by Jack Finney
She tried to move toward me, but my foot was still pressed to her stomach, holding her off, and she said, “Nickie, you want to and you know it!”
I knew it. “No, I don’t. Now, cut it out.”
She ran her hand suddenly up the back of my leg under my pajama pants, her fingers scrabbling, and my leg yanked away reflexively. Instantly she was scrambling toward me, and I backed right off my edge of the bed onto one foot, and stood up stumbling. She flung herself toward me, shrieking with laughter, and a hand shot out to grab an end of my pajama cord. It yanked, dissolving the knot, and my pants instantaneously dropped to the floor in a white puddle of ankle-deep cloth. I stooped quickly, reaching for them with both hands, but she was at the edge of the bed grabbing for me, and I swung away, one foot coming loose from the pants, which trailed after me from the other ankle as I ran. Marion was rolling off the bed in a whirl of pink cloth and flying legs, and—feeling naked and exposed, tugging the front of my pajama coat down—I ran across the room, yanking my other leg free from the trailing pants. There’s a big closet running clear across the end of the room, the door nearest me open, and I stepped in. It’s a sliding door, and I rolled it closed.
Instantly it was rolled open again, and Marion stood there grinning with excitement. She stepped toward me, and I whirled away, shoving at the clothes hanging beside me. “Marion, for god sakes! This is absurd!”
“But fun! Fun in a closet, hey, Nick! I’ll say!”
I was at Jan’s end of the long closet, moving off into it, frantically sliding armloads of her clothes back along the rod toward Marion, who was struggling after me, flinging the hangered clothes behind her almost as fast: it was as though we were swimming through clothes. “Nickie,” she called happily, her voice muffled, “isn’t this exciting!”
Weirdly, it was. If she so much as laid a finger on me I knew what would instantly happen, right here, and using both arms together in a kind of side stroke, I began shoving still greater swaths of hanging clothes back past me as I fought toward the other end of the closet.
I stopped suddenly and stood motionless: light had just appeared ahead, the door at that end of the closet soundlessly rolled open. I stood silent, listening, hearing nothing, breathing as shallowly as I could. The silence continued, and I knew she was standing somewhere outside the closet, gleeful, waiting to hear me commit myself to one direction or the other. I stood halfway between the two open doors in an empty little no man’s land between my end of the long closet just ahead and Jan’s behind me. Reaching silently out toward my end, my fingertips brushed nylon and I recognized my ski jacket. Very slowly I reached under the jacket, touched softer material, and closed my hand on it.
Then I heard her, empty hangers suddenly jangling, shoving her way toward me through Jan’s clothes, probably hoping to catch me coming toward her. Under my own hanging shirts, suits and folded pants was an empty space a yard high. I squatted quickly, then waddled rapidly along under my clothes, and walked silently out into the empty bedroom like a duck, my sky-blue ski pants in my hand. I stood and, balancing on one leg, quickly thrust the other into a pant leg. But I’d moved too quickly, lost my balance, and had to hop, my bare foot thumping the floor like a hammer.
Instantly I heard her switch directions inside the closet, and she appeared in the doorway at Jan’s end. She stood looking at me, then slowly raised both hands to shoulder height, her fingers curving into claws, and distorted her face into an idiot parody of lecherousness, her hunched-over shoulders shaking with silent laughter. She began walking slowly toward me.
There’s a kind of mindless panic in being chased, and without thought I simply dropped to the floor of the bedroom onto my hands and stomach, shoving hard with both legs against the closet wall, and slid right across the polished floor and under the foot of the bed.
Revolving frantically on my stomach, I turned to face the room, then lay there under the bed watching her bare feet and pink hem as she staggered around the room gasping through peal after peal of helpless laughter. I had one leg in the ski pants, and in the foot-high space under the bed I tried to slide the other leg into them but couldn’t find the opening, couldn’t maneuver or see behind me; I was sweating horribly. Then my toes found the opening, and—enraged—I shoved my leg violently down the pants by sheer force.
She was stooped over, watching me, her hair hanging almost straight down, her excited upside-down eyes looking into mine. For a moment, both motionless, we stared at each other. Then a hand appeared beside her inverted face, the hooked forefinger slowly and lasciviously beckoning, and I began to curse.
