Mischief

by Charlotte Armstrong

  Their voices came to a dead stop.

  “Why?” he said finally, his eyes glittering.

  “Because this isn’t fun.”

  “Why should I take you home?” he said, smoldering. “Ask some kind stranger.”

  She stared. She said, “You’re quite right. I do nothing for you. Or your ego. Do I? I’ll be leaving now.”

  “Lyn …”

  “Yes?” she said icily, half up, her coat on her shoulders.

  “If you go …”

  “Why should I not? You’re not entertaining me. Nothing’s for free, you say.”

  “If you go …”

  “I know. We’ll never meet again. Is that it?”

  “That’s it, I’m afraid.”

  “Jed, I don’t want to …” She was more limp, more yielding.

  “Then for Lord’s sake,” he said irritably, assuming it was all over, “sit down and quit talking like a little jackass.”

  Her sidewise glance was not merry at all. “Good night,” she said quietly.

  He settled in the chair, took a cigarette out of the package. “Got your mad money? Here.” He threw a five-dollar bill on the tablecloth.

  Lyn’s lips drew back from her teeth. He could feel, like a strong sudden gust, her impulse to hit him. Then he thought she’d cry.

  But she walked away.

  He sat, staring at the messy table. Of all the stinking lousy dates he ever had in his life! Protectively, he thought of it as just a date. He was furious. He advanced to being outraged. His last night in this town! Last night in the East! Last date! And she walked out on him.

  For what? He oversimplified. Because he didn’t give that mangy old deadbeat a quarter. Of all the …! He sat there and let anger become a solid lump. After a while, he paid the check and put his coat on. Outside, he looked east, then west. Lyn was nowhere about.

  He began to walk, fast, hands dug in his coat pockets. He supposed gloomily it was a good thing he’d found out what kind of stuff passed for thought in her head. (Lyn, with the dark head, his shoulder high.) So … cross her off the list. Yeah. Couldn’t she see he hadn’t tried to hurt her? Couldn’t she concede he’d learned a few things, formed some opinions, had to have a core of conviction that was, at least, honestly come by? No, she couldn’t. So, she walked away.

  But Towers would have a date tonight, just the same. His little book (with the list) was at the hotel, damn it. He swung north. Hadn’t thought he’d need it. But he had it. He could put his hand on it. His pride, his proof, his very honor began to get involved here. Towers would have a date his last night. Wouldn’t be stood up, not he!

  Jed slammed through the revolving door. It stuttered, not moving as fast as he. He stood, towering, teetering, smoldering, at the desk, crisply after his key. He went up to the eighth floor, unlocked his door, put on his light, flung off his coat, in one swift surge of entering.

  He visited the bathroom.

  He came out with the bathroom glass in his hand and stared around him. He dipped into his bag for that bottle of rye. He could think of nobody on his list who’d do him good. And the preliminaries. He was in no mood for them. Call any girl, this time of night, and you could hear her little brain buzzing. Oh, will I look unpopular if I admit I’m not busy? They all wondered, the nit-wits. So she’d say she had a date. And he’d say, “Break it for me?” Knowing damn well she probably was just about to wash her hair or something. So, she’d “break it.” Phony. Everything was pretty phony.

  (Not Lyn. She was just too naive to live.)

  He looked at the telephone. Call her and apologize? But what was there, honestly, to apologize for? He’d only said things he believed. He couldn’t change his spots. They’d only start over again. They didn’t think the same. And nobody walked out on Towers twice! This, she’d find out.

  Aw, quit stewing.

  The blind across his bank of windows was not drawn. He realized that he stood as one on a lighted stage. It felt, too, as if eyes were upon him. Somebody was watching him.

  He moved toward the windows that looked out on a court.

