by Ed McBain
Sara is Mata Hari, I catch glimpses of her as she wanders through the crowd, the only face I recognize, and that only barely. She wears a black silk dress cut low in the front, black-dyed ostrich feathers at the neckline and the hem. She has rented a black wig, bangs on the forehead, sleek and straight in the back where it falls away to the nape of her neck, long black false eyelashes, heavy blue eye shadow, dark lipstick, a black beauty spot at the corner of her mouth, a cigarette holder clenched between her teeth. She looks dark and mysterious and brooding and secretive, and she is drinking far too much and moving from one masked man to another, engaging each in conversation, flirting outrageously, seemingly unaware of my presence.
He appears at my side suddenly, the Lone Ranger in white hat and black mask, silver bullets in a cartridge belt, six-guns holstered. The Indian beside him, wearing feathers and war paint, fringed buckskin jacket and pants, leather mocassins, beaded belt hung with dagger and tomahawk, whispers, “Can you notice I’m not wearing a bra?” and both merge with the crowd. Someone murmurs, “Who was that masked man, Minnie?” and on the following crest of laughter, the Hunchback of Notre Dame crouches toward me, fixes me with a baleful cataracted glare, harelip pulled back over stained, crooked teeth, and cackles, “Five minutes to midnight, almost time.” A goblin, a gnome, the seeming issue of Quasimodo himself, materializes and babbles in a high excited voice, “Happy Halloween, happy Halloween!” I turn from him swiftly to find someone I recognize at last, Jean Trench, wetting her painted lips with a pink pointed tongue, wearing a black lace chemise, abundant white breasts bulging over its restraining top, black garters biting into her thighs, black net stockings, black patent leather high-heeled shoes.
“Hello, Jean,” I say. “You’re not wearing a mask.”
“Who the hell are you?” she says.
“Guess,” I say in the same drunken slur. “Where’s Victor?”
“Here someplace,” she says. “He came as a sultan. He’s a goddamn sultan.”
Sara approaches with a sidelong glide, skids to a stop before us, and lifts her half-empty glass so that it is just below Jean’s nose. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, miss?” she asks.
“What?” Jean says.
“Fuck off,” Sara tells her.
“What are you supposed to be?” Jean says.
“A pregnant college girl. Fuck off, I told you.”
“Charming,” Jean says, and swivels off, glancing back at me and wetting her lips once again.
“Charming,” Sara mimicks, and flits away toward the bar, moving in a blur of black ostrich feathers and silk, gleaming rhinestone bracelets, tilted cigarette holder, to embrace the portly sultan who must be Victor Koblenz, advising him as she kisses the tip of his mask nose that his sword is coming out of his scabbard, does he want everyone to see his sword that way in a public place? Koblenz is flabbergasted. He checks his sword, he checks his fly, he glances up quickly to beg elucidation, but Sara is gone again, quicksilver tonight, manic and cruel.
There is no mistaking Hester when she approaches. She is wearing the costume of a shapeless scarecrow, shabby dark suit with straw poking from collar and cuff, a stitched cotton mask covering her face, an old gray fedora jammed down around her ears. But there is something about the walk, something about the stiff carriage and erect head that suggest steel within the straw. The baggy trousers are, after all, trousers nonetheless, and Hester wears her balls like a wrestler.
“Is it you?” she says.
“It is I.”
“Good,” she says, and nods. “Is the party big enough for you?”
“Quite nice, thank you.”
“We try to please.”
“Hester,” I tell her, “I hope I never have the pleasure of working with you again.”
“My, my,” she says. “After all the nice things I said about you last night.”
“A momentary lapse, I’m sure.”
“On the contrary,” she says. “I meant them quite sincerely.”
“In which case, I thank you quite sincerely. I still hope I never see you again.” Because she cannot see my face behind the Old Grad’s mask, I nod for emphasis and wave the pennant twice. “Weglowski wants to be paid early tomorrow morning.”
“Epstein is in charge of money matters.”
“Will you tell him, please, to make delivery? I don’t want to find myself out on a limb because you people stiffed Weglowski.”
“Weglowski will be paid. It’s not your concern.”
Sara is back. She loops her arm through mine and presses herself against me. Her cigarette holder points wildly toward the ceiling. Her green eyes flash angrily through the heavy blue shadow. “What do you want, Pratt?” she says. “Leave him alone.”
Hester’s eyes through the holes in her mask are dark and suspicious. She glances from Sara to me, sensing a solidarity she had not guessed was there, and frightened by it now. Her expression is ludicrous, the featureless mask and the terrified eyes. I am tempted to laugh.
“I think you’ve had too much to drink, Sara,” she says.
“Not half enough,” Sara answers. There is a glittering edge to her voice. Her grip on my arm is fierce and tight. The cigarette holder tilts dangerously close to Hester’s face, like a rapier.
“I don’t think we can risk a drunken Sara,” Hester says to me.
“I’m not drunk,” Sara snaps. “Right, Arthur?”
“Right, Sara.”
Hester’s eyes are growing more and more concerned. They peer nervously through the stitched holes in her mask, flashing panic onto the otherwise expressionless face. “Will she be driving tomorrow morning?” she asks me.
