The Dream Walker

by Charlotte Armstrong

  “It will work,” Kent Shaw said, swearing whitely by whatever gods he had. “It will take time, some money but more time, and it must be perfectly done without any stupid mistakes. But it will work.” Then he told Raymond what it was he, personally, must finally do and it clicked. Raymond saw the delicious irony. He tasted already the sweetness of his revenge.

  They knew they would have time. Raymond was in for a long slow siege with the Law, months of it, before he would be entirely helpless. They roughed out the plot and discussed how the money was to be paid. They arranged another secret session together, there in November. There would be, after that, the putting up of the stakes. In the meantime, Kent Shaw was to develop all details, prepare the script, line up the cast (many of whose members would never know they had been in a play). Raymond gave him expense money. Kent crawled back the way he had come. They swore utter secrecy. Who knows what they swore on? Blood perhaps, like Huck and Tom.

  What they wanted to do was from coldest vanity—narrow and bitter and mean. But money and brains will serve any master. You don’t think the deluded, emotional, immature can make an effect on the real and solid world of affairs, because you don’t remember King John or Benedict Arnold or Adolf Hitler.

  When Kent Shaw left the apartment that evening, his head was full, I’ll warrant, of his masterpiece. He would pull off the biggest show he had ever staged and no one would ever know it. He could gloat in secret, meanwhile possessing the only tangible thing that a dirty, grubby, contemptible world really respects. The long green, the money.

  Of course he had to line up the women. He could buy one. The other, he thought, would play. Kent Shaw had his outline and he could see much of the detail already. There were some contingencies he could not foresee. If he had, I wonder if it would have mattered.

  Chapter Two

  I realize that I have been cheating. Very well. I can’t resist telling the first incident from the outside. I can tell it as an eyewitness. I was there.

  It happened on a Sunday afternoon, the sixth day of December. Charley Ives called me, about one o’clock.

  “You going down to this gathering at Cora’s, cousin Ollie? In a cab, I hope?” I admitted I was. “Pick me up?”

  “Oh, Charley.…”

  “You’ll be going by. Why not, Teacher?”

  “Because it’s so much simpler for you to go in your own cab and such a nuisance in traffic,” I sputtered. Charley often made me sputter. I had a deep long-seated impatience with him. I didn’t want to pick him up.

  “I’ll be on the sidewalk,” said he coaxingly.

  “So easy to miss you.…”

  “Most unmissable fella in the world. Two o’clock sharp?”

  “If you’re not on the sidewalk, Charley, my boy, I’ll just have to go on.”

  “Aw, Teacher,” he said, “school’s out.”

  I could see him grinning as if his picture had been projected on my dark-green wall.

  I went on getting ready. (I don’t live at the school but by myself in an apartment nearer the river. I may as well say that I live well, and not on my salary. I’ve always had quite a lot of money.) This was going to be a ridiculous way to spend a bright December afternoon, watching Cora Steffani’s latest TV effort. But she’d asked her friends to come and view some filmed half hour or other.

  My old friend, Cora (born Stevens) was in the plot.

  I can realize, now, that I never did entirely trust her. I knew she didn’t mind lying, when she could see a profit in it. In fact, I suppose I knew she was pretty much a phony. But I was her friend. You don’t choose a friend for his high moral integrity. You really don’t. I’d known Cora so long. We’d gone to dramatic school together. We’d been young together and—if you keep in touch—that holds. Then, years ago, she’d been briefly married to my cousin, Charley Ives, and I suppose it made another bond.

  I remember surveying, that afternoon, the split kind of life I was leading, since I’d been seeing so much of Cora lately. Days of earnest endeavor, doing the best I could with my girls and loving the work more than I ever admitted. (You grow shy; you don’t want to be too vulnerable; and the great sin, these days, is taking yourself seriously.) So, days of good hard work, and nights and weekends, running down to see Cora and certain other less than upright characters. Oh, I had fine friends in the theater, too, people whose endeavor was just as earnest and far more significant than mine. But Cora and the raffish crew that turned up around her.… Well, I had known her so long. And rascals are vivid, sometimes, and that’s attractive.

