Payment Overdue

San Francisco was still three states and 16 hours ahead when I pulled into the small gas-station café on the road between Loma, Colorado, and Harley Dome, Utah.

I was dawdling over the remains of my cheeseburger and contemplating the decline of the American French fry when the man who pumped gas and poured coffee put down his newspaper and started talking to me.

"I don't mean to bother you," he said, "but I couldn't help noticing your overbite. You really should have someone look at it. I could give you the name of a top guy in Los Angeles. That is, if you were going to Los Angeles."

The man was maybe as old as 40, fat as a turnip and smelled of grease and gasoline. In better circumstances, he could have passed for a certified public accountant.

"I know a good man in Phoenix," he continued, "if you were going to Phoenix. Or Seattle. I know a genius in Seattle."

I sucked up the dregs of my milk shake and promised to have someone look into my mouth at the earliest opportunity.

"Listen," he said, "I don't care about your overbite. I only said that to get the conversational ball rolling. What I need is a ride out of here. Now, how about it?"

I told him I never give rides to strangers.

"Good policy," he said, coming around to my side of the counter. "But if you can give me a few minutes of your time, I can tell you a little bit about myself. Then we won't be strangers anymore and you can give me the ride."

I wasn't anxious to start driving again and I have never refused a story, no matter how dull it promised to be. I told him I'd be glad to listen and then decide about the ride. The man poured me a free cup of coffee and started talking.

• • •

From the day I bought my first Buddy Holly record, I knew it was my destiny to be a rock-'n'-roll star.

I spent every minute of every day dreaming of the time when my name would top Billboard's Hot 100 and my face would be plastered across record-store windows. At night I would lie awake, imagining myself at Fillmore East, in a gold-lamé T-shirt and tight leather hip-huggers, madly whirling and gyrating, king to a nation of teenage nymphs. And had I not had the misfortune to be born fat, ugly and totally without musical ability, my dream might have come true.

It all could have happened. It just didn't.

So, instead of standing before the screams and lights in a black-satin jump suit, I became a record clerk and spent my days shelving Tito Puente albums and mentally nuzzling each and every one of the unending procession of mind-altering, gonad-tugging young ladies, all wearing short, tight skirts and skintight sweaters. All completely uninterested in me. And all on their way to buy the latest hit record by their latest pop idol, to whom, I knew, they would eagerly sacrifice their sweet young bodies without a moment's hesitation.

The days passed slowly and by closing time, I could hardly wait to rush home to my record collection and the magnificent stereo system I had painstakingly assembled from the finest components available. In fact, the night it all started, I was in such a hurry I had turned off the lights and locked the front door before I realized there was still one customer left in the store.

He was a dapper little man with a fringe of white hair over each ear and a well-trimmed fringe over his upper lip. He wore a blue pin-stripe suit with old-fashioned lapels and his shoes, I remember, were black and shiny. Not our type of customer at all.

"I have a most beautiful and unusual record," he told me. "Very old. Very rare. This is classical music," he said. "Been in the family for years." And how much would I like to offer him for it?

Impatiently, I explained that if he had an early Elvis on Sun, I might consider it. Or an original Screaming Jay Hawkins acetate. But other than that, I was in the business of selling records, not buying them; and if there was nothing he wanted to buy, would he mind letting me close up and go home.

Well, he didn't mind. He also didn't move. He just looked at me and started to smile.

"I'll give you a dollar," I said, finally. "Take it or leave it."

The old man laughed.

"A dollar's too much," he said. "Make it a quarter. We'll discuss it. I'll ask for seventy-five. You'll say fifteen. We'll settle for fifty."

"We'll discuss nothing," I said, closing the door behind us. "Here's your dollar. Here's my record. Thank you very much and good night."

Later that evening, after a perfect five hours with Ritchie Valens, Chuck Berry, the Big Bopper and Jerry Lee Lewis, not to mention Little Richard, Little Eva and Little Milton, I remembered the old man.

As I put the record on my turntable and just before it started spinning--at exactly 78 revolutions per minute--I happened to catch a glimpse of the title. It was written in red script on a black label. The record was called One Last Wish.

I sat back in my chair in the exact acoustical center of the room. The old man was right. This record was unusual.

