The Dream Walker

by Charlotte Armstrong

  “Do you think,” he said through his teeth, “you’re not exasperating? That fight’s thirteen years old.”

  “Truce. Truce,” I said. “I’ll be her only friend, the best I can. It’s a lousy role, Charley.” Tears started in my eyes.

  “Aw, Teacher,” said Charley softly and touched my hair lightly.

  I shivered violently. I couldn’t, thereafter, move or look. In another moment, I knew he had gone back to talk with Gray.

  I streaked uptown to my apartment and peeled off that detestable blue taffeta dress. My rooms looked like an archeological exhibit, and all my things were relics of a former era.

  I hurried out of there to the hospital. I could not … could not solidly imagine my role. It was unprepared, undigested, unrehearsed. I knew I was stepping on stage to do what I warned my girls never to do. I was not secure in the part. I didn’t understand the woman I was about to present.

  Charley was there already. Downstairs, he pounced on me. Bud Gray, he told me, was already hidden in the room next to Cora’s, with some listening device against her wall.

  “Go first,” said Charley. “Establish yourself.”

  I sighed. “I’ll have to try it my own way,” I warned him.

  “Any way that does it.” He was all policeman.

  So I went upstairs and tapped on her door.

  Cora was wearing a gold-colored robe of silk, embroidered with black dragons. She was sitting in an easy chair, talking to a strange young man. “Why, Ollie! Where have you been!” she exclaimed. But she was more wary than cordial. She knew she had offended me beyond all forgiveness. How could I make her believe otherwise?

  “You’d hardly believe where I’ve been,” I said grumpily.

  She introduced the young and rather pink-cheeked man as a henchman of Mildred Garrick’s. “Press?” said I. “Oh me.…”

  “In a friendly way, Miss Hudson,” the young man said. “Message from Mildred, that’s all.”

  I went over to the high bed and lay myself upon it. “I’m exhausted,” I said. “Go on with whatever it is.”

  “It’s nothing,” said Cora. “Mildred sends this young snoop around from time to time. Mildred’s been … kind.” (Mildred had been making the most of her inside track.) Cora got up and swished about, the long folds of golden silk boiling about her quick feet. “Ollie, where have you been? I thought you’d gone forever.”

  “I’ve been detecting,” I said.

  “Oh?” Cora lit a cigarette in her exaggerated way.

  “Where have I not been?” said I. “I’ve been to Denver, Los Angeles, Washington.”

  “Since day before yesterday?” she cried prettily. Maybe she hid alarm.

  “What’s the news?” said the little boy from the newspaper.

  “No news.” I closed my eyes.

  “Then what are you here for?” asked my old friend, Cora. Her voice was ready for weeping or for rage, whichever way the cat would jump. (I was the cat.) “I suppose you want a piece of my scalp,” she challenged.

  I said, “No.”

  “No?”

  I opened my eyes. “Cora,” (I suppose I had on what Charley Ives would call my Holy Grail look) “swear to me that you don’t understand this thing. You only know you dream.”

  Cora looked queer. “Ollie, I swear.” Her voice trembled very nicely.

  “Two impossible things before breakfast,” I misquoted. “Either you are a wicked liar. Or you have strange dreams. Choose one, I suppose.”

  “Miss Hudson,” said the pink-faced lad excitedly, “you think John Paul Marcus may be mixed up with Pankerman and that crowd?”

  “No, no, no,” I said quickly. “I wonder if Pankerman isn’t using Cora’s dream.”

  “Hey, that’s an idea!” he cried. It wasn’t much of an idea. “But …”—he looked around at Cora in apology—“you do,” he said to me, “believe she dreams?”

  “What else can I think?” I said. “She might want publicity. She might want notoriety. But to get it by wrecking Marcus … I cannot believe she’d do a thing like that to”—I let a beat go by—“people she loves.”

  Cora chose tears, of course. “Ollie, darling, how can I tell you? I was afraid I’d lost you. Nobody … nobody else knows what all this does to me.” She was all broken up. “I should have known,” she quavered sentimentally, “that you’d be fair. You’ve always been the fairest person I’ve ever known.”

  The pink boy went away, all agog.