  Cora and I are the same age, much the same size, both brunettes. I had a bit of gray showing. Cora’s black hair was blacker and glossier than ever. It was her livelihood to look as young as she could. My job would let me grow old.

  We took different turns, long ago. I dropped away from Broadway. The fact is, I never really made it. Cora said I hadn’t the guts and she was right. I hadn’t the nerve or the skin for it. The sad thing is that, for all her courage, somehow she never really made it, either.

  Cora Steffani. The name turned up once in a while but all the small parts she had played indifferently well didn’t add up to very much. But she still, at thirty-four, seemed to think that next year she’d make it. That I admired. As for Cora, I knew she thought I had feebly fallen back on an unearned income and was dabbling. But she had known me so long.…

  In a way, we were each other’s habit. We had a curious pact of plain speaking. We didn’t have many secrets one from the other. The secrets we did keep, each to herself, were the deep ones.

  Charley Ives was on the sidewalk. He got in and filled the cab, the way he does. Charley is a big man and he takes space, but why does he seem to take all of it?

  “Hi, Teach.”

  “Charley, my boy, how long have you been standing on the sidewalk?” I sputtered.

  “Oh, twenty minutes.”

  “You could have been there. It was silly to wait for me and five minutes’ ride.”

  “With contraptions like those on your feet in the dead of winter,” said Charley morosely, “you’re going to talk sense?” I bristled. I was wearing black satin, without so much as a button’s worth of ornament on it, and it needed frivolous shoes. “Silly, she says,” brooded Charley. “Lay off, or we’ll fight, Cousin Ollie. I’m in no mood for this clambake, anyhow.”

  “Why must you go?” I said.

  “Ask me no sensible questions, I’ll tell you no silly lies,” said Charley idiotically.

  Charley Ives was Marcus’ grandson, which made us more or less cousins. Long, long ago, in the days just before the Second War really broke upon us, Charley and I had a fight. I don’t like to remember it, but I do, clearly. I, stamping and howling that art and truth and beauty and understanding and being sensitive to people’s infinitive variations, all this was important, Hitler or no Hitler. Charley shouting that all that mattered—all—was to stand up with your kind and kill your enemy or be killed and dramatic art was for the birds. It was a very young and very stupid argument. Charley went to war and was gone a long time. When he came back, long after the peace, he wasn’t young any more. And neither was I.

  He, too, was thirty-four that December day. He’d taken to calling me Teacher. It made me feel elderly and stiff and ridiculous. So I called him Charley, my boy, and God knows whether he minded.

  He brought out the very worst in me. When I was with him I was the teacher. The stereotype, I mean. Something waspish and preachy. The truth was, he mystified and therefore irritated me.

  After the wars, Charley had bought into a publishing house. (Everyone in our family seems to have money. Perhaps we bask in the golden glow around Marcus. I don’t know.) But it seemed to me that Charley (of all people!) was doing no work. The money did the work, for all that I could see, and Charley was window-dressing. He was so big and he looked relaxed and knew how to be charming and he turned up everywhere seeming to have no pressing duties on his mind.

  (The young woman who had s
houted Hooray for art and sentiment and dainty understanding, she had learned to keep quiet. She hid in a shell that was poised and calm and she never shouted anymore. But the young man who had been so willing to get killed … where was he?)

  Charley stirred. “You going down to Washington for Marcus’ birthday next month? How about flying down together?”

  “I can’t go until the last minute. Classes.”

  “I can go anytime,” Charley said easily. “So it’s a date.”

  I sat there thinking, Of course you can go anytime. Why don’t you have something that limits you?

  “What are you going to give him for a birthday present?” Charley wanted to know.

  “A book,” said I.

  “He’s got a book. I send him crates full. I had an idea. Want you to help me pick it out.”

