Time and the Riddle: Thirty-One Zen Stories by Howard Fast Page B

were four claw marks on the back of his hand.
    He was licking the back of his hand when Barbara came out of the house and joined him.
    â€œWhat happened?”
    â€œI’m afraid our cat has reverted back to his true nature.”
    â€œWhat a pity!”
    â€œWell—perhaps. Perhaps not.”
    â€œYou have another flower on that beautiful thing!” she exclaimed with delight.
    â€œOh, yes.”
    â€œYour new species, isn’t it?”
    â€œWell, it’s a cross breed of sorts, but whether it will breed true or breed at all, that’s hard to say. Some cross breeds are sterile, you know. “We’ll let mother nature decide. The old lady is very wise about such things.”
    â€œDinner?”
    He turned to her, took both her hands, and said, “My dear Barbara, I love you very much. I always have. An act of love is something we create within us, and, if we are lucky, we nurture it.”
    â€œI like that,” Barbara said. “I’ll remember it.”
    â€œWe both will, and we’ll try as hard as we can, won’t we?”
    â€œWhat an odd thing to say! Of course we’ll try, You’re very strange tonight.”
    Then he put his arm around her waist, and they went in to dinner.

5
Tomorrow’s
Wall Street Journal
    A t precisely eight forty-five in the morning, carrying a copy of tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal under his arm, the devil knocked at the door of Martin Chesell’s apartment. The devil was a handsome middle-aged businessman, dressed in a two-hundred-dollar gray sharkskin suit, forty-five-dollar shoes, a custom-made shirt, and a twenty-five-dollar iron-gray Italian silk tie. He wore a forty-dollar hat, which he took off politely as the door opened.
    Martin Chesell, who lived on the eleventh floor of one of those high-rise apartments that grow like mushrooms on Second Avenue in the seventies and eighties, was wearing pants and a shirt, neither with a lineage of place or price. His wife, Doris, had just said to him, “What kind of nut is it at this hour? You better look through the peephole.”
    Knowing a good tie and shirt when he saw them, Martin Chesell opened the door and asked the devil what he wanted.
    â€œI’m the devil,” the devil answered politely. “And I am here to make a deal for tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal . ”
    â€œBuzz off, buster,” Martin said in disgust. “The hospital’s over by the river, six blocks from here. Go sign yourself in.”
    â€œI am the devil,” the devil insisted. “I am really the devil, Scout’s honor.” Then he pushed Martin aside and entered the apartment, being rather stronger than people.
    â€œMartin, who is it?” his wife yelled—and then she came to see. She was dressed to go to her job at Bonwit’s, where she sold dresses until her feet died—every day about four-twenty—and she saw enough faces in a day’s time to smell the devil when he was near her.
    â€œAsk your wife,” the devil said pleasantly.
    â€œIt wouldn’t surprise me,” said Doris. “What are you peddling, mister?”
    â€œTomorrow’s Wall Street Journal,” the devil repeated amiably. “Everyman’s desire and dream.”
    â€œIt’s an old, tired saw,” Martin Chesell said. “It’s been used to death. Not only have a dozen bad stories been written to the same point, but The New Yorker ran a cartoon on the same subject. A tired old bum looks down, and there’s tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal at his feet.”
    â€œThat’s where I picked up the notion.” The devil nodded eagerly. “Basically, I am conservative, but one can’t go on forever with the same old thing, you know.” He walked sprightly into their living room, merely glancing into the bedroom with its unmade bed, and measuring with another glance the cheap, tasteless furniture, and then spread the