While he was gazing blankly at his clothing, he became aware of the man and woman peering into the room at him.
It was a little old couple; two withered, fragile people huddled together, staring at him with anxious black beady eyes. The woman wore a cotton lace shawl and a shapeless dress, covered with the remains of a housecoat. The man was dressed in a brown shirt, red suspenders, baggy dark trousers, and some kind of slippers. Their hair was thin and gray, spidery wisps clinging drily to their wrinkled skulls. Paper-thin skulls, weathered, aged . . .
The old woman spoke first. Her voice was thick, guttural, heavily accented. They were German; their faces were straw brown, noses large and red, lips prominent. German peasants, with large hands and feet. “Bitte,” the old woman muttered, “es tut uns fruchtbar leid, aber . . .” She broke off, coughed, glanced at her husband, and continued: “How do you feel, mister? How are you?”
“I’m all right,” Hadley said.
The man coughed, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and said gruffly: “We hit you with our truck. You were standing in the street.”
“I know,” Hadley said.
Rapidly, the old woman added: “It wasn’t our fault; you were just standing there. Selbstmord . . .” She glanced apprehensively at her husband. “Er wollte selbst vielleicht—” Back to Hadley she asked: “Why were you there? What were you doing?”
“You’re lucky,” the man grunted. “No bones broken. We were driving home from the country, back from Point Reyes Station. My brother has a grocery store up there.” The ghost of an uncertain smile, the faint trace of shared, covert knowledge, twitched his thick lips. “Ah, you were drunk, nicht wahr? Getrunken, mein lieber junge Mann.”
“That’s right,” Hadley said impassively. He felt nothing, only a dull emptiness.
The old man sucked in his breath excitedly; he turned to his wife and jabbed his finger at her. A flow of German followed; both of them spluttered at once, gesturing and waving their hands. Triumph glowed on both ancient, seamed faces: a weight had been lifted from their shoulders.
“Drunk,” the old man repeated proudly. “You see? You were drunk.” Pointing his finger at Hadley he cried meaningfully, “It was your fault!”
“Sure,” Hadley said listlessly. “My fault.”
The tension was broken. Amiable pleasure flooded the old couple; they burst into the room and came gratefully around the bed, faces radiant with joy. “You see,” the old man explained to his wife, “I told you. Saturday night, junge Leute freuen sich—Ich erinne mich ganz.” He winked at Hadley. “You were lucky, mister,” he repeated. “Next time you might not be so lucky. Yes, we picked you up and brought you here. We took care of you; we fixed you up.”
Hadley knew they had been afraid to call the police, afraid to do anything but pick him up, put him in their car, and drive home with him. But he said nothing. It didn’t matter . . . Neither their previous terror nor their present good humor mattered to him. He was thinking about Pete in the back of the Studebaker. It had been twelve hours.
“Now look here,” the old man was saying to him. “You can’t make any trouble for us; you could be arrested for being drunk. Verstehen Sie? Ha,” he muttered, nodding wisely, with the eternal cunning of peasants. “We were very good to you; we brought you here and fixed you up. We took care of you . . . Look at your face—we bandaged you. Yes, my wife’s a trained nurse. We took good care of you.”
They both watched him intently, waiting for him to say something. They were confident; they no longer had anything to fear.
Hadley explored his face cautiously. His lips had been painted with some kind of salve. And his palms. He was bruised all over. His whole body ached, and felt alien. His clothes, heaped on the seat of a chair near the bed, were an unfamiliar bundle of rags. Were they really his? He wished suddenly he could see his face in a mirror. He started to ask the old woman for a mirror, but he found it difficult to speak. He tried and then gave up. Instead, he lay back against the metal head of the bed and ran his fingers lightly over his ruined nose. It had been washed and partly repaired. Pain flashed to his temples, and he let it alone.
“Do you want something?” the old man asked. “What do you want?”
“I want something to eat,” Hadley said.
The two of them exchanged glances and then conferred. “What do you want to eat?” the old man asked suspiciously. “We don’t have much on hand; this is Sunday, you know.”
