Double Trouble
James Forrest Carroll was lazily happy with himself. His needs were quite simple and the apartment he lived in was far beyond them. He had a gnawing doubt that he could keep it forever, because there was something about money that did not jibe.
He could not make enough money to maintain it—and he did not need it anyway. But it was very nice and he viewed it as any normal man might view living in his own ideal home, complete with everything that he ever hoped to have.
He awoke in the morning by physical habit, dressed by instinct and his breakfast was served by the housekeeper. Then he left the place and roamed. He saw the parks and enjoyed with primitive pleasure the greenery and the natural settings of tree, grass and sky. The park squirrels knew no fear of him and he found them interesting. Perhaps he subconsciously envied their obvious adjustment to their environment.
He visited an art institute once but never returned because it made him uneasy. The same was true of the museum of natural history, though it was more to his liking than the artificial art.
On the same street was a museum of science which, because of a strange arrangement of windows, portico, and row of columns, took on a distorted picture of a grinning giant that threatened to swallow whoever entered. Carroll, without knowing the subconscious connection, feared and avoided it even though he had to cross the street to pass it.
They took him from a planetarium once—screaming in fear and crying to be set free. Claustrophobia, one "expert" said, but he didn't know that Carroll had been mentally sitting in deep space with no solidity beneath him when he started to scream.
He—got along.
There was no apparent advance. His actions in life were normal to his preamnesiac self on minor items. He preferred the better restaurants, took an instinctive liking to the same good clothing that he had lived with before. In all outward respects James Forrest Carroll was a well-to-do man without the mental right to carry that position.
Occasionally it bothered him that something was wrong but he avoided the reason for it.