Man in a Hurry and Other Fantasy Stories. Alan Nelson
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He put his fingers into it tentatively. Remarkable how snug and comfortable it was! He pulled it completely on. Why, you scarcely knew it was there! He picked up the other glove, pulled it on, too…
* * * *
The reason I can’t get these gloves off, Dr. Departure told himself the next day, staring at his fingers, is that rubber sticks so close to the skin I can’t get a good grip on it. If only I had longer fingernails…
The door opened suddenly and through it popped the beaming face of Dr. Schnappenhocker.
“Morning, Manly!” he boomed. “Just out drumming up a little business and, right off, I thought of you.” He laughed heartily.
“Don’t you ever knock?” Dr. Departure growled.
“No offense, Doctor. Thought I’d leave you a program for next month’s Institute banquet. Did I tell you I was the guest speaker?” He dropped a folder on the chair and disappeared.
Dr. Departure turned his attention back to the gloves. It was odd. He couldn’t get them off. Very odd. Not that this bothered him particularly…they were so snug and light, you scarcely knew you had them on. Tonight, he’d get Emily to peel them off. It was a bit disconcerting, though, not to be able to do it yourself.
Of course, he’d had no impulse toward kleptomania—absolutely none at all. He smiled to himself. As a matter of fact, if you permitted yourself such a wild thought, it was just the other way around. Last night, he’d left a book on the bus and, this morning, he’d misplaced his favorite pipe in the coffee shop. Odd. Very odd.
His eyes drifted to the two sacks of stolen articles Flint had left. Have to return those, he told himself—not good to have them lying around. He scooped up the bags and, pawing through them, discovered from price tags that most of them came from Snow Brothers’ Department Store. It was lunch time; he’d drop them off right now.
A pre-inventory sale was raging in Snow Brothers’; it’s aisles throbbed with a squirming horde of women shoppers, and Dr. Departure, hugging two paper sacks, burrowed his way determinedly toward the accommodation desk.
It was in Women’s Purses that the whim suddenly seized him. He fought it off. It returned, more powerfully, more insistently, and, in a moment, it swelled into a wild, unreasoning, clamoring urge that made his fingers tingle and his whole body quiver.
He found himself edging over to a counter, reaching into the sack he carried. His breathing came faster as he removed the first article his fingers touched—a windshield wiper. Furtively, he looked about. No one was watching. With a quick, darting motion, he sneaked the wiper between two leather bags on the counter. Then, glancing nervously about once more, he hurried away with a pounding heart, feeling an odd, tingling triumph.
* * * *
“Opposite of kleptomania…that’s what you have!” Mrs. Departure was accusing her husband in a loud, hysterical voice two weeks later at dinner time. She was a large, resolute woman with steely eyes and sensible shoes. At the moment, however, she was considerably unstrung. “You’re an un-kleptomaniac, and you’ve got to do something about it!”
“And I tell you, it’s these damn gloves!” the doctor shouted, pacing back and forth. His dinner lay cold and untouched. His hair was rumpled. His eyes glittered with strange lights. His hands had a strange plucking motion, one against the other.
“You shoplifter! I mean…you shopdropper!” Her long, usually solid jaw quivered with anguish. “Sneaking into department stores, leaving trinkets all over the place. My blue vase! The pruning shears! Almost the entire silverware set! Even your little brass clock! All gone!”
“It’s the gloves, I tell you!” Vainly, he tugged, plucked and snatched at his fingertips. “I put them on backwards. Inside out! Damn! If I could only get a grip on them!”
“And today, the public library called again,” she cried shrilly. “Not a day passes but what you sneak three or four of your own books onto their shelves!”
“Well, if you’d helped me get these things off that first night, liked I asked you to, maybe I wouldn’t be in this fix!”
“But this evening!” Mrs. Departure’s lips twitched, her voice shrilled ever higher, “on the bus…that was the last straw! I saw you with my own eyes! The way you sneaked that man’s wallet out of his pocket, stuffed it with four of your own dollar bills, then put it back! I tell you, Manly, you’ve got to see someone!”
“And I tell you, there’s nothing wrong with me! It’s the gloves! When Flint skinned them off, it turned them inside out. They’re on backwards! Can’t you get that through your head?” He jammed a cigarette in his mouth.
“Gloves! Gloves! Gloves! I tell you, for the hundredth time, you haven’t any gloves on!”
“Where is the cigarette lighter?” Dr. Departure growled, slapping his pockets. “I had it right in my vest this morning.”
“The question is,” she said, laughing a bit hysterically and throwing back the flaps of his coat, “where is your vest? Manly, I might as well tell you…I’ve already made an appointment for you.”
She dug in her purse and handed him a card.
“Schnappenhocker!” he screamed. “Bert was really very nice about it.”
“I will not go to that revolting brother of yours,” Dr. Departure shrieked, turning a shiny purple.
“Not even if he was the last doctor on earth! That pompous witch doctor! That…” Suddenly, in mid-sentence, he let out his breath and stared into space a moment, a pleased and reflective expression beginning to relax his face. Witch doctor? There was still a little powder left… Why hadn’t he thought of palming the gloves off on Bert before? That loudmouthed wit-snapper was always trying on other people’s garments for a laugh—ladies’ hats, little boys’ bow ties, Dr. Departure’s own rather conservative rain shoes. The man simply couldn’t resist a pair of rubber gloves!
“You will go,” his wife was saying in a low, vibrant voice.
“Most certainly, I will go!” Dr. Departure replied in an equally vibrant voice, the sweet smile of anticipation growing on his face.
Never were doctor and patient ever happier to see one another than the following day when Dr. Departure entered the softly shaded inner sanctum of Dr. Bert Schnappenhocker. Dr. Schnappenhocker beamed at his rival with the undisguised eagerness of an anatomy student about to dissect an especially interesting species of tailless amphibian, while Dr. Departure gazed back with the smirking innocence of one all set to administer an emotional hot-foot. For two full minutes, they wrung each other’s hand.
“Well!” Dr. Schnappenhocker finally said heartily, impatient to make the initial incision. “Emily tells me you have a little problem.”
“I hate to bother you with it, really,” Dr. Departure replied, trying to keep from grinning.
For almost an hour, Dr. Departure allowed his brother-in-law to worm the whole unlikely story out of him, then, finally, when he gave the instructions and pushed the little box of white powder across the desk, he watched Schnappenhocker shake his head with a coy gesture of hopelessness and settle back in his chair.
“Manly, old man,” Schnappenhocker said. “Another six months of absolute rest and quiet ought to do it for you. Maybe eight. You owe it to Emily, you know. And to yourself.” He reached for the telephone.
Dr. Departure was prepared for this. Wild lights shining from his eyes—or what he hoped were wild lights—he leaped from the chair, seized the copper letter opener and leaned across the desk, breathing hard.
“Are you going to cast that spell or aren’t you?” he shouted, digging the opener into the mahogany desk top.
Dr. Schnappenhocker blinked apprehensively.
“Sure, Manly! Sure!” he placated. “I’ll cast the spell, then I’ll make