Hadley hesitated and considered a long time. “I want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich,” he said finally, with solemn conviction.
Their eyes widened in astonishment. “A what?”
“Please.” He started to go on, but he couldn’t think what to say. He remained silent and waited hopefully.
“Wouldn’t you rather have a bowl of hot chicken soup?” the old woman asked.
He shook his head.
Again the two of them conferred. “All right,” the old woman said begrudgingly. They moved slowly toward the door. “You know, you can’t stay here very long,” the woman said warningly. “We can’t afford to feed you; people like us don’t have very much money.”
“I realize that,” Hadley said.
The old man licked his puffy lips; his tiny eyes flickered. “If you stay here we’ll have to charge you,” he said hoarsely.
“That’s fine,” Hadley agreed.
Together, the old couple moved out into the hall. “Don’t you have a family?” the old woman asked bluntly. “Eine Frau, und—entschuldigen, bitte—wir haben das Bild deinem Sohn in dem—” She cackled apologetically. “A fine-looking boy; ist deiner?”
“Yes,” Hadley said. He would have answered anything to get them out of the room. “Yes, he’s my son.”
“Do you play chess?” the old man asked as the woman disappeared down the corridor toward the stairs. His wife yelled sharply to him, and his head ducked away. “I’ll talk to you later,” he promised Hadley. Loudly, he yelled back: “Ich komme!”
Hadley lay listening. He heard them going downstairs, a muffled sound that diminished and died. Then presently, a long way off, opening and shutting sounds. Dishes. Silverware. The low mutter of arguing voices.
Quickly, Hadley pulled himself upright and threw the bedcovers back. With a violent effort he swung his legs out of bed and onto the floor. His body was stiff as iron; he almost shrieked when he tried to pick up his clothing. His arms and hands burned like fire; he could hardly move his fingers.
He dressed as rapidly as he could, all but his shoes. Sticking his shoes in his coat pockets he limped to the window. It was locked. Easily, he disengaged the elaborate, rusty lock and tugged at the corroded metal handles. It wouldn’t open; it was rusted and painted shut. He tugged with all his strength. All at once the window gave; with a protesting groan it slithered up. Expertly, he got his forearms under, knelt down, and strained upward, his hands knotted together. The window rose halfway. Enough.
He scrambled out onto a narrow iron balcony. Damp mist, cold and biting, settled over him. A slowly descending blanket of acrid water. Over the rubbish-system yard, the fences, the rotting garage. He climbed over the railing and leaped from the balcony to the ground.
His naked feet struck with stunning force. He had missed the soft grass and landed on the concrete. Sickening agony crawled up his shattered legs. He fell in a heap and lay twisting, trying to hold back the sounds choking his throat. For a long time he stayed there, fighting off the rolling touch of darkness, waiting for some feeling to return to his feet. Above him at the window there were sounds, a flurry of excited motion. Faces peered out and were instantly withdrawn. Shrill shouts. Running.
He had to hurry. Painfully, he managed to get up and hobble a few steps. Holding on to the side of the house he reached a wrought-iron gate.
Hadley’s cold, numb fingers plucked and tore at the gate. Finally he managed to swing it back and limp by it. A narrow concrete walk led between two towering old wooden apartment buildings. He hu
rried along, toward the street beyond. A few cars swished wetly past. He could see more houses, concrete front steps, a vast hill of apartments rising up into the swirling clouds of mist. The concrete walk seemed to go on forever. One of his shoes fell out of his pocket and he had to stumble back for it.
He squatted down and began to put on his shoes. His fingers wouldn’t work well enough to tie the laces; he left them untied and hobbled on. The street came closer with agonizing slowness. He was almost there. He had to bend over to pass below the jutting lip of a window ledge. One more step, then another, another . . .
A gigantic figure loomed up and cut off the street ahead of him. A man in undershirt and dirty trousers, a vast whisker-stubbled face, rolls of red flesh, bad teeth, tiny red-rimmed eyes, expressionless slack mouth. Behind the man scampered the little old German peasant couple, voices shrill and commanding.
“Fang ihn an!” they screeched to the man. “Hurry!”
