I looked back to where I’d just been, and drew my hand across my forehead lightly. Was that I? Did I move so fast then? What for, what was it, what was the matter?
I didn’t go back to the chair again. Something had gone out of the room, leaving it emptier and bigger than before. Some atmosphere, it must have been, some inner lining, for none of its physical contents had moved. The lights were all still on as they had been, but they seemed to have lost some of their heat and glow; it was as though they had been tempered, watered down. It was a very large room to be alone in. There was too much space all around me. And it was night, it was dark out. I hadn’t been thinking of these things a moment ago.
I’d suddenly discovered I didn’t like the music—at least not that particular selection they’d just been playing—just as I’d suddenly discovered I didn’t like the candles at the table.
I picked up my shoes by their straps and padded out in my stocking feet. And when I put the lights out, I did it backhand, without looking behind me. The vignette ends.
Then another, briefer. I was sitting on the little silk-padded bench, upstairs, before the mirror, in my room. Completely faceless, a bared neck at the back, a downfalling mane of hair at the front that covered me like a curtain, running a brush down it in rhythmic regularity. And then suddenly the brush stopped, poised. Through a cleft in the hair I had just caught sight of the little tent-shaped folding clock there on the dressing table. Eleven-thirty. Just a good time to go to bed, my usual time when I wasn’t being kept out against my will at some dreary function. But then I didn’t have to stop like that, just to certify the time.
I kept looking at it. I parted the cleft, made it wider, let some of my face show through. Then I turned and looked around over my shoulder toward the bed. Not at the bed, but at the stand beside it, with a telephone standing on it.
Then I turned back again and looked at the slanted-back dial some more. Eleven-thirty. Eight-thirty. I put the brush down definitely. I flung my head back, and the whole curtain of hair went up and over, and fell back to the rear where it belonged.
I went over and sat down on the edge of the bed and picked up the phone. “Give me Long Distance, please. I want to make a person-to-person call. This is Jean Reid. I want to speak to Harlan Reid, at the Palace Hotel, San Francisco, California.”
I gave my number and hung up, and immediately I was stricken. Now what did I do that for? What’s the matter with me tonight? Him, of all people. I’ll never be able to say anything to him. Why, he’ll roar right in my face. I’d better cancel it, before it goes through.
My hand crept out a little way toward it, then stopped, slunk back again. My hand couldn’t seem to make up its mind, any more than my head could.
I got up and went back to the mirror, and sat down by that. I picked up things one by one, things I didn’t intend to use, and didn’t use. And set them down again. As though I were taking a sort of digital inventory.
Then suddenly there was that flutelike little trill I knew so well. And my whole body gave a start. I’d never been startled before by the ring of a telephone. I was now. There are so many firsts, when your path has entered the twilight regions of fear.
I ran to it fast, and held it to me with a sort of convulsive embrace. I knew as I got to it that I was going to tell him now, plead with him; that I believed, if only for this single passing moment—
“Miss Reid?”
“This is Miss Reid.”
“I’m sorry, we cannot connect you with your party. The Palace Hotel, San Francisco, informs us that Mr. Harlan Reid left just a few minutes ago.”
I hung up, all crumpled.
Courage came creeping back. Courage was the craven quality, cowardice had been the brave one. Courage was tinctured with the sourness of the grape: Well, all right. That takes care of that. It’s out of your hands, and it’s all for the best. You knew all along you shouldn’t have tried to do that, and you’ve been kept from making a sniveling little fool of yourself. You should be grateful.
I went over and put out the lights, all but the one beside the bed that I intended to read by. A tarnished-gold subglow was all that was left in the room, such as a low-burning fireplace might radiate.
I picked up the clock and wound it, and brought it over to the stand, beneath the lamp. I brought over the book I’d chosen, too, and carried upstairs from the library before.
I unwound the cord about my waist and dropped off the white toweling robe. An upper triangle of the covers was turned back; I peeled it back farther and got into bed.
“He’ll be back tomorrow. You’ll see him then, and you’ll tell him what you almost did tonight. But that will be different, somehow. You’ll be telling him afterward, instead of doing it at the time. You’ll both laugh about it.”
I clicked my lighter to a cigarette, and took up the book, and leaned back within the ostrich-egg nimbus of the lamp.
“Ah! Manon, Manon, repris-je avec un soupir, il est bien tard de me donner des larmes lorsque vous avez causé ma mart.”
My eyes left the page. Ten minutes to twelve. Just about getting there. He never got there any sooner than he had to. They dropped back again.
“… il est bien tard—vous avez causé ma mort.”
I had to start over.
“… il est bien tard—”
It wouldn’t work, it wouldn’t make sense. The book slid down a little farther on the covers, still open. I pried up the phone.
“Long Distance again. Please hurry. Jean Reid at this number. Person-to-person. Harlan Reid. San Francisco airport, Transcontinental and Western, Administration Building. He’s booked on the nine o’clock eastbound plane. Oh, don’t repeat it after me. Please hurry, it’s urgent.”
I hung up.
