Look at the Birdie: Unpublished Short Fiction Read online

  Fuzz Littler belonged to the Public Relations Department, and all the public relations people were supposed to be in Building 22. But Building 22 was full up when Fuzz came to work, so they found a temporary desk for Fuzz in an office by the elevator machinery on the top floor of Building 181.

  Building 181 had nothing to do with public relations. With the exception of Fuzz’s one-man operation, it was devoted entirely to research into semiconductors. Fuzz shared the office and a typist with a crystallographer named Dr. Lomar Horthy. Fuzz stayed there for eight years, a freak to those he was among, a ghost to those he should have been among. His superiors bore him no malice. They simply kept forgetting about him.

  Fuzz did not quit for the simple and honorable reason that he was the sole support of his very sick mother. But the price of being passively fubar was high. Inevitably, Fuzz became listless, cynical, and profoundly introverted.

  And then, at the start of Fuzz’s ninth year with the company, when Fuzz himself was twenty-nine, Fate took a hand. Fate sent grease from the Building 181 cafeteria up the elevator shaft. The grease collected on the elevator machinery, caught fire, and Building 181 burned to the ground.

  But there still wasn’t any room for Fuzz in Building 22, where he belonged, so they fixed him up a temporary office in the basement of Building 523, clear at the end of the company bus line.

  Building 523 was the company gym.

  One nice thing, anyway—nobody could use the gym facilities except on weekends and after five in the afternoon, so Fuzz didn’t have to put up with people swimming and bowling and dancing and playing basketball around him while he was trying to work. Sounds of playfulness would have been not only distracting but almost too mocking to bear. Fuzz, caring for his sick mother, had never had time to play in all his fubar days.

  Another nice thing was that Fuzz had finally achieved the rank of supervisor. He was so isolated out in the gym that he couldn’t borrow anybody else’s typist. Fuzz had to have a girl all his own.

  Now Fuzz was sitting in his new office, listening to the showerheads dribble on the other side of the wall and waiting for the new girl to arrive.

  It was nine o’clock in the morning.

  Fuzz jumped. He heard the great, echoing ka-boom of the entrance door slamming shut upstairs. He assumed that the new girl had entered the building, since not another soul in the world had any business there.

  It was not necessary for Fuzz to guide the new girl across the basketball court, past the bowling alleys, down the iron stairway, and over the duckboards to his office door. The buildings and grounds people had marked the way with arrows, each arrow bearing the legend GENERAL COMPANY RESPONSE SECTION, PUBLIC RELATIONS DEPARTMENT.

  Fuzz had been the General Company Response Section of the Public Relations Department during his entire fubar career with the company. As that section he wrote replies to letters that were addressed simply to the General Forge and Foundry Company at large, letters that couldn’t logically be referred to any company operation in particular. Half the letters didn’t even make sense. But no matter how foolish and rambling the letters might be, it was Fuzz’s duty to reply to them warmly, to prove what the Public Relations Department proved tirelessly—that the General Forge and Foundry Company had a heart as big as all outdoors.

  Now the footsteps of Fuzz’s new girl were coming down the stairway cautiously. She didn’t have much faith in what the arrows said, apparently. Her steps were hesitant, were sometimes light enough to be on tiptoe.

  There was the sound of a door opening, and the open door loosed a swarm of tinny, nightmarish little echoes. The girl had made a false turn, then, had mistakenly opened the door to the swimming pool.

  She let the door fall shut with a blam.

  On she came again, back on the right path. The duckboards creaked and squished under her. She knocked on the door of the General Company Response Section of the Public Relations Department.

  Fuzz opened the office door.

  Fuzz was thunderstruck. Smiling up at him was the merriest, prettiest little girl he’d ever seen. She was a flawless little trinket, a freshly minted woman, surely not a day older than eighteen.

  “Mr. Littler?” she said.

  “Yes?” said Fuzz.

  “I’m Francine Pefko.” She inclined her sweet head in enchanting humility. “You’re my new supervisor.”

