Paycheck (2003) (29 page)

‘We don’t want them,’ Timothy said.

‘That one’s sure nice and fat,’ Fred said longingly. But it was Timothy that had the knife; all he himself had was a string with a metal bolt on the end, a bull-roarer that could kill a bird or a small animal at a distance - but useless against a do-cat, which generally weighed fifteen to twenty pounds and sometimes more.

High up in the sky a dot moved at immense speed, and Timothy knew that it was a care ship heading for another fluke-pit, bringing supplies to it. Sure are busy, he thought to himself. Those careboys always coming and going; they never stop, because if they did, the grownups would die. Wouldn’t that be too bad? he thought ironically. Sure be sad.

Fred said, ‘Wave to it and maybe it’ll drop something.’ He grinned at Timothy, and then they both broke out laughing.

‘Sure,’ Timothy said. ‘Let’s see; what do I want?’ Again the two of them laughed at the idea of them wanting something. The two boys had the entire upstairs, as far as the eye could see … they had even more than the careboys had, and that was plenty, more than plenty.

‘Do you think they know,’ Fred said, ‘that our parents play Perky Pat with furniture made out of what they drop? I bet they don’t know about Perky Pat; they never have seen a Perky Pat doll, and if they did they’d be really mad.’

‘You’re right,’ Timothy said. ‘They’d be so sore they’d probably stop dropping stuff.’ He glanced at Fred, catching his eye.

‘Aw no,’ Fred said. ‘We shouldn’t tell them; your dad would beat you again if you did that, and probably me, too.’

Even so, it was an interesting idea. He could imagine first the surprise and then the anger of the careboys; it would be fun to see that, see the reaction of the eight-legged Martian creatures who had so much charity inside their warty bodies, the cephalopodic univalve mollusk-like organisms who had voluntarily taken it upon themselves to supply succor to the waning remnants of the human race … This was how they got paid back for their charity, this utterly wasteful, stupid purpose to which their goods were being put. This stupid Perky Pat game that all the adults played.

And anyhow it would be very hard to tell them; there was almost no communication between humans and careboys. They were too different. Acts, deeds, could be done, conveying something … but not mere words, not mere
signs
. And anyhow—’

A great brown rabbit bounded by to the right, past the half-completed house. Timothy whipped out his knife. ‘Oh boy!’ he said aloud in excitement. ‘Let’s go!’ He set off across the rubbly ground, Fred a little behind him. Gradually they gained on the rabbit; swift running came easy to the two boys: they had done much practicing.

‘Throw the knife!’ Fred panted, and Timothy, skidding to a halt, raised his right arm, paused to take aim, and then hurled the sharpened, weighted knife. His most valuable, self-made possession.

It cleaved the rabbit straight through its vitals. The rabbit tumbled, slid, raising a cloud of dust.

‘I bet we can get a dollar for that!’ Fred exclaimed, leaping up and down. ‘The hide alone - I bet we can get fifty cents just for the darn hide!’

Together, they hurried toward the dead rabbit, wanting to get there before a red-tailed hawk or a day-owl swooped on it from the gray sky above.

Bending, Norman Schein picked up his Perky Pat doll and said sullenly, ‘I’m quitting; I don’t want to play any more.’

Distressed, his wife protested, ‘But we’ve got Perky Pat all the way downtown in her new Ford hardtop convertible and parked and a dime in the meter and she’s shopped and now she’s in the analyst’s office reading
Fortune
- we’re way ahead of the Morrisons! Why do you want to quit, Norm?’

‘We just don’t agree,’ Norman grumbled. ‘You say analysts charged twenty dollars an hour and I distinctly remember them charging only ten; nobody could charge twenty. So you’re penalizing our side, and for what? The Morrisons agree it was only ten. Don’t you?’ he said to Mr and Mrs Morrison, who squatted on the far side of the layout which combined both couples’ Perky Pat sets.

Helen Morrison said to her husband, ‘You went to the analyst more than I did; are you sure he charged only ten?’

‘Well, I went mostly to group therapy,’ Tod said. ‘At the Berkeley State Mental Hygiene Clinic, and they charged according to your ability to pay. And Perky Pat is at a
private
psychoanalyst.’

‘We’ll have to ask someone else,’ Helen said to Norman Schein. ‘I guess all we can do now this minute is suspend the game.’ He found himself being glared at by her, too, now, because by his insistence on the one point he had put an end to their game for the whole afternoon.

