Hold Tight

by Christopher Bram

  “Now,” Hank whispered. “You stand out here away from the doors. Anyone comes in, run in after me and shout, ‘Jones.’ Okay? If I do this right, nobody’s gonna ever know. Except you and me. I’m gonna sit down behind him, and cut his throat.” Hank pulled the knife from his pocket. Closed, it was almost invisible in his fist.

  Erich watched Hank disappear through the curtain into the orchestra seats. The usher was standing at the front of the lobby, pushing the door open and leaning out, trying to listen to the rally. Erich wondered what it would be like, if there would be a scream or nothing at all, only Hank coming out with blood on his hands. He began to shiver, but told himself it was only the chill of air-conditioning after the heat outside. New thoughts darted through his head. He had trusted Hank, as a real American, to know how to kill a man. But did he? There was reason to believe the man who killed the houseboy might kill Hank, too.

  The movie bleated between the opening and closing of the curtain. Hank reappeared, as expressionless as a butler. “Not down here,” he said. “He must be up in the balcony.”

  Erich followed Hank around to the stairs. “I’ll stand on the landing. I can watch the doors from there and have time to come after you if anyone comes in.” He calmly trotted up the flight of stairs to the landing, then suddenly grabbed Hank’s sleeve. “Will you be all right?” he whispered. “What if he has a gun?”

  Hank remained stone-faced. “He didn’t have a gun back at the rally.” Hank looked over the brass railing. There was a clear view of the glass doors and the foyer outside, but Hank couldn’t believe there’d be any need to warn him. He was so impatient to kill Rice he could not imagine anyone stopping him. He patted Erich on the back and went up the last flight of stairs to the balcony lobby.

  Blair stumbled into darkness. His eyes adjusted to the light and he found a low wall in front of him and, beyond the wall, rows of empty seats sloping down to the lip of the balcony. The black, white and silver image of a man singing to a woman hung in front of the balcony; a voice crooned about moonlight and hair. A ray like moonlight ran back from the screen to a tiny window on Blair’s right, where the ray came together. That was the projection booth, where Anna must be. He looked for a way to get into it. The booth jutted into the balcony like a fortified pillbox. This side of the booth was flush with the aisle Blair had come down, but there was no door in the wall. He had seen no door in the balcony lobby. There was an aisle between the front of the booth and the low wall in back of the seats. Aisle and low wall ran the width of the balcony. The door to the booth must be on the other side.

  A man stood at the low wall directly beneath the projector beam. He saw Blair coming, clasped his hands behind him and turned back to the movie. Blair walked one step past him, and heard voices overhead, from a window in the booth ten feet above him. He stopped to listen. He could not make out any words because of the singing on the screen, only the guttural grumping of a man, and a woman’s voice—it had to be Anna’s—that sounded close to tears. He glanced at the low wall, wondering if he could climb up on the parapet and look into the booth, and see who Anna really was. The man standing at the parapet was watching Blair.

  “Little blowjob, friend?”

  Blair drove his hand into his pocket and backed away from the man. “Get away from me. Who are you?” Blair slipped his fingers around the trigger and handle. But he could see the man’s head in the movie light, bald and shiny. Not his sailor. “Get out of here,” he told him. “Leave immediately or I’m calling the police.”

  “Sheesh,” said the man and walked away, but only to go down the steps into the balcony and sit beside another figure. Blair counted four, no, five figures scattered among the seats up here. Were they all queers? He had to save Anna from this awful place.

  He reached the righthand corner of the booth. At the end of a dark aisle was an exit sign, the curtain below it outlined in wiggles of light, like the curtain he had come through on the other side. In the booth wall was a recessed doorway and two steps. Blair went up to it, felt the darkness and found a doorknob. He was about to knock. Instead, he pressed his ear against the door.

  “They are stupid, but they are sometimes stupidly smart. You were a fool to come here today.”

  “I know, Papa. But I get so lonely in that hotel.”

  So they were spies, Blair decided. He was glad to know that it was real. Ever since he entered the theater, he had been afraid it might all be some terrible joke.

