Night of Fire and Snow

by Alfred Coppel

  “I’m apt to get drunk,” he said. “I haven’t eaten since this morning.”

  “Do you want something? I can fix it.”

  He laughed. “No, no, thanks.”

  “Do you want to get loopy drunk?”

  “I think I’d like that very much.”

  “Good. Then let’s both get sloppy, shall we?”

  “Aren’t you afraid to get drunk with strangers?” he asked.

  She laughed meaningfully. “You’re no stranger, Miguel. You’re hand-picked.”

  “And you can take care of yourself.”

  “When I want to.”

  He put his drink down and watched her. She moved in close to him and sank into his arms. Then she reached up and kissed him and bit his lip. He reached inside her blouse immediately. She moved away with practiced competence. “Uh uh. Not yet.” She picked up her drink again and finished it, looking at him over the rim of the glass.

  He poured more into his glass. The numbness was stealing over him again but with it was coming the depression. He wanted to think of nothing but this girl and the anesthesia she offered, but other thoughts kept intruding.

  “Tell me about Nora Ames,” she said.

  “Nothing to tell.”

  She smiled and said, “All right. Later then.” She got up and walked to the bookshelf. She took a copy of The Canceled Skies down and with it was a copy of The Exile.

  “I went out this afternoon and bought this,” she said.

  “That’s how sure you were I’d call.”

  “That’s how sure.”

  “Old hound dog Rinehart. Professor Pavlov’s bell rings and he salivates. Conditioned reflex. Karl was right.”

  “Karl?”

  “My editor. My father-image, I think.”

  “Will you autograph these books for me? So I can impress my friends?”

  “All right. But don’t be too disappointed if they aren’t impressed. I’m not very famous.”

  “Just a little bit famous.” She got up and Miguel watched the rose swing across the room to a tiny black escritoire. She came back with a pen and handed it to him. He opened the books to the fly page and sat blankly, wondering what he could write there without being asinine or insulting. Finally he wrote, “For Jean with best wishes from Mike Rinehart,” on each and closed the books.

  “You could have been less formal,” she said.

  “To tell you the truth, I always feel like an ass when I have to autograph a copy of a book. I’m not witty and blank pages frighten me.”

  She sipped at her cocktail and said, “I think you’re shy, Mike.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Shy, but nice.”

  “Thanks,” he said dryly.

  “I don’t say it as a joke.”

  She moved closer to him. He could see her red toenails peeping out from under her like eyes bathed in pigeon’s blood. This is the way it goes, Miguel thought. Stylized as any pavanne.

  Talk and talk and fence and fence, go through the figures of the dancing conflict and finally plunge into intimacy because there’s nothing more to say and you’re afraid of the dark.

  For just an instant he had a vivid memory of Ella Eubanks and Martin Alberg panting on the sand. He put his fingertips on his eyes and pressed until the darting red fires devoured the image.

  Then suddenly Jean was upon him and he upon her and he lost himself in desire, fumbling at her clothes like an animal, without thought.

  Presently she sat up. Her blouse was open and her breasts exposed. She was breathing hard, as though she had been running a long distance.

  “Let’s go. Now,” she said.

  For a moment, Miguel with his mind dulled by excitement, did not understand her. She got up and changed the record and then walked into the bedroom. Miguel followed her like a man in a nightmare.

  Hours later he got up and stumbled into the living room. He picked up the pitcher and a glass and went back into the dark bedroom and sat down on the edge of the rumpled bed. He poured a watery drink and gulped it thirstily. He was very drunk.

  “Did you know hyenas eat their own entrails?” he asked.

  She mumbled something behind him that he couldn’t understand and he poured more of the diluted stuff into his glass and drank. He felt as though he were going to burst into tears at any moment.

  “What is it with you?” she asked.

  He turned around and looked at her. She lay naked on the bed watching him. Maybe she was drunk too. It didn’t matter. He pressed his hand against his eyes again and the fiery streaks were like the orange memories of a snowfield dissolving into flame. Fire and snow.