  Fuzz was almost speechless with embarrassment, for here was infinitely more girl than the General Company Response Section could handle with any grace. Fuzz had assumed that he would be sent a dispirited and drab woman, an unimaginative drudge who could be glumly content with a fubar supervisor in fubar surroundings. He had not taken into account the Personnel Department’s card machines, to whom a girl was simply a girl.

  “Come in—come in,” said Fuzz emptily.

  Francine entered the miserable little office, still smiling, vibrant with optimism and good health. She had obviously just joined the company, for she carried all the pamphlets that new employees were given on their first day.

  And, like so many girls on their first day, Francine was what one of her pamphlets would call overdressed for work. The heels of her shoes were much too slender and high. Her dress was frivolous and provocative, and she was a twinkling constellation of costume jewels.

  “This is nice,” she said.

  “It is?” said Fuzz.

  “Is this my desk?” she said.

  “Yes,” said Fuzz. “That’s it.”

  She sat down springily in the revolving posture chair that was hers, stripped the cover from her typewriter, twittered her fingers over the keys. “I’m ready to go to work any time you are, Mr. Littler,” she said.

  “Yes—all righty,” said Fuzz. He dreaded setting to work, for there was no way in which he could glamorize it. In showing this pert creature what his work was, he was going to display to her the monumental pointlessness of himself and his job.

  “This is my very first minute of my very first hour of my very first day of my very first job,” said Francine, her eyes shining.

  “That so?” said Fuzz.

  “Yes,” said Francine. In all innocence, Francine Pefko now spoke a simple sentence that was heartbreakingly poetic to Fuzz. The sentence reminded Fuzz, with the ruthlessness of great poetry, that his basic misgivings about Francine were not occupational but erotic.

  What Francine said was this: “I came here straight from the Girl Pool.” In speaking of the Girl Pool, she was doing no more than giving the proper name to the reception and assignment center maintained by the company for new woman employees.

  But when Fuzz heard those words, his mind whirled with images of lovely young women like Francine, glistening young women, rising from cool, deep water, begging aggressive, successful young men to woo them. In Fuzz’s mind, the desirable images all passed him by, avoided his ardent glances. Such beautiful creatures would have nothing to do with a man who was fubar.

  Fuzz looked at Francine uneasily. Not only was she, so fresh and desirable from the Girl Pool, going to discover that her supervisor had a very poor job. She was going to conclude, as well, that her supervisor wasn’t much of a man at all.

  The normal morning workload in the General Company Response Section was about fifteen letters. On the morning that Francine Pefko joined the operation, however, there were only three letters to be answered.

  One letter was from a man in a mental institution. He claimed to have squared the circle. He wanted a hundred thousand dollars and his freedom for having done it. Another letter was from a ten-year-old who wanted to pilot the first rocket ship to Mars. The third was from a lady who complained that she could not keep her dachshund from barking at her GF&F vacuum cleaner.

  By ten o’clock, Fuzz and Francine had disposed of all three letters. Francine filed the three letters and carbons of Fuzz’s gracious replies. The filing cabinet was otherwise empty. The General Company Response Section had lost all its old files in the Building 181 fire.

 
Now there was a lull.

  Francine could hardly clean her typewriter, since her typewriter was brand new. Fuzz could hardly make busywork of shuffling gravely through papers, since he had only one paper in his desk. That one paper was a terse notice to the effect that all supervisors were to crack down hard on coffee breaks.

  “That’s all for right now?” said Francine.

  “Yes,” said Fuzz. He searched her face for signs of derision. So far there were none. “You—you happened to pick a slack morning,” he said.

  “What time does the mailman come?” said Francine.

  “Mail service doesn’t come out this far,” said Fuzz. “When I come to work in the morning, and again when I come back from lunch, I pick up our mail at the company post office.”

  “Oh,” said Francine.

  The leaking showerheads next door suddenly decided to inhale noisily. And then, their nasal passages seemingly cleared, they resumed their dribbling once more.

