“Here she is, boys,” a cracked old voice sang out.
They got together and worked her up over the side. She came over the side, white and heavy, the lanterns making wet highlights on her, her head loose, black hair pasted flat. I heard the thumping as she tumbled onto the bottom of the boat. They covered her up and we headed in and the other boats came along.
People were coming down from the house. I got out onto the dock. A big trooper and I were the nearest when the two old men came up beside the dock. We knelt and reached down for her as they strained and lifted her up. We got her. My God, she was heavy. She felt as heavy as two women, with that tarp wrapped loosely around her. The trooper tripped and half sat down backward and I couldn’t hold the weight, even though I tried. All I got was an end of the tarp and she rolled out, flaccid. In the lights she was a funny color. One eye was open. The other was covered with her black hair, wet and covering half her face. We fumbled to cover her up again, and I heard Judy Jonah yell at us to make it quick.
I had forgotten my earlier feeling of coming too close to reality, and this brought it all back again. There was something immutable about that silent shape. You couldn’t tell it to go away. There were no lamps to rub, no incantations to say. It was there and undeniable and dead.
There was a room. They took me to a doorway. A strange woman took me to the doorway. There was a stink of flowers. She gave me a little push. “Go in and say good-by to her, Stevie.” I went in. There was satin and silver handles. It wasn’t my mother. They had made it out of wax, and my mother never was so pink and still. And her hands were not like that. Not like white sticks with blue nails. Not so still. They had been busy hands. Busy with soap and towels and brush and broom and quick caresses.
I turned and ran and the woman caught me and tried to hold me against her and I hit her with my fist and I guess I hurt her because she slapped me and then I cried and we both cried.
It had been a long time since I had remembered that. I stood very still. They were telling us to get off the dock. I looked at a slim dark-haired woman. I couldn’t remember for a moment who she was. Noel. Like meeting someone on the street. You haven’t seen them for a long time. And I remembered, but remembering did not chase away any ghosts.
I went to my room. I rolled up my sleeves. I scrubbed my hands. I wanted to scrub the skin off them. I wanted to get rid of the skin that had touched the heaviness of the body on the dock. I walked slowly toward the door to the corridor. And I heard someone coming. A woman. I opened the door. It was Noel. I spoke to her and took her hand and pulled her into the room and closed the door again. She would know where Randy was. I wanted to talk to him first. He could split the job with me. Maybe we’d have time enough.
She said he was still sleeping. I looked at her. She was a stranger. But there are times when you need the closeness of a stranger. I put my hands on her slim waist and pulled her close to me, and kissed her hard, with a sort of defiance, trying to kiss away all this tarp and flowers and grapple business. But even as I was kissing her, I remembered the afternoon, and remembered that it hadn’t gained me anything. I’d just got her emotionally involved. I had to find out where she stood. And, from her attitude, figure a way of untangling myself. She certainly wasn’t a hell of a lot to look at. And she looked at me with a discouragingly glazed and sappy expression.
So I delved a bit, cautiously, and found out, much to my relief, that she was off on a noble-wife kick. Standing bravely beside the unemployed husband. All very soap sales. It was an easy script to follow. I took my role. The disappointed lover. But not too insistent. The last thing I wanted to do was talk her out of the noble-wife part.
“Then,” I said bravely, “I’m to consider this the brush-off?”
It shows you how wrong you can be sometimes. I thought the little minx had been all loaded with sincerity. And what do I hear? One of my own lines, usually used in the brush-off scene. “We are a couple of adults, aren’t we?”
My surprise showed. And she told me it didn’t mean as much as we said it did. I tell you, with that acting ability, she could have landed a part.
I ruffled her hair and made with the “just grateful for knowing somebody like you” gambit. My kind of people. That’s what she was. I had a twinge of conscience about all the time I was losing, but suddenly I wanted her again. Maybe whenever there is death and violence around, you start wanting somebody. Maybe nature does it to you. Like affirming that you are the one who is alive. And we sat on the bed. But before it could become particularly interesting, the maid tapped on the door and said we were all wanted in the living room.
