by John Lutz
Graham puffed on his meerschaum pipe and paced to the window, then stared out at the darkening city. Some of the cars had their headlights on, and windows were starting to glow in random patterns on the faces of buildings. New York was putting on her jewelry, hiding squalor with splendor.
Four years ago he’d been divorced; he’d put a genuinely horrific marriage out of its misery before children arrived. Six months later, after quitting his job in Philadelphia to pursue his true calling, Graham had moved to New York and attempted to get one of his plays produced.
Some move! Even the lower echelons of the New York theater world weren’t impressed by a real-estate agent from Philadelphia with the chutzpah to fancy himself a playwright. Didn’t he know there were a million others in his mold?
With a final glance outside, he turned from the window and crossed the living room to an alcove directly above the one in Allie’s apartment. There a thick sheet of plywood was laid over two black metal filing cabinets, creating a desk that supported a used IBM Selectric, a phone and answering machine, stacks of paper, and several reference books. Graham sat down on the folding chair in front of the makeshift desk and got Dance Through Life out of the top drawer of one of the filing cabinets. Dance was the play he’d been working on for over a year. An off-Broadway company had expressed interest in producing it, if he could satisfy them with some suggested revisions in the last act. He didn’t agree with some of the advice, but this would be his first produced play. So he was in the process of following suggestions, doing the minor and, here and there, major revisions, trying all the while to preserve the essence of the play.
He picked up a red-leaded pencil and began tightening dialogue and making notes in the margins. The last scene needed more emotional punch, he’d been told. The theme had to be more clearly defined. Well, he could supply punch and clarity to order, if only they’d produce his play. If only he could see real actors walking through his script, mouthing his lines. Striking life in it onstage.
The evening, his apartment in New York, faded to haze, and he was in Chattanooga, Tennessee, at the Starshine Ballroom, where the play was set. Smoke from his pipe swirled around him as dancers and dialogue whirled through his mind.
He hunched over his typewriter and script, absently puffing on the pipe and absorbed in his work, and forgot about his downstairs neighbor until he’d gone to bed at eleven-thirty. The Scotch and water he’d downed after leaving the typewriter had eased the tension fueled by his intense concentration on the revisions, and he’d almost fallen asleep when he heard the muted ringing.
Her bedroom telephone.
He stared into darkness, not liking himself very much, but telling himself he was a playwright and the study of human nature was his business. It was almost a professional obligation. Arthur Miller wouldn’t pass up this kind of opportunity. Would he?
The phone abruptly stopped ringing. Allie had answered.
Graham rolled over on the cool, shadowed sheet.
To the side of the bed near the vent.
Lying on his stomach, he nestled his forehead in the warm crook of his arm and guiltily listened.
6
Allie drifted up from indecipherable dreams, pulled like a hooked sea creature by some sound . . . she wasn’t sure what. Then she felt a moment of panic as the jangling phone chilled her mind. She hated to be awakened by phone calls; almost always they meant bad news. The worst of life happened at night.
Oblivious, Sam was snoring beside her, sleeping deeply on his side with one arm flung gracefully off the mattress as if he’d just hurled something at the wall. As she reached for the phone, Allie glanced at the clock on the nightstand. Only quarter to twelve. She’d thought she’d slept longer, that it was early morning. Maybe the phone call wasn’t bad news. Maybe somebody who thought everyone stayed up till midnight.
The darkness in the humid bedroom felt like warm velvet as she extended her arm through it and groped for the phone. She pulled the entire unit to her so she could lift the receiver and quiet it as quickly as possible. No sense in letting the damned thing wake Sam.
She settled her head back on the pillow, in control now, and pressed the cool plastic receiver to her ear. Her palm was damp, slippery on the phone’s smooth surface. She had to adjust her grip to hold on. “ ’Lo.”
“I want to speak with Sam, please.” A woman’s voice. Young. Tense. And something else: angry.
“Who’s calling?”
“Tell him Lisa.”
“Well, listen, Lisa, Sam’s asleep.” Something cold and ugly moved in Allie’s stomach. Its twin awoke in her mind. “Is it important? About work?”
