Borderlands 3 Read online

  "How about setting fires? We were never entirely sure he caused the Lovett's fire. The firemen said faulty wiring."

  "You saw the look on that kid's face as the Lovett house went up. Total fascination. Enchantment. He was a firebug, all right. Funny how he was right there to witness the fire."

  "We were all there, Janine."

  "Hilary, listen. How would you have felt if six or seven years down the road they found your precious little Sarah dumped out in the woods somewhere, raped and mutilated? Torn to pieces?"

  "Oh, God, Janine. Don't say that. Don't breathe it."

  "That might have happened, Hilary. We heard what can happen with children like David on all the talk shows. He was a killer in the making. We had to do it."

  "Jesus, I can still hear David screaming. I can't get it out of my head."

  "Get hold of yourself, Hilary. We're all having a hard time with this. Don't forget, we each took an equal hand in it. Samantha poured the gas, Nicole lured David into the shed, I locked the door, and you threw the lit cigarette in through the window. You started the fire, Hilary. You're the one who actually killed David Wilmer. You. There's a death penalty in this state for murder. You'd be the one to die, Hilary. Just you. The rest of us would probably get off with probation. And think of your family. The publicity would ruin their lives forever. They'd all despise you if they found out."

  "Oh, God. What am I going to do?"

  "You're going to quit blubbering and pull yourself together, that's what. It's a bit late for tears."

  "Janine, I've got to go. I can't talk anymore."

  "Please don't do anything stupid, Hilary. For your kids' sake. For Harold. Think about your parents. This would kill them."

  "I'm going now, Janine. I can't live with this anymore."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "I'm going to take a little trip to the stars. I'm going to stop this pain once and for all."

  "Hilary, calm down. Take some Valium. Have a Seconal."

  "That's just what I intend to do."

  (disconnect)

  ▼

  (connect)

  "Nicole? Janine."

  "What's the matter?"

  "It's Hilary. She's falling apart. Having second thoughts, a guilt attack."

  "Oh, no."

  "Don't get excited yet. I think she's planning to commit suicide. I just talked to her a minute ago, and I swear I think she's planning to overdose on pills."

  "What should we do? Should we call an ambulance?"

  Pause. "I don't think so, Nicole. I think we ought to let her go ahead and do it."

  "What?"

  "Listen to me. Samantha we can handle. She's just a little nervous. She'll be okay. But Hilary... I think she'd eventually go to the police."

  "God."

  "Yes. I think we should just bide our time for now. Lay low. Stay cool."

  "What if she changes her mind and doesn't take the pills?"

  "We'll keep an eye on her house. If either one of us sees her leaving, we'll intercept her. If you see her first, bring her to my house. If I see her first, I'll bring her to yours."

  "What then?"

  "We'll discuss that when we need to."

  Sigh. "Janine, this is getting sticky. I didn't think it would get so complicated."

  "Relax, Nicole. Nothing's happened yet. Probably nothing will. Don't worry. Best friends like us, we can handle anything."

  "Yeah, you're right. We can handle Samantha and Hilary. We're an invincible duo." Laugh.

  "Best friends to the end. And Nicole?"

  "What, hon?"

  "Keep your eye on that Frazier kid down the street at 510. He seems a little odd."

  "Will do. Talk to you later."

  "Bye bye."

  "Bye."

  (disconnect)

  The Man Who Was Made of Money by Avram Davidson

  I can't remember when I first read an Avram Davidson story, but I know it's been many years ago, and it may well have been an old Ballantine paperback collection of his named after his classic, "Or All The Seas With Oysters." I suspect that the latest generation of readers and fans doesn't know much of his work because he hasn't been writing much lately. In fact, Avram couldn't sign the limited edition of this book because his health simply wouldn't allow it. But that was a small price to pay for the honor of publishing a new Davidson story—a chilling satire of contemporary culture that is far too close to many a suburban reality.