There was no tune, no rhythm, no lyrics. The singing was more like ... more like very melodic screaming. The voices were tortured. Horrifying. Yet, somehow, very musical. For no very good reason, I found myself smiling; and before I knew it, my foot started tapping. Thanks to the superiority of my equipment, I could hear the faintest background noises: strange sizzling sounds, hisses and groans. Cosmic crashes that filled the whole room with thunder. Gradually, the music--if you could call it that--grew louder. Cries and screams became overpowering silences and then great explosions and then colors and fire, and then there was a great flash of light and the room filled with smoke.

I sat riveted to my chair. If I had a muscle, I was too scared to move it.

When the smoke had cleared, the room was permeated with a faint smell of sulphur. And that wasn't all. Standing before me was a giant gray electronic monster. I was surrounded on all four sides by wall-to-wall computer.

"Thank you so much for calling," the computer began, in a very well-modulated and mechanical voice. "I am the Diagnostic Exponential Visualizing and Integrating Laboratory computer. You may call me the D. E. V. I. L."

When I came to, I found out the rest.

Due to a recent influx of very young men, many with backgrounds in data processing, hell had started to modernize.

"Computerizatien is only one part of the picture," the D. E. V. I. L. told me. "But I really don't know why we didn't think of it centuries ago!"

In the next few minutes, I learned that the D. E. V. I. L., while still a prototype, was nevertheless equipped to grant me one wish. One last wish in exchange, of course, for the eternal possession of my immortal soul.

"It's not a bad fate," the D. E. V. I. L. continued. "You will be assigned to an insignificant job in a small division of a larger corporation. You will be totally obsessed with success and will work compulsively to claw your way to the top. We will provide wife and children whom you will ignore and friends whom you will stab in the back. You will struggle and sacrifice and every time you climb to the highest rung of the corporate ladder, you will be immediately returned to the bottom to start working your way to the top again."

The computer sputtered for a moment and then fell silent. I knew it was waiting for my answer.

"I don't care about the consequences," I said. "I want to be the biggest star with the biggest hits. I want to make a million dollars a year. I want women to love me and I want three appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show."

The D. E. V. I. L. began to spin its memory disks.

"Right now," the D.E. V. I. L. explained, "I am running your personality profile through my guidance module. This way, we don't waste valuable time trying to make you something you're not. Which is inefficient, impractical and, in general, very bad business. This way, I can make you something much better than a rock-'n'-roll star."

"What could be better than being a rock-'n'-roll star?" I wanted to know.

"Being," the D. E. V. I. L. told me, "what you were always meant to be."

The computer started flashing and clicking. Lights lit. Buzzers buzzed. Right before my eyes, punched cards punched and were punched right back.

"Don't you ever get the feeling," the D. E. V. I. L. continued, "that somewhere along the line, you took the wrong turn in the right road or the right turn in the wrong road? And that because of this one little mistake, things never really worked out right for you?"

"I knew it!" I cried. "If only I had practiced my piano lessons!"

"We'll have the answer in .00632 seconds," the D. E. V. I. L. announced. "Not bad for a problem that would ordinarily have taken six hundred and sixteen devil-hours."

"Just compute," I said, sinking back into my chair. "Just compute."

The D. E. V. I. L. had the answer .00632 seconds later.

"Stanley Lippincott," it said, for that is my name, "in return for possession of your immortal soul, I, the D. E. V. I. L., will make you what you were always meant to be. An orthodontist."

(continued on page 232)Payment Overdue(continued from page 178)

An orthodontist!

I tell you, I was furious. In a rage, I got up from my chair and started looking for the plug.

"STANLEY," the D. E. V. I. L. shouted. "STANLEY, I'M GOING TO MAKE YOU A SPECIAL DEAL."

I said I would listen.

"It's a limited offer we're trying out in this area for a short time only. Try being an orthodontist for six months. If you like it, fine. If you don't, there's no obligation."

"I'm not sure," I said. "I'm finding it difficult to relate to a machine."

"Don't worry about that," came the answer. "In six months, we send you a preaddressed stamped card, which I'd appreciate you didn't fold, bend or staple. Simply return the card and we take it from there."

"Six months, right?"

"And no obligation."

"As an orthodontist?"

"Sign here," said the D. E. V. I. L.