I decided right away that was for the best. It broke it up and kept me from wasting any more good time. We made some fast repairs and got ready to go. I checked the hall and it was clear. I was amused at the way she had fooled me. Fooled old Steve, the expert. And I felt affectionate toward her. So as she moved by me in the doorway I gave her a little love pat.
Once I was at a zoo. A human-interest thing, I think it was. Baby zebras or something. Can’t remember. But I remember the big tawny cat. It was asleep. One big paw was through the bars. A typical linthead tourist had picked up a little stick. He leaned over the railing and he was jabbing at the exposed paw, showing his cretin children what a big brave guy he was, poking at a lion.
One minute the lion was asleep. The next minute that big paw flicked by the guy’s face so fast that he jumped back long after it had gone by. His kids started crying. His complexion was like spoiled library paste.
I just patted her and she whirled and raked me. Her face was all twisted up and she hissed as she did it. And then she was gone. I stood and called her every name in the book and then went in and looked at myself in the mirror. Two long deep ones, with blood gathering slowly. I washed them. I found iodine in the cabinet, and some tape. I patched myself up. She had no damn reason in the world to do that. Not a reason in the wide world. Nobody does that to me. I decided right then and there that I’d get her apart from the others somehow. I’d get her out beside the house and back her up against a wall. I wouldn’t mark her, but I’d damn well teach her a lesson she wouldn’t forget in a hurry. A couple of good solid thumps in the belly teaches them some manners. It knocks the wind and the fight out of them.
I was the last one to arrive in the living room. I got a cold stare from everybody, and I saw the flicker of speculation as they looked at my taped face and wondered. I saw Judy glance at the tape and then look immediately at Noel.
Even the servants were there, and the young doc with the sideburns. I sat as far away from Noel as I could get. I caught her eye and gave her a hard look.
Fish started talking, and as soon as I got the sense of what he was saying, I forgot all about Noel and my plans and everything else except the fact of murder. For a time my mind was just a damn blank, with a great big red M printed across it. And then the damnedest thing. If she drowned, it was an accident, and something like that could not happen to Wilma. She had to be murdered. My God, she had been born to be murdered. Pushing people. Always pushing. No truth or sincerity in her. Everything an angle. Everything had to be used for her benefit. It was just a case of which damn worm had turned.
And thinking of worms, I looked at Randy Hess.
We got our orders, and we were told that the big brass was coming. I jumped at the first hunk of silence that came along, asking permission to handle the working press on this whole thing. Fish was dubious. I oiled him a little and saw him lean my way. Noel took off. It began to break up into little groups. Fish and the doctor got me aside. I was explaining how I would operate.
I looked over the doctor’s shoulder.
Ever since that moment I’ve been explaining it to myself. Here is what I say to myself: There is something inside you that goes ’way the hell back. Primitive. Atavistic. I keep telling myself that it was just as automatic as yanking your hand back when you put it on a hot stove. Nothing you can control. No part of guts or lack of same. Just a reac
tion. One minute I was looking and I saw it, and the next second I was running like hell in the opposite direction. I went through the door so fast that my hands slapped hard against the corridor wall as I made the turn. And I ran all the way down to my room before I stopped. I stopped and I listened.
I keep telling myself it was just an instinctive reaction. I mean nobody has given me a bad time about it. They’ve looked at me in a funny way, but nobody has given me a bad time. I’d suspect that they’ve talked. You know. Good story over a five-o’clock shot. But what the hell.
I wish I could stop thinking about it. It comes up at the damnedest times. When I ought to have my mind on what I’m doing.
This isn’t a bad job, and I’d like to keep it. But if I keep goofing off, going ’way back there and thinking how I ran, I’m going to flub stuff, the way I messed up the timing yesterday meeting that train. And lose this job.