She stood, then the bed was rolling swiftly forward on its casters, about to expose me. I reacted before thought and, like an infantryman crawling under fire, began scrambling to keep up with the bed. Then at last my mind worked. I’d banged my head hard on the underside of the bedsprings; I’d hurt my wrists in the fall to the floor; I was hot, dusty, angry; right now I could resist any woman in the world. I stopped moving and let the bed roll forward till it cleared me.
With difficulty I pulled myself up by the headboard, the bed out in the middle of the room now, and stood erect, looking something like a merman, I suppose, both legs bound tight together by the stretch cloth of one leg of my ski pants. Marion couldn’t talk; her outstretched arm pointing at my sky-blue-wrapped legs looking like one thick, strangely contorted leg with two feet emerging from a single stretched cuff, she whooped with laughter, eyes enormous with astonished delight. I was damned if I’d hop, I told myself, and just stood there, holding onto the bedpost, then I had to grin, too. Marion collapsed helplessly onto the bed, rolling and shouting with laughter, and I watched her, grinning sheepishly, until I had to laugh, too.
She stopped presently and lay there, tears running down her cheeks, gasping for air, shaking her head in disbelief. I looked at her lying there, and fought. Fought harder. Fought furiously. And lost. I couldn’t walk, so I simply leaped—dived through the air, a streak of white tapering off into sky-blue—landed beside her, and grabbed her on the first bounce.
When presently I sat up, it was very slowly. I reached for the blanket, dragged it up, and wrapped it around my shoulders, a corner of it lying on top of my head, and sat there, knees drawn up, huddled. “Oh, damn,” I said. “Oh, goddamn, damn, damn.”
“You get my goat!” Marion was punching up a pillow, then she lay back, drawing the sheet up over her. “That was some pajama party! And you know it!” She smiled. “Oh, it’s so good to be back! To love again.”
“Then possess someone else, goddamn it!”
“It can’t be just anyone! This is my house, it’s where I belong, so it has to be Jean, Jane, June, whatever the hell her name is. You don’t suppose I like it?” She held a strand of hair out before her eyes. “Look at this scraggly hair. What a punk color.” She let the hair drop. “And thick eyebrows! Skinny arms!” She brought one leg out from under the sheet, and lifted it high, extending it gracefully. “Not bad legs, I must say. Though mine were better.” Smiling wantonly, she held the pose till I looked away, then brought the leg swinging closer to me, toes straightening to show off the graceful arch.
“Cut it out.”
She drew the leg back under the sheet and began making smacking sounds. “The inside of her mouth feels funny. Not quite big enough, or something. But fine for kissing, eh, Nickie?” Suddenly she flung her arms out, arching her body under the sheet till it was supported only at the shoulders and heels. “Oh, it’s so wonderful, Nick! Everything is! It’s wonderful just to stretch! I’d forgotten!” Lying back, she saw the tray on the floor beside her. “Hey! Been a long time since I tasted champagne!” She leaned over the side of the bed, filled two glasses and sat up again, handing one over to me. I sipped mine gloomily, she tasted hers, then drank it down. “Oh, boy! This is swell! Where’d you get hooch like this?”
“Liquor store near Haight Street.”
“The bootlegger has a store?”
“No. Prohibition�
�s over, Marion. Since long before I was born.”
“Well, that saves a lot of trouble.” She picked up the bottle, filled her glass, held the bottle impatiently till I’d finished mine, then filled it, too.
“Marion. You’ve got to go. And leave us alone. Got to.”
“While there’s still some champagne left? You don’t know Marion Marsh.”
“I’m beginning to.”
We finished the bottle; there was less than half a glass left for each of us. Marion emptied her glass, head tilted far back, draining the last drops, then set it down on the table beside her, smacking her lips. “We need some more of this good, good booze, Nickie.”
“Not a chance. You’ve got to go, damn it!”
She threw back the sheet, and stood up, naked and beautiful, walked to Jan’s end of the closet, standing open, and pushed one foot and then the other into Jan’s oldest and only pair of high-heeled shoes. She took Jan’s purse from the dresser, turned toward the bedroom door, and as she walked out, her arm reached into the closet to drag Jan’s street coat from its hanger.
