Free Time Out of Joint by Philip K. Dick Page A

out."
    "I’ll drop over tonight," Black said. "After dinner. I’ll take over something to show Ragle and Vic. By then I can whip up some sort of thing." He started to leave and then he said, "How’d he do on his entries for yesterday?"
    "Seemed to be all right."
    "He’s getting distraught again. The signs are all there. More empty beer cans on the back porch, a whole bagful of them. How can he guzzle beer and work at the same time? I’ve watched him at it for three years, and I don’t understand it."
    Dead-pan, Lowery said, "I’ll bet that’s the secret. It’s not in Ragle; it’s in the beer."
    Nodding good-bye, Black left the Gazette building.
    On the drive back to the MUDO building, one thought kept returning to him. There was just that one possibility that he could not face. Everything else could be handled. Arrangements could be made. But—
    Suppose Ragle was becoming sane again?
    That evening, after he left the MUDO building, he stopped by a drugstore and searched for something to buy. At last his attention touched on a rack of ballpoint pens. He tore several of the pens loose and started out of the store with them.
    "Hey, mister!" the clerk said, with indignation.
    "I’m sorry," Black said. "I forgot,’.’ That certainly was true; it had slipped his mind, for a moment, that he had to go through the motions. From his wallet he took some bills, accepted change, and then hurried out to his car.
    It was his scheme to show up at the house with the pens, telling Vic and Ragle that they had been mailed to the waterworks as free samples but that city employees weren’t allowed to accept them. You fellows want them? He practiced to himself as he drove home.
    The best method was always the simple method.
    Parking in the driveway he hopped up the steps to the porch and inside. Curled up on the couch, Junie was sewing a button on a blouse; she ceased working at once and looked up furtively, with such a flutter of guilt that he knew she had been out strolling with Ragle, holding hands and exchanging vows.
    "Hi," he said.
    "Hi," Junie said. "How’d it go at work today?"
    "About the same."
    "Guess what happened today."
    "What happened today?"
    Junie said, "I was down at the launderette picking up your clothes and I ran into Bernice Wilks, and we got to talking about school—she and I went to Cortez High together—and we drove downtown in her car and had lunch, and then we took in a show. And I just got back. So dinner is four frozen beef pies." She eyed him apprehensively.
    "I love beef pies," he said.
    She got up from the couch. In her long quilted skirt and sandals and wide-collared blouse with the medal-sized buttons she looked quite charming. Her hair had been put up artfully, a coil tied at the back in a classical knot. "You’re real sterling," she said, with relief. "I thought you’d be mad and start yelling."
    "How’s Ragle?" he said.
    "I didn’t see Ragle today." "Well," he said reasonably, "how was he last time you saw him?"
    "I’m trying to remember when I last saw him."
    "You saw him yesterday," he said.
    She blinked. "No," she said.
    "That’s what you said last night."
    Doubtfully, she said, "Are you sure?"
    This was the part that annoyed him; not her slipping off into the hay with Ragle, but her making up sloppy tales that never hung together and which only served to create more confusion. Especially in view of the fact that he needed very badly to hear about Ragle’s condition.
    The folly of living with a woman picked for her affability.... She could be counted on to blunder about and do the right thing, but when it came time to ask her what had happened, her innate tendency to lie for her own protection slowed everything to a halt. What was needed was a woman who could commit an indiscretion and then talk about it. But too late to reshape it all, now.
    "Tell me about old Ragle Gumm," he said.
    Junie said, "I know you have your evil suspicions, but they only reflect projections of your own warped