‘Shall we leave it all set up?’ Fran Schein asked. ‘We might as well; maybe we can finish tonight after dinner.’

Norman Schein gazed down at their combined layout, the swanky shops, the well-lit streets with the parked newmodel cars, all of them shiny, the split-level house itself, where Perky Pat lived and where she entertained Leonard, her boy friend. It was the
house
that he perpetually yearned for; the house was the real focus of the layout - of all the Perky Pat layouts, however much they might otherwise differ.

Perky Pat’s wardrobe, for instance, there in the closet of the house, the big bedroom closet. Her capri pants, her white cotton short-shorts, her two-piece polka dot swimsuit, her fuzzy sweaters … and there, in her bedroom, her hi-fi set, her collection of long playing records …

It had been this way, once, really been like this in the ol-days. Norm Schein could remember his own l-p record collection, and he had once had clothes almost as swanky as Perky Pat’s boy friend Leonard, cashmere jackets and tweed suits and Italian sportshirts and shoes made in England. He hadn’t owned a Jaguar XKE sports car, like Leonard did, but he had owned a fine-looking old 1963 Mercedes-Benz, which he had used to drive to work.

We lived then
, Norm Schein said to himself,
like Perky Pat and Leonard do now
. This is how it actually was.

To his wife he said, pointing to the clock radio which Perky Pat kept beside her bed, ‘Remember our GE clock radio? How it used to wake us up in the morning with classical music from that FM station, KSFR? The “Wolfgangers”, the program was called. From six
A.M
. to nine every morning.’

‘Yes,’ Fran said, nodding soberly. ‘And you used to get up before me; I knew I should have gotten up and fixed bacon and hot coffee for you, but it was so much fun just indulging myself, not stirring for half an hour longer, until the kids woke up.’

‘Woke up, hell; they were awake before we were,’ Norm said. ‘Don’t you remember? They were in the back watching “The Three Stooges” on TV until eight. Then I got up and fixed hot cereal for them, and then I went on to my job at Ampex down at Redwood City.’

‘Oh yes,’ Fran said. ‘The TV.’ Their Perky Pat did not have a TV set; they had lost it to the Regans in a game a week ago, and Norm had not yet been able to fashion another one realistic-looking enough to substitute. So, in a game, they pretended now that ‘the TV repairman had come for it’. That was how they explained their Perky Pat not having something she really would have had.

Norm thought, Playing this game … it’s like being back there, back in the world before the war. That’s why we play it, I suppose. He felt shame, but only fleetingly; the shame, almost at once, was replaced by the desire to play a little longer.

‘Let’s not quit,’ he said suddenly. ‘I’ll agree the psychoanalyst would have charged Perky Pat twenty dollars. Okay?’

‘Okay,’ both the Morrisons said together, and they settled back down once more to resume the game.

Tod Morrison had picked up their Perky Pat; he held it, stroking its blonde hair - theirs was blonde, whereas the Scheins’ was a brunette - and fiddling with the snaps of its skirt.

‘Whatever are you doing?’ his wife inquired.

‘Nice skirt she has,’ Tod said. ‘You did a good job sewing it.’

Norm said, ‘Ever know a girl, back in the ol-days, that looked like Perky Pat?’

‘No,’ Tod Morrison said somberly. ‘Wish I had, though. I
saw
girls like Perky Pat, especially when I was living in Los Angeles during the Korean War. But I just could never manage to know them personally. And of course there were really terrific girl singers, like Peggy Lee and Julie London … they looked a lot like Perky Pat.’

‘Play,’ Fran said vigorously. And Norm, whose turn it was, picked up the spinner and spun.

‘Eleven,’ he said. ‘That gets my Leonard out of the sports car repair garage and on his way to the race track.’ He moved the Leonard doll ahead.

Thoughtfully, Tod Morrison said, ‘You know, I was out the other day hauling in perishables which the careboys had dropped … Bill Ferner was there, and he told me something interesting. He met a fluker from a fluke-pit down where Oakland used to be. And at that fluke-pit you know what they play? Not Perky Pat. They never have heard of Perky Pat.’

‘Well, what do they play, then?’ Helen asked.

‘They have another doll entirely.’ Frowning, Tod continued, ‘Bill says the Oakland fluker called it a Connie Companion doll. Ever hear of that?’