  The moment he was gone, Cora said, suspending her tears. “But I don’t know whether to believe you.…”

  “Don’t then,” I said. There would be no more tears. We never had been sentimental.

  “Why did you tear off all over the country?” she demanded.

  “I wanted to know. Talked to Jo Cram, Monti, Dr. Barron.”

  “Isn’t he a lamb?” she cried falsely. (Put-on, I thought.)

  “And people in Los Angeles,” I told her.

  “Davenport?”

  “No. Bartholomew. Police.”

  “Well?”

  I shrugged and threw my hands out. “You just are not that clever,” I said and the line rang true. Her eyes flickered. “So I don’t know what it is,” I continued, “and since you swear to me.…”

  She swished herself around and sat down. “Don’t gimlet-eye me, Ollie. There’s no way to understand it. I’m sick of trying. We don’t need to talk about it, do we?”

  Silence.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked after a while.

  “Go abroad, maybe. Run away.”

  “No vaudeville turns? No confessions?”

  “I’ve had offers.”

  “I’m glad you’re not taking them.”

  “Bad enough, as it is,” she said, playing forlorn.

  “Cora, can’t the doctors help you?”

  “They don’t seem to.” She accepted this implication quickly. “And I am so tired of this cage. Do you know how long I’ve been in this hospital? I can’t leave it. I feel as if I wouldn’t get across the street with my limbs still on.”

  “No more would you,” said I.

  Cora sighed deeply. “It’s good to have you back. I’ve been lonely.” She looked sideways. “Where is Charley Ives? Do you know?”

  I didn’t have to produce an answer because Charley Ives was rapping on the door. He came in and the walls bulged. I guessed he’d been next door and had heard much that had been said. I pulled at my skirt and sat up more primly and somewhat defensively.

  “Ah, girls,” said Charley. “Letting your hair down?” He looked at me as if he’d like to throttle me.

  Cora’s lids fluttered. Otherwise she was motionless.

  “You,” said Charley to her with no more preliminaries, “are a liar and a louse. And you,” he said to me, “are a fool.”

  “Well!” said Cora brightly. “This is charming. Do go on.”

  “Do you think I won’t?” Charley put his hands in his pockets. “Cousin Ollie sees no evil. But I never did wear rose-colored glasses. It’s Pankerman’s money that pays for this prank.”

  “It doesn’t cost anything,” said Cora plaintively.

  “It will. You’re implicated up to your neck in slander and fraud and homicide.”

  “Am I?” She looked sideways at him. “Why aren’t I in jail, then? Wouldn’t they have to prove all this, Charley dear?”

  “Ah,” he said easily, “Darlene Hite can prove it.”

  Cora was good. Very good. She didn’t startle. She was braced, of course. She’d been ready for thunder and lightning from Charley Ives. She didn’t even make the mistake of saying, “Who is Darlene Hite?” She said nothing.

  I said it. “Who is Darlene Hite?”

  “The other one,” Charley answered. “The astral body. A real woman with Cora’s nose.”

  “Somebody wants to get in the act,” said Cora with superb ennui.

  “You’re not ill,” said Charley. “I’ll pay no more bills here. Why should I keep
you?” She narrowed her eyes. “Besides,” he continued, “since you and Darlene Hite together killed a man, your next stop is jail.”

  “How could I kill anybody in a dream?” she said mournfully. “Who’s this Darlene? Somebody wants her name in the papers, too? What a name! Why don’t you bring this Darlene? Before you make corny threats, Charley, dear.”

  “I’ll bring her.”

  “When?”

  “When I’m ready.” But Charley just wasn’t convincing.

  Cora laughed. “Trying to save your precious grandpa?” she mocked. “What did you do? Hire somebody? Are you blaming yourself, Charley, dear?” Now her voice was pure poison. She enjoyed it. “Are you thinking that if only you and I were still married, why, I’d have cut my tongue out, wouldn’t I?”

  “You’ll wish you had,” he said, and it looked to me as if he was the one who was going to be enraged.

  Cora said, “Oh, Charley, go away. Leave us. Make him go, Ollie.” Then, pitifully, “I can’t take much more.” But she could. She was enjoying it.