  “Why me?” said I. Why fly down with me? I was really wondering. Why wasn’t he taking Cora? I knew he had taken Cora to see Marcus while they were married and that Marcus hadn’t cottoned to her. Marcus is ever gentle, but you are not left in doubt about his feelings. Now, I didn’t know whether she and Charley Ives were engaged again or what. I thought, grimly, it was probably “or what.” The fire and flame between them had died away abruptly, long ago. Yet Cora acted as if he belonged to her and Charley, amiably, let her do it. I knew Charley worshiped Marcus. For all I knew, he’d split with Cora because of Marcus. If now, at the age of thirty-four, Charley, my boy, was torn about marrying his ex-wife all over again against his grandfather’s advice, he didn’t confide in me. I was afraid he would. It was none of my business. I didn’t understand a thing about it. I didn’t want to know.

  “I like your taste,” Charley said. “In fact, I defer to it.”

  I’d lost the thread.

  “Do you know you’re about as absentminded as a full professor?” Charley teased me. I didn’t answer or we’d have fought.

  Cora’s apartment, on the fringe of the Village, had one really good room. It was full of people that day. Only two of them mattered. Kent Shaw, faintly bouncing with tension, as usual, was sitting in a corner. And Mildred Garrick was there. A large woman with a cherub face, a crown of braids on her head into which she had a habit of thrusting feathers or flowers according to her fancy. Today she had a fat maroon velvet rose over her left eyebrow. Mildred wrote a column. She looked surprised to find herself where she was. And, since she could—an’ she would—print one’s name, Mildred was Queen-for-a-day in that company.

  “Olivia, beloved,” gushed she. “Do you know, the older you get, the more absolutely distinguished you become?”

  “You’re just being kind,” I said as dryly as possible. “Do you know Charley Ives?”

  “Of course. Of course. Of course.” Mildred pulled me aside. “What am I doing here?” she asked me with round eyes.

  “Oh, come, Mildred, don’t be such a snob.”

  I saw Cora put one arm around Charley’s neck, pull him down, and kiss him on the cheek. She then sent him to tend bar and he went, wearing her lipstick.

  “When is this program?” demanded Mildred. “I have an appointment …”

  Somebody said, “It’s just about two thirty now.”

  Cora was wearing tight black-and-white checked pants and a black blouse. Her thick-rimmed glasses rode on her head like a tiara and the cord attached to the earpieces hung off the back of her neck. She was too busy to greet me. She knew she needn’t bother. She was swaggering back and forth, hands flying, gesturing people onto cushions. “Kent, darling,” she said in her affected way that by now was her only way, “is the little gadget hooked up? Kent’s going to take this off on a tape for me. For the voice. Isn’t he a sweet?”

  I craned my neck and saw Kent fussing with a recorder. “I’m ready,” he snarled, “to make you more or less immortal.” Nobody bothered to resent Kent Shaw’s snarls anymore.

  “Somebody tune in CBS, then. Now, kids, I don’t say this is high holy art.…” Cora’s eyes flashed mockery at me. She suddenly crossed her legs and sank swiftly to the floor. She pulled her glasses down to position, put her elbows on her knees, pushed fingertips into her cheeks, and was absolutely still.

  The screen filled, music played, a title flashed on.

  I was watching Cora’s face. She was not at all a beauty. The face was thin. She had a rather long straight nose with a most distinctive tip to it. The nostrils flared back; the very tip of the nose made a sharp little bony triangle. That nose was the most arresting feature, gave all the character to her face. The effect was inquisitive and a bit mischievous. I was thinking that no makeup could change it. I was thinking, also, that Cora had this much skill. You did not know what went on in the head. The face did not need to tell you.

  Somebody said, “Hey, Cora, I thought.…”

  “Oh, no!” she cried tragically and clutched her forehead. “This is the wrong film! I’m not on! Oh, no!”

  So she rose. The slim legs were supple and strong. She got up from that cross-legged pose like a fourteen-year-old. “I’m so sorry!” she cried, desolately, and walked to the far end of the room and flung herself upon the window bench.

  People exerted themselves to be good sports about the fiasco and a great hubbub arose, very loud and jolly. Even Mildred Garrick tried not to make her intention of getting away as fast as she could too obvious. Everyone let Cora alone, assuming she was upset and embarrassed. In the corner, the tape recorder ran, apparently forgotten.

  It was Charley Ives who said quietly in my ear, “Is Cora all right, do you think?”

