We'll Always Have Paris by Ray Bradbury Read Free Book Online Page A

crafty
    glint in his eyes. He looked at the radio and stroked the top of it with his trembling
    hand.
    ‘Stay away from there!’ cried his wife.
    ‘Oho,’ he said. ‘Is this where she hides at night, in here, eh? In here! This
    is her coffin, eh, this is where the damn old vampire sleeps until tomorrow when her sponsor
    lets her out!’
    ‘Keep your hands off,’ she said hysterically.
    ‘Well, that settles her hash.’ He picked the radio up in his hands. ‘How do
    you kill her sort of witch? With a silver bullet through the heart? With a crucifix? With
    wolfsbane? Or do you make the sign of a cross on a soapbox top? Eh, is that it?’
    ‘Give me that!’ His wife rushed over to grapple with him. Between them, they
    swayed back and forth in a titanic battle for the electric coffin between them.
    ‘There!’ he shouted.
    He flung the radio to the floor. He tromped and stomped on it. He kicked it
    into bits. He ravened at it. He held the tubes in his hands and smashed them into silver
    flinders. Then he stuffed the shattered entrails into the wastebasket,all the time his wife danced frantically about, sobbing and screaming.
    ‘She’s dead,’ he said. ‘Dead, God damn it! I’ve fixed her good.’
    His wife cried herself to sleep. He tried to calm her, but she was so deep in
    her hysteria he could not touch her. Death was a terrible incident in her life.
    In the morning, she spoke not a word. In the coolness of the separated house,
    he ate his breakfast, confident that things would be better by evening.
    He arrived late to work. He walked between the typing, clicking rows of
    stenographers’ desks, passed on down the long hallway, and opened the door of his secretary’s
    office.
    His secretary was standing against her desk, her face pale, her hands up to
    her lips. ‘Oh, Mr Tiller, I’m so glad you came,’ she said. ‘In there.’ She pointed at the door
    to the inner office. ‘That awful old busybody! She just came in and–and—’ She hurried to the
    door, flung it open. ‘You’d better see her!’
    He felt sick to his stomach. He shuffled across the threshold and shut the
    door. Then he turned to confront the old woman who was in his office.
    ‘How did you get here?’ he demanded.
    ‘Why, good morning.’ Ma Perkins laughed, peeling potatoes in his swivel
    chair, her tidy little black shoes twinkling in the sunlight. ‘Come on in. I decided your
    business needed reorganizing. So I just started. We’repartners now. I had lotsa experience in this line. I saved more failing
    businesses, more bad romances, more lives. You’re just what I need.’
    ‘Get out,’ he said flatly, his mouth tight.
    ‘Why now, young man, cheer up. We’ll have your business turned around in no
    time. Just let an old woman philosophize and tell you how—’
    ‘You heard what I said,’ he grated. ‘Isn’t it enough I had trouble with you
    at my house?’
    ‘Who, me?’ She shook her head. ‘Sakes, I never been to your house.’
    ‘Liar!’ he cried. ‘You tried to break up our home!’
    ‘I only been here in the office, for six months now,’ she said.
    ‘I never saw you here before.’
    ‘Oh, I been around, around, I been observin’. I seed your business was bad, I
    thought I’d just give you some gumption you need.’
    Then he realized how it was. There were two Mas. One here, one at home. Two?
    No, a million. A different one in every home. None aware of the others’ separate lives. All
    different, as shaped by the individual brains of those who heard and lived in the far homes. ‘I
    see,’ he said. ‘So you’re takin’ over, moving in on me, are you, you old bastard?’
    ‘Sech language.’ She chuckled, making a crisscross pie on his green blotter,
    rolling out the yellow dough with plump fingers.
    ‘Who is it?’ he snarled.
    ‘Eh?’
    ‘Who is it, who’s the traitor in this office?!’ he bellowed. ‘The one who
    listens to you in secret here, on my time?’
    ‘Ask me no questions, I’ll