‘A “Connie Companion” doll,’ Fran said thoughtfully. ‘How strange. I wonder what she’s like. Does she have a boy friend?’

‘Oh sure,’ Tod said. ‘His name is Paul. Connie and Paul. You know, we ought to hike down there to that Oakland Fluke-pit one of these days and see what Connie and Paul look like and how they live. Maybe we could learn a few things to add to our own layouts.’

Norm said, ‘Maybe we could play them.’

Puzzled, Fran said, ‘Could a Perky Pat play a Connie Companion? Is that possible? I wonder what would happen?’

There was no answer from any of the others. Because none of them knew.

As they skinned the rabbit, Fred said to Timothy, ‘Where did the name “fluker” come from? It’s sure an ugly word; why do they use it?’

‘A fluker is a person who lived through the hydrogen war,’ Timothy explained. ‘You know, by a fluke. A fluke of fate? See? Because almost everyone was killed; there used to be thousands of people.’

‘But what’s a “fluke”, then? When you say a “fluke of fate—” ‘

‘A fluke is when fate has decided to spare you,’ Timothy said, and that was all he had to say on the subject. That was all he knew.

Fred said thoughtfully, ‘But you and I, we’re not flukers because we weren’t alive when the war broke out. We were born after.’

‘Right,’ Timothy said.

‘So anybody who calls me a fluker,’ Fred said, ‘is going to get hit in the eye with my bull-roarer.’

‘And “careboy”,’ Timothy said, ‘that’s a made-up word, too. It’s from when stuff was dumped from jet planes and ships to people in a disaster area. They were called “care parcels” because they came from people who cared.’

‘I know that,’ Fred said. ‘I didn’t ask that.’

‘Well, I told you anyhow,’ Timothy said.

The two boys continued skinning the rabbit.

Jean Regan said to her husband, ‘Have you heard about the Connie Companion doll?’ She glanced down the long rough-board table to make sure none of the other families was listening. ‘Sam,’ she said, ‘I heard it from Helen Morrison; she heard it from Tod and he heard it from Bill Ferner, I think. So it’s probably true.’

‘What’s true?’ Sam said.

‘That in the Oakland Fluke-pit they don’t have Perky Pat; they have Connie Companion … and it occurred to me that maybe some of this - you know, this sort of emptiness, this boredom we feel now and then - maybe if we saw the Connie Companion doll and how she lives, maybe we could add enough to our own layout to—’ She paused, reflecting. ‘To make it more complete.’

‘I don’t care for the name,’ Sam Regan said. ‘Connie Companion; it sounds cheap.’ He spooned up some of the plain, utilitarian grain-mash which the careboys had been dropping, of late. And, as he ate a mouthful, he thought, I’ll bet Connie Companion doesn’t eat slop like this; I’ll bet she eats cheeseburgers with all the trimmings, at a high-type drive-in.

‘Could we make a trek down there?’ Jean asked.

‘To Oakland Fluke-pit?’ Sam stared at her. ‘It’s
fifteen miles
, all the way on the other side of the Berkeley Flukepit!’

‘But this is important,’ Jean said stubbornly. ‘And Bill says that a fluker from Oakland came all the way up here, in search of electronic parts or something … so if he can do it, we can. We’ve got the dust suits they dropped us. I know we could do it.’

Little Timothy Schein, sitting with his family, had overheard her; now he spoke up. ‘Mrs Regan, Fred Chamberlain and I, we could trek down that far, if you pay us. What do you say?’ He nudged Fred, who sat beside him. ‘Couldn’t we? For maybe five dollars.’

Fred, his face serious, turned to Mrs Regan and said, ‘We could get you a Connie Companion doll. For five dollars for
each
of us.’

‘Good grief,’ Jean Regan said, outraged. And dropped the subject.

But later, after dinner, she brought it up again when she and Sam were alone in their quarters.

‘Sam, I’ve got to see it,’ she burst out. Sam, in a galvanized tub, was taking his weekly bath, so he had to listen to her. ‘Now that we know it exists we have to play against someone in the Oakland Fluke-pit; at least we can do that. Can’t we? Please.’ She paced back and forth in the small room, her hands clasped tensely. ‘Connie Companion may have a Standard Station and an airport terminal with jet landing strip and color TV and a French restaurant where they serve escargot, like the one you and I went to when we were first married … I just have to see her layout.’