A huge hairy paw reached out for Hadley. Hadley turned and awkwardly stumbled away. The hand groped, brutish and slow, as he agilely sneaked past it. Bending almost double he scuttled by a second window projection; the giant figure mutely turned and followed. It reached the projection, bending slightly to reach for Hadley. The point of the wooden support beam caught the giant just above his temple.
“Ugh,” the man said. A look of surprise settled over his face. He turned slowly toward the projection, his arm up, first clenched. Hadley fled. He reached the sidewalk and dashed down the street.
A bus came lumbering cautiously down the slippery wet surface of the hill. Hadley ran breathlessly, his skin wet with mist. Waving his arms, he shouted at the bus; it began to slow down, belching acrid fumes of carbon monoxide. The driver, a brown-faced middle-aged man, pointed sternly at the bus stop down at the end of the block. Shifting gears, he increased the velocity of the bus slightly.
Hadley continued to run after the bus. The passengers watched, some with amazement, others shocked, a few of them amused. At the stop the bus slowed to a halt; the doors flew open and three girls leaped down. Hadley clambered inside, panting and gasping, pushed past the driver, and sought the first empty seat.
“A dime, mister,” the driver said patiently.
Panic seized Hadley. He threw himself down on the seat and began searching his pockets. He didn’t have a dime; all he had was a crumpled five-dollar bill. Clumsily, he leaped up and ran to the back door . . . but the bus had already started. Foolishly, he stood in the well, not knowing what to do, knowing only that he did not have what the driver demanded he have.
“Where do you want to get off, mister?” the driver asked with urbane weariness. “Here, mister?”
Hadley couldn’t answer. He gripped the pole and hung on tight; houses and cars flashed wetly past outside. The passengers craned their necks and peered at him with fear and curiosity, wondering what he was going to do, wondering how his torment might affect them.
At the next stop the bus halted and the doors slid automatically back. Hadley bounded down onto the pavement; after a pause the bus started and rumbled on, up the steep hill beyond. It disappeared, and the smell and sound of it died.
Taking a deep, shuddering breath, Hadley began walking. To his right was the downtown business section, the expanse of closed-up shops along Market Street. Somewhere beyond were Mission and the slums, the tiny hovels and dives of the Tenderloin. And the Greyhound bus depot.
He turned that way.
It was two in the afternoon when he stepped off the Greyhound bus at Cedar Groves. Hostile, silent rain drifted down on the houses and streets; hunched over, he again began walking.
It took only a moment to reach the factory district; the bus depot was directly at its edge. He located the familiar warehouse and the bleak, deserted parking lot behind it. There, in the far corner of the lot, was the wet gray Studebaker, where he had left it.
But something was wrong. The windows had been rolled down . . . and he had left them up. On the rain-swept asphalt something glinted; a fragment of glass. It came to him instantly: the windows had been broken and the car opened. Somebody had noticed Pete.
Cautiously, he walked on past the parking lot. At a cheap café he entered and ordered a cup of coffee. Sitting at the counter by the blaring jukebox, he sipped the coffee and tautly watched the parking lot. It took a while, over half an hour, but eventually what he expected occurred. A policeman in a dark Army raincoat detached himself from an opposite doorway and crossed the street to the parking lot. Out of the shadows another policeman appeared; the two of them spoke a few words and then separated. They returned to their posts and melted into the drab landscape.
Hadley pushed away his coffee cup and got to his feet. He had lost Pete; and the police were out looking for him. Shoving open the door, he emerged from the warm yellow café onto the bleak rainy street. Quickly he walked off to his right, without looking back. Nobody followed him.
There were three one-dollar bills in his pockets, change from the Greyhound bus fare. Searching carefully he brought up a fifty-cent piece, a quarter, and two dimes. Not far ahead was the dour outline of a cheap transient-class hotel. He headed toward it.
“How much?” he asked the clerk leaning against the flyspecked counter. “A single—without bath.”
The clerk studied him thoroughly before answering. He was a tall young man with sallow, pimply skin, a shock of thick, greasy black hair tumbling down around his ears, wearing a dirty pale blue shirt and food-stained slacks. “Looks like something happened to you,” he said languidly.