In record time I got pants and shirt on right over my pajama top, and a pair of loafers on my bare feet, shoving in shirttails as I ran down the stairs. But when I hit the sidewalk she was far down the street, almost at the corner. I slid into the Packard over the door top, then rolled down the hill after her, accelerating as much as I dared. Before I reached the corner she turned it to the right.
I swung around after her, directly into a parking space at the end of the block. Marion was fifty yards ahead of me, just passing the delicatessen and the beauty parlor and wig salon heading toward the liquor store whose sign hung out over the walk at the end of the block. Almost directly under the sign a stout woman stood facing the direction Marion was walking from. Her mouth was moving, and when I turned off the ignition I realized that she was feebly calling “Help.” She repeated it, not so much yelling as just saying it: “Help”; then, “Police.” She was staring not at Marion but at the back of a man who was walking away from her. He wasn’t old, as I’d thought at first glance, but shabby, wearing an excessively long dirty overcoat to the tops of his broken unlaced shoes and a knitted cap pulled down over his ears and forehead. He was eying Marion walking toward him, I realized suddenly, and in that instant—not ten yards from Marion now, and walking slowly toward her—the man suddenly opened his coat wide. I cursed and began scrambling out of the car. Because except for his shoes, the man was completely naked under the coat, an exhibitionist, the sides of his coat held stiffly out before him, his eyes riveted to Marion’s.
Marion didn’t screech, look away, break stride, or even hesitate. Instantly, she flung her own coat open wide, and for another step or so the two of them, naked as eggs under their coats, walked steadily toward each other, the sides of their coats held straight out before them.
The man’s jaw dropped in shock. He stopped, stared, horrified, then flung both arms tight around himself, wrapping himself in his coat, hugging it to him, turned and ran.
The stout woman he was now suddenly running back toward, screeched, turned, and began to run, too. Both of them then—the woman lumbering in panic, the man shuffling to avoid losing his shoes—ran down the street in weird slow motion while Marion, coat snugly around her again, swept grandly into the liquor store.
I was laughing too hard, silently, shoulders trembling, to even protest when I followed her into the store, and she bought three quarts and a pint of champagne, spending all but nineteen cents of the money in Jan’s purse.
I remember some of what happened then with a shining clarity, and the rest not at all. I remember Marion and me running down the steps from my apartment, bottles in hand, Marion in Jan’s red-velvet gold-trimmed robe and matching slippers. On the front porch we pounded on the Platts’ door with our fists, choking with laughter. And I remember their faces when they came running to the door, yanked it open, and saw us standing there; they’d been having lunch. I remember inviting them up for champagne, though I don’t remember them coming up.
And I remember Marion and me in the kitchen opening a champagne bottle; I held it while she twisted the cork. Al scratched at his little door, and I unlatched it with my foot, he nosed it open, walked in, and stopped dead. Motionless, frozen in the moment of taking a step, he stared at Marion. Obviously he saw nothing of Jan; this was a stranger, and he studied her warily. Then Marion got her cork out, bent down, snapped her fingers gently, and Al came cautiously over. A little neck-scratching and they were friends.
The Platts must have come up because they were there: Frank on the window seat, glass in hand, grinning at everything that happened or was said; Myrtle rushing downstairs, then back up again with a stack of old phonograph records that she set on the coffee table. Marion shuffled through them, said, “Hot diggety dog, Eddie Cantor!” and handed me three or four of them. I got them onto the spindle of the record player after a stab or two, turned the thing on, and the sound came out at Donald Duck speed, and we all howled, Marion delighted since it was the first time she’d heard it. I set the dial at 78 then and restarted it.
I clearly remember lying on the chesterfield, scratching Al’s ears, Myrtle and Frank side by side on the window seat grinning, as Marion sang the words to “Ida! Sweet As Apple Cider!,” fingers snapping, along with the round lush voice of Eddie Cantor. And I remember Marion teaching us “how Eddie Cantor dances.” Each of us standing separately, she had us spread the fingers of both hands, then bring our hands rapidly together and apart in a soundless clapping motion, only the fingertips touching. When we mastered that with the help of more champagne, she coached us in holding our eyes exaggeratedly wide while rolling them frequently. Then, eyes rolling, fingertips clapping, knees rising high, we pranced around the room, Al barking, to “Makin’ Whoopee!”