  He was looking directly across the narrow dark deep well into another lighted bank of windows. The other room hung there in the night like a lighted stage. The scene had no depth. It was lit by a lamp near the windows. The light fell on a female figure. There was a girl or a woman over there. She was dressed in some kind of flowing bluish or greenish thing. She seemed to be sitting in the window, probably on the flat top of the long radiator cover. Her neck was arched. She had short yellowish hair. She seemed to be looking down at a point on her right leg just above the knee. A garter or something? Her right foot rested on the radiator top. The nicely shaped leg was bent there, framed and exhibited, with the bluish-green fabric flowing away from it.

  She was not looking out, not looking at him. He was absolutely certain that she had been. He knew he must be silhouetted in the frame of his own windows. He stood still, watching her, making no further move to pull his blind down. He was absolutely certain that she knew he was there.

  She moved her right palm slowly down the curve of her calf. Her head turned. She looked across at him. He did not move.

  Neither did she.

  Her hand rested on her ankle. Her garment remained as it was, flowing away from the pretty knee. Her head was flung up from the neck. She looked at him.

  There was something so perfectly blunt about the two of them, posed as they were, each in his bright box, suspended, aware … It was as if a shouted Well? crossed the court between them.

  Jed felt himself grin. The anger that hummed in his veins changed pitch, went a fraction higher. What was this? and why not? he thought, pricked and interested.

  CHAPTER 5

  The girl took her hand from her ankle, put both hands on the radiator top behind her, bent her body to lean back on the stiff support of both her arms, kept looking out at him. There was something direct about it that fitted with his mood.

  Jed was reading the floor plan of the hotel that lay in his head. He was counting off numbers, calculating. He had the kind of mind that carried maps and floor plans with him always. He felt pretty sure he knew what the number of that room must be. He put his bottle of rye down and raised both hands where the shape of them would be silhouetted for her to see. He signaled with eight fingers, with both hands bent in an O, and then with seven fingers.

  She sat up, suddenly, wrapped both arms around her middle, and turned so that the knee slid down. She was facing him, her head tilted as if to say, What do you mean?

  He took up the bottle in his left hand, pointed at it, at her, at himself.

  Her chin went high, as if her head fell back in laughter.

  He put down the bottle, pantomimed himself at a telephone. She understood because her head turned and she looked behind her toward where the phone in that room must be.

  She made the sign of seven.

  Jed backed away from the window. He knew he was still perfectly visible, perhaps even plainer to her sight now, in the glare of the overhead light. He picked up his phone. He said to the girl, “807, please.”

  Downstairs, as Rochelle made the connection, a thought no clearer than the word “huh?” crossed her mind fleetingly. Pursuing it, she remembered. Oh yeah, 807 was the whispering foul-mouth. What now? Probably, she surmised 821 was going to complain. She was tempted. She heard a man’s voice say, “Well?” It was blunt and a trifle mocking. It wasn’t going to complain. Rochelle’s interest, faint in the first place, faded. The muscles of her mouth made a quick cynical comment, soon forgotten.

  Jed could still see the girl, in the little puddle of light by the beds in there, answering her phone. He waved. “Hi,” he said, over the wire.

  She made a soft sound, like a chuckle. “Hello.”

  “Would you like a drink?”

  “I might,” she said.

  “Alone?”

  She knew what he was asking. “You can see, can’t you?” she said and the hint of laug
hter came again.

  “If I walk around, will you open the door?”

  “I might”

  “It’s a long walk,” he said.

  He had the impression that she would have teased him, but something happened. He saw her head turn. Some sound … that she could hear but he could not. She said, in a different mood and a different tempo, “Wait a few minutes?”

  “This is an impulse,” Jed said frankly. “It might not last.”

  “Five minutes,” she said, sounding eager and conspiratorial, now. “There’s somebody at the door.” Then she said, “Oh, please,” very softly and very softly hung up.

  Jed sat on the bed in his room, and automatically put the phone down. He saw her at the window, lowering the blind, but she tripped it so that he could still see into the room. He knew when she went into the shadowy part, when she opened the door. The visitor came in the direction that, to Jed, was downstage, came in far enough so that he could identify the hotel livery.