  “Is it real busy around here sometimes, Mr. Littler?” said Francine, and she shuddered because the idea of being thrillingly busy pleased her so much.

  “Busy enough,” said Fuzz.

  “When do the people come out here, and what do we do for them?” said Francine.

  “People?” said Fuzz.

  “Isn’t this public relations?” said Francine.

  “Yes—” said Fuzz.

  “Well, when does the public come?” said Francine, looking down at her eminently presentable self.

  “I’m afraid the public doesn’t come out this far,” said Fuzz. He felt like a host at the longest, dullest party imaginable.

  “Oh,” said Francine. She looked up at the one window in the office. The window, eight feet above the floor, afforded a view of the underside of a candy wrapper in an areaway. “What about the people we work with?” she said. “Do they rush in and out of here all day?”

  “I’m afraid we don’t work with anybody else, Miss Pefko,” said Fuzz.

  “Oh,” said Francine.

  There was a terrific bang from a steam pipe upstairs. The huge radiator in the tiny office began to hiss and spit.

  “Why don’t you read your pamphlets, Miss Pefko,” said Fuzz. “Maybe that would be a good thing to do,” he said.

  Francine nodded, eager to please. She started to smile, thought better of it. The crippled smile was Francine’s first indication that she found her new place of employment something less than gay. She frowned slightly, read her pamphlets.

  Fuzz whistled reedily, the tip of his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

  The clock on the wall clicked. Every thirty seconds it clicked, and its minute hand twitched forward microscopically. An hour and fifty-one minutes remained until lunchtime.

  “Huh,” said Francine, commenting on something she’d read.

  “Pardon me?” said Fuzz.

  “They have dances here every Friday night—right in this building,” said Francine, looking up. “That’s how come they’ve got it all so decorated up upstairs,” she said. She was referring to the fact that Japanese lanterns and paper streamers were strung over the basketball court. The mood of the next dance was apparently going to be rural, for there was a real haystack in one corner, and pumpkins and farm implements and sheaves of corn stalks were arranged with artistic carelessness along the walls.

  “I love to dance,” said Francine.

  “Um,” said Fuzz. He had never danced.

  “Do you and your wife dance a lot, Mr. Littler?” said Francine.

  “I’m not married,” said Fuzz.

  “Oh,” said Francine. She blushed, pulled in her chin, resumed her reading. When her blushing faded, she looked up again. “You bowl, Mr. Littler?” she said.

  “No,” said Fuzz quietly, tautly. “I don’t dance. I don’t bowl. I’m afraid I don’t do much of anything, Miss Pefko, but take care of my mother, who’s been sick for years.”

  Fuzz closed his eyes. What he contemplated within the purple darkness of his eyelids was what he considered the cruelest fact of life—that sacrifices were really sacrifices. In caring for his mother, he had lost a great deal.

  Fuzz was reluctant to open his eyes, for he knew that what he would see in Francine’s face would not please him. What he would see in Francine’s heavenly face, he knew, would be the paltriest of all positive emotions, which is respect. And mixed with that respect, inevitably, would be a wish to be away from a man who was so unlucky and dull.

  The more Fuzz thought about what he would see when he opened his eyes, the less willing he was to open them. The clock on the wall clicked again, and Fuzz knew that he could not stand to have Miss Pefko watch him for even another thirty seconds.

  “Miss Pefko,” he said, his eyes still closed, “I don’t think you’ll like it here.”

  “What?” said Francine.

  “Go back to the Girl Pool, Miss Pefko,” said Fuzz. “Tell them about the freak you found in the basement of Building 523. Demand a new assignment.”

  Fuzz opened his eyes.

  Francine was pale and rigid. She shook her head slightly, incredulous, scared. “You—you don’t like me, Mr. Littler?” she said.

  “That has nothing to do with it!” said Fuzz, standing. “Just clear out of here for your own good!”

  Francine stood, too, still shaking her head.

