Number Eight

I wake from a bad dream (of Isabel, as usual) and find myself face down in bed in my one-room efficiency apartment over a stable for burros, horses, cattle and pigs. They thump at night, but I like the smell. I get up, go over to the window. I can see the Spanish coast far below, the Mediterranean beyond it, North Africa beyond that. It looks different from what it did 165 miles up.

I do 20 push-ups, then I go out into the corridor and knock on my neighbor's door. The tall one, the Scandinavian.

"What are you doing tonight?" I say.

"I don't know," she says, smiling. "As I tell you last time, let me ask my boyfriend."

I shrug, go to the door on the other side of mine and knock. "What are you doing tonight?" I say, when the short, dark-haired girl answers.

"Nothing," she says.

"Let's have a drink," I say. "Or an ice cream."

"OK. Eight o'clock."

The Scandinavian girl is now standing in the corridor. "He doesn't feel too nice," she says, referring, I presume, to her boyfriend. "Let's have a drink."

"I'm busy."

I do 40 push-ups and take a shower.

The short, dark-haired girl is named Charlotte. She's from Canada, she says, and rich, and on the run from her Jewish-businessman lover in Vancouver. I buy her an ice cream, one for me, too. Then we sit at a table at the Café Pombo just off the main plaza in town, watching the Spaniards smoke, cough, spit, talk.

"And what do you do?" she eventually says.

"I'm an astronaut."

"Oh, really?" she says, laughing. "Is that all?"

"How about another ice cream?"

"This is my third. Thanks, no."

Back later at the place we live, she says, "Care for a drink?"

"Sure."

"Just a minute."

She goes inside, closing the door on me. Twenty-eight seconds later, it opens again. "Come in," she says, smiling. "But no funny stuff."

At first, she won't let me. Because it's her own place, she says, and therefore she doesn't have to. But I know what she wants and, finally, I prevail. I do 200 push-ups a day.

"I'm shocked," she says later. "At myself, I mean. You're the first square I ever slept with. And you're not bad at all."

"Thanks," I say. Then I ball her again.

Later, we're resting, when I hear a funny noise under the bed.

"What's that?"

"Oh, nothing."

Nevertheless, I look under the bed. There is a guy there, lying on the floor, staring at the springs.

"Who are you?"

"Number eight," he says.

"Who is he?" I ask Charlotte.

"I found him in Marrakesh," she says. "He's completely harmless."

"What is this number-eight stuff?"

"He thinks that number is the key to all the mysteries of the universe. He spends every waking hour contemplating it. All he does is smoke and think about the number eight."

• • •

Another bad dream that night, once again about Isabel and me. We are together in a public place, as usual, and, as usual, something separates us. An animal stampede this time, right through the corridors of the Smithsonian Institution.

I wake up, face down, to what sounds like the thumping of animals below but is actually a knock on my door.

It is the Scandinavian girl.

"I'm moving down to the campo," she says. "Would you like to share a house with me?"

"What about your boyfriend?"

"He's going home to Stavanger," she says. "Jealous, or ill, or something like this. I would rather not live in the campo alone."

"I'll think about it," I say and close the door.

• • •

Up at the Café Pombo, I am having a brandy and an ice cream and thinking about it, when Eleanor Everett comes walking down from the bus stop.

"Surprised to see me?" she says.

"Oh, yes."

"I brought you a carton of Camels."

"I can get them here."

"Some water-purifying tablets."

"They have spring water here."

"And some back copies of Time."

"Thanks."

"So you're going to Mars?"

"Eventually. The chief says----"

"Your hair looks longer. I hardly recognized you."

"What about an ice cream?"

"Later. Where are you staying?"

"A little apartment."

"Will you carry my bags?"

"Kind of smelly."

"My bags?"

"My apartment. They thump at night."

"Who?"

"The animals."

"I like animals."

She hates animals. I carry her bags. We're supposed to be engaged.

"What a great place!" she says in the apartment, tearing at my clothes and sneezing. "What a beautiful view!" She hammer-locks me down on the big double bed.

"You taste like ice cream," she says, later on, after a sneezing fit.

"I'm on an ice-cream kick."

"Achoo!"

We make love again, or, rather, she makes it. Afterward, we sleep.