  Charley said, “I’ll tell you what you couldn’t take. A man having the guts to say he didn’t want you.” Muscles tightened in her neck. In mine, too. “Fell for each other, in a big way, didn’t we?” Charley said. “All of our dreams came true. Only trouble was, I wasn’t quite so deep asleep, and I proceeded to wake up. And had the nerve to say so. Being unwilling to spend the rest of my life in hell, for one mistake. And we had pious speeches, didn’t we? About being good friends. And, oh, we were so gay. And lust,” said Charley Ives, “for a dirty indirect revenge in your filthy little heart.”

  Cora was getting angry, now, all right.

  “Did you think,” said Charley, “that I, who’d had my eyes opened years ago, wouldn’t know? You’re so small you’d get into a scheme like this, just for your name in the papers. But it’s peachy-keen, it’s jolly fun, isn’t it?… to ruin John Paul Marcus, while you’re at it, for the oldest cliché in the book. The woman scorned.”

  “You may go,” said Cora loftily.

  “When you turned on the—shall I say?—full personality,” said Charley and, oh, he was insulting, “even then I wouldn’t stay married. And you had to play civilized—”

  “Get out,” said Cora in a voice that was thick and ugly.

  Then Charley was calm and smiling. “Poor … cheap … mean … little thing …” he drawled. He left us and closed the door softly.

  He’d done his share. She looked as if she’d explode. Now it was for me to catch her reaction. To receive the indiscretions born of this rage. But I, I was so absolutely flabbergasted at Charley’s tactics that I could hardly pull myself together. I didn’t know the role. It was impossible. “Why … the … conceited … ass!” I muttered. It wasn’t good. It was dreadfully bad. Put-on, as Dr. Barron would say.

  Cora turned around. “Get out,” she screamed at me. “Get out, Ollie, darling darling Cousin Ollie. Get out, Teacher!”

  I slipped off that high bed. “I shouldn’t have heard. I can forget.”

  “In a pig’s eye you’ll ever forget,” she screeched. “It’s water on the desert to you. Think I don’t know? You’re mad about Charley Ives. You’re crazy for him, yourself!”

  So I took up my bag. “Call me, if you like,” I said as quietly and stolidly as I could. “When you are feeling better. And don’t worry about the bills,” I said over my shoulder. “I’ll stop at the desk and take care of them.”

  Cora said chokingly, “Just let me alone, you and your noble charity.”

  “Oh, I will,” I said, “whatever you say.” (But I tried once more.) “I haven’t anything to do,” I said, “since I’ve lost my job, standing by you.”

  She screamed at me, “Get out!”

  So I left her.

  Charley Ives met me at the elevator and we rode down silently. In the lobby he said to me, “I was wrong, Teacher. And you were right.” He said it straightforwardly with his blue eyes steady.

  I wanted to look everywhere but at his face. But I said to his unhappy eyes, “Maybe she’ll call me. I think she may.”

  “Do you?” he said respectfully.

  “Because she can use me,” I said. “She has, already.”

  “How, Ollie?”

  “Olivia Hudson, Marcus’ kin, on the wrong side. And that boy gone running to tell what he heard.” Charley winced. “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Marcus knows.”

  Then Bud Gray joined us.

  “Anything?” asked Charley.

  “Not a sound. Doesn’t talk to herself, apparently. Good try.” Both of them were sober in defeat.

  “What can we do now?” I asked nervously.

  “Find Darlene Hite, I guess,” said Charley. “Shall I take you home, Ollie?” He was sober and sad and all the thunder and lightning was gone.

  “I better go up to school and resign.”

  “Must you?” Charley was troubled.

  “It’s a part of the act, I think.” I took pity on him. “Now, Charley, my boy, don’t look so distressed. You were about as nasty as anyone could possibly be.”

  His eyes sparked. “Thank you,” he said.

  “That Cora,” said Gray, “sure wasn’t having any comfort from you, Ollie.”

  “She had to scream,” I said, “and accuse somebody of something. Oh, I suppose I irritate her a thousand ways. It’s not as if we were together or alike, you know. We began together but we went different ways. We still check each other as if we were each other’s measuring sticks. Hard to explain.” I stopped mumbling. “I’m not excusing that terrible performance. I was bad.”

