Free Bagombo Snuff Box by Kurt Vonnegut

anything.”
    Maude nodded soberly. “Earl, what does it all add up to?”
    “All what?”
    “I mean, have you tried to put any of it together—the old
clothes, and his paleness, and that crack about doing better now than he’d had
any right to expect six months ago, and the books, and the TV set? Did you hear
him ask Converse about the books?”
    “Yeah, that threw me, too, because Charley was the book
kind.”
    ‘All best-sellers, and he hadn’t heard of a one! And he wasn’t
kidding about television, either. He really hasn’t seen it before. He’s been
out of circulation for a while, and that’s for sure.”
    “Sick, maybe,” said Earl.
    “Or in jail,” whispered Maude.
    “Good gosh! You don’t suppose—”
    “I suppose something’s rotten in the state of Denmark,” said
Maude, “and I don’t want him around much longer, if we can help it. I keep
trying to figure out what he’s doing here, and the only thing that makes sense
is that he’s here with his fancy ways to bamboozle you out of money, one way or
another.”
    “All right, all right,” said Earl, signaling with his hands
for her to lower her voice. “Let’s keep things as friendly as we can, and ease
him out gently.”
    “How?” said Maude, and between them they devised what they
considered a subtle method for bringing Charley’s visit to an end before
supper.
    “Zo . . . zo much for dis,” the photographer said. He winked
at Earl and Maude warmly, as though noticing them as human beings for the first
time. “Denk you. Nice pagatch you live.” He had taken the last picture. He
packed his equipment, bowed, and left with Lou Converse and the writer.
    Putting off the moment when he would have to sit down with
Charley, Earl joined the maid and Maude in the hunt for flashbulbs, which
Slotkin had thrown everywhere. When the last bulb was found, Earl mixed martinis
and sat down on a couch that faced another, on which Charley sat.
    “Well, Charley, here we are.”
    “And you’ve come a distance, too, haven’t you, Earl?” said
Charley, turning his palms upward to indicate the wonder of the dream house. “I
see you’ve got a lot of science fiction on your shelves. Earl, this house is
science fiction.”
    “I suppose,” said Earl. The flattery was beginning, building
up to something—a big touch, probably. Earl was determined not to be
spellbound by Charley’s smooth ways. “About par for the course in America,
maybe, for somebody who isn’t afraid of hard work.”
    “What a course—with this for par, eh?”
    Earl looked closely at his guest, trying to discover if
Charley was belittling him again. “If I seemed to brag a little when those
fool magazine people were here,” he said, “I think maybe I’ve got a little
something to brag about. This house is a lot more’n a house. It’s the story of
my life, Charley—my own personal pyramid, sort of.”
    Charley lifted his glass in a toast. “May it last as long as
the Great Pyramid at Gizeh.”
    “Thanks,” said Earl. It was high time, he decided, that
Charley be put on the defensive. “You a doctor, Charley?”
    “Yes. Got my degree in 1916.”
    “Uh-huh. Where you practicing?”
    “Little old to start practicing medicine again, Earl.
Medicine’s changed so much in this country in recent years, that I’m afraid I’m
pretty much out of it.”
    “I see.” Earl went over in his mind a list of things that
might get a doctor in trouble with the law. He kept his voice casual. “How come
you suddenly got the idea of coming to see me?”
    “My ship docked here, and I remembered that this was your
hometown,” said Charley. “Haven’t any family left, and trying to start life
all over on this side again, I thought I’d look up some of my old college
friends. Since the boat landed here, you were the first.”
    That was going to be Charley’s tale, then, Earl thought—that
he had been out of the country for a long time. Next would come the touch. “Don’t
pay