“Not about work.” Was that a laugh? “I don’t work with Sam. But it’s important, all right.”
Allie didn’t say anything. She was fighting all the way up from sleep, reaching out for answers and finding only questions. Lisa . . . Did she and Sam know a Lisa? Had Sam ever mentioned the name?
Lisa said, “Gonna let me talk to him?”
“It’s almost midnight; he’s asleep. Sure it can’t wait till morning?”
“It can’t wait.”
Allie stared into deeper darkness where she knew ceiling met walls. A corner; no way out. “Hold on.”
She nudged Sam’s ribs and whispered his name.
He rolled over, facing her. She caught a whiff of his warm breath, the wine they’d had with dinner. His upper chest and neck gathered pale light but his face was in shadow. “Whazzit?”
“You awake?”
“ ’Course not.”
“Well, you got a phone call. Woman named Lisa.”
“She on the line now?”
“Now. Waiting.”
Sam was quiet for a long time. Allie could hear him breathing rapidly. She felt her world sliding out from under her. It was making her sick, dizzy. Too casually, he said, “Tell her I’ll call her in the morning.”
Allie pressed the receiver back to the side of her head, so hard that it hurt. She gave Lisa Sam’s message.
“You’re his wife,” Lisa said, sounding furious and determined. “I know he’s married, ’cause I followed him home from my apartment. Saw you two through the window, then saw you come out together and followed you. Saw how you acted together. Tell him that. Explain to him I know his name’s really Jones, just like it says on his mailbox. Tell him he better fucking talk to me, or I’ll talk a lot more to you.”
Allie listened to her own breathing. “I don’t think I will tell him. Anyway, he’s asleep again.”
“I really think you should.”
“Sorry, I don’t agree. You’ve got a lot of your facts wrong, Lisa.”
“Not the essential one. Wake up Sam, if he really is asleep. Put him on the goddamn phone.”
“ No.”
Lisa laughed, not with humor. The bitter sound seem to flow from the phone like bile. “You poor, dumb bitch.” She hung up. Hard.
Allie lay unmoving, the receiver droning in her ear. The darkness closed in on her tightly, making it difficult to breathe. Poor, dumb bitch . . . There had been more than bitterness in Lisa’s voice; there had been pity. Allie slowly extended her arm, hung up the receiver with a tentative clatter of plastic on plastic. The buzzing of the broken connection continued in her head, like an insect droning.
After awhile she said, “Sam?”
Seconds passed before he said, “Hmmm?” Drowsy. Pretending to be asleep. Maybe it was all a dream. Maybe hope could make it so, glue it where it was broken so nobody would know the difference and nothing was changed from the time they’d gone to sleep.
But Allie knew it couldn’t be repaired.
“Lisa told me to say she knew you were married. That she followed you home.”
He gave a long, phony sigh, as if this didn’t concern him and he resented it interfering with his rest. “Whaddya say her name was?”
“Lisa.”
“Last name?”
“You tell me.”
Nothing but silence from the darkness on
Sam’s side of the bed. A jetliner roared overhead like a lion in a distant jungle. The echo of traffic rushed like flowing black water in the night.
She watched him in silhouette. “She’ll call back, Sam.”
Lying on his stomach, he raised himself up so that his upper body was propped on his elbows, head hanging to stare at his pillow. It was a posture of despair. His hair had fallen down over his forehead and was in his eyes. “Yeah, I guess she will.”
Allie said in the calm voice of a stranger, “Who is she, Sam?”
He flopped over to lie on his back. The mattress swayed beneath his shifting bulk; springs squealed. The back of his hand brushed her bare thigh and quickly withdrew, as if he’d touched something forbidden.
“Sam?”
“Yeah.” Resigned.
“Who is she?”
“A girl, is all.”
Allie was thrown by the simple evasiveness of his answer. He was speaking to her as if she were twelve years old. She didn’t like what was welling up in her but she couldn’t stop it. She couldn’t even put a name to it. “Christ, is that what she is, a girl is all? Is that what you’ve got to say, like some goddamned adolescent caught two-timing his steady?”
