He was now on a very long and narrow side street with a downward slope. By a trick of the wind the walks of the side he was on were swept almost clear of snow. Yet on the windward side, to his left, first-floor doors and windows were fully covered by drifts, some to a height of ten feet or more. A huge building was there. A single massive structure that looked like the wall of a great white canyon. Its windows, ledges, and cornices were obscured by a troweling of packed snow and ice all the way to the ragged line of its roof, which must have been eight or ten stories above the ground. This building seemed to go on for the entire block. Corbin felt another stab of anger as he looked at it, but he forced his attention back down along the dark and snowless windbreak where he stood. It was then that he would see her. She would be some fifty yards ahead of him, moving haltingly, and almost invisible but for the light she reflected from an occasional uncurtained window. There were gas lamps at intervals along the street but none were lit. No lamplighter would make his rounds tonight.
She would move a few steps, then pause and turn toward the building across the street, then move on again. Corbin could see that she was baffled by the drifts that began in the middle of the roadway and rose up against all the building's entrances. She stopped again. Both hands came up to warm her frozen ears as she searched in vain for a crossing she could manage in the heavy floor-length coat she wore. It was then that she saw Corbin’s shape closing in upon her. She screamed. It struck him that it was a cry more of hatred, of vexation, than of fear. He saw a flash of teeth as she gathered up her frozen skirts and turned from him, running.
This was Corbin’s first clear look at the woman. She was young, no more than twenty-four, he thought. In daylight he would remember her as pretty, almost beautiful. But now she seemed ugly, hateful. Corbin was moving again. In his right hand he noticed the glint of a polished ebony cane. It flicked forward in rhythm with his pace. He could feel the cane's carved silver knob against his palm. And he saw his sleeve. More lamb's wool at the cuff. The rest was a soft gray plaid unlike any coat Corbin owned. When he looked up again, he saw that he had halved the distance between himself and the woman.
She was becoming frantic. And exhausted. She staggered against a high iron fence in the light of a brownstonè's parlor window. A man came briefly to the window, pausing only long enough to steam it with his breath, then he turned away.
“Sir, please,” he heard her call. “Sir, please help me.”
Corbin knew it was useless. She would not be heard against the whistling wind. And if she tried to climb the steps leading to the door and if her knock were not promptly answered, she would be trapped. The woman seemed to realize that as well. Again she ran.
There was another wide avenue like the last. But this one, Corbin saw, had some monstrous unlit structure above it which straddled the roadway like a giant spider. A railroad. Yes, that's what it was. An elevated railroad and a large terminus. He thought he heard a wail of despair as she peered through the blast of wind at the lifeless building above her. There would be no help there, either. The trains had long since stopped running, unable to make the slightest grade on icy tracks. The terminus and platform would be another trap at best. Corbin watched her stumble on toward one of the steel columns that supported the elevated. She fell to her knees as she reached it and held on, chest heaving, gathering her strength for a dash to the column’ s opposite number on the other side. Suddenly she straightened. She had seen something. She raised a hand to shield her eyes against the ripping sleet.
“Police!” she screamed. ”I need you! Police!”
But the sound went nowhere. Even Corbin could barely hear it. The wind seized her words and shredded their sounds and threw them back past her face. The woman pushed heavily to her feet and lunged in the direction of whatever salvation she saw, but the wind did to her skirts what it had done to her plea. Her feet were slashed from under her. On hands and knees, she shot a desperate glance toward Corbin’ s advancing form, then turned, crawling her way across the avenue.
Corbin, or the part of him that remained Jonathan Corbin, began to feel a stirring of pity for her. He wanted to tell her that she needn't scream, that she needn't run. But another part of him knew that was wrong. It was right that she should suffer. It was right that she be punished for the terrible wrong she had done him. Corbin placed one hand upon the thick fur hat that he wore and leaned into this new avenue, crossing at an upwind bias as one would attempt to swim a rapids. A short block into the wind he saw through squinting eyes the aid the woman had sought but had not had the strength to reach. Two uniformed policemen were struggling to raise a fallen horse. On the open seat of the delivery wagon to which the beast was harnessed, Corbin saw the dead or senseless body of the driver. He was hunched forward. Frozen. The loose end of a long scarf streamed out in the wind and slapped unheeded at his face. Corbin hesitated. He thought he should offer assistance. But no, he decided. The driver was either beyond his help or already in the good hands of the two patrolmen. And the woman had reached the shelter of the building line and was now regaining her feet. If he let her go to find new sanctuary, what stories would she tell? What new humiliations would she bring upon his name? Corbin turned after her.
