Bert Shipton was dropped off at his home in Albuquerque. He had forgotten it was being repossessed, a fact of which he was forcefully apprised by the new owners when they found him ransacking the kitchen for beer. He’d been keeping himself sane by anticipating the beer he would drink when he got back to Earth, and now here he was, and there wasn’t any. At loose ends, he wandered down the street, thinking he’d stop in to see Larry Cinch. Larry was out in the alley, fixing his car.
“Well, stranger,” said Larry, wiping his hands on a greasy rag. “Haven’t seen you in a year or better. Thought you’d died. Say, isn’t that a kick about Benita?”
“What about her?” Bert wanted to know.
“She’s some high mucky-muck in Washington. Special attaché for something or other to the U.N. Sorry about the dee-vorce, but you’re prolly better off.”
“What dee-vorce?”
“She married somebody else. Since nobody could find you, and the ET’s said you’d prolly been eaten, the president got you declared dead by special act of Congress. Part of a compensation package for the intermediary.”
“Hell, I’m not dead. Never was dead!”
“I’ll bet nobody knows you’re alive! If that don’t frost the cake. Here, have a beer. Any man just recent dead deserves a beer.”
Bert took it in hand and drank deeply. His face turned red, he choked, then spewed the contents across the fence with a cough that reached down into his thighs. He felt as though his insides were coming out. Another sip brought the same reaction.
“You’re one, huh,” said Larry, with a sympathetic shake of the head. “That’s too bad.”
“I’m one what?” gasped Bert.
“One of those that shouldn’t drink. The ET’s, they’ve put some stuff in the air. It’s to keep people from endangering other people. People who get nasty when they drink can’t drink. They heave it up. People who don’t drive safely can’t drive. They forget how. Simple, huh? Nobody can smoke until they’re eighty-five, and people who plan to shoot other people go into screaming fits if they touch a gun. Either that or the gun shoots them. Gun sales are down over eighty percent.
“Funny how we didn’t know that most people who bought guns were really thinking about killing people? Turns out they were, though. Even me. I have this kind of fantasy about killin’ my wife an’ her mother. Didn’t ever take it serious, but got to admit, I’d thought about it. So, I can’t buy a gun, but I can drink, so long as it’s no more than one beer an hour, no more than five in any one day.”
After a few minutes of watching Larry enjoying his beer, Bert decided to go see if he could find somebody else to talk to. He wandered down to the police station. Though he’d spent some time locked up, he also had friends there. Sergeant Wilkes and Joe Keene and . . . lots of people.
The place was like a graveyard.
“Hey,” he yelled. “Gimme a little service here.”
Wilkes came out of the office and stared at him in astonishment. “Bert? I thought you was dead.”
“I’m not dead, Jim,” Bert replied testily, repeating: “Never was dead.”
“Well, I be damned,” said the sergeant. “Hey, you hear about Benita?”
“Larry tole me.”
‘That was somethin, wasn’t it? Remember how she used to go down to the shelter to hide out when you was on a rampage? Boy, you two used to get into it. You used to whack her a good one, ever now and then.” He shook his head sadly. “None of that stuff happens anymore.”
“Whatta you mean, none of that stuff? Wives don’t drive men crazy anymore? That’d be the day.”
The sergeant shook his head. “Hardly ever. It just don’t happen like it used to. I think it’s something in the air, you know. Like the antidrunk dust.” He rearranged some papers on the desk, raising a cloud of ordinary dust in the process. “Heard your house got sold.”
“Damn Benita! She didn’t pay the mortgage.”
“You know, if you need a job or a place to sleep, you should go down to that shelter where she used to go. It’s not for women anymore. They call it a Glusi Center now. Like a homeless shelter. Got some real good programs for people sort of … at loose ends, you might say.”