Short Fiction Mack Reynolds (best ereader for pdf and epub .txt) 📖

you can dance to, something you know the words to. Corny, they used to call it. Remember ‘Sunny Side of the Street,’ and ‘Just the Way You Look Tonight.’ ”

Larry winced again. He said, “Look, I admit, I don’t go for concerts either but it doesn’t hurt you to⁠—”

“I know,” she said sweetly. “It doesn’t hurt for a bright young bureaucrat to be seen at concerts.”

“How about Dixieland?” he said. “It’s all the thing now.”

“I like corn. Besides, my wardrobe is all out of style. Paris, London, and Rome just got in a huddle a couple of weeks ago and antiquated everything I own. You wouldn’t want to be seen with a girl a few weeks out of date, would you?”

“Oh, now, LaVerne, get off my back.” He thought about it. “Look, you must have something you could wear.”

“Get out of here, you vacant minded conformist! I like Mort Lenny, he makes me laugh; I hate vodka martinis, they give me sour stomach; I don’t like the current women’s styles, nor the men’s either.” LaVerne spun back to her auto-typer and began to dictate into it.

Larry glared down at her. “All right. OK. What do you like?”

She snapped back irrationally, “I like what I like.”

He laughed at her in ridicule.

This time she glared at him. “That makes more sense than you’re capable of assimilating, Mr. Walking Status Symbol. My likes and dislikes aren’t dictated by someone else. If I like corny music, I’ll listen to it and the devil with Brahms or Dixieland or anything else that somebody else tells me is all the thing!”

He turned on his heel angrily. “OK, OK, it takes all sorts to make a world, weirds and all.”

“One more label to hang on people,” she snarled after him. “Everything’s labels. Be sure and never come to any judgments of your own!”

What a woman! He wondered why he’d ever bothered to ask her for a date. There were so many women in this town you waded through them, and here he was exposing himself to be seen in public with a girl everybody in the department knew was as weird as they came. It didn’t do your standing any good to be seen around with the type. He wondered all over again why the Boss tolerated her as his receptionist-secretary.

He got his car from the parking lot and drove home at a high level. Ordinarily, the distance being what it was, he drove in the lower and slower traffic levels but now his frustration demanded some expression.

Back at his suburban auto-bungalow, he threw all except the high priority switch and went on down into his small second cellar den. He didn’t really feel like a night on the town anyway. A few vodka martinis under his belt and he’d sleep late and he wanted to get up in time for an early start for Florida. Besides, in that respect he agreed with the irritating wench. Vermouth was never meant to mix with Polish vodka. He wished that Sidecars would come back.

In his den, he shucked off his jacket, kicked off his shoes and shuffled into Moroccan slippers. He went over to his current reading rack and scowled at the paperbacks there. His culture status books were upstairs where they could be seen. He pulled out a western, tossed it over to the cocktail table that sat next to his chair, and then went over to the bar.

Up above in his living room, he had one of the new autobars. You could dial any one of more than thirty drinks. Autobars were all the rage. The Boss had one that gave a selection of a hundred. But what difference did it make when nobody but eccentric old-timers or flighty blondes drank anything except vodka martinis? He didn’t like autobars anyway. A well mixed drink is a personal thing, a work of competence, instinct and art, not something measured to the drop, iced to the degree, shaken or stirred to a mathematical formula.

Out of the tiny refrigerator he brought a four-ounce cube of frozen pineapple juice, touched the edge with his thumbnail and let the ultra thin plastic peel away. He tossed the cube into his mixer, took up a bottle of light rum and poured in about two ounces. He brought an egg from the refrigerator and added that. An ounce of whole milk followed and a teaspoon of powdered sugar. He flicked the switch and let the conglomeration froth together.

He poured it into a king-size highball glass and took it over to his chair. Vodka martinis be damned, he liked a slightly sweet long drink.

He sat down in the chair, picked up the book and scowled at the cover. He ought to be reading that Florentine history of Machiavelli’s, especially if the Boss had got to the point where he was quoting from the guy. But the heck with it, he was on vacation. He didn’t think much of the Italian diplomat of the Renaissance anyway; how could you be that far back without being dated?

He couldn’t get beyond the first page or two.

And when you can’t concentrate on a Western, you just can’t concentrate.

He finished his drink, went over to his phone and dialed Department of Records and then Information. When the bright young thing answered, he said, “I’d like the brief on an Ernest Self who lives on Elwood Avenue, Baltimore section of Greater Washington. I don’t know his code number.”

She did things with switches and buttons for a moment and then brought a sheet from a delivery chute. “Do you want me to read it to you, sir?”

“No, I’ll scan it,” Larry said.

Her face faded to be replaced by the brief on Ernest Self.

It was astonishingly short. Records seemed to have slipped up on this occasion. A rare occurrence. He considered requesting the full dossier, then changed his mind. Instead he dialed the number of the Sun-Post and asked for its science columnist.

Sam Sokolski’s puffy face eventually faded in.

Larry said to him sourly, “You