  “This is no place for a pretty, clever, ambitious, charming little girl like you,” said Fuzz unevenly. “Stay here and you’ll rot!”

  “Rot?” echoed Francine.

  “Rot like me,” said Fuzz. In a jangling jumble of words he poured out the story of his fubar life. And then, beet red and empty, he turned his back on Francine. “Good-bye, Miss Pefko,” he said, “it’s been extremely nice knowing you.”

  Francine nodded wincingly. She said nothing. Blinking hard and often, she gathered up her things and left.

  Fuzz sat down at his desk again, his head in his hands. He listened to Miss Pefko’s fading footfalls, awaited the great, echoing ka-boom that would tell him Francine had left his life forever.

  He waited and he waited and he waited for the ka-boom. And he supposed, finally, that he had been cheated out of that symbolic sound, that Francine had managed to close the door noiselessly.

  And then he heard music.

  The music Fuzz heard was a recording of a popular song, cheap and foolish. But, turned back on itself by the countless echo chambers of Building 523, the music was mysterious, dreamlike, magical.

  Fuzz followed the music upstairs. He found its source, a large phonograph set against one wall of the gym. He smiled bleakly. The music, then, had been a little farewell present from Francine.

  He let the record play to the end, and then he turned it off. He sighed, let his gaze travel over the decorations and playthings.

  If he had raised his eyes to the level of the balcony, he would have seen that Francine hadn’t left the building yet. She was sitting in the front row of the balcony, her arms resting on the pipe railing.

  But Fuzz did not look up. In what he believed to be privacy, he tried a melancholy dance step or two—without hope.

  And then Francine spoke to him. “Did it help?” she said. Fuzz looked up, startled.

  “Did it help?” she said again.

  “Help?” said Fuzz.

  “Did the music make you any happier?” said Francine.

  Fuzz found the question one he couldn’t answer promptly.

  Francine didn’t wait for an answer. “I thought maybe music would make you a little happier,” she said. She shook her head. “I don’t mean I thought it could solve anything. I just thought it would maybe—” She shrugged. “You know—maybe help a little.”

  “That’s—that’s very thoughtful of you,” said Fuzz.

  “Did it help?” said Francine.

  Fuzz thought about it, gave an honest, hesitant answer. “Yes—” he said. “I—I guess it did, a little.”

  “You could have music all the time,” said Francine.
“There’s tons of records. I thought of something else that could help, too.”

  “Oh?” said Fuzz.

  “You could go swimming,” said Francine.

  “Swimming?” said Fuzz, amazed.

  “Sure,” said Francine. “Be just like a Hollywood movie star with his own private swimming pool.”

  Fuzz smiled at her for the first time in their relationship. “Someday I just might do that,” he said.

  Francine leaned out over the railing. “Why someday?” she said. “If you’re so blue, why don’t you go swimming right now?”

  “On company time?” said Fuzz.

  “There isn’t anything you can do for the company now anyway, is there?” said Francine.

  “No,” said Fuzz.

  “Then go on,” said Francine.

  “No suit,” said Fuzz.

  “Don’t wear a suit,” said Francine. “Skinny-dip. I won’t peek, Mr. Littler. I’ll stay right here. You’ll feel so good, Mr. Littler.” Francine now showed Fuzz a side of herself that he hadn’t seen before. It was harsh and strong. “Or maybe you shouldn’t go swimming, Mr. Littler,” she said unpleasantly.

  “Maybe you like being unhappy so much, you wouldn’t do anything to change it.”

  Fuzz stood on the edge of the swimming pool at the deep end, looked down into eleven feet of cool water. He was stark naked, feeling scrawny, pale, and a fool. He thought he was surely a fool for having become the plaything of the logic of an eighteen-year-old.

  Pride made Fuzz turn his back on the water. He started for the locker room, but Francine’s logic turned him around again. The cool, deep water undeniably represented pleasure and well-being. If he refused to throw himself into all that chlorinated goodness, then he really was a contemptible thing, a man who enjoyed being miserable.