Cue for Quiet Read online

bunch of pirates. We'd all hadexperience with that sort of thing, hadn't we? Why--someone at theother end of the bar wanted some service and Art left. I sat back andbegan to add two and two. I got five.

  Art came back and grinned at me. "You're not going to like this,Pete."

  "What won't I like?"

  "This," and a man in coveralls shouldered me aside and set a cobra onthe bar in front of me, a snake with a twelve inch tube. Art went onto explain: "They're giving me a loaner until my own set gets back andthey don't want to plug it in the usual place until they get a chanceto completely check the wiring. Okay?"

  It had to be okay. It wasn't my place of business. I moved down a bitand watched the serviceman plug it in. He tried the channels forclarity and without warning flipped the volume control all the wayover and the whole building shook. I shook, too, like a bewilderedLabrador throwing off an unwanted splash of icy water. The top of myhead lifted from its moorings and shifted just enough for me to namethat infernal serviceman and all his issue. He just sat there andgrinned, making no attempt to tone down the set. Then I said what Ithought about his television, and the set went quiet. Like that.

  It began to smoke and the serviceman began to shuck tools from hisbox. Art opened his mouth to yell and I walked out the front door.The High Hat, right across the street, would serve to keep me warmuntil the smoke and profanity was cleared and Art had the repairmanunder control.

  I knew it! They had a jukebox inside the door with the same twenty toptunes of the week, the same gaudy front with the same swirling lightsand the same tonsillectomied tenors. I shuddered as I eased by, and Imurmured a heartfelt wish over my shoulder, something about the bestplace for that machine. I ordered a beer, a short one. The barkeep, apleasant enough fellow, but with none of Art's innate joviality, rangup the dime.

  "You didn't happen to pull the cord out when you walked by, did you?"

  "Pull the cord out of what?"

  He didn't bother to answer, and went over to the machine. That was thefirst I realized the music had stilled. He clicked the switch on andoff a few times with no result, and went to the telephone, detouringby way of the cash register to pick up a coin. Thoughtfully sipping mybeer I heard him dial and report a jukebox out of order. Then a relayclicked in the back of my head.

  Could all this be a coincidence? Could be.... Couldn't be! The beergrew warm in my hand as I remembered. Every time I'd wished, reallyreally wished, something had happened. Now that I had time to think itover I remembered that red rotor spinning madly past my eyes, thathorrible hatred and afterward, that sated sense of fulfillment....Better have another beer and forget it, Pete. Better make it twobeers. Maybe three.

  The High Hat sold me a lot more than two beers, or three. When I leftthere, although I was walking a mental chalkline I had a littletrouble lighting a cigarette in the chill breeze. I didn't bothergoing back to Art's. Art was all right, and there was no sense inmaking trouble for a pal. Harry, now. He was a stinker. Go put theneedle in Harry, two blocks away.

  While Harry was drawing the beer I walked string straight to thejukebox, clicked in a quarter, and stalked back to the barstool. Turnyour back, Pete, just as though you didn't know perfectly well whatwas going to happen. Now take a tasty sip of your beer, wait for thenoise to start.... Take a deep breath, now; Pete Miller, saviour ofman's sanity. I closed my eyes and pretended to be covering a yawn.

  "Tubes," I whispered, "do your stuff. Blow that horn, Gabriel--goahead and--blow!"

  The jukebox moaned as far as the first eight bars; I got my quarterback from a puzzled Harry; I listened to Harry call his repairman; Ifinished my beer; I got outside and almost around the corner before Ibegan laughing like a hyena; I got to bed snickering and went to sleepthe same way; and I woke up with a headache.

  Hammering presses the next day I treated with the contempt of longpractice. One single theme kept rolling around like a pea in awashtub; just what had happened to that television set and thosejukeboxes? And what had made a fairly new eight-cylinder almostdisintegrate, apparently on command? Agreed, that coincidence has amighty long arm, but hardly long enough to scratch its own elbow.Forty years old and a superman? One way to find out. Let's go at thiscold sober. Let's scratch this shiny new rubber band until it snaps.