“She will be driving tomorrow morning,” Sara answers, and at that moment, someone shouts, “It’s midnight!”
“Show your face and then take her home,” Hester says. “She’s polluted.”
“The whole fucking world’s polluted,” Sara says.
They are taking their masks off everywhere around us. I remove mine quickly. I am here to show my face, and I do not plan to leave until everyone has seen it.
“I’ll give you five minutes,” Hester says.
“Why? What’s the hurry? Put Arthur to sleep so he can run out to die tomorrow?”
“Nobody’s going to die tomorrow.”
“Except everybody,” Sara says flatly. “We’re staying.”
“You’re leaving,” Hester says.
“Why? I’m the whole life of this whole boring party. I’m the only one here with any life in me.” She suddenly bursts into laughter. “Did you hear that, Arthur? Oh my God, that’s funny!”
“I’ll get your coat,” Hester says.
“Don’t bother, we’re not leaving,” Sara says. She leans against me. She puts her head on my shoulder. She sighs deeply and murmurs, “Oh, dear, dear, dear.” We stand silently, I with my arm around her, she with her head on my shoulder, eyes closed. With the party noises engulfing us, with the now-unmasked guests swirling by in a dazzle of color, exclaiming their surprise or their certainty (“I knew it was you,” the Lone Ranger shouts, recognizable now as Seth Wilson with faithful brassiereless Indian companion Adele by his side, “I knew it all along,” an opinion apparently not shared by Quasimodo who is Ralph the Hotel Eavesdropper, and who says to me snottily, “Cover an old grad face with an old grad mask? You sure had me fooled”), flitting by with oooohs and ahhhhs, I am being seen to the hilt and no one seems to notice the shoes. Koblenz the sultan comes over and says, “Ah, Mr. Sachs, very clever indeed, very clever.” Very clever, I think. We are all very clever. But Sara leans against me in basic black.
Hester returns almost at once.
“Quickly,” she says. “Get her out of here.”
“She is not a leper,” I mention.
I bundle Sara into her coat. She is wearing the long black coat tonight. It overwhelms her. “Thank you,” she says, as I button it over her breasts. “Thank you, Arthur.”
“Hurry,” Hester says.
We move swiftly toward the front door.
“If you need a driver in the morning, call me,” Hester says.
“I will.”
“Good luck,” she says.
In the entrance alcove, Jean Trench is leaning against the bookcases in her chemise and garters, impatiently tapping one high-heeled shoe, wetting her lips and chatting with an unmasked gentleman dressed as Frankenstein’s monster. The front door is open. On the walk outside, I catch a quick glimpse of the Lone Ranger striding swiftly toward a waiting red Volkswagen with a brassiere-less Tonto behind the wheel. Sara pauses in the doorway, turns toward Jean Trench, and says, “Are you still here? I thought I told you to fuck off.”
Outside, it has begun to snow.
She has been in the bathroom puking since shortly after midnight, ever since we got back to the hotel. Each time I go in to her, she tells me to go away. She sits on the tiled floor with her head bent over the toilet bowl, retching drily, begging me to leave her alone. I listen to the sounds of her misery, and go back to her again and again, only to be sent away repeatedly. The vomiting does not stop until almost two A.M. I hear the water running in the sink. When she comes out of the bathroom, she is naked and shivering. She turns off the lamp and crawls into bed beside me.
“I’m cold,” she says. “So cold.”
I hold her close, but she continues to shiver, and at last I get out of bed, and go to my suitcase, and remove from it my yellow nightshirt. She refuses to put it on. In the darkness, she shakes her head and says, “I don’t want it, I don’t want it,” until finally I force it over her head, and thrust her arms into it, and she subsides and says, “I thought it was your wife’s nightgown,” and I say, “No, it’s my nightshirt,” and she quietly says, “Thank you.”
She is silent for several moments. Then she says, “I’m sorry.”
“That’s all right.”
“I’m so ashamed of myself.”
“There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“I’m sorry you had to see me that way. Why did you keep coming back, Arthur?”
“To help you.”
“So ashamed.”
“You were sick.…”
“Drunk, drunk.”
“I wanted to help you, that’s all. To take care of you.”
“Yes, now,” she says.
“What?”
“I have to throw up again, Arthur.”
She scrambles quickly out of bed, her hand cupped to her mouth. I follow immediately behind her. This time, she allows me to assist her. I support her head, I brush her long hair away from her face as she heaves drily. Afterward, I wet a cloth and take it to her where she lies pale and spent in bed. I put it on her forehead. She nods.
“Getting to be a goddamn habit,” she says.
“Shhh.”
“I’m so ashamed of myself.”
“Try to get some sleep, Sara. We have to get up early.”
“I wanted to make love,” she says. “Instead, I get so stupid drunk.”
“Never mind, darling. Go to sleep.”
“Forgive me.”
“It’s all right.” I turn off the lamp again, and settle into my pillow.
“Arthur, please forgive me,” she says in the darkness. “I didn’t mean to.”
“I know, darling, it’s all right.”