I thought it would never ring. It was so hard, leaning there on my elbow, crouched forward, hovering over it. My fingers drummed soundlessly on the covers. Then they pleated a short line in them, a fold, a tuck, running back and forth over it again and again. Then they rose to my hair, which was back already, to make sure it was back, to feel if it was back. Childish things came and went in my mind. Maybe by leaning over it so close you’re stifling it, you’re keeping it from— Get back away from it, give it room to sound in.
I put my hand on it, waiting. I took it off again, snapped my fingers at it twice, the way you would a dog to quicken it.
Then suddenly that trill, as close as though it were inside my own chest.
“Miss Reid?”
“Yes! Yes!”
“I’m sorry, the airport has been unable to contactMr. Harlan Reid for us. The nine o’clock eastbound plane has already taken off.”
My own clock was still only four to twelve.
My voice was a little dry, I had to force it. “What is the correct time now, operator?”
“The correct time is now one minute after twelve, Eastern Standard Time.”
Ten minutes later I moved again. I had the testimony of the clock itself for that, so I knew ten minutes had gone by. It was six after on its face. I reached for it, and took it up, and turned it forward to eleven after. Then I set the alarm for seven-thirty, and put it back where it had been. In those ten minutes I must have just sat there quiescent in the lamplight; I couldn’t remember having done anything. I must have just sat looking— but not at anything on the outside.
I put out the lamp, and the ectoplasm-like puddle of light it had cast over the pillows shriveled into nothingness. After a while, in the darkness, the music came back, the music I had heard earlier in the evening, at first faint and uncertain, then stronger, like a radio warming up, until at last it was boilingloud inside my head.
I threshed around violently in the dark; I took the pillow by its two ends with my two hands, and curled it up tight against the sides of my head, pressing it convulsively over my ears. But that didn’t still the music. It was already on the inside, so how could that keep it out? Unnoticeably it changed it, however. The words and the melody dimmed and lef
t it. Only the rhythm remained, growing more even as it grew fainter, until it had altered into the drone and throb of a plane’s heavy engines whirring aloft in the sky. That familiar sound we have all heard so often, as one passes overhead. Then that too receded, drew away, diminished, into irretrievable distance, beyond power of recall. And at the heartbreaking point at which it vanished into silence, uneasy sleep began.
A moment later the clock cymbaled, and it was day, and he was almost here, he was coming in, it was time to go and meet him.
I flung up the blinds, and the sun was like a chunk of copper ore from its recent mining. Strange thoughts and fears that came at night had gone away again. There wasn’t any corner of the mind that sun couldn’t reach into and cleanse of the soot and dregs of night. The law of the senses came back into full sway: only what you could see and touch and hear, that alone was real, that alone was true.
I stepped under the shower in its ice-cold, unmixed state, and took the pride I’d always taken in not flinching, not even by so much as the twitch of a shoulder, at its stinging bite. And later, as soon as my lips were dry enough, I whistled as I toweled and dressed.
They gave me a cup of coffee downstairs. I took it with my coat on and standing up at the table. I refused everything else, told them I’d have breakfast with him when the two of us had come back together.
I drove too fast because I felt so good, and wouldn’t have minded if some cop had chased me, just for the fun of it, but no one did. Then when I got in closer, I tapered off, so I wouldn’t hit something or hurt someone. When I came out of the city at the other end, I opened up again. The wind felt good, it pulled my hair straight out behind me in an even line, almost took the curl out of it.
I got there five minutes before time, and parked, and then walked back and went into the waiting room. They had it on the board, marked for arrival at 8:30. I bought a pack of cigarettes at the counter, and then ambled around aimlessly. I stood for a minute at a swiveling rack, leafing the corners of magazines that I didn’t seriously intend to buy. Then I let them be, and went over and sat down, and smoked in blissful contentment for a moment or two, and looked at my face in my pocket mirror to see if I looked as all right as I wanted to look.
I glanced up suddenly, and a man had come out and climbed up on a portable step arrangement, and was withdrawing one of the stenciled plaques from the adjustable schedule board. The one that said “San Francisco—8:30 A.M.” It remained blank where he had taken it out.
I got up and went over and stopped him, on his way in with it under his arm. “That should be in any minute now, shouldn’t it? I have twenty-nine after—”
He looked at me and shook his head briefly. “It’s overdue,” he said reticently, and tried to go on his way again.
I stopped him a second time. “Well, how late will it be, can you give me any idea? I came all the way out here specially to meet it.”
“Hard to say,” he said charily.
“Well, find out for me—please. Ask them in there. They must know in there.”
He went into the office and closed the door. I waited there, where I’d accosted him. Then he came out again and said: “We don’t know when to expect it. No use your waiting around for it. The best thing might be for you to go home, and then call us up later in the morning. We might have some more definite—”
“But you must know,” I persisted. “What’s the last stop before here—Pittsburgh? What time did it leave Pittsburgh? Can I go in there a minute?”
“I’m sorry, miss, the public isn’t allowed in there. Just a minute.” He went in again himself. Then another man came out.
He was somewhat absent of mien, I noticed, as though his thoughts were elsewhere even while he was addressing me, and I didn’t like that. “If you’d care to leave your number here at the airport,” he said, “I’ll see that you’re called as soon as—”
“What time did it leave Pittsburgh?” I repeated. He looked at me first for a moment, as though he weren’t going to answer. Then he said, “It didn’t arrive at Pittsburgh.”