  Bellhop, or something. Oh, well … He went into his bathroom with a vague sense of stepping into the wings for a moment, out of the footlights. He looked at himself in the glass. His anger was no longer so solid. It had broken into a rhythmic beat. It came and went, ebbed and flowed. When it pulsed high he felt reckless and in a mood to smash. When it ebbed low he felt a little bit blank and tired. But the pulse was strong, the beat was urgent. It seemed necessary to do something.

  Eddie said, “Little girl went to sleep, all right, did she? You all right. Nell?”

  “Umhum,” Nell murmured. She’d fallen into the maroon chair and looked relaxed there. Her lids fell as if they were heavy over her eyes. Her face was smooth and seemed sleepy.

  “What you got on? Nell!” Eddie’s voice was thin and careful.

  “I’m not hurting anything.”

  Eddie’s flitting eye caught the top of the dressing table and the condition it was in. His gold-flecked teeth bit over his pale lip. He moved closer to the dressing table. After a while he said, in a low voice, “You shouldn’t monkey with other people’s stuff, Nell. Really, you shouldn’t.”

  “I’m not hurting anything,” she repeated and her voice was more truculent than before.

  Eddie gnawed his lip. He rescued the perfume bottle and replaced the stopper. Almost furtively, his fingers began to neaten the tumble of jewelry. He began to talk, softly, coaxingly.

  “It’s kind of an easy job, though, isn’t it, Nell? Don’t you think so? Just to sit for a few hours in a nice room like this. And just think, you get paid for it. Fifty cents an hour isn’t bad, for nothing but being here. If you was home, you’d be sitting around with Aunt Marie, waiting for bedtime, just the same. You like it, don’t you, Nell?”

  “Oh, sure,” she said drowsily.

  “Nell, you … better take off that negligee … and the slippers. Honest. I don’t think Mrs. Jones would like that.”

  “She won’t know the difference,” said Nell shortly.

  “Well,” said Eddie, “I hope you … Will you take them off, like a good girl?”

  “Umhum,” she murmured. “Sure I will, Uncle Eddie.” She lifted her eyes and smiled at him.

  He was enormously encouraged and pleased. “That’s right,” he cried. “That’s good. Take them off, Nell, and put them where they were, so she won’t know. Because you want to get paid. You want to get more jobs like this. Don’t you see, Nell? It’ll be a real nice kind of little work for you. So easy. And you can do what you want with the money, after. You can buy some fancy slippers like those for yourself, Nell. Or a pair of earrings. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

  She turned her cheek to the chair.

  Eddie wished he knew how it was Marie talked to her, what it was she did. Because Nell was good when Marie was around, real quiet and good.

  “Tell you what I’ll do,” he said heartily. “When I get off duty, I’ll bring you up a coke. O.K.? Have a little refreshment, you and me. It won’t seem so long. You’ll be surprised how the time will go by.”

  “Sleepy,” she murmured.

  “Well,” he said, bracing his shoulders, “nap a little bit. That’s a good idea.” He looked at the perfume bottle that was now nearly empty. He cleared his throat. He said in a nervous rush, “And you ought to apologize for spilling the perfume … right away when she comes back.”

  Nell’s lids went up slowly until her eyes were very wide. “It was an accident,” she said an octave higher than before. Her whole body had tightened.

  “I know. I know,” said Eddie quickly. He stepped near her and put a gentle hand on her shoulder. She twisted away from it. “Of course it was an accident. I believe you, Nell. Sure it was. The only thing I mean is, it’s a good idea to say so, real soon, before she notices. Anybody can have an accident like that. She won’t blame you.”

  Nell said nothing.

  “It’ll be all right,” said Eddie, comfortingly. “You couldn’t help it. Now, you just—just take it easy a little bit. I’ll be back.” He looked nervously behind him. The open elevator, standing too long on the eighth floor, was present in his consciousness. “I gotta go. But you’re all right, aren’t you?” He swallowed. “Please, Nell,” he said in a thin pleading voice, “don’t get into no more mischief with their things?”