• • •

I wake up, face down in bed, with a thumping head and a high fever. I have some kind of superflu; Eleanor Everett seems delighted. She starts immediately to nurse me, between sneezes. Soup. Cough medicine. Vomit medicine. More soup. Darvon 65. Rectal suppositories. Tea. More soup. But the fever continues. So do the headaches and bad dreams. I believe I am dying and it is fine with me. But Eleanor Everett stays up nights, nursing me. Still, my recuperation is a long one. And on the night that finally I am completely well again, I don't tell Eleanor Everett, since this will mean we have to make love.

• • •

It is late morning and she is still asleep on the bed, sneezing and wheezing. I am into the 14th push-up when there is a knock at the door. It is Charlotte.

"Hope you're feeling better," she says, "since I have to ask you a big favor. I got this cable from my friend in Vancouver. He's coming tonight. Can you put this one up until he goes away?"

"Number eight," he says.

"Doesn't he ever say anything else?"

"People full of shit," he says.

I let him in.

"Don't worry," Charlotte says. "He's finally figured out the meaning of number eight, so he's even more harmless than usual. He'll just stay under the bed."

Instead, he jumps right into it beside Eleanor Everett.

"Number eight," he says, cackling. But she doesn't wake up.

• • •

"¿Quiere usted?" says the ice-cream girl.

"Me, too," I say. "And I'd like to try a number eight, please."

"¿Qué hay?"

"Un número ocho, por favor."

She has dark, long hair, gigantic brown eyes, long, slim legs, friendly, snub-nosed breasts. More than that, she gives off a luminous glow. The number eight is pretty good, too, tasting much like vanilla fudge.

I am about to strike up a (continued on page 218)Number Eight(continued from page 152) conversation when I hear a sneeze behind me. It is Eleanor Everett, with her suitcases.

"If you didn't want me to stay," she says, "couldn't you have told me? I mean, this number-eight business...."

"I'm sorry. Look, have an ice cream."

She doesn't answer but turns and walks off, apparently angry, toward the bus stop.

• • •

"You're crazy," Charlotte says, getting dressed. "You can't mess around with the local chicks. Especially you."

"Why?"

"Because you're a macho hombre in this town."

"What's that?" I say, deciding to get dressed, too.

"A stud," Charlotte says. "A town like this, everything gets around pretty fast. They know we sleep together. They know that Scandinavian chick propositioned you about a house. They know that other one--"

"My fiancée--"

"--Flew all the way from New York to see you and that as soon as she finished nursing you, you dumped her. That makes you quite an hombre in the Spanish eyes. At the same time, though, if you start pulling that stuff on their women, they'll crucify you, privately if not publicly."

"They don't worry me."

"Then worry about the girls. Sexually frustrated. Mothers along on dates. Sevenyear courtships and nothing but dry humping. These chicks can't put out until they're married."

"OK with me. I've got to get married. Otherwise, I can't go to Mars. The chief--"

"I wish you'd climb down from this space stuff."

"Besides, this one loves me."

"How do you know?"

"She says so, openly, every time I get an ice cream."

"What does she say?"

"First there's a big smile and then she says: '¿Quiere usted?' "

"That means: 'What do you want?'"

• • •

I move down to the campo to share the house with the Scandinavian girl. Her name is Enga, or Venga, or Inga or Vinga. For supper, she serves me and Number Eight bowls of brown rice and a "special" drink made of mint leaves, raisins, eggshells, cinnamon, salt, hot water and brown rice.

Another bad dream that night, nonerotic, as usual.

I enter the debriefing room at the space center. Isabel's mother is there, telling me with suppressed glee: "She's in the bed in the next room." I shrug diffidently but am, nevertheless, agitated beyond belief.

Some time passes and Isabel finally turns to me from where she lies, under blankets, watching television.

"You could have at least come in," she says with a chiding smile, "to see if I was up or not."

"Oh, you," I say--gruffly, because the sight of her has put a lump in my throat. "At this hour, you're always up."

Her hair is as dark and long as ever, her eyes the same gigantic brown. I see the long, slim legs when she removes the blanket and the friendly, snub-nosed breasts. Through the luminous glow of her, however, I notice she is wearing lipstick, something she never does.