“Well, has there been trouble? Did something happen? When did it leave Chicago?”
He looked at the other man. He said something under his breath about “She’s entitled to the information; it’ll be made public in a short while, anyway.” Then he turned around and went in again.
“It hasn’t been reported since eleven o’clock last night, Pacific Time, two hours after leaving San Francisco.”
The man went on talking to me, but I scarcely heard what he was saying. I suppose trying to ease me, telling me not to worry, that it would be all right, that they hadn’t had any definite bad news, just no news at all. He walked with me part of the way back toward the car, as far as the doors of the waiting room; asmuch as anything else, I suppose, to getme off the premises, started on my way. That was congenial to me; I was as glad to have his brief escort terminate as he must have been glad to terminate it.
Then I was outside again in the open. The same biscuit-colored sunlight tincturing everything; the same crisp dark-blue shadows where you walked about under it; the same mirrorlike blue sky, with just two or three flecks of cloud, like blobs of shampoo lather, thrown up against it as if somebody had been careless with a sponge. Everything had such a clean, washed look.
I got back in the car, started it, and then I sat there for several moments. I knew I had to press my foot down on the accelerator if I expected it to move, but I didn’t, it seemed too much trouble.
I think I would have sat there longer than I did, but one of the parking-lot attendants finally came over, trying to be helpful. He could hear the engine turning, but no motion resulted.
“Are you having any trouble, miss? Something go wrong?”
“No,” I said dully. “No, it goes all right, when you want it to.” And I pushed my foot down, and showed him, and went away from there.
I drove slowly on the homeward way. I crawled along. I kept forgetting to keep at it, and the car would taper almost to a full stop. Then I would remember I must keep applying myself, and I would send it forward again.
I was dulled, and glazed with shock. And I knew that this was not bad; what would come after this, once it had worn off, was what would be bad.
The city, when I coursed through it on my way out at the other end to get to our place, had that sparkling, bustling, vivacious look that a clear day can give a city. The store windows blazed and sent gleams into your eyes, like mirrors backing the sun. The limestone and the granite façades rearing sharply upward here and there against the sky all looked as though they had been newly chipped and scoured, they were so spotless. The people moved about in droves, each one dipped into his own little pool of dark-blue ink that followed him wherever he went. Even the very sidewalks twinkled, with minute particles of mica embedded in them.
I stopped for a light, and it occurred to me he should have been there in the seat beside me, in that floppy coat with the collar turned up at the back, and with his brief case on his knees; that we should have been jabbering away, the two of us, instead of my sitting in the car alone like this, and in silence. I turned and looked at the empty seat beside me, and my hand strayed out and lightly touched it, with a sort of mute longing. Then came back again to take up the wheel rim once more.
A little farther on I saw a news truck backed up to a newsstand in one of the squares, unloading a new edition, and I drew up and motioned the concessionnaire to bring over a copy to the car, almost before he had finished severing the rope that bound them into a great square block.
It was in the papers already. But little or nothing that I already didn’t know. It just had the finality of print now, than which there is nothing more awful and more doomingly final. “Plane reported missing with fourteen aboard. Last heard from somewhere over the Rockies. Searching parties being organized—”
More pain welled in. It was beginning to pour in now through the crevices. I twisted the paper into a misshapen bowknot, and let it drop
to the running board, and from there fall off to the street. I glided out from the curb again.
They had already heard at the house, I could tell by their faces. And the fact that they didn’t say anything, didn’t ask me why he wasn’t in the seat beside me, told better than anything. They thought by not speaking of it they were being tactful. Perhaps they were; it would have hurt either way, anything would have hurt.
I wanted to get to a room and be by myself, but I had to pass them first.
I saw Mrs. Hutchins looking at me. “I had the trip for nothing,” I said, and gave her a steel-rimmed smile.
I made the mistake of stepping into the dining room for a moment, and caught them off guard, before they were able to efface the traces of the home-coming breakfast.
“You can clear those things away,” I said, and turned my head sharply.
“Just a coop of coffee, miss?” Signe pleaded.
“No, thank you. You can give me a drink of brandy. I’ll take it up to my room with me.”
When she came out with it, she had to go looking for me. She found me standing by the radio. I knew they’d had it on before I got there, I could tell because the little glass shield over the scimitar of dial was still lukewarm to the touch.
“Did anything come over this yet?”
“No, miss. Mrs. Hootchins try. Only comes howto bake a cake.”
“There’s news every hour on the hour, on this station here, the one at the end. Keep it on that. One of you keep listening. I’ll be upstairs, call me if—if anything comes in.”
She squatted down then and there, made a great big puddle of her skirts on the floor in front of it. She looked grotesquely funny. But I didn’t laugh. I suppose she thought by being that close to it, she could hasten it. Her eyes were steamy with unshed tears, they were only awaiting my permission to overflow. She was the sort ready to cry with anyone and everyone.
I didn’t want her to cry for me. I went upstairs to do my own crying.
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