  So I looked at her. She was lying on her back on the narrow bench, her head crooked on a cushion, one leg bent so that the foot was on the floor. Her glasses, hung around her neck by that thick cord, seemed to catch a little yellow light, although draperies had been drawn, to protect the TV screen, and where she lay it was dim.

  “Can’t be asleep,” I murmured. I thought Charley hesitated to go himself to rouse her or comfort her or whatever. I thought he wanted me to do it. So, of course, I went.

  She wasn’t asleep. But she couldn’t be roused. Now others noticed something odd. Somebody rolled up one of her eyelids. She had not fainted. She seemed limp. Her pulse was fast.

  People said not to crowd, to let in some air. Someone drew the curtains open and she lay, just as limp, in full daylight. Somebody wanted to call a doctor. Somebody asked what time it was. Somebody answered.

  Cora opened her eyes and sat up.

  Charley said, “What ails you?”

  “I don’t know. I went away.”

  “Fainted?”

  “I don’t know. I was walking on a beach,” Cora said in a perfectly matter-of-fact voice. “In my green summer cotton.”

  “Dreaming? You couldn’t have been asleep.”

  “Wait,” she said sharply. “Wait.…” It was as if she were catching a dream back that might fade. “Josephine Crain was there. I walked up to her. I said, ‘Josephine, please tell me where we are.’ She doesn’t know me. Then I remembered what I’ve read. I said, ‘You are in Florida. But where am I?’ Then I was frightened. I was terrified. I walked very fast, hard to do on the sand, in my white sandals with heels.…” Cora looked down at her feet in black heelless slippers, and I know I shivered. “What”—she began to rub her head—“what happened?”

  “Must have had a dream,” said somebody soothingly. Somebody brought her a drink. Cora sat huddled together. I thought she looked all of thirty-four. “It was the strangest kind of dream,” she muttered. “I think I will crawl into bed, if you will all excuse me.”

  “Do you feel ill?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Mildred Garrick said to me, “Now, what was all that?” She pranced out. People left, awkwardly and at a loss for an attitude. It was just awkward, just odd. Kent Shaw waited until nearly last. “I’ll leave the machine,” he said. “Don’t make a mistake and erase it.”

  “Erase what?” said Cora. “What do you mean, Kent, darling?”

&nb
sp; “The thing was running the whole time. You might want your analyst to hear it.”

  “I don’t want to hear it at all. Take it away.”

  Kent shrugged and took it away. Charley and I were left with her. He took her hands. “What happened, now … really?” Charley can be very sweet and gentle. Some big men can.

  “Just what I said. I can’t tell you more than that.” She pulled her hands away. “I thought I was on a beach.”

  I said, “So long, you two.”

  But Cora said, “No. Charley, you go away. There’s a dear man. Let Ollie stay with me.” (We had known each other so long.)

  So, Charley left and I stayed. Cora didn’t go to bed. We lounged, talking quietly, not about her dream or whatever it was, but gossiping a bit. Cora didn’t seem to bother to put on any act for me. I thought she had suffered some queer mind lapse and it had frightened her. I thought she was toughly assimilating whatever the sensation had been. I let her be. She finally said she felt all right. I knew she meant that I could go.

  She had the grace to thank me, in a phrase that was pure Cora. “Your ivory tower has made you a nice peaceful type to have around,” said Cora.

  “No questions asked,” I said lightly. “Have a snack and go to bed, why don’t you?”

  “Ollie, I will.” She kissed me. Then just as I went through the door she said, “Ollie, you know Josephine Crain, don’t you?”

  “Um hum.”

  “She is in Florida?”

  “Miami. Yes.”

  “When will she be back?”

  “The twentieth, I think. She’s going into rehearsal.”

  “Sometime,” said Cora, “ask her.”

  “Ask her what?”

  “If I was there.”

  Josephine Crain is one of our truly great. She came back to town, as planned, and the day after, right in the midst of the Christmas rush, Cora called me. “Ollie, do something for me? I know you will.”

  “I might if I knew what it was.”

  “Go and see Josephine Crain. You know what to ask her. Kent Shaw’s promised to go with you.”