Slippage by Harlan Ellison Read Free Book Online Page B

when he looked to his left, into the living room, and was able to discern—ever so faintly there in the oily shadows and pale moonglow seeping through the four front room windows—the shape of a man sitting on the sofa, the message became the crackling S.O.S. once sent by the Titanic to the Carpathia.
    There was an indistinct shape on the floor in front of the man's feet. It was motionless.
    Eddie Canonerro stood framed in the entrance to his living room—what had been his unremarkable, familiar living room—in plain sight of a man who should not have been sitting on his sofa, in a house that had been unremarkably, familiarly his house for fifteen years. Stood framed, outlined clearly, defenseless and bewildered, watching the large sitting man who stared at him across what was now an alien landscape, a living room nomansland as bleak and ominous and unforgiving as the silent terrain moments before it became the battlefield of Agincourt.
    "Who the hell are you?" Eddie said.
    His tone was warily between umbrage and confusion, careful not to cause insult. Every fool has a gun these days.
    "I'm a friend of Carole's," the shadowy shape on the sofa said. There was no movement of mouth, deep in darkness.
    "Where's my wife...?"
    Eddie was suddenly frantic. Was she dead? Wounded, lying on a floor somewhere? Was this a burglar, a rapist, some demented interloper careering through the neighborhood? Where was Carole!
    "Where're my kids...?"
    "Carole's left you. Carole's taken the kids. I'm here to make sure you move out of Carole's house." He gave the lumpy shape on the floor a half-shove, half-kick with a workbooted foot. It rolled awkwardly for a short space, then came to rest in a shard of moonlight bisecting the carpet. Eddie recognized it now. His old Army duffel bag. Packed full. "Here," said the man, "here's your clothes. You better leave now, that's what Carole wants."
    "I'm not going anywhere," Eddie said. He set down the thin, cabrettagrain attaché case. He dropped his jacket. If the guy moved suddenly, well, there was a Bantu assegai and hide-shield on the living room wall to his right. Pulling the spear loose from the brackets would be easy. If the guy moved. Suddenly.
    The guy's face was deep in shadow. No eyes to read. No expression to measure. Nothing to anticipate except words.
    "I'm not here to fight with you. Carole asked me to be here when you got home. Carole asked me to tell you it was all over, and she's taken the kids, and she's going to divorce you. That's what I was supposed to tell you. And Carole asked me to make sure you left and took your clothes with you, and then I'm supposed to lock up the house."
    Eddie's jaw muscles hurt. He realized he'd been grinding. "Where is she? She go to her mother's? What're you, the boy friend?"
    The guy said, "I'm a friend of Carole's. That's all."
    "She doesn't have any friends I don't know."
    "Maybe you don't know Carole very well."
    "Who the fuck d'you think you are?"
    "I'm a friend of Carole's. She asked me to tell you, that's all."
    "I'm calling the cops. Stay right there, smartass. I'm calling the cops to come and bust your ass for breaking and entering." He took a step toward the phone on the end-table beside the big, overstuffed reading chair.
    "Carole gave me a key. I have a notarized letter from Carole, giving me permission to be here."
    "Yeah, right. I think we'll let 911 decide if you've got the right to be in my house, mister!"
    "Do you really want me to give them the other letter, the one Carole wrote about why she's left you? It's got all the stuff in it about your bad habits, and hitting her, and the stuff about the kids..."
    Eddie couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Are you out of your fuckin' mind?! I've been married fifteen years, I never raised my hand to her, what the hell are you making up here?"
    "Carole told me about it. Carole was smart to leave you."
    Eddie stepped back, felt his hand touch the wall. He was reeling. He understood, suddenly, that