  He dropped his head into his hands and said, “In the night of fire and snow, save me from evil—”

  She rose to one elbow to look at him. “What’s the matter?”

  “That’s Auden,” he said. “Alaine loves Auden.”

  “Auden?”

  “Poetry, goddam it,” he yelled at her. He felt himself rocking from side to side. The room seemed to tip perilously. He recited in a loud voice, “Who is passionate enough when the punishment begins?”

  He wheeled around and dropped the glass on the floor. The dregs of the martini wet his bare foot. He bore her back onto the pillows and buried his face in the hollow of her throat. He felt her arms go around him automatically. O my love, o my love, in the night of fire and snow, save me from evil. He could feel the tears hot and stinging behind his eyes. He heard himself talking, mumbling endlessly. “He just lay there in the snow and cursed my lousy guts and I wouldn’t let him die so I carried him and then they gave me a goddam medal. Me, for chrissake. A medal. I flushed it down the john in the BOQ and it plugged up the lousy plumbing.”

  He pushed himself up on his elbows and looked down at her. In the dark, she was faceless. “At night all goddam cats are gray,” he said. “I need a drink.” He swung his legs over the side of the bed and fumbled for the glass and the martini pitcher. He poured a glass and offered it to her and she drank a little and handed it back. He finished it and then poured the last of the liquor out of the pitcher onto the floor.

  He heard her laugh in the darkness.

  “What’s so goddam funny?”

  “I was just thinking of myself lying in bed with Nora Ames’s man,” she said. “Look whose time I’m beating.”

  Miguel stared at her, trying to focus his eyes on the faint outline of her face. “God damn you,” he said. “God damn you to hell.”

  “What’s the matter with you?” she asked.

  “Shut up.”

  “Now, wait a minute, mister. Who do you think you’re talking to? You can’t come in here and talk like that,” she said in an aggrieved voice.

  He staggered to his feet. He had difficulty in standing, but he managed to stay erect bracing himself against the bed with his knee. He felt about as sick and degraded as he could ever remember being. She started to say something and he told her to shut up, for chrissake. He began looking for his clothes.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Getting out. Out,” he said.

  “Like that?”

  “Any goddam way. Getting out.” He could only think now of getting away, and through the spinning images in his brain he could see arching cables and a dark, swift fall toward utter peace.

  He found his shoes and put them on. One sock he stuffed into his pocket as he pulled on his trousers and shirt. He wrapped his coat around him, shivering with a bone-cracking chill. He seemed to be moving through a thick sea of molasses.

  Jean Murray was sitting up in bed watching him. He opened the door and in the shaft of light from the living room she looked as though she were carved of yellow stone. His stomach churned.

  He made it into the living room. On the coffee table were the two books. He picked them up and then fumbled blindly in his pocket for some money. He found a bill and dropped it on the big black-and-gold couch and then he jammed the books into his coat pocket and plunged from the room and out into the st
reet.

  He stumbled and fell. His face lay on the cold pavement. He wanted to close his eyes and just stay there but he forced himself to his feet. He had forgotten where he had left the car. Far down the quiet street he could see the blue lights of an open bar. He began to walk in that direction. It seemed miles. Finally he reached the door and stood there for a moment, dragging gulps of cold night air into his lungs. A spasm hit him and he was sick, his eyes watering painfully and his stomach trying to shove itself into his throat.

  Presently it was over and he found he could stand without the lights around him spinning. He stepped around the filthy mess he had made and walked into the bar. In the back he could see what he wanted. He walked to the phone booth and shut himself inside. The light seemed blinding. He could see the few customers staring impersonally at him through the windows. He opened the phone book and began to search. It took him a long time because the page kept dancing around but finally he found it. Fear was bursting like a rocket in his chest. He tore the page from the book and went out into the bar.

  The bartender came around to meet him. “You okay, Mac?”

  “All right,” Miguel said thickly. “Give me a brandy.”

