welcome to the monkey house

The screech cut right through Susanna's speech about Mr. Hinkley's being an angel. The screech made scalps tingle and teeth ache. Susanna looked indulgently in the direction of the screech, forgiving the screecher. She found that the Screecher wasn't a person to be indulged. The screech had been made by the stool of Cpl. Norman Fuller, who had come home the night before from eighteen bleak months in Korea. They had been eighteen months without war- but eighteen months without cheer, all the same. Fuller had turned on the stool slowly, to look at Susanna with indignation. When the screech died, the drugstore was deathly still. Fuller had broken the enchantment of summer by the seaside- had reminded all in the drugstore of the black, mysterious passions that were so often the mainsprings of life. He might have been a brother, come to rescue his idiot sister from the tenderloin; or an irate husband, come to a saloon to horsewhip his wife back to where she belonged, with the baby. The truth was that Corporal Fuller had never seen Susanna before. He hadn't consciously meant to make a scene. He hadn't known, consciously, that his stool would screech. He had meant to underplay his indignation, to make it a small detail in the background of Susanna's pageant- a detail noticed by only one or two connoisseurs of the human comedy. But the screech had made his indignation the center of the solar system for all in the drugstore- particularly for Susanna. Time had stopped, and it could not proceed until Fuller had explained the expression on his granite Yankee face. Fuller felt his skin glowing like hot brass. He was comprehending destiny. Destiny had suddenly given him an audience, and a situation about which he had a bitter lot to say. Fuller felt his lips move, heard the words come out. "Who do you think you are?" he said to Susanna. "I beg your pardon?" said Susanna. She drew her newspapers about herself protectively. "I saw you come down the street like you were a circus parade, and I just wondered who you thought you were," said Fuller. Susanna blushed gloriously. "I- I'm an actress," she said. "You can say that again," said Fuller. "Greatest actresses in the world, American women." "You're very nice to say so," said Susanna uneasily. Fuller's skin glowed brighter and hotter. His mind had become a fountain of apt, intricate phrases. "I'm not talking about theaters with seats in 'em. I'm talking about the stage of life. American women act and dress like they're gonna give you the world. Then, when you stick out your hand, they put an ice cube in it." "They do?" said Susannah emptily."They do," said Fuller, "and it's about time somebody said so." He looked challengingly from spectator to spectator, and found what he took to be dazed encouragement. "It isn't fair," he said. "What isn't?" said Susanna, lost. "You come in here with bells on your ankles, so's I'll have to look at your ankles and your pretty pink feet," said Fuller. "You kiss the cat, so's I'll have to think about how it'd be to be that cat," said Fuller. "You call an old man an angel, so's I'll have to think about what it'd be like to be called an angel by you," said Fuller. "You hide your key in front of everybody, so's I'll have to think about where that key is," said Fuller. He stood. "Miss," he said, his voice full of pain, "you do everything you can to give lonely, ordinary people like me indigestion and the heeby-jeebies, and you wouldn't even hold hands with me to keep me from falling off a cliff." He strode to the door. All eyes were on him. Hardly anyone noticed that his indictment had reduced Susanna to ashes of what she'd been moments before. Susanna now looked like what she really was- a muddle-headed nineteen-year-old clinging to a tiny corner of sophistication. "It isn't fair," said Fuller. "There ought to be a law against girls acting and dressing like you do. It makes more people unhappy than it does happy. You know what I say to you, for going around making everybody want to kiss you?" "No," piped Susanna, every fuse in her nervous system blown. "I say to you what you'd say to me, if I was to try and kiss you," Fuller said grandly. He swung his arms in an umpire's festure for "out." "To hell with you," he said. He left, slamming the screen door.--kurt vonnegut, "miss temptation"