Little Drops of Water (Stories) by Kurt Vonnegut

Author:Kurt Vonnegut [Vonnegut, Kurt]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-440-33947-2
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2009-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

The telephone by my bed rang.

“This is Larry Whiteman!”

“Drop dead, Larry Whiteman!” The clock said two in the morning.

“Tell that girl to quit it, do you hear?”

“Fine, glad to, you bet,” I said thickly. “Who what?”

“That wholesale groceress, of course! That Buffalo thing. Do you hear? She’s got to quit it instantly. That light, that goddamned light.”

I started to drop the telephone into its cradle, hoping against hope to rupture his eardrum, when I came awake and realized that I was fascinated. Perhaps Ellen had at last unleashed her secret weapon. Larry had had a recital that night. Maybe she’d let him have it in front of everybody. “She blinded you with a light?”

“Worse! When the houselights went down, she lit up her fool face with one of those fool flashlights people carry on their key chains till the batteries pooh out. There she was, grinning out of the dark like death warmed over.”

“And she kept it up all evening? I’d think they’d have thrown her out.”

“She did it until she was sure I’d seen her, then out it went. Then came the coughs. Lord! the coughs!”

“Somebody always coughs.”

“Not the way she does it. Just as I took a breath to start each number, she’d let go—hack hack hack. Three deliberate hacks.”

“Well, if I see her, I’ll tell her,” I said. I was rather taken by the novelty of Ellen’s campaign, but disappointed by its lack of promise of long-range results. “An old trouper like you shouldn’t have any trouble ignoring that sort of business,” which was true.

“She’s trying to rattle me. She’s trying to make me crack up before my Town Hall recital,” he said bitterly. The professional high point for Larry each year is his annual Town Hall recital—which is always a critical success, incidentally. Make no mistake about that—Larry, as a singer, is very hot stuff. But now, Ellen had begun her lamp and cough campaign with the big event only two months off.

Two weeks after Larry’s frantic call, Ellen and I coincided at lunch again. She was still distinctly unfriendly, treating me as though I were a valuable spy, but not to be trusted, and distasteful to deal with. Once more she gave me the unsettling impression of hidden power, of something big about to happen. Her color was high and her movements furtive. After a few brittle amenities, she asked if Larry had said anything about the light.

“A great deal,” I said, “after your first performance, that is. He was quite burned up.”

“But now?” she said eagerly.

“Bad news for you, Ellen—good news for Larry. He’s quite used to it now, after three recitals, so he has calmed down beautifully. The effect, I’m afraid, is zero. Look, why not give up? You’ve needled him long enough, haven’t you? Revenge is the most you can get, and you’ve got that.” She’d made one basic mistake that I didn’t feel was up to me to point out: All of her annoyances were regular, predictable, which made it very easy for Larry to assimilate them into the clockwork of his life and ignore them.

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