  “You’ve had more than enough.”

  “Give me a goddam brandy and call me a cab,” Miguel shouted.

  “Okay, Buster, but don’t get loud in here or I’ll lack your butt out.”

  He went behind the bar and poured Miguel a pony of Christian Brothers. Miguel picked it up with shaking hands and drank. For a moment he didn’t think it was going to stay down. But it did and the lights started spinning again. He covered his eyes with one hand and steadied himself against the bar with the other. He could hear the bartender talking on the phone with the cab dispatcher.

  “Your car will be right here. You wait for it outside.”

  “I’ll be all right here.”

  “Nothing doing. Out.”

  Miguel nodded and put a dollar bill on the bar. He stumbled into a table and almost fell on his way to the door, but he made it with nothing more damaging than disgusted looks from some couples coming in.

  Outside, he leaned against the side of the building trying to smother the pounding in his chest. He stank. He could smell himself. This is the end, he thought. Lower than this you can’t get. Not ever.

  His thoughts were limping things, like three-legged stallions prancing around a hippodrome inside his skull. The ringmaster was a gigantic Raoul, wheezing dropsically and wielding a long whip.

  A glare-eyed monster with chrome teeth and a yellow crest that said For Hire was looking for him. A cilium extruded itself and swung open a door. He plunged into the leathery, cigarette-smelling darkness. He gave the driver the address. The cab started. He wondered what the driver would do if he simply asked him to drive out to the bridge and leave him there. Probably he would eagerly alert the police. The world was filled with nosey, well-intentioned horse’s asses who would take you on as a responsibility at a dollar or so a mile. He could hear the cybernetic grumbling of the meter. He could see the drivers eyes watching him in the rear view mirror.

  Nothing to worry about, bleeding heart, he thought. I’m harmless. I’m finally harmless. There’s no one left I can screw up. No one but myself. He thought about it and decided he didn’t even feel very sorry for himself any longer. There was nothing left inside at all. He felt like an empty shell with a great star-shot void inside. If I swallowed a pebble, he thought, it would fall a thousand miles before touching anything.

  The cab stopped before a dark apartment house.

  ‘This is it,” the driver said. “You make it all right?”

  Miguel fumbled in his pocket, found a bill and gave it to the driver.

  Then the cab was gone and he was standing alone before the door, holding a match to read the names on the little cards by the buzzer panel. Swiftly, before he could make himself stop, he pressed the button. He leaned on it, tried to shove it through the wall.

  The opening of the voicepipe said something he couldn’t understand. He drew back his fist and smashed it hard against the grille. Pain lanced through his hand. He pressed the buzzer again.

  A voice said, “Who is it?”

  “Open the door. It’s Mike Rinehart.”

  “Who?”

  Tears stung his eyes. His hand and arm throbbed. The street, dark and empty, spun around him. “It’s Mike—let me in, for chrissake!”

  “Wait a minute. I’ll be right there,” the voicepipe said.

  Miguel pressed his forehead against the wall and waited. It was like lying face up under the guillotine.

  He heard someone behind the door. He tried to turn around to face the darkness but he couldn’t. He heard a woman’s voice and a man’s and then the door opened.

  Miguel raised his head. The shadowy figure was huge and menacing on stiff legs. He took a step forward, hesitated, forced himself on. He felt hands on his shoulders. He said, “Jesus, Tom.” Absurdly, he began to cry. Then he passed out.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Miguel awoke and the sunlight was pouring through a window into a pleasant, unfamiliar room. He felt battered and sore. His right hand throbbed painfully. He looked at it and the knuckles were skinned badly.

  His clothes were laid out on a chair, a dressing gown lay at the foot of the bed. He tried to reconstruct the night before. All he could be sure of was that he had gotten monumentally drunk and had tried to find Tom.

  He could hear the sounds of someone moving lightly about in the apartment. He closed his eyes and tried to think.

  He did not know how long he rested so before there was a light tap at the door.

  “Come in,” he said hoarsely.

