“First one’s a cinch. Your stomach was upset or something and you had a pure hallucination. Happens to the best people once in a while. Or-you got a second choice just as simple-maybe you saw a new kind of bug. Hell, there are probably thousands of insects that haven’t been classified yet. New ones get on the list every pear.”
“Urn,” said Charlie. “And the heat business?”
“Nell, doctors don’t know everything. You got too mad seeing that teamster beating the horse, and anger has a physical effect, hasn’t it? You slipped a cog somewhere. Maybe it affected your thermodermal gland.”
“What’s a thermodermal gland?”
Pete grinned. “I just invented it. But why not? The medicos are constantly finding new ones or new purposes of old ones. And there’s something in your body that acts as a thermostat and keeps your skin temperature constant. Maybe it went wrong for a minute. Look what a pituitary gland can do for you or against you. Not to mention the parathyroids and the pineal and the adrenals.
“Nothing to it, Charlie. Have some more wine. Now, let’s take the duck business. If you don’t think about it with the other two things in mind, there’s nothing exciting about it. Undoubtedly just a practical joke on the museum or by somebody working there. It was just coincidence that you walked in on it.”
“But the showcase-“
“Bother the showcase! It could have been done somehow; you didn’t check that showcase yourself, and you know what newspapers are. And, for that matter, look what Thurston and Houdini could do with things like that, and let you examine the receptacles before and after. Maybe, too, it wasn’t just a joke. Maybe somebody had a purpose putting it there, but why think that purpose had any connection with you? You’re an egotist, that’s what you are.”
Charlie sighed. “Yes, but, but you take the three things together, and-“
“Why take them together? Look, this morning I saw a man slip on a banana peel and fall; this afternoon I had a slight toothache; this evening I got a telephone call from a girl I haven’t seen in years. Now why should I take those three events and try to figure one common cause for all of them? One underlying motif for all three? I’d go nuts, if I tried.”
“Um,” said Charlie. “Maybe you got something there. But-“
Despite the “but-” he went home feeling cheerful, hopeful, and mellow. And he was going through with the wedding just as though nothing had happened. Apparently nothing, of importance, had happened. Pete was sensible.
Charlie slept soundly that Saturday morning, and didn’t awaken until almost noon.
And Saturday nothing happened.
NOTHING, that is, unless one considered the matter of the missing golf ball as worthy of record. Charlie decided it wasn’t; golf balls disappear all too often. In fact, for a dub golfer, it is only normal to lose at least one ball on eighteen holes.
And it was in the rough, at that.
He’d sliced his drive off the tee on the long fourteenth, and he’d seen it curve off the fairway, hit, bounce, and come to rest behind a big tree; with the tree directly between the ball and the green.
And Charlie’s “Damn!” had been loud and fervent, because up to that hole he had an excellent chance to break a hundred. Now he’d have to lose a stroke chipping the stymied ball back onto the fairway.
He waited until Pete had hooked into the woods on the other side, and then shouldered his bag and walked toward the ball.
It wasn’t there.
Behind the tree and at about the spot where he thought the ball had landed, there was a wreath of wilted flowers strung along a purple cord that showed through at intervals. Charlie picked it up to look under it, but the ball wasn’t there.
So, it must have rolled farther, and he looked but couldn’t find it. Pete, meanwhile, had found his own hall and hit his recovery shot. He came across to help Charlie look and they waved the following foursome to play on through.
“I thought it stopped right here,” Charlie said, “but it must have rolled on. Well, if we don’t find it by the time that foursome’s off the green, I’ll drop another. Say, how’d this thing get here?”
He discovered he still had the wreath in his hand. Pete looked at it and shuddered. “Golly, what a color combination. Violet and red and green on a purple ribbon. It stinks.” The thing did smell a bit, although Pete wasn’t close enough to notice that and it wasn’t what he meant.
“Yeah, but what is it? How’d it get-“
Pete grinned. “Looks like one of those things Hawaiians wear around their necks. Leis, don’t they call them? Hey!”
He caught the suddenly stricken look on Charlie’s face and firmly took the thing out of Charlie’s hand and threw it into the woods. “Now, son,” he said, “don’t go adding that damned thing to your string of coincidences. What’s the difference who dropped it here or why? Come on, find your ball and let’s get ready. The foursome’s on the green already.”
They didn’t find the ball.
So Charlie dropped another. He got it out into the middle of the fairway with a niblick and then a screaming brassie shot straight down the middle put him on, ten feet from the pin. And he one-putted for a par five on the hole, even with the stroke penalty for a lost ball.
And broke a hundred after all. True, back in the clubhouse while they were getting dressed, he said, “Listen, Pete, about that ball I lost on the fourteenth. Isn’t it kind of funny that-“
“Nuts,” Pete grunted. “Didn’t you ever lose a ball before? Sometimes you think you see where they land, and it’s twenty or even forty feet off from where it really is. The perspective fools you.”
“Yeah, but-“
There was that “but” again. It seemed to be the last word on everything that happened recently. Screwy things happen one after another and you can explain each one if you consider it alone, but—
“Have a drink,” Pete suggested, and handed over a bottle.
Charlie did, and felt better. He had several. It didn’t matter, because tonight Jane was going to a shower given by some girl friends and she wouldn’t smell it on his breath.
He said, “Pete, got any plans for tonight? Jane’s busy and it’s one of my last bachelor evenings-“
Pete grinned. “You mean, what are we going to do or get drunk? O. K., count me in. Maybe we can get a couple more of the gang together. It’s Saturday, and none of us has to work tomorrow.”
AND IT was undoubtedly a good thing that none of them did have to work Sunday, for few of them would have been able to. It was a highly successful stag evening. Drinks at Tony’s, and then a spot of howling until the manager of the alleys began to get huffy about people bowling balls that started down one alley, jumped the groove, and knocked down pins in the alley adjacent.
And then they’d gone—
Next morning Charlie tried to remember all the places they’d been and all the things they’d done, and decided he was glad he couldn’t. For one thing, he had a confused recollection of having tried to start a fight with a Hawaiian guitar player who was wearing a lei, and that he had drunkenly accused the guitarist of stealing his golf ball. But the others had dragged him out of the place before the police got there.
And somewhere around one o’clock they’d eaten, and Charlie had been so cussed that he’d insisted on trying four eateries before they found one which served duck.
He was going to avenge his golf ball by eating duck. All in all, a very silly and successful spree. Undoubtedly worth a mild hangover.