Hadley didn’t answer.
“Three dollars,” the clerk said. “No luggage?”
“No,” Hadley said.
“In advance.”
It was more money than he had expected. But he signed the register and handed over the bills. Elaborately, the clerk gave him the key with its heavy square of red plastic, stamped with the name and address of the hotel and the number of the room. With a contemptuous twist of his body the clerk pointed to a flight of wide wooden stairs; he eyed Hadley all the way up, until the lobby was lost behind and Hadley emerged on the second floor.
His room was large, drab, and not clean. Immediately, he pulled open the window and let the damp afternoon air billow in. The gray, stringy curtains fluttered dismally. Outside the hotel a few trucks moved noisily along the wet road, their tires swishing mournfully. The day was dark, leaden gray. Only a few people were out; they ducked along in heavy raincoats and umbrellas. The damp chill made Hadley’s jaw ache; around one of his broken teeth the gum was slowly swelling and festering.
He couldn’t stand the room.
Getting to his feet, Hadley hurried out into the corridor. He slammed the door after him and descended to the lobby. Only the desk clerk was visible. A yellow plastic portable radio screeched Western steel guitar on a shelf over his head; he slumped over a pocket book spread out on the counter. Hadley wandered in an aimless, desperate circle and then threw himself down on a dilapidated wicker chair near the window of the lobby.
He wondered what he was going to do. He wondered where he was going to go, and how. There was nothing left to his plan. There was nothing left to anything.
For a time he eyed the cigarette machine in the corner of the lobby. He got out the change, but then he put it away. All the money he had would have to go for dinner; already his stomach had begun to growl sickishly. But what could he get to eat for seventy-five cents?
Rain beat against the plate-glass window of the hotel lobby. The tramping splash of men walking past echoed through the open door. Hadley hunched over miserably, beginning to feel the tireless probings of panic.
While he was sitting and meditating, a man came and sat down on the sagging couch across from him. A bald, middle-aged man with a heavy black mustache, wearing a rumpled brown coat and a gray sweatshirt, cord trousers, and black leather dress shoes.
The man nodded. “Afternoon.”
“Afternoon,” Hadley muttered.
&nb
sp; “You hurt your jaw, my friend,” the man said solemnly.
“Yes,” Hadley answered.
The man got out a cigarette case, bent and imitation gold. He took a cork-tipped cigarette from the case and then held it out to Hadley.
“Thanks,” Hadley said gratefully, accepting one.
“Look,” the man said; his voice was faintly accented. He leaned forward and lit Hadley’s cigarette from the side of the case: it was a combination case and cigarette lighter. With a broad, toothy smile the man settled back and lit his own. “Pretty neat, don’t you think?”
“Sure,” Hadley said listlessly.
The man looked around the lobby. His eyes grew large and round; his mouth fell open in an expression of wonderment. “Pretty terrible-looking hotel,” he said in an awed voice.
Hadley nodded.
The man sagged. He grinned wryly, and shrugged. “I own it.” He held out a large, soft hand; there were two gold rings embedded in the flesh of his fingers. “You’ve heard of me? I’m Preovolos. John Preovolos.” He jerked his head. “I own the cigar store and the used-furniture store over that way.”
He jerked his head again. “The restaurant on that side . . . serves the hotel. Isn’t that something?”
“Sure,” Hadley said, a little amused by the fleshy Greek.
“Listen,” Preovolos said tensely, leaning forward, his face close to Hadley. “This place is run-down, isn’t it? Give me your opinion.”
“It is,” Hadley admitted.
Preovolos sighed. “I thought so.” He accepted the news with philosophical calm. After a moment he inquired ruefully: “The rooms, too? They’re the same, you would say?”
“I’m afraid so,” Hadley said. “Maybe worse.”
Preovolos slumped. “That’s what I thought. As I came in the door I said to myself, ‘The rooms are even worse.’ ” He glanced up expectantly at Hadley. “You look like you come from a good family. Would you say that?”
“Yes,” Hadley agreed. “I come from a good family. They live in New York. Lots of money.”
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