by Peter Rabe
I reached for it and she kicked at my hand. I held her leg and she hit me in the neck. Then she jerked her leg free and all the time I was straightening up she was hitting me hard on the head and the shoulder. She got in one good smack on my face and then I got her hands out of the way. I hit her face, twice I think, and she fell back on the bed, next to the window.
I went back to the syringe and stepped on it The glass ground into the carpet and there was a wet stain.
When I went to her again, where she sat on the bed, she was somebody else.
“Jimmy,” she said, “I’m sorry I hit you. Really, I’m sorry.”
Her eyes looked awfully big and she took my hands. The wrong note was her voice, much too fast.
“Don’t worry about that, Jessie. I’m worried about something quite different.”
“I know, Jimmy. You’ve been reading the papers and you see some horrible thing, some gizmo apparition that’s called an addict. You see that, don’t you, Jimmy? And then you look at me and you say, poor, poor Jessie. And such a nice girl — ”
She waited, looking at me, and then I said yes, I was thinking something like that. She smiled a warm smile and shook her head. She closed her eyes when she did that and then opened them again, big and soft.
“It isn’t like that at all, Jimmy. Really.”
I had to look away for a moment because the girl was getting to me. She had her voice much more under control so that it matched the look in her eyes.
“It’s true, Jimmy. Look at me. Do I look like a — a junkie?”
“No,” I said. “You don’t, Jessie.”
She took a deep breath, a relaxing sound, and then she stroked my cheek.
“But I don’t know what a junkie looks like,” I told her.
Her face seemed to drop off and another one jumped into place, hard, sharp like a weasel.
“You smoke, don’t you, Gallivan? Did you ever try going without for a day, did you, Gallivan? You know how it feels, don’t you? You can’t stand it It’s not worth it, that state of craving the drag, and what’s a cigarette, this one cigarette, that sort of thing, isn’t it, Gallivan?”
“Yes. It’s something like that But …”
“But nothing, Jimmy.” She put her hand on my shoulder and she looked entirely different again. I began to wonder who was who and which was which. “But nothing, Jimmy, because I’m not that way. Here, Jimmy, I’m not excited, worked up. Here.” And she took my hand and put it under her breast. “You feel how slowly the heart beats there, Jimmy?” She smiled at me and said, “Or here,” and put my other hand to her neck, so I could feel the pulse there. And she had moved her arm so that she held my other hand where it was, close by her breast.
“Jessie — ” I started, but she wasn’t through.
“I admit it, Jimmy. I had it bad once. Really. But do you know I shook it and there hasn’t been horse, or tea, or anything like that for three whole years, Jimmy?”
I think I believed her. I was startled by her sudden use of that slang but the way she looked at me, the calm voice, how we sat together, I believed what she said.
“So you see, Jimmy, it isn’t the same as with that cigarette you’re trying to skip for one day. Nothing like that at all, really. I’ve had nothing for all this long time.” Then she shrugged and looked very off-handed. “So this,” and she nodded at the floor where the stain was and the broken syringe, “that’s not anything, really.”
“Good, Jessie. Good.”
“Because I’m not hooked.”
“I believe you.” I took out my cigarettes and lit one for her. I put it in her mouth and then lit one for myself. “But you were hooked once?”
“Yes. Then I shook it.”
“You remember how it started?”
“Started?” She dragged hard on the cigarette and let most of the smoke come out without having inhaled.
“Wasn’t there that one jolt, two maybe, which didn’t matter at all? The one before you got hooked?”
She took the cigarette out of her mouth and paper got stuck. She bit at her lip.
“So that you got hooked on the ones which didn’t matter?”
She got up from the bed with quite a bounce.
“You sonofabitch,” she said. “Get out!”
“No.”
She threw her head back and laughed at the ceiling but when she looked down again her face was sharp, almost pointy.
“What are you going to do,” she said, “beat me?”
“Yes, Jessie. I might do that.”
That got her for a moment and before she got any further I said, “You remember so well about the ones that didn’t matter, like that one there. Do you remember about the others, when you tried shaking the monkey?”
“I told you I went through all that. I said …”
“But right now you’re not remembering. About the one like a cigarette you can’t have. About that, only worse.”
She puffed hard and went to the window. But she didn’t turn away.
“I’ve only read about it, Jessie, but isn’t there that point where it’s like claws in your guts, in your brains, in every big and small muscle? And then like a big, wonderful breath that unlimbers the cramp everywhere, when you get the jolt — only it doesn’t last?”
“You’re a pretty good talker, Gallivan.”
She wasn’t She used a flip sentence but it didn’t come out that way. It came out with fear.
“First time I met you, Jessie, you said only a junkie thinks he can make forever. You must know about that Is it true?”
I got up when she didn’t answer and walked to her. The cigarette was down to a stump.
“You remember how it doesn’t work, don’t you, Jessie?”
I pulled her close and held her head against me.
“And the reason you remember it now is because you’re not hooked. Like you said you weren’t, Jessie. That’s why that jolt on the floor there is nothing. That’s why you can take a deep breath now and nothing else needed.”