  Gray said, as so many people will, “You did your best.”

  But Charley said, “If she had, she’d know it.”

  I wanted to bawl. But I said, “They do say them as can, do. And them as can’t, teach. Don’t they? Sorry I muffed it.” So I got away.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I was permitted to resign without protest. I think I would have been discharged, anyway. Miss Reynolds couldn’t understand my position, of course, and even if she had, there was just too much publicity.

  Cora did use me. The news went around that I refused to call her a liar. Which implied, no matter how you twisted it or turned it, that I (of all people) thought Marcus might be the one who was lying. So Marcus was being hurt and I was helping. Although my bit was hardly significant in the flood.

  Questions were asked in official places. Usually reliable sources and unidentified spokesmen hedged and hinted. Politicians puffed up with loud cries that the people be told. They didn’t say what. Committees were rumored. Columnists recapitulated and among them there were the “objective analyzers,” the angry partisans, staunch defenders, witty scoffers, and sad reluctant viewers with alarm. Everywhere, the eye met the printed suggestion that there must be more than met the eye.

  It was released, on our side, that there existed a Darlene Hite, and now the entire nation was looking for her. That high school annual picture and a theatrical photographer’s highly retouched version of her grown-up face were printed everywhere, side by side with Cora’s. Nobody found her.

  Charley Ives went to Washington the following Monday. Bud Gray stood by in New York. There was a plane ready. A forlorn hope.

  Cora stayed, secluded and protected, in that hospital. I paid the bills (a fact that got out and hurt Marcus, too). She kept to her story. What else was she to do? She was safe as long as she did. She could read. She knew from the newspapers how we had heard of Darlene Hite. She also knew we couldn’t find her.

  Raymond Pankerman (although he was in the toils, personally) must have been gratified. Marcus was being hurt.

  As for Kent Shaw, he was seen in his usual haunts and he joined, naturally enough, in the endless discussions. But we gave him no thought. Why should we?

  Happy little man. Swelling to the point of madness, scurrying shabbily about, with the great secret of his masterpiece, his swan song, bathing his veins with joyous self-congratul
ations. Reading and listening and swelling, swelling with that poisonous pride!

  I was right. Cora did call me. The mere existence of a Darlene Hite, acquainted with Ed Jones, had done us some good. At least, it was fuel for theories on our side. So maybe Cora felt she needed to flaunt me. Maybe she was thinking of those bills. Anyhow, she called me, on Monday, and I went.

  She made an apology. Said she’d been upset.

  I, groping for my part, said that Charley obviously had been trying to upset her. And Charley had been nasty.

  “I loathe him,” said Cora.

  “Naturally,” I said.

  Cora looked at me oddly. “But Charley’s psychology wasn’t bad,” she said airily. “If a woman did want a man she couldn’t have, she’d protect herself.”

  “How do you mean?” said I.

  “Why, she’d cover it up. She’d seem to … dislike him. Don’t you think so, Ollie?”

  I shrugged for an answer, while Cora watched and licked her lip. Then, in mutual relief, we left that subject. It almost seemed that we were back in the old arrangement. We were as we had been, old acquaintances, neither of us altogether fond or trusting, but still each other’s habits, and able to stay in the same room, part hostile, part resigned.

  So I was there when Kent Shaw turned up, to call. (Perhaps he took care to see that someone should be. It was no time for him to be seeing Cora alone.) He came glumly, that afternoon, and hadn’t much to say. It was, I thought, a concession to pure curiosity, which he resented in himself. This is what he did say. “Cora, dear, why don’t you go to Spain? Or Rome? Very pleasant in Spain. And Rome is charming.”

  “I very well may,” she told him.

  “Book passage, then,” he urged. “Ten days ahead, at least.”

  Cora said somewhat impatiently, “I know.”

  “Doesn’t cost too much and well worth it to get away. You can afford it, can’t you?”

  “I expect so,” she murmured.

  “Tell me when to send the usual basket of fruit.” Kent rose to go.

  Cora grimaced. “Oranges? Dates?”

  “No lemons, dear,” Kent said. (This seemed to me to be somewhat inane.)

  “Sugared fruit, Kent darling,” Cora said, “if you really want to please me.”