They were near the end of a second long street when Corbin was again close upon her. There was a house. A huge house. A mansion of brick and stone set well back from the sidewalk behind a high spiked fence of wrought iron. The gates of the fence were fully open upon a driveway and garden well lit with electric lamps. The curved driveway led to a porte cochere big enough to accept the largest barouche or coach and four. She stopped there, shivering, staring at this house. Corbin could almost hear her thoughts. Another windswept avenue lay ahead of her, this one even more open and exposed than the last. He knew that she could not bear to attempt another crossing. She would not have the strength. But this great house. Surely she could find refuge here. The servants would take her in. She could ask them to say nothing to their mistress. Only to let her warm herself in the kitchen. She could sit in a chair until morning. Their mistress need not know that she had forced herself upon this house uninvited and in such a state. But it was no use. They would surely tell her. Or worse, they would sell this intelligence to that dreadful Colonel Mann for a silver dollar and within a week her humiliation would be made public in his newspaper.
The woman, Corbin knew, could not bear that. She would not seek shelter there. It would mean the end of all she valued. With an anguished waving of her arms she turned from the warmth of those lights and plunged insanely back into the storm.
Across from the mansion, at the edge of a great open square, was another building in the early stages of construction. All around it were piles of bricks and lumber under wind-whipped tarpaulins. The storm made small mountains of these and filled in the passes between them. It was in this direction that the woman ran. There was no light there. Only the distant glow of the mansion's arc lights. But it was enough that when she turned at last to face him he could see the full measure of the mocking contempt in which she held him. There was a smear across her mouth that looked like blood. Her hair, once piled high and teased into ringlets at her brow, was now a fallen, frozen reddish mass. He knew all the more clearly why she had turned from those gates. Vanity. Shame. The fear of being whispered about in drawing rooms, of her name being stricken from guest lists, of heads in passing carriages turning away from the woman who had the coarseness of manner to appear at the door of Alice Vanderbilt in such a state of dishabille. If only they knew, Corbin thought. If only they knew the true depths of her shame.
He stopped in front of her. He saw his walking stick rise until its silver tip was level with her breastbone. She backed away, her lips curling into a sneer. A word. She spoke a word. Children is what Corbin thought she said. Only that. Inflected upward at the end as if spoken as a warning. Corbin advanced upon her, his cane held poised, steering her backward into the construction site, into the farthest and deepest drifts. Against one of the
se she fell. She reached both arms behind her to break her fall and these plunged into the soft snow almost to her shoulders. She did not try to rise.
“Be done with it,” the young woman spat at the figure standing over her. “Beat me, children.” That word again.
Corbin saw the tip of his cane find a place between her breasts. There was something hard there, a wire form beneath her clothing. The cane did not seem to hurt her as he pushed down upon it, pressing her more deeply into the bank of snow. Her head was buried past the level of her ears. The lighter edges of the imprint she made crumbled in against her cheeks. The woman was struggling at last, spitting, biting uselessly at his cane, but the effort left her arms impacted behind her all the more. She tried to kick at him. Corbin saw his own right foot rise and then come down across the buttons of her coat at a point between her knees. She was pinioned. Helpless. Unable to move at all.
All at once, Corbin felt ashamed. One does not treat a woman in this manner. Not for any reason. If only she would say something. Some small spoken kindness. Anything that might serve to take away a hurt he keenly felt but whose source he could not remember. He would let her go if she would ask his forgiveness. Or even if she would cry. He would let her go as far away as possible. Away from him. And take the humiliation with her.
What humiliation?
Whatever it was, she must have known the answer. Or perhaps Corbin said it aloud without realizing it. Because then she said, “He'll be twice the man you are.”
“And the other?” Corbin heard himself ask. His voice was flat and cold.
”I warn you.” She coughed.
He pressed harder with his cane. “And the other?” he repeated. “What sort of man is he?”
“Twice.” She raised her face and shouted. “Twice as well. Twice and more. Twice in all ways, damn you, sir.”
Nothing more was said for several minutes. She lay quiet and still. As still as the dead man named George except for the shallow rise and fall of her bosom.
”I cannot feel anything,” she whispered sleepily.
“No,” he answered, ”I fear that you cannot.”
And Corbin held her there until his own feet were numb and the snow stopped melting on her face.
Two
T he slender, honey-haired Englishwoman had been in a windowless conference room for four hours when she was called to the telephone and heard the worried voice of Jonathan Corbin's secretary. She frowned. She knew at once that it must be snowing outside.
Gwen Leamas listened, her frown deepening. “It's been since before noon,” Sandy Bauer told her. “There's already going to be trouble because he bagged his lunch date with the people from the Masters golf tournament. And now I hear things breaking in there.”
“Why didn't you call me before this?” she whispered.
“Because it was hardly snowing,” Sandy told her. ”I stayed and had a sandwich at my desk just in case. It only started really coming down a few minutes ago.”
“You're a love,” Gwen said. “I'll be there in two minutes.”
She made her apologies to Bill Stafford, citing a minor but urgent personal matter. Their meeting, held to discuss the format of a new magazine show, was essentially over anyway. Stafford, who adored his wife but loved to watch and listen to Gwen Leamas, was visibly disappointed. He liked to say she gave the dump some class. She'd already thoroughly charmed the new show's prospective host, an otherwise difficult columnist named Hobbs.
