Free Shivers by William Schoell Page B

poppin’ outa sight each day, and I don’t fuckin’ know why. And we ain’t findin’ all that many of ‘em.”
    “Johnny. It’s a thankless job, a futile job, at times. You said so yourself.”
    “You’re not listening to me. Within the past six months, our workload has tripled. Everybody says, ‘So, that’s life. Everybody wants to disappear all of a sudden, ha ha. Shut up and do your job.’ So I shut up and I do my job but I still wonder: why? What’s happening out there that so many people should just vanish all of a sudden ? I checked the figures over and over and over one afternoon. I was terrified. If it keeps up, we’re gonna have an empty city.”
    Gloria looked at him reproachfully. “Now Johnny. You’re exaggerating and you know it. You have insomnia. That milkshake—your stomach ache is—magnifying—everything.” She suddenly leaned over and put her hand on his forehead. “John, you’re shivering. Are you getting the flu? You don’t have a fever.”
    “That must be the milkshake too!” Albright snapped. “You asked me what was wrong; I told you. What do you have to bug me for?”
    “I didn’t mean to “bug you.’ I was concerned.”
    He got up, waving his arms around. The coffee cup overturned, spilling out what was left in its contents. “All right already. Forget I said anything. I’m crazy, okay?”
    “Don’t yell at me, Johnny. I just don’t want you to get so upset. What do you think’s going on—a conspiracy or something? There has to be a logical explanation. Things are tough all over these days. The world is crazy. Why don’t you just accept that—for whatever reason—more people each week are reported missing now than were a few months ago.”
    “And fewer and fewer are being found.”
    “What are you going to do? Kill yourself over it? You have enough to worry about. Your health. Your weight. You’re not the only one with problems; I have problems. Why don’t you ever talk to me, find out what I’m feeling?”
    “I talked to you tonight. What the hell good did it do? Huh?”
    She didn’t answer. She looked away from him, only looking up when she’d heard his footsteps retreat into the bedroom. She wiped her eyes, beginning to tear, and got a towel to clean up the spilled coffee. She put his cup and her own into the sink, put out the light, and checked in on little Bobby.
    She was feeling sorry for herself and she knew it. But John had to be exaggerating the work situation; it just didn’t make any sense. He’d been acting peculiar for days now, and it put even more of a strain on their already troubled marriage.
    She’d swallowed it hook, line, and sinker, that was it, about how being a woman meant that you gave birth to lots of babies and stayed home to take care of them. She loved Bobby, loved all her children, but often wondered if she’d paid too high a price. She couldn’t deal with all her continual disappointments. Instead she kept telling herself, Be glad for what you have. It worked most of the time. Sure, you’re no beauty queen, you look older every day, she said, but you’re as happy, happier than those young sex queens in the movies, what with all their unhappy love affairs, their silicone boobies. Still, she couldn’t help but wonder if her life might have been more—exciting, rewarding, what-have-you. Couldn’t she have—accomplished—something? Hell, she knew that going to work, having a career, wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Who says she would have been happy trudging off to work day after day—same faces, same hours, same routine. It always looked so glamorous for the career women with important, high-paying jobs, chic clothes, and slim figures running around in the commercials aimed at liberated women. Work all day. Play all night. But for a dumpy, plain-looking, untalented woman like her, the dog-eat-dog world would not have been kind. Or so she told herself.
    She loved John. But sometimes she felt so alone.
    She tried