"Mother's not home," she says. "We can go over to my house and make--"

But Isabel is suddenly on the other side of the debriefing-room glass and her last word is lost on me.

"What?" I say.

"I said we can go over there," she says, "and make glug--G-L-U-G--glug!"

Glug, I think, a Scandinavian drink.

I wake up.

"What's for breakfast?"

"Brown rice."

I move back to town.

• • •

"So you're really hung up on the Spanish girl," Charlotte says.

We are walking down the road toward a big villa where there is to be a party.

"Personally," Charlotte continues, "I think you could do better. But that's up to you. When you ask her out, ask her mother along, too. It's the way they do things here."

• • •

The party is a moonshot-watching party--the first moonshot, Gordon, Carruthers and Macy, the joker who always cuts farts in our self-contained oxygen-generating environments. There is a big television set and the guests, mostly American expatriates, are strung around it in a semicircle, making comments. Somebody passes me a funny-looking cigarette. I take a puff and pass it on.

"Just a big glob of rock."

Somebody passes me a funny-looking pipe. I take a puff and pass it on.

"I hope it blows up on the pad."

"I hope the States blow up."

Somebody passes me a Coca-Cola bottle full of water, corked, with a funny-looking tube coming out of it. I take a puff and pass it on.

"Still, think of Columbus----"

"Think of the squalor back home."

I light up a Camel, take a puff and pass it on. Then there is a lot of coughing and cheering. I remember people stuffing my pockets with pesetas and then somebody named Jim taking me home.

• • •

I wake up in my bed with Jim. No memory of dreams, good or bad. Jim is a girl, blue almond eyes, blonde and curly all over.

"You're the first square I ever slept with," she says, "and, funny thing, you're not bad at all."

She has a tinkly voice, kind of Cockney.

"Did the shot get off?" I say.

"You won a lot of money."

"Money?"

"Covering all the bets. The 'never-make-it' bets. The shot got off fine. Who's that under the bed?"

"Number Eight."

"Number Eight. Oh, yes," she says, reaching under the bed, her back and bottom twisted taut. "I heard of Number Eight in Marrakesh." She pats him on the head. "Nice Number Eight."

I hear him cackling, then he barks.

Now Jim is up and dressing. Black pants, black morocco belt, chain-mail shirt, black vest, black beads with a rubber pacifier dangling at the end. No underwear, no shoes.

"Did we have a good time last night?" I say.

"Very."

Even in dusty black, she is beautiful. She makes me think of thundercracks and sunrise. She makes me forget about Isabel, the ice-cream girl, even Mars.

"What's it like a hundred and sixtyfive miles up?" she says.

"Terrible. Why don't you stick around?"

"No," she says, finally, "only tired chicks 'stick around.' I'm not a tired chick yet."

There is a knock at the door. When I answer it, an angry-looking Scandinavian guy is standing there.

"Are you the foringer," he says, "who is sharing the house with Inga in the campo?"

"I was," I say, but when I see he is about to punch me in the mouth, I add: "I never slept with her, however."

"Neither did I," he says and punches me in the mouth.

My head slams back against a bedpost and by the time I wake up, he is gone. But so is Jim. And so is Number Eight.

• • •

Heading up to the farmacia, I find Carey sitting at the Café Pombo, sipping brandy. Carey is the one who writes the astronauts' wisecracks.

"Well, well," he says, "the black-sheep astronaut, as I live and breathe! There you are, you bastard, just as Eleanor Everett said, living in a little Spanish hippie haven. Not only with long hair but a beard. That was a dirty deal you handed her."

"The Senator's daughter is used to dirty deals."

"Batson, the chief is getting impatient."

"My time isn't up yet."

"Any progress?"

"Oh, yes, yes."

"Glad to hear it. The ones you left back home are asking for you. Nancy, Isabel----"

"Isabel?"

"Yes, and Ruth, Gladys, Doris, Bobbie, Liza, Elaine and Susanne. Susanne is General Englehard's wife, if you remember. The reason the chief insists you get married or get off the pot."

"So Isabel is asking for me?"

"Why not marry Eleanor Everett?"

"Hates animals."

"Well, when are you getting married?"

"I don't know."

"Who's the lucky girl?"

