The Dark Side by Damon Knight (ed.)

fell from a perfectly clear sky. The gnome must have remembered it at length, for a moment later the rain stopped. Like shutting off a faucet, Greenberg unwillingly thought.
    “Goodby, weekend business,” he growled. “If Esther finds out I got into an argument with the guy who makes it rain—”
    He made an underhand cast, hoping for just one fish. The line flew out over the water; then the hook arched upward and came to rest several” inches above the surface, hanging quite steadily and without support in the air.
    “Well, go down in the water, damn you!” Greenberg said viciously, and he swished his rod back and forth to pull the hook down from its ridiculous levitation. It refused.
    Muttering something incoherent about being hanged before he’d give in, Greenberg hurled his useless rod at the water. By this time he was not surprised when it hovered in the air above the lake. He merely glanced red-eyed at it, tossed out the remains of the gnome’s hat, and snatched up the oars.
    When he pulled back on them to row to land, they did not touch the water—naturally. Instead they flashed unimpeded through the air, and Greenberg tumbled into the bow.
    “A-ha!” he grated. “Here’s where the trouble begins.” He bent over the side. As he had suspected, the keel floated a remarkable distance above the lake.
    By rowing against the air, he moved with maddening slowness toward shore, like a medieval conception of a flying machine. His main concern was that no one should see him in his humiliating position.
    At the hotel he tried to sneak past the kitchen to the bathroom. He knew that Esther waited to curse him for fishing the day before opening, but more especially on the very day that a nice boy was coming to see her Rosie. If he could dress in a hurry, she might have less to say—
    “Oh, there you are, you good-for-nothing!”
    He froze to a halt.
    “Look at you!” she screamed shrilly. “Filthy—you stink from fish!”
    “I didn’t catch anything, darling,” he protested timidly.
    “You stink anyhow. Go take a bath, may you drown in it! Get dressed in two minutes or less, and entertain the boy when he gets here. Hurry!”
    He locked himself in, happy to escape her voice, started the water in the tub, and stripped from the waist up. A hot bath, he hoped, would rid him of his depressed feeling.
    First, no fish; now, rain on weekends! What would Esther say—if she knew, of course. And, of course, he would not tell her.
    “Let myself in for a lifetime of curses!” he sneered. “Ha!”
    He clamped a new blade into his razor, opened the tube of shaving cream, and stared objectively at the mirror. The dominant feature of the soft, chubby face that stared back was its ugly black stubble; but he set his stubborn chin and glowered. He really looked quite fierce and indomitable. Unfortunately, Esther never saw his face in that uncharacteristic pose, otherwise she would speak more softly.
    “Herman Greenberg never gives in!” he whispered between savagely hardened lips. “Rain on weekends, no fish—anything he wants; a lot I care! Believe me, he’ll come crawling to me before I go to him.”
    He gradually became aware that his shaving brush was not getting wet. When he looked down and saw the water dividing into streams that flowed around it, his determined face slipped and grew desperately anxious. He tried to trap the water—by catching it in his cupped hands, by creeping up on it from behind, as if it were some shy animal, and shoving his brush at it—but it broke and ran away from his touch. Then he jammed his palm against the faucet. Defeated, he heard it gurgle back down the pipe, probably as far as the main.
    “What do I do now?” he groaned. “Will Esther give it to me if I don’t take a shave! But how?… I can’t shave without water.”
    Glumly, he shut off the bath, undressed and stepped into the tub. He lay down to soak. It took a moment of horrified stupor to realise that he was completely