A Stir of Echoes - By Richard Matheson Page 0,20

"is baby happy. Alla time, alla time-'when we gonna make a baby?' 'When we gonna put sperm to egg?' and-"

"Frank..." Elizabeth's fork clinked onto her plate; she covered her eyes with a trembling hand. Richard stared at her, wide-eyed. Anne reached across the table and put her hand on Elizabeth's.

"Take it easy, man," I said. "You trying to give us indigestion or something?"

"Sure," Frank said. "Easy he says. Easy. You try to take it easy when something that isn't even alive yet eats up all your money."

He shook his head dizzily.

"Babies, babies, babies," he chanted. He glanced at me suddenly. "What are you looking at me for?" Superficials were gone. He looked at me as if he hated my guts.

I blinked and lowered my eyes. I hadn't been conscious of staring at him. I'd only been conscious of the twisted, angry wellings in his mind.

"Just looking at an idiot I know," I said.

He hissed in disgust.

"I'm an idiot, all right," he said. "Any guy's an idiot who makes babies."

"Frank, for God's sake! " Elizabeth pushed up from the table shakily and put her plate in the sink.

"Richard," said Frank, "don't make babies. Make girls. Make whoopee. Make trouble. But don't make babies."

The remainder of the meal, dessert and all, was eaten in a tense silence broken only by vain attempts at dinner conversation.

Later, Frank and I went out for a drive. He'd kept on drinking and was getting more and more abusive to Elizabeth so I suggested we go for a ride. I took our car so I could do the driving. I told him I had to get gas for the next day anyway.

"Don't matter," he said, "I'm not going to work anyhow. Why should I?" As we pulled away from the curb Elsie came out of the house in a sun suit and waved to us, then bent over to pick up the hose.

"Fat bitch," Frank snapped. The impression I got from him was not one of anger, though-unless it was angry lust.

We drove in silence a while. Frank had rolled down the window on his side all the way and his head lolled out of it, the cold night wind whipping his dark hair. I kept my eyes straight ahead, heading toward the ocean. Once in a while Frank muttered something but I paid no attention. I kept thinking about life going on, every little realism driving one farther from any thinking about the other things. Once we'd seen a hypnotist on television. He had a young woman in a trance and she was very calmly giving him facts and figures about her former life in Nuremburg in the 1830s. At first I'd been glued to the chair, absolutely spellbound. The woman talked fluent German even though she was American for four generations back; she described buildings and people; she gave dates, addresses, names.

Then, as I watched, the little realities began to impinge. I felt the bump in the chair cushion I was sitting on. My head itched. I was thirsty and I took a sip of Coca-Cola from the glass on the magazine-strewn coffee table in front of me. I heard the rustle of Anne's clothes as she shifted her weight beside me on the sofa. I became aware of the smallness of the television tube in relation to the room. I heard an airplane pass overhead and noted the books in the bookcase. And this woman went on talking and talking and gradually this incredible thing became ordinary and dull. I sank back against the sofa back and watched without too much interest. I even changed to another channel before it was over. It was the same way now. Feeling the hard seat under me, the steering wheel in my hands, the sound of the Ford's engine in my ears, seeing, from the corner of my eye, Frank sitting there glumly, seeing the lights flashing by-it was all too real; too matter-of-fact. Everything else seemed unacceptable. The woman was, once again, a dream. And all the rest-even to the sensing of Frank's and Elizabeth's thoughts seemed imaginative fancy. Something to be explained away.

After driving about twenty minutes we stopped at a bar in Redondo Beach and sat in a back booth, drinking beer. Frank drained three glasses quickly before dawdling over the fourth. He rubbed the ice-sweated bottom of the glass over the smooth table top and stared at it.

"What's the use?" he said, without looking at me.

"Use of what?" I asked.

"Use of everything," he