  A rather pretty woman of about thirty opened the door. She was carrying a steaming cup of coffee.

  “I thought you might need this,” she said.

  Miguel nodded.

  “I’m Katharine,” the woman said. “Tom had to run down to the shop. But he’ll be back in a half-hour or so.”

  Miguel felt embarrassed and ill-at-ease. He was conscious of the way he must appear to her.

  She put the coffee cup on the nightstand. “Are you feeling better now?”

  “Yes, thanks. I’m sorry to be so much trouble.”

  She smiled for the briefest instant and said, “You’re a friend of Tom’s. It’s no trouble.” She stopped for a moment and said, “Drink it while it’s hot.”

  He sat up obediently and drank the scalding coffee. Katharine sat down on the edge of the bed and regarded him with a guarded expression.

  Presently, she said, “There are some things I want to say to you before Tom gets back. But I don’t know how. We don’t know each other.”

  There was a package of cigarettes on the nightstand and Miguel took one. He offered the pack to the woman but she shook her head. He lit his own and inhaled deeply, letting the smoke drive the cobwebs from his brain.

  “You’re Tom’s wife,” he said.

  “Yes. We’ve been married five years.”

  “I see,” Miguel said slowly.

  “Tom’s all right now,” the woman said. “I want him to stay all right.” Her dark eyes seemed to light up when she spoke about Tom, Miguel thought. And she wants him to stay all right. She’s frightened because I’ve come back.

  “I understand,” he said.

  “Do you?”

  Miguel nodded, not looking at her. “I do.”

  “I don’t want anything or anyone to harm him,” Katharine said.

  “Yes,” Miguel said heavily. “Perhaps I’d better leave right away.”

  “Tom doesn’t want you to,” she said. “I’m not sure about myself.” ‘

  “I don’t mean Tom any harm,” Miguel said. “I—I was looking for something—”

  “I love him, Mike,” she said, calling him by name for the first time.

  Miguel could only nod his head.

  “Now take a shower and come to breakfast.” She turned and walked out of the room.<
br />
  When he was showered and shaved and dressed, he went out into the kitchen. His hand and arm hurt and Katharine said, “Let’s have a look at that. Who did you hit?”

  Miguel said he couldn’t remember and let her wrap the hand with gauze.

  “You’d better have that X-rayed,” she said briskly. “It might be broken.”

  She served him scrambled eggs and bacon and he was surprised to find himself ravenously hungry. He ate and began to feel better.

  After a second cup of coffee, he asked, “You said something about a shop. What shop is that?”

  “Tom’s got his own auto-parts store.” She smiled suddenly and it seemed to transfigure her face. “Dual manifolds, special heads, racing pistons, things like that. He caters to the hot-rodders. It’s a good business.”

  “Do you understand it?”

  “Of course. Do you?”

  “I would have once,” Miguel said thoughtfully, remembering Horace Greeley, the plans they had had so long ago for the red Chewy, the races on the back roads around Los Altos.

  Katharine stood up. “There’s more coffee on the stove. I’ve got some shopping to do.”

  “But Tom—“ Miguel said, looking at his watch.

  “He’ll be here.” She walked to the door and then turned back. “I forgot, Mike. There was a call for you yesterday. New York. Tom can give you the message.”

  Miguel frowned. “A call? Here?”

  Katharine shrugged. “A man, I think. Tom will know. I’ve got to run now.” And she vanished on her manufactured errand.

  Miguel went to the stove and poured another cup of Katharine’s coffee and carried it into the living room.

  The flat was pleasant, simply furnished. There were a few record albums in a cabinet near a table model radio-phonograph, a few books on a shelf near the window. He looked at the titles and saw his own books there.

  Had Tom seen himself in The Exile, Miguel wondered. Had he understood what Miguel had been trying to say? He turned away from the bookcase and sat down, smoking nervously. He had an impulse to get his things and run but he sat without moving, knowing that he would never again have the kind of courage it had taken to come here.