Sandy Bauer breathed deep relief at the sound of the jingling chain jewelry and the whoosh of leather pants that signaled the approach of Mr. Corbin's girlfriend. Used to be, anyway. If the office talk was right, they had lived together for a couple of years in Chicago until she left six months before he did and came here. Sandy knew for a fact that Mr. Corbin had lived at her place while he looked for a place of his own. But whatever was between them seemed to fade away as soon as Mr. Corbin found that crazy old house of his in Connecticut.
Gwen stopped at Sandy Bauer's typewriter, glancing at Corbin's closed door and placing her hand over the several bracelets she wore to silence them.
“Has he not been out at all?” she asked in the soft precise accent that Sandy sometimes tried to imitate.
“Not since he saw it was snowing.” She cocked her head toward the phone console on her desk. “I've been saying he's in a meeting, but it's only a matter of time before Stafford or someone else I can't stop decides to walk in on him.”
Gwen nodded, looking down to check the watch she wore looped over a silver belt. Stafford would be busy a while longer, she knew. Another hour of swapping stories with those left in the room and then drinks with Mr. Hobbs at “21 ” or the Algonquin. Still, “I'm going to try to take him out of here,” she said quietly. “Do you think you can keep everyone at bay a bit longer?”
Sandy nodded. “Miss Leamas, are you going to...” Corbin's secretary bit her lip. “If all you're going to do is put him on his train, I'd just as soon take him to my place and let him stay there.”
Gwen Leamas met her eyes. “I'll take care of him,” she said evenly. And then she softened. “That was very nice of you, Sandy. Very nice indeed.”
The younger girl smiled, pleased with herself that she had the nerve to ask and relieved that she got away with it. As for being nice, though, Sandy didn't know how nice she'd be if Mr. Corbin ever looked at her the way he still looked at Gwen Leamas sometimes. Not that I'm jealous, Sandy thought. What's to be jealous about a model's cheekbones and huge brown eyes that can look smart and nice at the same time, and good boobs, and also a skinny body, which is especially aggravating since I know for a fact she's a cheeseburger freak.
Gwen answered the secretary's smile with one that she hoped was reassuring but hesitated with her hand on Corbin's door. It crossed her mind to ask Sandy to say nothing of Jonathan's emotional state or about them leaving together. But the request, she decided, would be gratuitous and probably offensive. Jonathan Corbin was Sandy's boss, but she clearly liked him in the bargain. To say the least. In any case, there would be no gossip. Gwen settled for a wink, then took a breath and stepped through Corbin's office door.
Corbin stiffened as she entered but did not turn from the window. The draperies at his right hand were swinging slightly, as if just released. She could see a large wrinkled area where his fist had been clutching them. Jonathan was posing now, she realized, trying to look like an executive pondering a problem while gazing thoughtfully out a window. Yet she felt sure that his eyes were tightly closed.
‘‘It's Gwen, Jonathan.” At her words she saw his shoulders sag and heard his lungs expel the air they'd been holding. His head shook slowly but he did not turn.
‘These things you see,” she asked gently, “are they out there now?”
“No.” The word croaked from a dry and tight throat. Corbin coughed and swallowed. “Not from here. I never see them from here.”
“From the street then. You see them when you're down on the street?”
Corbin hugged himself and nodded.
She touched her fingertips against the door to see that it was securely closed, then stepped to his side. Gwen barely glanced at the gray-white blur outside the window. Raising her hands to both his shoulders, she turned him, Corbin resisting at first, until he faced her. Only then did Corbin open his eyes. Leaning closer, she placed her palms against his cheeks and kissed him lightly on the lips.
“Jonathan?”
“”‘Yes?.”
“Will you show me this time?”
“No.” He tried to pull away.
“Do you ever see them when someone is with you?”
“Yes,” he answered, then blinked. In truth he wasn't sure. He'd seen them when there were other living people around. Always. But with someone he knew? Someone whose hand he could hold and maybe keep from slipping back into another time? ”I don't know,” he added distantly.
“Let's try, Jonathan.”
“No.”
“You can
't just bury yourself here all weekend like some den animal. What will you do for food if the snow doesn't stop?”
Corbin had already thought about the coffee and candy machines near the freight elevator, and the partially uneaten lunches that were often abandoned in the refrigerator of the office kitchen. He shook his head miserably. “Gwen, you just don't know what it's like.”
“Then tell me, Jonathan. What is out there that a man who's never shown the smallest spark of timidity would fear? Are there monsters? Do these people you see try to harm you?”
“No, nothing like that.” A hand he could hold, he repeated to himself. Except it wouldn't work. It's supposed to be ghosts who fade while what's real and alive stays that way. But out there it's the living who fade. The flesh and blood.
“Then if you really do see the things you've told me about, Jonathan, I should think it would be bloody fascinating. My God, it's like time travel.”
Time Out of Mind Page 2