HARLAN ELLISON - Anywhere but here

Omen. There had been a helluva nauseating omen that this was going to be one of the worst days of his life. Just that morning, if he'd been prescient enough to recognize it for what it was. But he wasn't, of course. No one ever is. The neighbor's cat, which he truly and genuinely, deeply and passionately despised, that fucking ugly one-eyed shit-gopher cat with the orange tuft of hair on its muzzle, that puke cat was sitting in the tree right outside his bedroom window when he opened his eyes and awoke from a restless night's sleep, and turned to look at the kind of day it was going to be. In the branches nearly touching his second-storey window, sat that fungus of a cat, with a dead bird hanging out of its drooling jaws. Like a stringy upchuck of undercooked manicotti. With feathers. He looked right into the dead face of that bird, and he looked right into the smug face of that toilet bowl cat, and if he'd had the sense or foresight to figure it out, he'd have known this was a significant omen. But he didn't. No one ever does.

Not till he came home that night from work, from wage slave hell designing greeting cards for the Universe of Happiness, across the river and into the industrial park, did he look back with incomplete memory, and suspect that the presence of stringy, matted-feather, watery thin blood death right outside his wake-up-and-sing-a-merry-song window was a message to him across thirteen hours.

He got the message when he pulled up in the driveway and got out and went into the back seat and pulled out his jacket and his attache case, and looked at the house. It was dark.

He got the message when he walked up the front walk and turned his key in the door and opened the door, and the house was dark. No smell of dinner cooking. No sound of the kids cranking with the Mario Bros. No feel of preparations for the evening. No sight of Carole rushing across his line of sight. Only the beginning of the taste of ashes. He got the message.

And when he looked to his left, into the living room, and was able to discern -- ever so faintly there in the oily shadows and pale moonglow seeping through the four front room windows -- the shape of a man sitting on the sofa, the message became the crackling S.O.S. once sent by the Titanic to the Carpathia.

There was an indistinct shape on the floor in front of the man's feet. It was motionless.

Eddie Canonerro stood framed in the entrance to his living room -- what had been his unremarkable, familiar living room -- in plain sight of a man who should not have been sitting on his sofa, in a house that had been unremarkably, familiarly his house for fifteen years. Stood framed, outlined clearly, defenseless and bewildered, watching the large sitting man who stared at him across what was now an alien landscape, a living room nomansland as bleak and ominous and unforgiving as the silent terrain moments before it became the battlefield of Agincourt.

"Who the hell are you?" Eddie said.

His tone was warily between umbrage and confusion, careful not to cause insult. Every fool has a gun these days.

"I'm a friend of Carole's," the shadowy shape on the sofa said. There was no movement of mouth, deep in darkness.

"Where's my wife . . . ?"

Eddie was suddenly frantic. Was she dead? Wounded, lying on a floor somewhere? Was this a burglar, a rapist, some demented interloper careering through the neighborhood? Where was Carole!

"Where're my kids . . . ?"

"Carole's left you. Carole's taken the kids. I'm here to make sure you move out of Carole's house." He gave the lumpy shape on the floor a half-shove, half-kick with a workbooted foot. It rolled awkwardly for a short space, then came to rest in a shard of moonlight bisecting the carpet. Eddie recognized it now. His old Army duffel bag. Packed full. "Here," said the man, "here's your clothes. You better leave now, that's what Carole wants."

"I'm not going anywhere," Eddie said. He set down the thin, cabretta-grain attache case. He dropped his jacket. If the guy moved suddenly, well, there was a Bantu assegai and hide-shield on the living room wall to his right. Pulling the spear loose from the brackets would be easy. If the guy moved. Suddenly.

The guy's face was deep in shadow. No eyes to read. No expression to measure. Nothing to anticipate, except words.

"I'm not here to fight with you. Carole asked me to be here when you got home. Carole asked me to tell you it was all over, and she's taken the kids, and she's going to divorce you. That's what I was supposed to tell you. And Carole asked me to make sure you left and took your clothes with you, and then I'm supposed to lock up the house."

Eddie's jaw muscles hurt. He realized he'd been grinding. "Where is she? She go to her mother's? What're you, the boy friend?"

The guy said, "I'm a friend of Carole's.

That's all." "She doesn't have any friends I don't know."

"Maybe you don't know Carole very well."

"Who the fuck d'you think you are?"

"I'm a friend of Carole's. She asked me to tell you, that's all."

"I'm calling the cops. Stay right there, smartass. I'm calling the cops to come and bust your ass for breaking and entering." He took a step toward the phone on the end-table beside the big, overstuffed reading chair.

"Carole gave me a key. I have a notarized letter from Carole, giving me permission to be here."

"Yeah, right. I think we'll let 911 decide if you've got the right to be in my house, mister!"

"Do you really want me to give them the other letter, the one Carole wrote about why she's left you? It's got all the stuff in it about your bad habits, and hitting her, and the stuff about the kids . . . "

Eddie couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Are you out of your fuckin' mind?! I've been married fifteen years, I never raised my hand to her, what the hell are you making up here?"

"Carole told me about it. Carole was smart to leave you."

Eddie stepped back, felt his hand touch the wall. He was reeling. He understood, suddenly, that he was actually reeling. This couldn't be happening.

"I never . . . " His voice was small. He knew the truth . . . he just wasn't a hitter. Had never hit a woman. Had, in fact, only raised his fists in anger once, thirty or more years ago, to defend himself against a pair of schoolyard bullies. He was just, simply, not a hitter. Why had Carole told this guy such things? Why had she left without speaking to him? Why had she taken his sons away? Why had she confided in this total stranger? Why had she -- and had she? -- written letters of permission, letters of accusation? What the hell was happening here?

"We haven't been having any trouble," Eddie said.