"Her. Over there."

"Where? I don't see anybody."

"At the ice-cream stand."

"There's nobody at the ice-cream stand but that kid."

"That's her."

"You balling that kid?"

"Of course not. Spanish girls are straight shooters. You can't mess around."

"You could even mess with your copilot on the Mars shot."

"Well, if he kisses me first----"

"How the hell did you get into the space program? Never mind! You've just got two weeks left to shape up, Batson! And don't forget the pushups."

• • •

"¿Quiere usted?"

"Tú."

"Eh?"

"Ti y su madre."

"¿Mi madre!"

"Y tú. El cine. Esta noche. Yo, tú y su madre."

"Gracias, señor."

"¿A las ocho?"

"Si, a las ocho. ¿Cómo se llama?"

"Batson. Billy Batson."

"Batson Billy-Batson."

"¿Y tú?"

"Teresa."

• • •

Back at the place, no sign of Jim or Number Eight. Nor my sextant nor my Nikon camera. A further check and I realize the Sony AM/FM is gone, along with the tape recorder, my wrist strengthener, the Rolex, my Saint Christopher's medal and the pornographic poker deck I bought in France.

Number Eight's travel bag is still there, but inside are only a few rags, a bunch of colored beads, a locket with a photo of Shirley Temple as a child and a note:

Dear Ricardo,

Hope this reaches you before too much damage is done. I've picked up syphilis, probably in Marrakesh, either from Helen or Gloria or Juan. I then possibly passed it on to Suzy, Eloise, Sasha and you. Since you were fooling around with Helen and Suzy and maybe Sasha, too, you better get a blood test quick. Please pass this note to Hank, Annamaria and the Canadian chick, Charlotte. Sorry.

Love, Mitch

I am sitting on my bed, thinking about the note, when there is a knock at the door. A short, dark man who looks exactly like Charlotte is standing there.

"Excuse me, but is this the residence of Miss Charlotte Sprigge?"

"No, it's that door on the right."

"Thank you."

"Just a minute."

"Yes?"

"Give her this note, will you?"

"Certainly."

He goes and I close the door. Even so, I can't help hearing the knocking on Charlotte's door, which grows louder and more persistent.

"Charlotte, it's me, Ben. Open up. Charlotte, I know you're in there, I can hear you moving around. I just want to talk to you, Charlotte. Open up. Open up! All I really want to know----"

I hear Charlotte's door open.

"--Is why you shot me at the altar rail."

I listen for an answer. Instead, there is a shot, then another.

Out in the corridor, Charlotte is standing over Ben's twitching body with a smoking pistol in her hand, reading my note. She sees me.

"Sorry," she says, waving the note. "What else is there to say, except that penicillin works wonders? Will you give me ten minutes to clear out?"

"Sure, kid. Good luck."

Ben's body is now quite still.

"A bientôt."

A big, disease-ridden kiss for me and she's off to pack her clothes.

• • •

Despite the racket of the shooting, the darkening streets are deserted--except for a little Spanish girl, leading a grown man along on a piece of string. He is crawling on all fours but appears otherwise normal. He grins at me, then the girl leads him off.

I continue on uphill, toward guardia civil headquarters; but at a cross street, I hear somebody say, "Ssssst!" and when I walk over to investigate, I get punched in the mouth. There are four, or perhaps six, unseen figures all around me, punching me in the mouth and wherever else they can punch or kick me. I don't understand the words they're screaming, except that, before I crumble, I hear now and again the name Teresa.

When I revive, I'm sitting in a chair and green uniforms surround me. The guardia.

"¿Qué pasa, hombre?"

"Well," I begin, "it's----"

But I get punched in the mouth.

I am tired of getting punched in the mouth. I punch one green uniform in the solar plexus. It goes down. I punch another in the throat and it staggers back off. I punch the creases out of a couple more green uniforms before they overwhelm me.

"¿Loco!" I hear one say; and before I pass out again, I see they are fastening little wires to my head.

• • •

Carey is standing over my bed.

"It's like this," he says. "They didn't know who you were. Just another crazy foreigner, they thought. They get a lot of them here. So, if you'll forget the beatings and the shock treatment, they'll forget your involvement in the shooting."