“I’m sorry. God, I’m sorry. But really, that’s all she is to me.”
“Sam, that’s so shabby. So fucking banal.”
“So maybe I’m banal. I’m sorry about that too.”
He was working up anger now, preferring it to guilt. The hell with him. He wasn’t fooling her.
“How long you two been being banal together?” she asked.
“This isn’t an ongoing relationship,” he said. “Something happened one time. Only one. Damn it, Allie, I wish it hadn’t happened. I sure didn’t plan it. Neither did she.”
“God’s plan, huh?” she said bitterly.
“More like the devil’s,” Sam said. “A moment of weakness on my part, and it led to something. I thought that kinda thing only happened to the clowns on soap operas, but I was wrong.”
She said, “I don’t believe things like that just happen, Sam.”
“But they do. Then the people involved regret it but can’t change the past. Please, Allie, try to understand this. Try not to be—”
“Try not to be what?” she interrupted.
“I dunno. Naive, I guess.”
She sat up, and switched on the lamp by the bed. Sam twisted his head away from the light, shielding his eyes, as if he might decompose under the glare like Dracula caught in the sun. Allie knew it was the truth that was making him come apart.
“You have to do that?” he asked. “Turn on that damned light?”
“What do you mean by naive? That I trusted you?”
Now he did roll onto his side to face her, his head resting on his upper arm so that his cheek was scrunched up. His eyes were still narrowed to the light. “No. But I don’t want you to think an accidental affair with another woman means anything important.” He scooted toward her, touched her hip gently with his fingertips, making her suddenly aware and ashamed of her nakedness. She pulled away violently, startling him. “Allie, please!”
Allie kept her distance. “She said on the phone she thinks you’re married. Talks as if you lied to her, led her to believe she was the only one in your life. The way you’ve been lying to me.”
“The point is, it doesn’t matter a gnat’s ass to me what she thinks.”
“Sure, I can believe that.”
“Oh, c’mon, Allie. You’re mad right now, not thinking straight. Not putting this in perspective. And I don’t blame you. But it was a onetime affair of the glands, not the heart. And it’s over, I swear it! It meant no more than a shared dance that can never happen again.”
“Lisa would disagree with you, I bet.”
“Maybe. But so what? I only care what you think, Allie. That’s all that’s important to me in this crazy world. Honestly. You believe me, don’t you?”
“No.”
He made a sound almost like a moan. “I don’t know what I can do about that. I only wish I could do something to make you see the facts. The Lisa thing just sort of happened and then ran its course and no longer matters. Please, Allie, accept that as the truth, because it is.”
“You’re not denying it, only repeating that it doesn’t matter.”
“I don’t like lying to you. Never did. I admitted I slept with Lisa Calhoun. If you need to hear it again, I’ll admit it again. I can’t see why you don’t realize the rest of what I’m saying’s true.”
“I don’t need to hear it, Sam. Not anymore.”
“Well, yeah, I guess not. Allie?”
She knew his wheedling, little-boy voice. Right now it sickened her. Sam was about to ask her forgiveness. She couldn’t handle that. She reached out an arm and hurriedly switched off the lamp.
“That’s better, Allie.” He’d assumed she wanted to go back to sleep, that their discussion was over at least until morning.
She said, “Get out, Sam.”
“What?”
“Out. Now.”
“Hey, I know it’s your place, but it’s midnight.” He switched on the lamp on his side of the bed, then glared at her so she could see he was furious. He hadn’t expected this, his look said. Didn’t deserve it. She was being damned unreasonable, and all because of some insignificant one-night stand that had come to light. “Where do you expect me to go at this hour?”
“Find a hotel. Come back tomorrow for your things. Or the next day. Or don’t come back at all. I don’t care, Sam, not anymore.”
He appeared puzzled for awhile. Injured. Then he tried a smile. It was male mastery time. But he was acting out of desperation and she knew it. “I don’t believe you,” he said, like a line from a movie, as if the script was on his side and their destiny was in the last reel.
