Selected Stories by Fritz Leiber by Fritz Leiber Read Free Book Online Page A

him. I explained he didn’t know just how serious she was about her crazy ideas. I pointed out he was cutting both our throats. I even amazed myself by bawling him out.
He didn’t take any of it in his usual way. He just kept repeating, “But, Dave, I’ve got to see her.”
The street door slammed.
“That’s her,” I said, lowering my voice. “You’ve got to get out.”
He wouldn’t, so I shoved him in the darkroom. “And keep quiet,” I whispered. “I’ll tell her I can’t work today.”
I knew he’d try to look at her and probably come busting in, but there wasn’t anything else I could do.
The footsteps came to the fourth floor. But she never showed at the door. I got uneasy.
“Get that bum out of there!” she yelled suddenly from beyond the door. Not very loud, but in her commonest voice.
“I’m going up to the next landing,” she said, “And if that fat-bellied bum doesn’t march straight down to the street, he’ll never get another pix of me except spitting in his lousy beer.”
Papa Munsch came out of the darkroom. He was white. He didn’t look at me as he went out. He never looked at her pictures in front of me again.
That was Papa Munsch. Now it’s me I’m telling about. I talked about the subject with her, I hinted, eventually I made my pass.
She lifted my hand off her as if it were a damp rag.
“Nix, baby,” she said. “This is working time.”
“But afterward…” I pressed.
“The rules still hold.” And I got what I think was the fifth smile.
It’s hard to believe, but she never budged an inch from that crazy line. I mustn’t make a pass at her in the office, because our work was very important and she loved it and there mustn’t be any distractions.
And I couldn’t see her anywhere else, because if I tried to, I’d never snap another picture of her—and all this with more money coming in all the time and me never so stupid as to think my photography had anything to do with it.
Of course I wouldn’t have been human if I hadn’t made more passes. But they always got the wet-rag treatment and there weren’t any more smiles.
I changed. I went sort of crazy and light-headed—only sometimes I felt my head was going to burst. And I started to talk to her all the time. About myself.
It was like being in a constant delirium that never interfered with business. I didn’t pay attention to the dizzy feeling. It seemed natural.
I’d walk around and for a moment the reflector would look like a sheet of white-hot steel, or the shadows would seem like armies of moths, or the camera would be a big black coal car. But the next instant they’d come all right again.
I think sometimes I was scared to death of her. She’d seem the strangest, horriblest person in the world.
But other times…
And I talked. It didn’t matter what I was doing—lighting her, posing her, fussing with props, snapping my pix—or where she was—on the platform, behind the screen, relaxing with a magazine—I kept up a steady gab.
I told her everything I knew about myself. I told her about my first girl. I told her about my brother Bob’s bicycle. I told her about running away on a freight and the licking Pa gave me when I came home.
I told her about shipping to South America and the blue sky at night. I told her about Betty. I told her about my mother dying of cancer. I told her about being beaten up in a fight in an alley behind a bar. I told her about Mildred. I told her about the first picture I ever sold. I told her how Chicago looked from a sailboat. I told her about the longest drunk I was ever on. I told her about Marsh-Mason. I told her about Gwen. I told her about how I met Papa Munsch. I told her about hunting her. I told her about how I felt now.
She never paid the slightest attention to what I said. I couldn’t even tell if she heard me.
It was when we were getting our first nibble from national advertisers that I decided to follow her when she went home.
Wait, I can place it better than that.