I felt her take a deep breath and then let it out, carefully. She talked very low.
“It’s all right now. But a minute from now?”
“You did it for all those years. What happened?”
“Just let me stand like this for a while,” she said.
I had my arms around her and stroked her back.
“That’s what helps,” she said. “Standing like this.”
“I won’t go away.”
She made a dry sound, like the start of a laugh.
“How free are you, Gallivan?”
“Yuh. That was a funny thing for me to say.”
I felt her nod, and then we said nothing for a while.
“It worked for three years, and then what happened?”
She moved away from me and then she walked the length of the room. She started talking from the other end.
“I got hooked once and was a pusher. I was a pretty important pusher because for a longer while than most I didn’t really come apart I was a smart, hooked pusher.”
“And then?”
“It doesn’t happen very often,” she said, “but I took the cure and it worked. That impressed them.”
“Them?”
“Yes, them. Like the ones on this floor. The businessmen. Because I had been such a good worker and now clean to boot, because of that I stayed on and they liked it I know an awful lot about them. With a junkie that doesn’t matter, but I was clean.”
“You spent a dirty three years.”
“Yes. I did, Gallivan.”
“But it worked well enough to keep you clear of the needle, all that time.”
“Give me a cigarette, Gallivan.”
She came over and I gave her one. I sat down on the bed and she on a chair.
“It didn’t work well enough,” she said, “or else I wouldn’t have tried that,” and she nodded at the stain.
“What happened?”
“What happened?” and she shrugged at the s
moke drifting off. Then, like an afterthought, “The other night happened.”
“What did you say?”
“Sounds stupid, doesn’t it?”
“The party? What I did on the porch?”
“Well,” she said down to her lap, “not that important It just capped it.”
I got up and went over to her. It was awkward bending down to her and not knowing where to touch her, or whether to touch her, but wanting to show a lot of warmth.
“My God, Jessie, don’t talk it down like that. I can’t excuse what I did, I don’t even want to explain it But if how I felt afterwards is any measure of what …”
“Still, Jimmy, it just capped it I can’t live like the last three years and have nothing build up. Then it’s just a question of time and you know that once a junkie …”
“No. Please, Jessie, listen to me.”
“You know something?” she said and looked up. “You’re talking to me now, the way I tried it with you, that day in the hotel room.”
“You did well then.”
“Yes,” she said. “Look at us.”
We smiled at each other because we didn’t know what else to do. It went with her remark. It was quite mechanical. Then she said, without smiling, “They had you hooked from the start, and you never knowing a thing.”
“I want to thank you for trying to stay out of it, Jessie. I don’t know what happens next …”
“I know what happens next.”
“Let me finish. I want to thank you for not playing it right that first day in the room, and for the time when you stood in front of the gun, hoping that I wouldn’t use it, and for the time when you managed so badly when we had that breakfast here. And the party, where you didn’t pan out either, but were just being Jessie, who kept wishing I was human.”
“Yes,” she said. “Thank you. It’s too bad.”
“But not so bad that you have to take that,” and I showed her the stain again.
“No. Not now” Then she turned away so I couldn’t see her face. “But when it gets bad and there’s nobody to run to, or when it gets bad because there is nobody to run to — ”
Then there was the shrill, hard peal of that bell.
She came around in the chair, looked at me.
“You see. Now it’s over.”
She meant a hell of a lot more than I had time for at the moment, but maybe we could have that later. Though I don’t think I wondered about that right then. Everything got very fast and the questions very simple.
“What’s that bell, Jessie? Answer me.” I picked her up out of the chair and we both stood there as if saying good-by with the train already leaving.
“That bell, Jessie. If that’s got to do …”
“That’s Mister Simon.”
“Who’s that?”
“You’ll see him. They brought you back to see him.”
“Top man?”
“Yes. Here.”
“And?”
“That’s all, Jimmy. No ‘and.’”
“But I don’t know anything. Jessie! Why all …”
“That was the good thing so far, Jimmy. That you didn’t know anything.”
“I know this whole thing was engineered. I know something I shouldn’t Something they want to know.”
“And once they open up to you, Jimmy, if they do, then you know it’s the end.”
“What do they want? Do you know, Jessie?”
“Something the dead Tooley had. Something he left behind.”
“What, for God’s sake!”
“I don’t know. I really don’t know.”
Then the bell rang again, like a knife cutting at us. And Rand would be looking for me. Any minute —
“Jessie. Listen to me.”
She looked up, flighty and nervous.
“It isn’t over, Jessie. Will you help?”
“Can I?”
“You got a car?”
“Yes. But if you …”
“Just listen. Jump in that car, drive out to the lake on the other side of Yorkdam. Bowline Lake.”
“Where Tooley used to hole up and nobody knows …”
“I know. Drive out the highway to the lake and there’s Bowline Bar. Go there and wait for me.”
“Wait for you?”
“Damn it, I just might make it!”