If this was how Eddie Cantor danced, we liked it, and we all seemed to more or less know the words to “Makin’ Whoopee!”—including Al, who howled them, head aimed at the ceiling. Together with Eddie Cantor’s own voice, the volume turned on full, we screamed and howled out the song as we pranced around the house through every room the way Eddie Cantor dances, floors and window glass vibrating, till a picture fell off the living-room wall.
But it never seemed to me that I was drunk; or if I was, it was a different, lighter kind of thing with champagne; we just seemed to float through the afternoon. Marion asked what time it was, over and again it seemed to me, though it never annoyed me. I’d just smile and say, “Quarter to five” . . . “Six-fifteen” . . . “A little after seven” . . . I don’t remember us beginning to dance, but I remember us dancing dreamily, cheek to cheek, hardly moving, to “The Sheik of Araby,” sung by Rudy Vallee, Myrtle sitting on the chesterfield beaming at us, Frank asleep in a chair. I remember with a hard, sharp embarrassment how foolishly flattered I felt that Marion should think I was worth all this trouble, and murmuring something to her about it. She said, “You think you’re the only reason I’m back? Don’t kid yourself, Sheik. There’s a lot more reason than that, I’ll say! What time is it?” We danced past Myrtle and she said how wonderful it was to see how Jan and I still felt about each other, and my conscience screamed at me. What else can I do, I said silently; sit in a corner and sulk till she leaves?
I remember slamming the door of the Packard and letting my head drop back onto the leather seat back, hearing the other door slam, hearing the whir of the starter motor.
Marion was driving when I woke, but while there was champagne left in my veins and mind, I still didn’t seem drunk. My head on the leather seat back as I opened my eyes, I saw the low skyline of a building sliding along beside us and knew I’d seen it before. We were slowing at the curb: that’s what had awakened me. And yes; I knew these tiled roof surfaces, beige stucco walls, the arched doorways of this vaguely mission-style building. What was it?
I sat up, staring at it as we stopped, Marion pulling up the hand brake, turning off engine and lights; it was a handsome building
still, but old now, feebly lighted by too few bulbs, not another car at this long empty stretch of red-painted curbing before it. “Nick, hurry! Get rid of the car somewhere, park it in a garage, we’ll be late!” I turned; in Jan’s street coat Marion was sliding out on her side, then she slammed the door, ran around the front of the car and across the sidewalk, and in through one of the long row of double doors stretching across the building’s front.
I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I knew where we were now; this was the SP depot. After a moment or so, I got out, walked inside, then stopped. Across the tiled floor Marion stood at a ticket window, her back to me. Except for the man behind the window there was only one other person in all of the waiting room, an old man waiting on one of the long, varnished wood benches, a brown-paper shopping bag, its entire surface wrinkled and creased many times over, between his feet.
Marion turned from the ticket window, walked to the center of the empty floor, and stopped. I walked toward her but she didn’t see me immediately; she was looking slowly around at the old depot, even glancing up at the ceiling. Her eyes, I saw, walking toward her, were bewildered. She heard my steps then and turned. “Nick, he says there isn’t a Lark any more!” She turned to glance back at the man behind the one open window; a boy, actually, of no more than nineteen, a Mexican, with a wisp of mustache, sitting in shirt sleeves, elbows on the counter, cheekbones on fists, reading a magazine lying open on the counter before him. “He says there’s no night train to Los Angeles at all!” Her words were a wail; I was afraid she might cry.
“I know.” I reached out to take her elbow. Gently I said, “Marion, people don’t ride trains any more. There are hardly any left.”
She didn’t answer or move. She looked slowly around at the worn empty benches; at the long row of ticket windows nearly all permanently boarded over with raw plywood; at the dusty-windowed restaurant in a corner of the waiting room, the big handles of its entrance doors chained together and padlocked; at the great overhead blackboard labeled ARRIVALS—DEPARTURES, its green-ruled spaces empty; at the dismantled lunch counter, its row of metal stool supports still bolted to the floor, the stool tops gone. She said, “I came down here one night. I was in a play at the Alcazar. I was in the first and third acts but not in the second, and there was time to rush down here and back before my last entrance. Doug Fairbanks and Mary Pickford were leaving for Hollywood.