“And below your signature — ?” the agent’s wife asked.
“Sure. Fornit Some Fornus.” He paused. “You can’t see it in the dark, but I’m blushing. I was so goddammed drunk, so goddammed smug. .. I might have had second thoughts in the cold light of dawn, but by then it was too late.”
“You’d mailed it the night before?” the writer murmured.
“So I did. And then, for a week and a half, I held my breath and waited. One day the manuscript came in, addressed to me, no covering letter. The cuts were as we had discussed them, and I thought that the story was letter-perfect, but the manuscript was… well, I put it in my briefcase, took it home, and retyped it myself. It was covered with weird yellow stains. I thought…”
“Urine?” the agent’s wife asked.
“Yes, that’s what I thought. But it wasn’t. And when I got home, there was a letter in my mailbox from Reg. Ten pages this time. In the course of the letter the yellow stains were accounted for. He hadn’t been able to find Kirschner’s bologna, so had tried Jordan’s.
“He said they loved it. Especially with mustard.
“I had been quite sober that day. But his letter combined with those pitiful mustard stains ground right into the pages of his manuscript sent me directly to the liquor cabinet. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. Go directly to drunk.”
“What else did the letter say?” the agent’s wife asked. She had grown more and more fascinated with the tale, and was now leaning over her not inconsiderable belly in a posture that reminded the writer’s wife of Snoopy standing on his doghouse and pretending to be a vulture.
“Only two lines about the story this time. All credit thrown to the Fornit… and to me. The bologna had really been a fantastic idea. Rackne loved it, and as a consequence — ”
“Rackne?” the author asked.
“That was the Fornit’s name,” the editor said. “Rackne. As a consequence of the bologna, Rackne had really gotten behind in the rewrite. The rest of the letter was a paranoid chant. You have never seen such stuff in your life.”
“Reg and Rackne… a marriage made in heaven,” the writer’s wife said, and giggled nervously.
“Oh, not at all,” the editor said. “Theirs was a working relationship. And Rackne was male.”
“Well, tell us about the letter.”
“That’s one 1 don’t have by heart, it’s just as well for you that I don’t. Even abnormality grows tiresome after a while. The mailman was CIA. The paperboy was FBI; Reg had seen a silenced revolver in his sack of papers. The people next door were spies of some sort; they had surveillance equipment in their van. He no longer dared to go down to the corner store for supplies because the proprietor was an android. He had suspected it before, he said, but now he was sure. He had seen the wires crisscrossing under the man’s scalp, where he was beginning to go bald. And the radium count in his house was way up; at night he could see a dull, greenish glow in the rooms.
“His letter finished this way: ‘I hope you’ll write back and apprise me of your own situation (and that of your Fornit) as regards enemies, Henry. I believe that reaching you has been an occurrence that transcends coincidence. I would call it a life-ring from (God? Providence? Fate? supply your own term) at the last possible instant.
‘It is not possible for a man to stand alone for long against a thousand enemies. And to discover, at last, that one is not alone… is it too much to say that the commonality of our experience stands between myself and total destruction? Perhaps not. I must know: are the enemies after your Fornit as they are after Rackne? If so, how are you coping? If not, do you have any idea why not? I repeat, I must know.’
“The letter was signed with the Fornit Some Fornus doodle beneath, and then a P.S. Just one sentence.
But lethal. The P.S. said: ‘Sometimes I wonder about my wife.’