I had yelled it at her pretty loud and maybe it was just the shock of that that did it, but she said, “Yes. I think you just might.”
“And you, Jessie, you just wait for me there.”
“Should I do …”
“Nothing. I just want you around.”
She almost cried then and I gave her a kiss.
“All right, Jessie?”
“Sure — ”
“You can call me Gallivan,” I said and grinned at her.
“All right,” and then she smiled. “Jump, Gallivan,” she said, and held the door for me.
CHAPTER 23
I ran down the corridor and thought, if she holds out, if she doesn’t need any more of the stuff for the next twenty-four hours and if she holds out — and then I could see the plant, my coat on the chair, because the light was on now, and Rand was looking at me, waiting.
“Where you been, Gallivan?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m not,” he said. “Come on.”
It was clear enough. I think I was now Simon’s worry, whoever he was.
We went down a corridor, very slowly I thought, and then we stopped at a door and didn’t go in. Rand looked at the bulb over the door and leaned against the wall. The bulb wasn’t lit.
“Simon?” I asked him.
“Yes. Mister Simon.” Then he looked at me and said, “How was she?”
This wasn’t the time for the noble act and I had no intention of slugging Rand but it must have shown in my face. He kept smoking but said, “I didn’t mean it that way. I meant, how she was. She’s on again, isn’t she?”
“How do you know?”
“He gave it to her,” and Rand nodded at the door.
I had never seen Mister Simon before. I had just been afraid of him. Scared sick even, when I thought back at the spider web he had made all around me. But that had been a piddling emotion. Now I hated his guts.
“That’s for you,” said Rand, and the bulb over the door was on.
Rand opened the door and let me go first.
This was a hospital room. There was a bed and a lot of equipment That was the first impression. Shiny equipment, glass and chrome, a thing which might have been a stomach pump, a long-necked stand to hold up a transfusion bottle, a heating pad wire going into the bed, a rubber tube coming out of the bed. Only after seeing all that was there time to find Mister Simon.
He was small in the bed and I had no idea how old he was. He was rolled up into a sitting position and a big, littered bed desk made him look smaller than he probably was.
He was bald. He had waxy skin on his skull and gray, papery skin on his face. He wore glasses, not too thick, but too big. Unless his face was unusually small. The false teeth made big ridges around his mouth and they tightened his skin. When he talks, I thought, maybe he’ll sound like a parrot.
“If you like to sit,” he said to me, “take that chair, so I won’t have to turn.”
The voice was bigger than the rest of the man. Or perhaps the voice was the only thing normal about him, the rest of the man sick, dried up, wrong to be living.
“You’ve made time even shorter than it was,” he said. “I’m sorry you got spotted.”
“So am I.”
He didn’t act as if he had heard. He seemed to be concentrating on something else. With all the sickness he showed, he conveyed a kind of strength which came through in his voice, which showed in his directness.
“When you were out in Bowline Lake development, Gallivan, did you remember where Tooley lived?”
When they get direct, Jessie had said, when they don’t bother to hide their interest any more
, that’ll be the end.
“I never knew where he lived,” I told Simon.
“You have indicated that you do. You did so when you spoke to Rand, while still in prison, and I get the impression from your behavior since you have been out, that you might know more than you have been telling.”
“So far, Mister Simon, I didn’t know I was supposed to tell anything.”
“Where were you last night, Gallivan?”
“I took a walk.”
As far as he was concerned, I hadn’t said a thing. He went on, “I think you got spotted on that walk, Gallivan. The only explanation for that, at that hour, is that you went someplace where you were known.”
“I used to live in Yorkdam.”
“Did you go to that bar where Rand found you with Tooley today?”
I got a cigarette out, hoping to cover everything with that tired, old gesture, hoping a good, meaningless answer would come to me in the meantime.
“Please don’t smoke,” said Simon.
I put the cigarette away, and he talked again.
“Did you ever wonder why I went to the trouble, Gallivan, of getting you out in that expensive, that very risky way?”
“Why you engineered the break?”
“Yes. After all, I could have waited three weeks, ‘til they let you out legally. What I mean is, you might think so, as you wonder about this.”
“You don’t make sense. Nothing does.”
“I always make sense, Gallivan. Roll me down a little, Rand, will you?”
Rand did that and Simon’s upper body moved downward in a short arch, a movement of an inanimate thing.
“Your accidental cell mate,” he said, “this man, Tooley, he and I used to work together. Then we had a falling out.”
“Anything to do with the fact that he was in under death sentence?”
“No. His own fault, that. But a vindictive man. Maybe you noticed?”
“I didn’t like him.”
“That has nothing to do with it. At any rate, having gone this far, Gallivan, please listen to the rest.”
Once they tell you everything —
“He is dead now, but he is still endangering my life.”
“You seem well enough.”
“I’m half dead, Gallivan, but just half. As I was saying, he was a vindictive man. And then, I know something else. Tooley was secretive, and he was a hoarder. They go together sometimes, have you ever noticed?”