  Lifting his ear from the door, Blair saw a figure standing in front of the screen, looking around. Another queer? This man was taller than the first and dressed in white.

  The theater suddenly lit up. The moonlit screen instantly became a bright desert. Someone laughed and Blair pressed himself against the door. That was his sailor out there.

  The man was looking for Blair. Why? Maybe he knew Blair killed the nigger. Although what did these people care what happened to each other? Maybe he had come in here only to be with queers. It did not matter. Blair eased the revolver out of his pocket. He would do here what he had forgotten to do at the rally.

  The sailor looked up the dark aisle and stood still a moment. He must not have seen Blair, because he resumed walking, to the left, past the front of the booth and out of Blair’s view.

  Blair stepped away from the door. He could do it, knowing the woman he did it for was only a few feet away.

  Hank stepped past the aisle, then pressed his back against the wall. That was his spy beneath the exit sign around the corner. Hank drew a deep breath. A faint glow in front of him flickered like heat-lightning each time the movie cut to a different shot. He listened for another burst of talk from the screen before he snapped his wrist and clicked the knife open. He would swing around the corner and charge the man. It was so near, so easy, he had to picture Juke’s face before he could do it.

  The projector ground loudly in the booth. Simon held Anna’s hands and kissed the tears off her face. “I love you and I am sorry. But you cannot stay here.” His voice had softened but the frown never left his face.

  Anna sniffed and nodded. “Yes, Papa. I’ll go now. I won’t try seeing you again for a long time, I promise.”

  Simon stood up and helped his daughter to her feet. “Let me go first and make certain nobody is out there,” he said, and started down the short flight of steps to the door.

  Erich stood on the landing for half a minute after Hank disappeared into the balcony, then another half minute, and he saw gray trousers and brown shoes run into the foyer outside. Sullivan and two other men appeared at the box office window, Sullivan flashing his wallet as he spoke. The woman answered. Sullivan and one of the men ran toward the glass doors.

  Erich turned and ran up the stairs to the balcony lobby. “Jones!” he cried and ran past the first curtained doorway to the second one. He plunged through the curtain into a dark aisle, where a man stood with his back to the exit. “Jones? Hank?”

  The man turned. Before he could answer, a door opened beside him.

  Light poured from the door. The man glanced at the light and Erich saw Rice, the hand at his side clutching a gun.

  Hank appeared in front of the movie screen, coming towards them with his fist.

  Erich had to shout about the gun, but it was too late to shout. He jumped at the man’s back, grabbed the wrist with the gun. He threw his other arm around the man’s neck to stop him from breaking away and freeing his wrist.

  Blair had been grabbed from behind. He tried twisting free. Twisting back, he saw his sailor coming towards him. He raised the gun to fire—but something held his arm.

  Hank saw Rice as paralyzed as in the crowd. Juke’s knife was open. Hank rushed into the man, slipping his left arm around the man’s shoulders, holding him against the knife. The blade pressed against clothes and ribs, then broke through.

  The gun fired at the floor.

  The body in Erich’s arm stiffened as if given an electric shock.

  The man threw his head back, hi
s mouth opened wide for a squeak from the back of his throat. The gun dropped from his hand.

  Hank saw Erich’s face behind the man, saw Erich for the first time and understood they held the man together.

  “Hands up! All of you! Hands up or I’ll shoot!” someone shouted.

  There was more light, from behind Erich now. Then a second gunshot. And despite everything Erich told himself, about Hank’s life and his depending on holding Rice, Erich let go. Erich’s own body collapsed beneath him. His right leg was burned out from under him.

  “Release him, Fayette! Let go of him!” Sullivan stood in the open exit, the curtain ripped to the floor. His gun was pointed at them, ready to fire again.

  Blair arched backwards, trying to unknot the pain in his chest that left him breathless. The weight embracing him from behind disappeared. He pushed away from the weight in front of him, only to grab at it with his right hand when he felt his legs failing him. He turned to the left. He remembered a door opening there, but had not had time to see who was behind it. Gripping the shoulder above him, Blair raised his head and saw a balding gentleman in a long white duster. Behind the man stood Anna, his Anna, her pretty face spoiled by enormous eyes and red lips pinched back in disgust.