  * * * * *

  At three-thirty I was first in line at the timeclock, second out thegate, and fourth or fifth to line up at the National Bar. "Aspirin andginger ale," I ordered, and got a knowing grin from the barkeep.Laugh, buddy. You may think I feel bad now, but wait and see whathappens to your bangbox. I dare someone to put in a nickel; Idouble-dare you. That's it--pick a good number from one to twenty andgo back to your stool and sit down. Take it easy, now, Pete. Don'tstrain, don't press, no slugging in the clinches, and break clean. Theplace needs a good airing, anyway, and the floor could use a newbroom, too. Bubble, bubble, go for double ... no more music. No morenoise. Smoke, you boiler factory, smoke! Hey, somebody, pull thatplug. Not that one, _that_ one. Pull it out. Pull it out! _Pull itout!_

  * * * * *

  Finally someone did pull it out, someone chattered excitedly into thetelephone, and I slid out the front door when the fire engines werewailing blocks away. Coincidence, hey. And cold sober, too. I stood onthe curb and watched the firemen dash in and straggle out. Dirty trickto break up a pinochle game in weather like this. Four red-eyedcrimson giants snorted and whined their blunt noses back into theclogged traffic, back to wait another call. Three buses were sentinelsat the safety zone, and one of them took me home to dinner. This wason a Friday, the night for the Olsens, next door, to have their weeklysangerbund. When Helen shook me into wakefulness the party was goingstrong.

  "Pete, will you wake up? You know perfectly well when you hear me!"

  Yes, I heard her. "What time is it?"

  "Never mind what time it is. You go over there and tell them you'regoing to call the police if they don't turn off that radio--"

  I yawned. "After two o'clock."

  "Almost two-thirty. You just get up and--"

  I laughed out loud, as loud as you can laugh at that time of themorning. "Roll over and go back to sleep," I told her. "They'll shutit off in a minute."

  I shut my sleepy lids and went through the deep breath routine. Theradio stopped. Then an afterthought; this was Friday, and I wanted tosleep late on a Saturday unsullied and unwelcomed by soap operas.Another deep breath, complicated by a yawn, and I went back to sleep.

  * * * * *

  Over our coffee Helen pulled aside the kitchen curtain.

  "I thought there was some reason I didn't wake up until ten. Lookacross the street," and she pointed.

  In front of the Olsen's, a red panel truck, Chuck's Radio Service.Next door, in front of the Werner's, Harper Radio Parts. In theSmith's driveway, Rapid Radio Repair.

  "What are you grinning at?"

  "Me? I'm not grinning. Not at this time of the morning."

  "Pete Miller, you were, too. Just like the cat that ate the fish."

  "Canary, you mean."

  "That's what I said. What's so funny?"

  "Nothing," I said. "We just got a good night's sleep for a change. Ilike my sleep."

  She harrumphed a bit, as suspicious as she usually is, and I went tothe stove for more coffee. Over my shoulder I said, "Want to play alittle cards tonight?"

  She was skeptical about that. "At Art's, I suppose."

  "Sure. Saturday night euchre tournaments."

  "That noisy place? Nothing doing."

  I told her the jukebox and the television set were out of commissionand there'd be no noise she didn't make herself. She loved to playcards, I knew, and she liked Art. It was just the incessant roar thatwore her down. I managed to talk her into it.

  * * * * *

  At Art's that night I listened with envy to the words that were usedover the telephone when the jukebox gave up its ghost. I heard onlyA
rt's end of the conversation, of course, but I gathered that Art wasbeing accused at the very least of sabotage. I changed the subjectquick when I caught Helen trying to figure out the look I must havebeen wearing. Women get so they're pretty good at that after they'vebeen married awhile. Art himself drove us home at closing time. Helenand Art's wife did all the talking, and I'm sure no one noticed I heldmy breath before every bar or house and Helen commented, as I fit thekey into the front door, on the fact that the Olsens and the Wernersand the Smiths all picked the same time to turn off their radios."Very nice of them," she said, "considering it's Saturday night."

  Now, I use two buses to get to work, transferring