“I love you so much,” she says, and sighs. The room is still. She breathes evenly beside me. I find myself thinking of the bridge again. I look at my watch. It is almost two-thirty. I go over a checklist in my mind. I have rented a car with snow tires and skid chains; it is in the hotel garage next door. I have purchased a one-way airplane ticket to New York. I have packed my single suitcase, leaving out only my nightshirt (both nightshirts now), my toilet articles, and what I will wear in the morning.
“Arthur?”
“Yes, Sara?”
“No, nothing,” she says.
I have put the blasting machine in a cardboard box and wrapped it with pink paper and blue ribbon so that it looks like a gift package. There is nothing more to do. Except blow the bridge and run.
“Arthur?”
“Yes?”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
“Arthur?”
“Yes?”
“Arthur, please forgive me, I think I’m pregnant.”
I sit up in bed and reach across her for the lamp on the night table.
“No,” she says, “leave it off. Please.”
“What makes you think so, Sara?”
“What do you think makes me think so?”
“I mean, have you …?”
“I missed my period,” she says quietly. “I’m six days late.”
“Six days.”
“Yes.”
“That’s nothing at all, Sara. Some women …”
“I’ve never been late before. Not by six minutes.”
“I don’t see how you can decide on the basis of being only six days late.…”
“Oh, please, Arthur!”
“I’m sorry, Sara, but I honestly think you’re reacting a bit hysterically.”
We are silent. I can hear my watch ticking. The room is black and fathomless.
“When were you supposed to get your period?” I ask.
“The twenty-seventh.”
“Are you sure of the date?”
“Yes, I circled it on the calendar. I always circle it.”
“The twenty-seventh was when?”
“Sunday.”
“And today is?”
“Saturday. Don’t you know? You’re going to blow up a bridge, and you don’t even know …”
“It isn’t Saturday yet.”
“It is.”
“It’s Friday.”
“It’s past midnight, that makes it Saturday.”
“Actually, you’re only five days late, if you want to get right down to it.”
“Arthur, would you mind telling me what the hell difference it makes? Five days or six days, would you mind telling me?”
“When do you figure you got pregnant, Sara?”
“The first time we made love.”
“Which was when?”
“Some total recall,” she says.
“Sara, I’m trying to figure this out, and I’d appreciate …”
“It was a week ago Wednesday night, the twenty-third.”
“Sara,” I say, calmly and patiently, “it is physiologically impossible for a woman to conceive four days before she is expecting her period.”
“Fine.”
“I’m telling you.”
“Fine. Then I have nothing to worry about.”
“Nothing at all.”
“Except that I stopped taking the pill when I got back from Arizona last summer, and we made love last Wednesday night and I was supposed to get my period Sunday, and I didn’t, and I know very well I’m pregnant.”
“You’re not pregnant. Anyway, it’s not such a big deal, even if you are. You can get a legal abortion anywhere in the United States today. It’s not like it was years ago, when you had to run to Denmark or Puerto Rico.”
“Go to sleep, Arthur.”
“Anyway, you can’t possibly be pregnant.”
“I shouldn’t have told you. I don’t know why I told you. Don’t worry about it, Arthur.”
“I am worrying about it.”
“If I can’t possibly be pregnant, why are you worrying?”
“Because I don’t want you to be pregnant.”
“And I don’t want you to die,” she says, and suddenly she is weeping. I take her in my arms and hold her close and her tears spill onto my chest, and I think Oh, you are a wonderful fellow, Samuel Eisler, a charmer indeed. You came out here and found yourself a little girl who never told, or wept, or got drunk, and you taught her how to do all those things and maybe got her pregnant besides; you’re a fine upstanding gentleman, Samuel Eisler, you’re a prick.
I now know who I came here
to kill.
I begin trembling.
Weeping, trembling, we cling to each other in the night.
Saturday, November 2
There is at least a foot of new snow on the ground outside.
The bell tower is tolling nine o’clock. I turn from the window, go into the bathroom, and begin lathering my face. Sara stands in the doorway, watching.
“Are you going to shave your mustache?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“I wish you wouldn’t. I like it.”
“Have to,” I tell her.
It is more difficult than I imagined it would be. I began growing the mustache the day we learned that Adam had been killed, more than six months ago. It is thick and full, and I do not have a scissors with me. It resists me almost willfully, clogging the razor, refusing to be shorn. I cut myself repeatedly. My hand is shaking, I curse often. Sara watches silently from the doorway. At last, I bend over the sink and rinse my face and look at myself in the mirror. I see Sara’s eyes studying me. I turn to her.
“You look very young,” she says.
“As young as Roger Harris?”
“Roger who?” she asks, and smiles.
“Do you like it?”
“I’ll grow used to it,” she says. “In time.”
I dress swiftly. Sara continues watching me, seemingly intent on my every move, absorbed by simple routine acts like tucking my shirt into my trousers or fastening my belt. I am knotting my tie, eyes on the mirror, Sara standing just behind my shoulder, watching, when she says, “You were up very early this morning.”
“Yes.”
“What were you doing?”
“Writing a letter.”