  “Is it this awful tie?” Blair wondered. He lay one hand over the ugly necktie, and found something hard sticking out. It hurt when he touched it, as if it were part of him. He looked back at Anna, ashamed, but all he saw now was ceiling, then red like sunlight through closed eyelids, then nothing.

  “What did you do to him, Fayette?” Sullivan stepped over Erich, who lay there clutching his leg, and knelt beside Rice, keeping his gun aimed at Hank. “Don’t move. One move and I’ll shoot you in the head.”

  But Hank stood perfectly still, empty hands at his side. He looked down at the body curled around Juke’s knife. Now that the deed was done, it seemed cheap, nasty. The man needed to die, and yet he was so pathetic in death that Hank was sorry he was the one who had done it. He had felt the same way the first time he killed a chicken for his aunt by wringing its neck. But you can eat a chicken.

  “Buddy? You okay, buddy?” Sullivan rolled the body over. Only when he saw the blood did he see the knife. “Dammit to hell! Look what you’ve done!” He glared at Hank, his gun pointed at the sailor’s face. Then he remembered the projectionist standing in the door. “You there! Stop rubbernecking and call an ambulance. Turn on some house lights. And shut off that damn movie! We have a murder here!”

  Rice was dead? The carpet around Erich was wet and warm, but he had thought it was all his blood. The old man disappeared from the door. A pretty girl stood in his place, hand over her mouth as if she was going to be sick, her eyes never leaving the body at her feet. Then she was pulled into the booth and the door closed behind her. The house lights came on. The movie continued to play in the distance, a pale pair of ghosts exchanging wisecracks on the washed-out screen. Above Rice, above everything from where Erich lay, Hank stood like a cold, white angel of death, a bit of blood on his pants leg. His eyes met Erich’s.

  “You’re bleeding,” he said, a dry sadness in his voice.

  Erich nodded. He almost smiled, proud to be bleeding.

  Hank stepped forward, unbuckling his belt.

  “Don’t move, Fayette!” Sullivan jumped up, waving his gun at Hank. His other hand held Rice’s gun, a handkerchief wrapped around it. “Put your hands on your head.”

  Hank pulled his webbed belt through the belt loops. “I’m putting something around my friend’s leg. So he don’t bleed to death.”

  “Get back, Fayette. I’ll kill you. I’ll—”

  “Go ahead,” said Hank, stepping past him. “I’ve done what I was gonna do.” And he crouched beside Erich to slip the belt around his thigh, above the wound.

  Sullivan lowered his gun. He looked around, embarrassed. “FBI!” he shouted to the people on the balcony. “Everybody out! We’re clearing the theater! Use the other exit!” Returning his gun to his shoulder holster, he looked back at Hank and Erich. “Yeah, let the authorities take care of you two,” he muttered. “I don’t want the blood of the likes of you on my conscience.” Another man appeared in the doorway. “Where the hell have you been?” Sullivan hollered at him. “Clear this balcony. We don’t want anybody seeing this. There’s a projectionist in there. He stays. We have to talk to him. Send Brown and Cohen over here when they come in.”

  Erich watched Hank cinch the belt around his leg. There was pain, but he was pleased to feel pain. He knew he was getting giddy from the loss of blood. It began to feel almost tender: Hank tending his wound, the fact that they had just killed a man together. Pain was Erich’s way of paying everyone back. He felt all distance disappear between himself and Hank, conscience and world, watcher and watched. Looking at the dead man beside him, Erich felt he understood everything. And then he passed out.

  21

  WAKING EACH MORNING IN a hospital bed, in a ward full of enlisted men, Erich was thrown back to his first weeks in the Navy, in boot camp, where he always woke up one minute before reveille only to lie very still in his bunk, dreading the moment when the lights went on and the shouting began, the start of a whole new day of humiliation. He would lie alone in the winter dark, wishing he could stay still one second longer, wishing he had awakened a second sooner so he could have one more second of peace. In those long, brief seconds, Erich often wondered why he had gone to so much trouble to enlist and subject himself to so much misery.