It isn’t a bad job. There are twelve theatres in the chain. But now Mr. Walsh has got this idea I should dress up like a damn Martian and walk up and down in front of the Times Square house for this 3D horror thing. I keep telling him it’s a job for an usher or one of the assistant managers, but he keeps telling me I’m the publicity guy, aren’t I?
It was just like the way you’d snatch your hand off a hot stove. You don’t stop and think about it first, do you?
I’d argue more, but I keep thinking about that Sunday morning.
Do you?
Thirteen
(WALLACE DORN—BEFORE)
YEARS AGO I PUT MY FOOT DOWN. Firmly. It isn’t that I do not love Florence. She is my wife. She has carried and given birth to my children. But I had to forbid her presence at any of those social functions that are connected with my position at Fern and Howey.
I could not function properly while I waited in sick dread for her to put her foot in her mouth. And she always did. Invariably.
It isn’t as though I keep her in a locked room. We have our own circle of friends and, thank God, none of them has anything to do with advertising, publishing, or the arts. They are plain people. There is nothing brittle or self-consciously clever about them. And I am very glad that most nights I am able to catch the five-twenty-two out of Grand Central Terminal.
Florence is a comfortable woman. There was a time, of course, prior to and for about a year after our marriage, when I thought she was an enormously exciting woman. It is easy to see now that what misled me was her great vitality. Her hair is red and her skin is very white, and her looks faded very quickly. She seemed to turn, in a few short months, from girl bride to heavy-set matron. But, though I was disappointed at the time, I would not have it otherwise. She knows my wants. She keeps the home neat, cooks well, is good-humored, and very pleasant with the children. They are healthy children.
Florence is not an intelligent woman. She has a certain native shrewdness, but no mental equipment with which to cope with the people I must deal with each day. I am the head of my household. I have seen to it that there is no doubt about that. Someone must command. Otherwise there is fuss and disorganization.
I have made it a point not to mention her or the fact of my marriage and my children to my coworkers. Thus many of them are astonished when they learn that I am married. They try to include her in invitations. I say she is not well. That, of course, is a lie. She is as strong as a good horse.
I have been, I believe, a good husband to her. My salary has increased steadily, though it has never been, and perhaps will never become, spectacular. Except for Ferris, the accounts I handle with Fern and Howey are small. I have an even temper around my home. I give Florence a rather generous allowance. Though I have been unfaithful, I consider those lapses as being, perhaps, an inevitable by-product of my occupation, and commend myself on the fact that there have been so few such episodes. No more than nine, I believe, during sixteen years of wedded life.
Each morning she drives me to our small rustic station and I get on the train, and during the forty-minute ride I compose myself for the work of the day and prepare the face I will show to the world. I pledge myself to go through each day with quiet dignity, with as much honor as is possible, with affability and understanding of the problems of others.
And it was with that same attitude that I arrived at Wilma Ferris’ place at Lake Vale. But despite all vows, sometimes one finds oneself in a situation where dignity and honor are denied you. I despise such people, every one, except, perhaps, Paul Dockerty. He retains some of the instincts of a gentleman. Though, in a few more years, he too will be lost. I can save myself because I have a retreat. Each night I can go to my home, to my chair and pipe and robe, to the relaxation of a modicum of excellent Scotch, to quiet conversation, to a game of chess with my neighbor.
I knew, of course, that Wilma had poisoned Mr. Howey against me. And I knew that in inviting me she undoubtedly had more unpleasantness in mind. I even suspected that she wished to tell me that she was shifting her account to some other firm, perhaps to some brash outfit completely lacking in the dignity that has characterized Fern and Howey dealings since the establishment of the agency in 1893 by the elder Mr. Detweiler Fern. But I could not allow myself to think of such a contingency seriously. The implications were ghastly. Though Mr. Howey is, I trust, a man of honor, I believe he would feel that he should chastise me severely for the loss of the profitable Ferris account.
Though I did not care for the people, I enjoyed the opportunity of playing games. It took my mind away from the continual problem of what to do if Wilma did what I thought she might do. Scrabble is hardly a challenging game from an intellectual point of view. There are none of the clean rhythms and sequences of chess. I found Dockerty and the Jonah girl rather dull at it, and won handily.
