The Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson Read Free Book Online Page A

event—”
    “Disposition! What are we—”
    “Will you stop interrupting me?”
    “You said disposition! What are we—bric-a-brac to be disposed of?”
    “I’m trying to be realistic about this!”
    “You’re trying to be cruel about it! Just because I didn’t know that you—”
    “Oh, stop it, stop it. I can see there’s no point in trying to be realistic.”
    “All right, we’ll be realistic,” she said, face tense with repressed anger. “Are you suggesting that I leave you and take Beth with me? Is that your idea of being realistic?” His hands twitched in his lap.
    “And what if they don’t find it?” he said. “What if they
never
find it?”
    “You think I should leave you, then,” she said. “I think it might be a good idea,” he said. “Well, I don’t!”
    And she was crying, hands spread across her face, tears trickling out between the fingers. He sat there feeling numbed and helpless, looking at her trembling shoulders.
    “I’m sorry, Lou,” he said. He didn’t sound it.
    She couldn’t answer; her throat and chest were too tight with breath-shaking sobs.
    “Lou. I…” He reached out a lifeless hand and put it on her leg. “Don’t cry. I’m not worth that.”
    She shook her head as if at a great, unanswerable problem. She sniffed and brushed at her tears.
    “Here,” he muttered, handing her the handkerchief from his robepocket. She took it without a word and pressed it against her wet cheeks.
    “I’m sorry,” she said.
    “You have nothing to be sorry for,” he said. “It’s me. I got angry because I felt foolish and—stupid.”
    And now, he thought, he was inclined in the other direction—toward self-castigation, toward self-indulgent martyrdom. The mind troubled was capable of manifold inversions.
    “No.” She pressed his fingers briefly. “I had no right to—” She let the sentence hang. “I’ll try to be more understanding.”
    For a moment her gaze rested on the white-skinned patch where his wedding ring had been. Then, with a sigh, she rose.
    “I’ll get ready for bed,” she said.
    He watched her walk across the room and disappear into the hallway. He heard her footsteps, then the clicking of the lock on the bathroom door. With slow-motion actions he got on his feet and went into the bedroom.
    He lay there in the darkness, staring at the ceiling.
    Poets and philosophers could talk all they wanted about a man’s being more than fleshly form, about his essential worth, about the immeasurable stature of his soul. It was rubbish.
    Had they ever tried to hold a woman with arms that couldn’t reach around her? Had they ever told another man they were as good as he—and said it to his belt buckle?
    She came into the bedroom, and in the darkness he heard the crisp rustle of her robe as she took it off and put it across the foot of the bed. Then the mattress gave on her side as she sat down. She drew her legs up and he heard her head thump back softly on her pillow. He lay there tensely, waiting for something.
    After a moment there was a whispering of silk and he felt her reaching hand touch his chest.
    “What’s that?” she asked softly.
    He didn’t say.
    She pushed up on her elbow. “Scott, it’s your
ring,”
she said. He felt the thin chain cutting slightly into the back of his neck as she fingered the ring. “How long have you been wearing it?” she said.
    “Since I took it off,” he said.
    There was a moment’s silence. Then her love-filled voice broke over him.
    “Oh, darling!” Her arms slipped demandingly around him, and suddenly he felt the silk-filmed heat of her body pressing against him. Her lips fell searchingly on his, and her fingertips drew in like cat claws on his back, sending spicy tingles along the flesh.
    And suddenly it was back, all the forced-down hunger in him exploding with a soundless, body-seizing violence. His hands fled across her burning skin, clutching and caressing. His mouth was an open shiver under hers. The