  Lying very still in the hospital, day after day, was like that anxious minute of peace before the authorities enter the barracks and shout you out of bed.

  After the bone was set and his wound sewn up, the anesthetic wore off. All that remained was a leg encased to the hip in plaster and a dread of unknown consequences. The exhilaration had vanished and Erich was stunned by what he had done. His fourteen hours with Fayette now seemed like a moment of temporary insanity. He seemed to have been hypnotized by the man. Erich’s feelings about it changed from day to day, from hour to hour. Sometimes he was angry with Fayette; sometimes he was grateful to him. An effort of thought was required to prevent Erich from dismissing what had happened as insane, unnecessary or wrong. Once you commit yourself, it never ends. You cannot stop thinking. The gunshot had not really broken the distance between Erich’s conscience and self.

  It was being in the dark about the future that filled Erich with doubts about what he had done, and being utterly alone. There was no word from Mason, no visit by the FBI or police. He was in a Navy hospital, not a prison hospital, and the doctors knew Erich only as a gunshot wound and shattered femur. The world became closed and foreign a few feet beyond his bed. Worst of all, there was no news of Hank Fayette. Hank had disappeared into an unknown as opaque as government. Watching Hank bind his leg had been the last Erich had seen of him, before he lost consciousness.

  The other men in the ward were the survivors of ships torpedoed or shelled by the Germans. There were shrapnel wounds, burns and missing limbs. A simple gunshot wound was a rarity here, although Erich’s wound had other complications. The man in the bed beside him, in traction with a broken back, was frequently visited by shipmates from other wards. They sat around him in bathrobes and pajamas, telling each other over and over what had happened to each of them when their ship went down. Erich ached to tell someone his story, but realized he couldn’t, not yet. His story, if used properly, might be his and Hank’s last, best hope. When he recognized there was something he could do, Erich’s storm of doubt lifted.

  On the fifth day, an orderly came to Erich with a wheelchair and said he was taking him to the porch for some fresh air. Erich asked to be wheeled instead to the hospital library. While the orderly flirted with the pretty librarian, Erich went through every newspaper from the past five days. He found it, not in the paper the day after it happened, but in today’s paper. And not in the news but the obituaries. It promised more than anything Erich had hoped for. Thomas Blair Rice III, son of pa
rents about whom there was more to say than there was about him, died on July 6. In his home.

  “I can’t tell you how disappointed I am in you, Erich.”

  The following afternoon Commander Mason finally came to the hospital, bringing a bottle of rum, which was confiscated at the door. He sat in a chair beside Erich’s bed, in full view of the entire ward, as if he and Erich had nothing to hide from the others.

  “I trusted you, Erich. Completely. And you did what you did. You spoiled it for everyone.”

  “Where’s Hank Fayette?” said Erich.

  “Hank? Oh…” Mason looked into his eyebrows as though trying to remember. “I think Hank’s on Governor’s Island. In the brig. How’s your leg?”

  “How come I’m not in the brig?”

  “What for? Insubordination? Absent without leave? Neither of these seemed to warrant bars for a man shot in the leg.”

  “What about murder?”

  Mason looked straight at Erich and calmly smiled. “What murder?”

  “Rice.”

  “Rice didn’t die.”

  “I saw him die,” said Erich. And he let go with what he knew. “Thomas Blair Rice, who died in his home. Two days after he was killed.”

  Mason flinched, stared hard at Erich, then stood up. “Nurse!” he shouted. “Bring us a wheelchair. I’m taking this patient out on the grounds.”

  Erich did not smile or say a word while the orderly lifted him into the wicker-seated chair and propped his heavy leg out. Mason stood by, impatiently fingering the cap in his hands. He dismissed the orderly and wheeled his subordinate through the ward to the porch and down the ramp to the graveled path.

  It was hot on the treeless lawn: the other ambulatory cases remained under the porch that ran the length of the one-story hospital. Beyond the sunburned lawn were the cranes and canted gray smokestacks of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Beyond that was the low jagged ridge of Manhattan.