She wasn’t sure if she believed herself, but she looked away from him. “Get out.”
Sam clutched her arm and she slapped his hand away. She was startled by how loud a sound it made.
He stood up, naked, his maleness wilted between his legs. He located his jockey shorts and danced into them, yanking them tight. You’ll hurt yourself that way, Sam. He found his pants.
She turned away from him, watching his madly writhing shadow on the wall as he stormed around, wrestling angrily into his clothes. A button clattered on the floor, bouncing and rolling.
Then the shadow was still. He’d worn himself out; she could hear his deep and rapid breathing, like right after sex.
Calmly, he said, “All right, Allie. I’ll send for the rest of my stuff.”
Allie felt something pointed and sharp swell in her throat; she was afraid if she tried to answer him she might sob. She lay very still, listening to the night sounds of the city, to Sam’s ragged breathing.
She heard him leave the bedroom. Heard the thump of his rubber heels as he crossed the apartment to the door. The metallic snick and rattle of the locks being worked on the door to the hall.
The door slammed.
Allie lost it. She pressed her face deep into her pillow and sobbed.
At four-thirty A.M. she gave up on trying to sleep and climbed out of bed. She switched on the lamp and put on her white terry-cloth robe.
She padded barefoot into the living room and to the alcove where she had her desk and IBM-clone computer. It felt good, settling down before the computer; this was a world she knew, a dance whose steps were no mystery. She flipped the computer switch and booted the system.
At first she’d considered working on the Fortune Fashions job, but she realized this wasn’t the time for that. In the green glare of the monitor screen, she sat idly toying with the keyboard, trying to relax her whirling mind. Computers and Allie were compatible. Right now, she envied them. Computers thought, in their basic way, but they didn’t feel. Allie didn’t want to feel. She wanted to see herself from a distance, so she could analyze and convert emotion to cold fact. An IBM clone—that’s what she wanted to be.
&
nbsp; She keyed in her household budget program and looked over the figures. Made a few calculations and studied the results on the screen.
The computer played fair with her and gave her the hard truth. Without Sam, if she wanted to stay in the Cody Arms and pay her bills, she’d need help, even with the Fortune Fashions account.
There was a way to obtain the right kind of roommate, she knew. She’d considered it before Sam had moved in with her.
Allie keyed in the word-processor program. She typed “Wanted, roommate to share apt. W.70s,” then her phone number.
Tomorrow she’d look at the classified pages of some newspapers and decide where she might place the ad. She wanted to do this right; didn’t want to attract the wrong kind of people. She’d read the ads in some of thé underground papers. Desperate singles, divorcees, shut-ins, and gays. People looking for sex partners who shared their particular perversions. There was a loneliness there, a sadness she didn’t want to touch her.
She spent the next half-hour composing and printing out rental application forms.
She couldn’t leave the computer; it was like a friend she could rely on, one that wouldn’t deceive, or switch allegiance. There was comfort in predictability.
When the windows were beginning to brighten with the dawn, she switched off the computer, went back to bed, and finally slept.
7
Allie slept until almost noon, then awoke to the sinking realization of what had happened. Lisa. A woman named Lisa. She felt a hollowness when she thought about Sam, and beyond that a deep resentment and anger. Love could do a quick turn to hate, sudden as a tango step, and she didn’t want that. She chose not to have that kind of corrosiveness inside her. The task would be to exorcise him from her mind, a necessary knack if she wanted to continue her life.
For a few minutes she lay in bed, getting used to the new Allison Jones in her state of existence without Sam. Then she rolled her tongue around her mouth, making a face at the bad taste, and struggled out of bed.
Slightly stiff from sleeping so late, she staggered into the bathroom and brushed her teeth with the final surrender of the Crest tube. She picked up Sam’s toothbrush from the porcelain holder and dropped it, along with the distorted corpse of the toothpaste tube, into the wastebasket. Then she turned on the shower and adjusted the water temperature. She stood for a long time beneath the hot needles of water, waking up all the way and working up courage to face what was left of her Saturday. Of her life.