  Beth and Joe Braidel (accent on the last syllable) hadn't even moved into their new home when old Mr. Goodworth came to see it. She said, "And how do you like our ranch house?" And instead of a decent, "it's very nice", at the least or words of praise which any civilized person would feel were only proper, the old man had to ask, "And where are the cattle?" Oh, of course Beth smiled, but she really could have killed him; however, as she told herself, she didn't have to live with Harry Goodworth. Let him look around and make his remarks, in a few minutes he would go away and write up the policy, that was all he was there for, and there wouldn't be any nonsense about his calling every week to collect the money the way he was still doing for that piddling little life insurance that Joe's parents were still paying for. No thank you, none of that for Beth, the new place was far enough away from the old neighborhood and besides, with this kind of policy you only paid once a year. Twice?

  It was a lovely house, a beautiful house—

  Beth could have done without old Harry Goodworth altogether, not only in regard to the insurance on the new house, but the one on Joe's life, which had been taken out years ago. Who needs Goodworth, she had argued back then. Maybe the old man knew that and that was why...? No. That's just the way he always was. Well. One of these days. A yellow face like that, he wouldn't be around much longer. And the policy could be transferred, couldn't it? To someone who could really be of use to Joe in business... so. She wasn't having any more of old Goodworth or of Joe's parents, or, for that matter, of her own parents, than she could help. It was her house and it was going to be furnished her way. And this was where real loyalty came in. Never mind what it all cost. A woman has a right to have nice things in her house, isn't that right?

  When we say that Beth Braidel didn't want too much to do with her own parents, that isn't to say that she didn't want anything to do with them. As soon as the house was ready to show people, one of the first she showed it to was her mother. Wall-to-wall carpeting in every room, every appliance the human heart could want, serving-for-ten of everything, original modern art on the walls—

  "Well, did your little girl do all right for herself?" asked Beth, in her funny way.

  And Beth's mother, nodding, and with that typical little dry smile that only Beth's mother can do so well if she wants to (and God help you if she doesn't!), said, "Not... bad. Not bad at all. See what you can do if you handle the husband right?"

  Meanwhile, and far more important for the moment, were her two closest friends. Her two closest friends.

  It was perhaps just a little bit unfortunate, their both having the same first name, thus requiring them to be referred to by their last ones as well, Joan Raisen and Joan Kaye. If everyone had gone along with the simple little idea which Beth had thought of, namely calling one "Joan" and the other one "Joanie," but some people for some reason seemed unable to grasp this concept, even their husbands, for example, so there was nothing to be done about that: And after Joe Braidel had said, I know... I know, very apologetically, he gave every indication of having learned his lesson...

  Keeping up with the Joanses!

  Some sense of humor.

  After all, why does a woman want a nice home? For herself? Hardly worth the worry and aggravation. For her husband? Does the average man, left to himself and his own devices, even know? He doesn't know. Food, a comfortable old chair, a couch and a bed and a television set—enough for him. As for children, too ridiculous to consider that and that was a bridge she didn't even intend to come to, let alone cross, for a goodly period
of time, if at all.

  No.

  A woman wants a nice home for the same reason she wants a nice husband, because what else is there to compensate her for everything she gives up when she gets married and everything she has to put up with after she gets married? She wants a home and a husband that she can show her friends and family without being ashamed. And to say that "a woman's place is in the home," to interpret that as meaning that her place is only in her home, is disgusting. But after all, where does the average woman have a better chance to display what she is really made of and what she really is, except in her own home? Beth's little cousin Kippy, now just take Beth's little cousin Kippy. Two children in two rooms and a filthy so-called artiste's studio, and in what a neighborhood! And when does she ever get out with her stupid artist husband, and then where do they go? A museum, a gallery! And yet she says she's happy!

