Kelp whispered with harsh urgency, “Your mask! Your mask!”
Dortmunder looked around. “What?” Then he felt his bare face and said, “Oh, for Christ’s sake.” His mask was near him, on the mantel, and when he picked it up it was warm from hibachi heat. He pulled it angrily over his head and said, “It stinks worse when it’s hot.”
May said, “You men get some wood, build a real fire in this fireplace. We need some heat in this room.”
“What wood?” Dortmunder said. “Everything outside’ll be too wet to burn.”
“There must be wood in here,” she said. “Something to make a fire.”
“All right,” Dortmunder said, looking around. “All right, I’ll find something.”
“I can’t help,” Murch said. His voice was muffled by his hands, so that he sounded as though he too had a mask on. “I can’t very well carry wood with my hands over my face,” he said, and even through the muffling effect the tone of grievance could be heard in his voice.
“So you’ll sit there,” his Mom told him.
Dortmunder and Kelp went out to the kitchen, where they found some built-in shelving they could rip out, and for a time the empty house echoed with ripping, rending, crashing sounds from the kitchen. Meantime, Murch’s Mom moved the hibachi to a corner of the fireplace and made a bed for the fire out of ripped-up pieces of cardboard from the cartons that had contained their provisions. Murch sat the card table and watched the action through his fingers, and May dressed the boy in pajamas and wrapped the other blanket around him. On the television screen, which no one was watching, the blind hermit was playing his violin for the monster.
Dortmunder and Kelp brought a lot of jagged pieces of wood in, stacked them in the fireplace, and lit the card. board underneath. The fire started up at once, and smoked terrifically for half a minute, during which time everybody coughed and waved their arms and shouted unintelligible and unfollowable orders about the flue. Then all all at once the chimney began to draw, the fire flared up, the smoke was sucked away into the rain and the wind outside, and heat wafted out across the room.
“That’s nice,” May said.
Jimmy, warm now and dry, turned at last and noticed the television set. “Oh!” he said. “Bride of Frankenstein! There’s some beautiful shots in that. It was directed by James Whale, you know, he also did the original Frankenstein and The Invisible Man. Just incredible camera angles. Can I watch?”
“It’s past your bedtime,” May said.
“Oh, that can’t count now,” Jimmy said. “Besides, my room is cold, and you want to keep me warm, don’t you?”
“An exercise-yard lawyer,” Dortmunder said.
Murch said, “Put the kid upstairs, will you? I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with my hands over my face.”
Dortmunder said, “And I don’t want to keep this goddam mask on any more.”
Jimmy said, “I’ll make you a deal.”
They all looked at him. Murch’s Mom said, “You’ll make us a what?”
“I already saw your faces anyway,” Jimmy said, “when I first came in. But if you let me stay and watch the movie, you can take your masks off and I promise I’ll make believe you kept them on. I’ll never identify you, and I won’t tell the police or anybody else that I ever saw you or that I know what you look like. I’ll make a solemn vow.” He held his right hand up in the three-finger Boy Scout oath sign, though he was not now and never had been a Boy Scout. But he meant it just the same.
The gang all looked at one another. Murch’s Mom said, “Well, it would be easier.”
Kelp said, “But that’s not the way it’s done. That’s not the way it’s done.”
Dortmunder said, “You mean in that goddam book?”
“I mean anywhere. But, all right, in the book. Could you imagine the gang in that book taking their masks off and sitting down with the victim and watch Bride of Frankenstein?”
“I really really promise,” Jimmy said.
Dortmunder yanked his mask off and threw it into a corner. “I’ll take the kid’s word for it,” he said.
“So do I,” said Murch’s Mom, and pulled her own mask off. “This thing flattens my hair anyway.”
Murch took his hands down from his face. “Boy, that’s a strain on the arms,” he said.
May took off her mask, looked at it, and said, “I always thought this thing was pretty silly anyway.”
Kelp, the only one in the room with a Mickey Mouse mask on, said, “You people don’t seem to understand. If you don’t do a thing right, how do you expect to get away with anything?”
“Be quiet,” Murch’s Mom said. “I’m watching the movie.”
May said to Jimmy, “Come here, sit with me.”,,
I m a little old for sitting on people s laps, Jimmy said.
“Okay,” May said. “Then I’ll sit on yours.”
Jimmy laughed. “You win,” he said. “I’ll sit on your lap.”
They all arranged themselves in their chairs before the television set again, as they had been before Jimmy had come back. Kelp looked at them all., looked at the kid, looked at the TV, shook his Mickey Mouse-masked head, shrugged, pulled the mask off, flipped it away, and sat down to watch the movie.
The hermit and the monster ate dinner together. “Food good,” said the monster. The hermit gave him a cigar.
20
WHEN DORTMUNDER woke up he was stiff as board. He sat up, creaking in every joint, and discovered that his air mattress had developed a leak during the night. In order to have something for them to sleep on, without having to cart half a dozen beds out here from New York, Murch and his Mom had bought a bunch of inflatable air mattresses, the kind that people use in their swimming pools. And Dortmunder’s had sprung a leak during the night, lowering him slowly to the dining room floor, on which he had done the rest of his sleeping. The result being that he was now so stiff he could barely move.
Gray-white daylight crept through the boarded windows, showing him the empty room, the black hole in the center of the ceiling where a chandelier had been removed, and the other two air mattresses. Murch’s was empty, but a blanketed mound breathed slowly and evenly on the other one; Dortmunder felt fatalistic irritation at that. Kelp’s air mattress had not leaked, he was over there sleeping like a baby.
Last night, after the movie, the kid had been put back up in his room with the door locked, for whatever good it might do. But he’d been asleep by then-Dortmunder had had to carry him upstairs-so maybe he was still around. In any event, mattresses had been blown up for the ladies in the living room and for the gentlemen next door in the dining room, and to the pity-pat of rain on the floor-the roof leaked-they had all gone off to sleep.
Speaking of pitter-pat, there wasn’t any. Dortmunder frowned at the windows, but the boards were too close together for him to see out or even to tell what kind of day it was; though this light did seem too pale to be direct sunshine. Anyway. the rain had apparently stopped.
Well, there was nothing for it but to get up, or at least to make the attempt. Also, there was the smell of coffee in the air, which made Dortmunder’s stomach growl softly to itself in anticipation. Last night’s Lurps had been better than nothing, but they weren’t exactly the kind of meal he was used to.
“Urn,” he said, when he leaned forward, and, “Oof,” when he stretched one hand out on the floor and shifted his weight over onto it. “Aggghh,” he said, when he heaved his body heavily over onto one knee, and, “Oh, Jee-sus,” when at last he struggled to his feet.
What a back. It felt as though somebody had pounded a lot of finishing nails into it last night. He bent, twisted, arched his back, and listened to his body creak and snap and complain. Moving a lot like Boris Karloff in that movie last night-in fact, he looked a bit like that character-he staggered out of the dining room and into the living room, where he found May, Murch’s Mom and the kid sitting at the card table, playing hearts. May said, “Good morning. There’s hot water on the hibachi, if you want to make yourself some coffee.”
“I don’t want to make myself some coffee,” Dortmunder said. “My mattress leaked, I slept on the floor, I’m too stiff to bend over.”
“In other words,” May said, “you want me to make it.”
“That’s right,” Dortmunder said.
“After this hand,” May said.
Dortmunder grunted, and went over to open the door and look out at the world. The sky was very gray and the ground was very wet and there was still a damp chill in the air.