foot had started down on the first step. He teetered on his left. His body moved forward; he squirmed for balance. A gray-haired matron started to caress his back and he arched it out.

Too far. He fell, the bottle shooting out of his sweaty grasp before him.

He hit a couple of steps on the way and finally piled painfully on the ruins of the bottle. He realized his chest was very wet.

He looked up and managed to scream just once as the torrent of yearning, of adoring, of beseeching faces closed over him.

That's why they have a hunk of blood-stained linoleum buried in White Willow Cemetery. And that immense monument above it was raised by enthusiastic public subscription in a single hour.

Why do writers go through dry periods—"slumps"? Obviously there may be as many answers to this as there are writers, but creative depletion and the need for recharging must relate to most. Several years after I became a professional, I had an agent who persuaded me to write money-making but utterly unchallenging fiction. (You'll find the whole story elsewhere in these Afterwords.) It was the only time in my life when I really tried to become a hack writer. I didn't realize then that I utterly lacked the necessary talent. Well, I made a good income for a while, then stopped writing completely.

I mean completely. I found that when I sat at the typewriter, nothing at all would come out—not even a business letter, not a list of Things To Be Done. My psyche was simply opposed to anything that had to do with literary expression. This went on for two years, and I found myself working at miscellaneous nonwriting jobs in order to pay the rent.

(All right, as slumps go, this would hardly compete with Lester del Rey's. Lester claimed here, as elsewhere, to have outdone every other writer: a slump seven-and-a-half years long made my two-year one look puny. But, as I told Lester, you could still starve to death on puny.)

I had almost given up thinking of myself as a writer, and was working as a waiter—in a place called Meyer's Goodie Shoppe!—when one night, as we were sweeping up, a title occurred to me. "Everybody Loves Irving Bommer"? I couldn't wait to get home to start writing it, to find out what such a story would be about.

I wrote it in a seven-hour stretch, before I went to bed. And it ended the slump—that slump, anyway.

But that's only a very small part of the story about the story. I eventually wrote many other stories, many other articles; I completed a novel and became a professor at Penn State; and I retired from Penn State. Ten years after I retired, I turned on the television one night.

And there was Irving Bommer. As a movie. On screen.

The title was different, yes, and the protagonist was not the ugliest man in town, yes, and yes, yes, there were other differences—but the Gypsy woman was still there offering a potion that was irresistible to a womanless man, and the protagonist used the potion as a spray, and yes, yes, there were other remarkable similarities to my story. The basic plot gimmicks of the fantasy seemed to be all mine.

I was angry. Through my nephew, David Klass, who is a well-established screenwriter, I got the name of a Hollywood lawyer. I called the lawyer.

He told me I didn't have a chance; there was no satisfaction to be had. Assuming I was right in all the similarities I had noted, there was still the matter of California law as it related to the statute of limitations.