"Carole says it's terrible living with you. She says to tell you it's all

over, and she's getting a divorce."

"You said that!"

"Carole told me to say it to you."

What was with this gazoonie? Was he fucking retarded, or what? It was like having a conversation with Rain Man, or Forrest Gump, or Lenny from the Steinbeck novel. It wasn't any kind of conversation he'd ever had with anybody, even his grandfather, when the old gentleman had gone simple, and Eddie as a kid had been taken to visit Grampa in the Home.

Not even those soft, aimless, frustrating conversations had been like this.

There had been no menace when talking to Grampa.

"I'm calling the cops." He moved again toward the end-table. The guy on the sofa didn't move. Eddie strained to see some tiniest reflection of moonlight in the shrouded eyes, but they were back in darkness. It was like trying to see a road sign through heavy fog. You could strain all you liked, but you were going to overshoot your turnoff, no matter how hard you craned your neck forward. Where there is no light, there is no sight. He picked up the receiver and put it to his ear.

"Carole had the phone turned off. Electricity and water, too. Until you leave. I made sure that was done."

Eddie held the dead thing to his ear. Not even the sound of the sea. Slowly, he set the implement back on its stand. The guy pointed to the duffel bag.

"I'm not going anywhere!" Eddie yelled.

Then he remembered the revolver in the hall closet. Up on the shelf, near the front door in ease anyone ever tried to force a way in. He turned quickly, stumbled through the entrance, back into the front hall, and got to the closet. He automatically reached for the light switch to illuminate the closet, and flipped it. And nothing happened. Electricity and water, too. Until you leave.

He fumbled in the closet, found the shelf, found the cardboard box under the moth-proof bag of mufflers and scarves, and jammed his hand inside. It was empty.

From the living room he heard the guy's voice. "Carole told me about the gun. I got it out of there."

Eddie felt his knees lock. He couldn't move. His spine was frozen. The guy could be behind him right now, the revolver aimed at his back. Not even kill him, just leave him a cripple for the rest of his life. Unable to walk. Unable to pee. Unable to work with his hands, draw, paint, do the work he so much wanted to do. All the work he'd put off for fifteen years to raise two kids, to make a stable marriage, to have a career in business. He'd put it all to one side and now he was going to be shot by a stranger in his own house.

He turned, slowly.

But the guy wasn't there. The hall was empty. Eddie closed the closet door, and walked back through the entranceway into the living room. The guy hadn't moved. The duffel bag lay where it had rolled. The moonlight still came through like watery soup, enough to enfeeble, but insufficient to restore or bring back to health.

"What the hell do you want with me?" Eddie said.

"I'm just a friend. Of Carole's. I said that before. She asked me to come and make sure you left."

Eddie felt pressure in his chest, like an attack of heavy anvil angina. "Where's the gun?"

"Over there on the television set. I put it there after I took out the bullets and threw them in the trash."

"And you're just going to sit there till I leave you here, all alone in the house I've been paying mortgage payments on for fifteen years? You think that's going to happen?"

"Well, this is Carole's house now. She owns it. You just have to leave, and everything will be fine."

"I'm not leaving some guy I never heard of, all alone in my house. And where the hell's all my stuff? My drawing table, my art supplies, my paints, my reference books? How am I going to make a living? You think I'm just going to take my clothes in an old duffel bag and vanish? This is damned crazy, it's obscene, for chrissakes!"

"Everything here is Carole's now. It's all like an egg, it's all one thing. She owns it, shell and everything inside it."

"What are you babbling about? You act like she's the goddam Queen of Spain, some fucking nobility, droit du seigneur, everything belongs to her! Not bloody likely! I worked for every stick in this place, and I'll fight her every step in the court before I let her screw me over!"

"No, you have to go away now. Carole asked me to tell you that." "I want to see her. I want her to tell me. We never had any trouble, this is all nuts, this hitting and the kids and all the rest of it. It's nuts! No eggs, just nuts!"

"You can't see her. Carole's gone away. But Carole can see you." "What are you talking about? Where is she? If she's at her mother's house, she can't see me. Is this some crazy bad joke, is she here?" He turned and yelled into the empty house, "Carole! Hey, honey! Carole, you here?"

But there wasn't any answer. He stood there for a long time, staring at the unmoving shape seated comfortably on his sofa, in his living room, tapping a workbooted foot that had kicked his duffel bag that contained all he was going to be permitted to carry away of his life.

His life till now.

He said it to himself again. My life till now.

In the darkness -- a darkness he now understood hid his face from the guy on the sofa -- a guy who was the last aspect of my life till now --he smiled. She had left, had taken his life till now with her, and she was free. No. Not so. She was still tied to my life till now. In darkness, he was drenched in light. Now he could smile, because now he was free.

Take care of the kids? Well, that would've been his job, but now it was part of my life till now, and that wasn't his responsibility any longer. Support, money, phone calls, courts, screaming attorneys, letters, eyeless guys on sofas . . . all part of what she had decided to tie herself to, forever. He was free.

Never again to go across the river and into the Universe of Happiness. Fifteen years ago he had tied himself to my life till now, and he had been a good husband and loving father and a doomed wage-slave, and he would have stayed at it forever. But now he could go anywhere but here, with anyone but the jailer of his prison. He was out. In the darkness, he smiled; he turned, and walked through the front hallway, past the defenseless closet, and out the front door. He hoped Carole could see him, because as soon as he got in the car and drove away, he would cease to be Eddie Canonerro. Anywhere but here, with anybody but you.

Squatting near the porch glider was that scabrous cat. Eddie moved very fast. He kicked the little fucker in the head and, squealing, it jumped for its life, and ran away.

Squinting through her telescope, the Queen of Spain frowned. Then the picture went dark, and not even the sound of clockwork ravens made the future any brighter.