Shooting Script and Other Stories by Link William & Levinson Richard

Author:Link , William & Levinson, Richard [Link , William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crippen & Landru, Publishers
Published: 2022-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

MEMORY GAME

“Alright now, give this a try, Mr. Perkins. What’s the altitude of Mount Everest?”

Mr. Leroy Perkins touched his glass to the bar and observed the neat, wet circle it made. “Twenty-nine thousand, one hundred and forty-one feet,” he said.

“Check it, Sam,” said one of the men at the bar.

The bartender paged through a copy of the World Almanac . “Yep,” he said. “He’s right.”

“Another round, Leroy?” Jake Underwood asked. Jake was a shriveled little man, Mr. Perkins’ neighbor, and the two of them drank together every night.

“I don’t think so, Jake. We’ve already had our three.” Mr. Perkins studied his reflection in the bar mirror. It looked pleasantly blurred to him, a signal that he had had enough.

Sam flipped to another page. “What was Lou Gehrig’s batting average in 1925?”

Mr. Perkins yawned. A glance at his pocket watch showed him it was already eleven. Alice was probably waiting for him to appear under the streetlight. Let her wait, he thought with sudden anger. I’m a man; I can come home when I damn well please. “That’d be .295,” he told Sam.

“Yeah,” said someone else. “But how many consecutive games did he play?”

“Two thousand, one hundred and three.”

“That’s what it says in here,” Sam said. “What a memory.”

Mr. Perkins curled his thin lips in a smile. Yes, what a memory. Sometimes he even amazed himself. Ever since he was a boy he had used the infinite quantity of his mind to amuse and astonish others. It was as if nature had compensated for his fragile body, his poor heath, his myopic vision. Occasionally, he thought it a shame that he had not used his memory professionally, rather than just as a hobby. But Alice would have forbidden it. He could imagine her scalding remarks: “Are you crazy? What do you want people to think you are – a freak?”

“Come on, let’s have another one,” Jake whispered. “Alice won’t be able to tell the difference.”

“Afraid not, Jake. Three a night. That’s my limit. “

“You’ve had more’n that some nights.”

“Only twice before, both last year. And then I only had four.”

Jake grunted and slid off his stool. “Well, if you’re not gonna drink with me, I may as well go on home. Clara will give me the dickens if I’m not back by eleven-thirty.”

Mr. Perkins didn’t look at him. They usually left the bar together every night. But on this particular evening, with vague rebellion in his blood, he wanted to stay. Let Alice wonder for a change. Let her – “See you tomorrow, Jake.”

“Okay, Leroy. Good night.”

Jake moved through the door and some of the other men, as if following an example, finished their drinks and began to leave.

Mr. Perkins’ eyes met those of the drunk standing alone at the end of the bar. The man was resting his unshaven chin on the lip of his glass. Mr. Perkins knew the man had been there, off and on, for the past month. Just sitting there, evening after evening, ordering cheap bourbon and listening to them play the memory game.

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