When I said good night to Wilma, just as her game of gin rummy—infantile occupation—was breaking up, she gave me a glance as shrewd and alien and darting as the glance of a snake. It chilled me. After I was in bed I still felt cold. How have I offended her? I want nothing but the security of my job. Am I not good at my job? The Durbin Brothers, and Massey, Grunewald, and Star, and Bi-Sodium and Tichnor Instrument—they have always been satisfied. Every one.
The croquet game the next day was almost pleasant. It would have been far more pleasant had the others kept their minds on the competition. They seemed to have no great urge to win. They clowned grotesquely, and I was most disappointed in Paul Dockerty, getting as drunk as he did. I figured the proper angles, and the odds, and played crisply and well, finishing my circuit first, but avoiding the stake so that I could range back out across the court and aid the laggard members of my team as best I could. Wilma walked close to me at one point and put me badly off my form by murmuring, “Talk to you later, Buster.”
Of all the possible names she could have selected for me, she picked the one most calculated to distress me. It is a name completely without dignity. While still tense and worried about her, I played badly, and my ball was captured and driven into the water. I retrieved it and, setting it down in the parking area, I regained the playing field with one stroke, and hit the stake firmly with my next stroke after seeing that my further efforts would not aid my teammates. I was pleased to see that we won.
Wilma saw me in her room before lunch. She had me sit down. She had a cigarette and she walked back and forth, from the door to her dressing table, walking in silence as my tension mounted.
“Miss Ferris, I …”
“Please hush, Buster. I’m thinking.” That is typical of her. No form, no courtesy. Striding back and forth, ranging like a big cat in a cage, wearing that naked-looking sunsuit, the long muscles in her legs pulling and tightening with her strides, her dark hair bouncing.
Finally she stopped and faced me, looking down at me. “O.K., I’ve decided there’s no nice way to tell you. Dockerty is doing a job as far as he can. But that creepy agency you work for is dead weight.”
“Fern and Howey are one of the—”
“Hush. You’ve never come up with
anything either good or original. You just submit to me a lot of fancy presentations of my own ideas. Watered down, usually. I’ve given you every chance. I thought that in spite of the people you work for, you might come through eventually. Dorn, you haven’t had an idea of your own in fifteen years. So you’re an expensive luxury. I need a younger, hungrier agency. Somebody with vitality and imagination. You people think you’re in something a little like banking. Suits by Brooks Brothers. Dark paneling. Hushed voices. You bore me.”
“Miss Ferris, I …”
“And you are the dullest man I’ve ever set eyes on. An imitation limey from Indiana. What are you trying to do? Inspire confidence? I am uninspired, Dorn. When I’m in town Monday I’ll phone that unctuous Mr. Howey and kiss him off and pick myself something new. You can cancel out all that stuff they’re working on over there that they laughingly call a campaign. My God, stop goggling at me! I can do this, you know.”
“I wish you would reconsider,” I said weakly.
“I have. Too many times,” she said. I looked at her. Nobody knew it but Wilma and me. So far. I could see myself sitting across Mr. Howey’s desk, his eyes like little swords.
I wished she would fall dead. I wished she would drop dead on the floor. And I could go to the office and be very upset and tell Mr. Howey that she had told me that she had decided the advertising appropriation should be increased, but had died before she could take steps.
I looked at her throat. I saw a pulse there. I stood up slowly. I couldn’t permit this disorderly and ridiculous woman to put an end to a quiet and satisfying and honorable career. Advertising has become a respected profession. I am a respected man. She was doing this to me out of restlessness, out of whatever it was that was driving her. I stood up and my arms and hands felt heavy and powerful. She turned her back on me and went over toward the dressing table. I took one silent step, my arms half lifted. She craned her arms up behind her in that graceful-awkward way of woman and worked at the snaps of the sunsuit top. She said in a flat bored voice, drained of emotion, “Now run along and play games or something, Dorn.”
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