  Whereas a successful woman, a woman who has a lovely home, a woman who has time and leisure and means to go where she pleases when she pleases, a woman who has the latest of everything, such a woman can, so to speak, open her home to the whole world in complete confidence that nobody can turn up a nose and nobody can look down on her and/or pity her. Such a woman need bear no resentment for the past regarding if she were perhaps treated unfairly by a parent or if an older or younger sibling had favorite status. Such a woman can look her aunt, let us say, in the eye and she doesn't have to say such words as, "your marvelous Vicki that you were always boasting off: Does she have two dishwashers? Three freezers? A floor-level wine-cellar? Stereo, with speakers and controls in every room? Ten complete servings of imported tableware? The very latest subscription copies of French and British magazines? Not just a few copies you bought six months ago and six months from now the same ones will still be there staring you in the face, but the latest!" Such a woman doesn't have to say things to her aunt. Her aunt has eyes. Her aunt is not a complete fool. Neither is her mother, and not her school friends and not their mothers, aunts, sisters, and so on and so on.

  Such a woman is a success!

  And success can only be matched against other successes.

  It had always seemed that Joe Braidel had appreciated it. If you have a lovely home, if you have a lovely wife, if she has jewelry, if you have two decent cars and a station wagon, and if you have enough insurance, well, what more can a man ask for or expect?

  Suppose he had a wife who insisted on going out to work and he could never be sure that she was really in her office and not in a little apartment with her so-called employer, instead of taking care of her lovely home or enjoying some well-earned leisure with a woman friend or two.

  After all, Beth never for a moment forgot what her duties were. And neither did she demean herself by forgetting what her husband's duties were. And a lovely home and everything that it entails has to be kept up, doesn't it?

  But a man feels he has to grumble. He has to? All right, let him grumble.

  "Why do you need a new station wagon, now?", grumbles Joe.

  "I need a new station wagon? All the groceries I buy for myself I could carry on a scooter. You want to do the shopping?" is how Beth puts it to him, pithily.

  Of course the new wagon has more room in it than the old one, but that's not the point, the point is that it's a new one. What man wants his wife to drive around an old heap of junk already over two years old?

  "And the insurance is due next month, too," Joe concludes. This is supposed to be Beth's fault. As though Beth had demanded that he arrange quarterly payments, let him pay it annually like the fire and burglary insurance, or semi-annually, whichever is the most convenient for him, as she points out. And he talks about her clothes! A man can wear a suit from one year's end to another, as long as he remembers to have it cleaned and pressed regularly, but that's just not the way women's clothes are. And that goes for every kind of clothes, from underwear to fur, as well as accessories, wouldn't you agree? Of course!

  "No, I don't want you to make your panties out of flour bags" says Joe, "but what in the hell do all these bills have to do with wearing underwear made out of—?"

  "I'm sorry about the bills, Joe," she says contritely, and points out that if he put more money in her account she could pay cash.

  And sometimes it is necessary for her to tell him not to raise his voice to her. You just don't let them get away with it, that's all. If they say no you have to keep after them until they say yes, and if they try to get away then you stand in the doorway or you follow them into the bedroom. "Everybody in the neighborhood will hear you," says Joe.

  "Everybody in the neighborhood will hear me? Then everybody in the neighborhood will hear me," says Beth, letting him know what his own words sound like. "If everybody in the neighborhood will hear me—"

  Joe holds his head in his hands, because men love these little dramatic tricks, and pretends to groan and moan and then he says, "All right, all right, oh my God—Yes! Yes!" He opens his mouth again but is forestalled in his intended underhanded tricks by his long-suffering wife who quickly reminds him that everybody in the neighborhood will hear him, if he doesn't stop his shouting, and this never fails to shut him up.

  ▼

  "Just like a child," says Joan Raisen.

  "They are just like children," agrees Joan Kaye.

  And they caution one another.

  "Never make a man jealous," they say, "there are better ways."

  It is agreed that if there are no children, and there are as yet no children, then mention of more insurance should always be made casually. It is agreed that insurance is very important. And they squabble politely over the tab, and whose turn to pay it.