"I wasn't involved in any shooting."

"Look, Batson. Carruthers and Macy have landed on the moon. The whole world's in a glorious uproar. Do you want to spoil all that?"

"What about the girl?"

"All arranged, courtesy of our Spanish allies. She's already taking a cram course in English. You're to be married this Sunday."

"I mean the other girl, Charlotte."

"Got away. The guy's all right, though. Thigh wound. Piece of an ear shot off. Already out of the hospital. He's gone to find out why she shot him."

"And Jim?"

"Who's Jim?"

"Somebody I balled once."

"Jesus, Batson!"

"A girl."

"Oh, that one. From your pad. She's gone, too. Left town with some spaced-out-looking cat carrying a big sack."

"Number Eight."

"What?"

"Nothing."

"C'mon. Get dressed. You've got to take a blood test before this wedding. Among other things."

• • •

Back in town, finally, I get the redcarpet treatment. The bells in the town's four churches are ringing, there are fireworks and a parade--all as if I were the one up there on the moon. Afterward, a banquet party for me in the best restaurant in town. The mayor is there, so is Teresa (grinning, flushed and big-eyed, squeezing my hand hard and hotly) and her mother (draped in widow's weeds but beaming). Carey is there and so is Senator Richard Everett--three tables away--and his daughter Eleanor and some U. S. military brass brought down from Madrid. And, surprise of surprises, Isabel is there, too, traveling, as usual, with her mother.

Somebody hands me the paper I have asked for and I write the note:

Eleanor Everett,

I may have given you syphilis.

Get a blood test quick.

Cordially, Batson

Suddenly, Isabel and her mother are at my table.

"Hello, Isabel," I say, passing the note. "Hello, Isabel's mother."

"She looks quite a bit like me," says Isabel.

"A little leaner in the calves," says her mother.

"Teresa is your twin," I say to Isabel. "And in good health, besides."

"The doctor," she says, "you know, the psychiatrist, he said I'm in love with you."

"I told you that."

"He said I should marry you, despite the----"

"I told you that."

"And it certainly seems like, well, you're the only man I can ever relax with, the only man I ever miss, the only man, really, in my life."

"As I said."

"And I can't conceive of living without you. But, Billy, Billy, I'm still allergic to you."

"Even happens when you write her a letter," says Isabel's mother. "Her eyes water. She can't breathe. She breaks out."

My note to Eleanor Everett has been passing down the tables and has now reached the Senator himself.

"Well," I say, "what can you do? That's life."

"But, then, again," says Isabel, "Teresa looks so much like me, maybe she's my biological twin, too. And if she can go through with it, maybe if I tried hard----"

"Never mind," I say, watching as the Senator tries to hand the note to Eleanor Everett, "you'll find someone you're not allergic to."

"But----"

"It doesn't matter, Isabel, it really doesn't matter."

"Eleanor Everett is engrossed in talking to an Air Force major and the Senator is opening the note himself.

"Well, if that doesn't matter, what does?"

"The number eight," I say, as the Senator begins reading the note.

"The number what?"

"Eight. Eight. Think about it awhile. It's a lot more than a handy digit to stick between seven and nine."

"I don't understand," Isabel and her mother simultaneously say.

"I could hold your hand, Isabel, and explain. But I seem to have forgotten my rubber gloves. Excuse me."

I bolt for the door and, reaching it, turn back. The Senator's face is as scarlet as the bagpipes of the guardia band that is now marching around the room.

Isabel, my one, true love, has tried to follow me, but the marching pipers block her way.

• • •

I pack the one-suiter with everything I think I'll need and a few other things that Number Eight has left. Before leaving, I brush my teeth and do push-ups until I can't do any anymore. Outside, over the fireworks, I hear the dumb animals thumping below. Above me, the moon is fat and glistening. Macy is up there, farting in his space suit. To the right of the moon and up sits Mars, bloodily twinkling. Beyond is the Milky Way, a white smear across the sky, like the sloppy erasure of a blackboard mistake. I hear a noise below, like barking. My heart leaps as I look down. But it is neither Number Eight nor Jim, just the little Spanish girl and her four-footed human friend. She sees me looking down and smiles.

"¿Adiós!" she says.

"¿Adiós!"