By the end of the trial period, I knew that the D. E. V. I. L. had been right and I had been wrong. My destiny was to have been an orthodontist. In my first six months of practice, I grossed over $75,000. And not only was my practice successful but my reputation, both professional and personal, began to grow and spread.

Dental schools invited me to lecture and the Ladies' Home Journal asked me to write an article on problems of the gums. The New Yorker was interested in doing a profile and I started appearing regularly in the leading tooth-paste commercials.

But even better than the money, the fame and the glory were the girls. Young, rich, beautiful girls. Girls who wouldn't look twice at Stanley Lippincott, record salesman, but who couldn't resist Dr. Stanley Lippincott, D. D. S.

Needless to say, when the letter from the D. E. V. I. L. arrived, I checked the box marked Yes! Please Continue Your services! and, being careful not to fold, bend or staple, sent the card back in the very next mail.

The years that followed were beyond my wildest expectations.

I lived in a lush penthouse high above Fifth Avenue (my offices, of course, were on Park). I sat at the best tables and in the best seats. I was invited to all the very best parties and became a welcome visitor on late-night TV shows.

I had a mad affair with a fashion model and I broke it off. I took up golf and came in second in the Orthodontists' Invitational in Nassau. Once I was even flown to South America by private jet to consult on a special bridge being built for Maria Madruga, the new Peruvian superstar.

In contemplative moments, I still thought of being a rock-'n'-roll singer and occasionally I even played a record or two. But somehow, by then, even Frankie Lymon had lost his magic and my contemplative moments became fewer and farther between.

It was the beginning of my sixth year when it happened.

I had just received an offer to become technical advisor to the hit television show The Young Dentists. I was reticent at first, but when the producer explained that the program could do as much for dentistry as Ben Casey had done for medicine and how there might even be a part in the show for a handsome and sophisticated type, I began to pack my drills.

I was ready to leave for Hollywood when the first red envelope came.

Inside the envelope was a bill, the kind of bill prepared on a computer and printed by an automatic typewriter. (I knew this because I used the same system for my own bills.) The bill was made out to me "for services rendered" and demanded immediate payment of "one immortal soul."

At first, I was worried, but then I realized it had to be a mistake. I tore up the bill and moved to Beverly Hills.

One month later to the day, another red envelope arrived. This time, the bill was marked Payment Overdue and contained a short note.

"Dear Dr. Lippincott," the note read. "Perhaps you've been too busy to settle this account or perhaps you've forgotten us under the pressures of your many other obligations. We understand how this can happen and hope we will have the pleasure of hearing from you soon."

The letter was signed, "With warmest best wishes, B. Z. Beel."

I ignored the second bill. And the third. And the fourth. But by the time the next bill came, I couldn't ignore the fact that I had become a nervous wreck.

By now, the letters that came with the bills had become abusive, threatening.

"Unless payment is made in ten days from receipt of this letter, we will be forced to turn the matter over for collection."

This time, there were no warm wishes.

I tried writing to B. Z. Beel. I explained that there had to be a mistake in his records and that while I was perfectly willing to keep my side of the bargain, I was still a very young man, hardly old enough to consider settling accounts.

My letters were never answered.

After that, it was boats and planes and buses and cars and sometimes even mules. I traveled alone and only at night. I spoke to no one and no one knew who I was.

Finally, a year after I had disappeared and by the most circuitous route possible, I arrived at the small, almost prehistoric village in a remote section of West New Geinea.

The red envelope was waiting for me.

"Dear Dr. Lippincott," the letter began. "This is to inform you that your account has been referred for collection. You will be contacted by our agents shortly. Sincerely yours, B. Z. Beel."

There was a P. S.:

"KINDLY NOTIFY THIS COMPANY OF ANY CHANGE OF ADDRESS."

• • •

I put down my third cup of coffee and paid the check with a five-dollar bill. I gave the change to the strange, haunted man.

"I've been here almost two weeks," he said. "I've got to get moving. Please, will you give me the ride?"

"Sorry," I said. "Sorry."

And I left him there in the little gas-station café on the road between Loma, Colorado, and Harley Dome, Utah.

I wished I could have helped, but basically, it was a matter of principle. The way I figured it, there were only two possibilities. Either the man was a dangerous psychopath or he was a dentist. And I don't give rides to dentists.