  Beth is feeling so much better. Such afternoons are, after all, a form of therapy, wouldn't you agree? And how would Joe like to have to pay those kind of bills? So, Beth is sorry to deny her friends the pleasure, but insists that it is her treat. "My Aunt Simma," she just remarks in passing, before they part, "who is in many ways really an awful old woman, always used to say, 'Better insurance without a husband than a husband without insurance.'"

  Her friends, nodding solemnly with raised eyebrows and lower lips tucked under, digest this... and then assure her, that, Yes, well, it is an awful thing to say, but... still... you know...

  Beth has almost forgiven Joe by the time she gets home.

  However, Beth is not the morbid type, and rather than let her mind dwell on such subjects, decides that Joe deserves a good break, something nice: something really, really nice. So she trades in her old car and buys an imported sportscar for him. Since the day she had her friends over for the special viewing on the then new house, Beth has never felt so happy. She anticipates the look on Joe's face...

  But the look on Joe's face is not at all what she anticipated. Joe, in short, proves to be a real bastard and a son of a bitch about her lovely present for him. And he insists on holding some kind of senate hearing about it. How he can't use it for his work. How they already have two cars. How even if they sell one, what will it bring? As though Beth is supposed to be a goddamn blue book; how is she supposed to know how much it will bring? And how this and how that, and so all the pleasure she anticipated in driving the lovely little sports car is gone, it is just gone, and she breaks into tears. And he is still a son of a bitch! Not until Beth has completely lost control of herself and sprawls on the ground weeping in anguish does Joe decide that this time he has gone too far.

  Joe looks at her and evidently he reads her mind through her face. She raises her head and touches her hair. "Oh, now, don't bring up that bull about sewing your underwear out of flour sacks," he says, with sadly misplaced humor. "Just try to remember that I'm not made of money—" Beth says nothing, she just looks at him. "Well, am I?" he asks.

  No one could stand it, and Beth's iron control breaks down and she all but screams at him, "Yes! Yes! Yes, you are—you have to be! Somebody has to be! Who else should be? Me? Me?" And she clenches her fists and her jaws clench, and she says, beside herself, "You have to
be made of money!"

  Well, for a wonder! Joe does not carry on anymore: now that the facts of life have been laid before him, so to speak, all he says is, "So I have to be made of money..." And then he goes and takes some pill or capsules with milk and goes off to bed. And Beth—

  And here comes the funny part. You have never heard anything as weird as this in all you life. Because after he drops off to sleep, or maybe before, it doesn't make any difference, Beth has this absolutely fantastic and incredible dream! She dreams that suddenly she is wide awake and some sort of little glow of light is in the room, not electricity and not moonlight, but enough to see by very clearly, and she goes and looks at Joe's bed and he is there, yes, but very, very different. In fact, in this dream there is this huge and enormous mass of money in the bed and it is shaped just like Joe! Joe is actually made of money. So in this dream Beth immediately gets up and tiptoes over and slips several bills off the pile where his stomach was, so to speak, thinking to herself, "Well... he weighs too much anyway." She giggles and opens a drawer in her dressing-table and slips two bills clearly identified as $500 each and one $1000 bill into a little purse she had there and closes it up and giggles to herself again and gets back into bed and goes to sleep.

  Have you ever heard of such a thing? No, of course not, and neither has anyone else.

  Next morning Joe seemed kind of tired and, not grouchy, just sort of, oh, slumpy. Hardly gave her a civil word! Maybe he hadn't slept well, if so, that's his problem, she didn't write those prescriptions. And yet Beth had this crazy sort of idea in her mind that Joe actually had been awake and had seen her take the money and put it in her purse and that after she went to sleep he got up and took it out and—oh, she couldn't imagine the rest of it. It was a crazy idea, but the more she thought of it the more she resented it: after all, it was her money. So what right did he have? And the more she thought about it, the more she resented it. Which is what effect a selfish husband can have upon even the most unselfish of wives.