  “I’m not doing anything,” she said sullenly.

  But, when he sighed and paused in his progress toward the door as if he would plead some more, she said quickly, “I’m sorry, Uncle Eddie. I’ll put everything back. You know I get … restless.” Her hands moved to the earrings. I’ll take them off.”

  Immediately, he was pleased. “Sure, I know you get restless. I know you don’t mean anything. I want you to … kinda get used to this idea. The thing is, to think, Nell. We could work up a kind of a little business, here. If you’d just … if you like it.”

  “I do like it,” she said, sounding thoughtful and serious. An earring lay in her hand.

  The little man’s face reddened with his delight. “Good girl! That’s swell! And it’s a date, now. Don’t forget I’ll bring the cokes.” And so he withdrew, pointed little face going last, like a mouse drawing back into its hole.

  Nell waited for the door to close. With no expression on her face she put the earring back on her ear lobe. She got slowly to her feet. Then they began to move on the carpet in that tiny dance. She listened. She went to the blind and it rattled up under her hands.

  Jed was standing in the middle of his room, his weight even on both feet, looking rather belligerently across at her.

  She flung up both hands in a beckoning gesture, let them go on, until her arms were in a dancer’s high curve, and she whirled backward from the window. Jed stood still. And the girl stood still, posed with her arms high, looking over her shoulder.

  In a second, Jed put the bottle in his pocket, and his finger on his light switch. His light went out.

  Nell pawed, disturbing the order Eddie had created, and she snatched at Ruth’s spare coral lipstick.

  CHAPTER 6

  Jed’s impulse had been flickering like a candle in a draught. He put the bottle in his pocket for the necessary little drink that you take while you look the situation over, put his key in his pocket, too, heard the elevator gate closing. So he waited for the faint hum of its departure before he went around the corner to his right and passed the elevators and turned right again.

  His mood was cautious when he tapped on the door marked 807.

  She was not very tall, not very old, not bad looking, either. But he couldn’t type her. No curly blonde. Not a sleek blonde. Her face, tilted to look at him, was a triangle and the eyes were set harlequinwise. Jed’s nostrils moved. She reeked … the whole room reeked … of perfume. She opened the door wider, quickly. He took a step and the door closed behind him as if she had fanned him into this perfumed place. His glance went rapidly around. He looked, and knew it, as if he were ready to take the step back again, and out.

  “What’s in the bottle?” she asked.

/>   He took it out of his pocket and showed her the label. He said, mechanically, “Too nice a night to drink alone.” His cool gray stare examined her.

  Her blue eyes examined his. For a minute, he thought there wasn’t going to be any act … and he was fascinated by that same sense of blunt encounter that he had felt before.

  This wasn’t a type he knew.

  She turned, tripping a little on the aquamarine hem of the negligee, so long it puddled on the floor around her. She said, “Won’t you sit down?” Her voice was flat and matter-of-fact. Yet he wasn’t sure whether she used a cliche or mocked one.

  He set the bottle on the desk and walked past it, going warily to the big maroon chair. “Nice of you to let me come over,” he said, perfunctorily. His eye caught certain signs and he was not pleased. He thought he had better get out of here as gracefully as was quick. Obviously, this room was half a man’s.

  She walked over a bed on her knees and then was standing between the two of them with complete dignity. It was an odd effect, almost as if she didn’t notice how she had got there, as if she assumed that of course she must have walked around the bed like a lady. She put her hands on the phone. “We must have some ice,” she said grandly.

  “Fine.”

  “Ginger ale?”

  The name on that envelope caught in the hasp of the suitcase was Jones. “Whatever you like, Mrs. Jones,” Jed said.

  She was startled. Her body stiffened as she held herself high in surprise. Then her reddish lashes swept down. Into the phone she said, grandly, “Please send ice and ginger ale to Mrs. Jones in 807.”

  Jed guessed she was being some movie star or other. But they’d cut a line out of the picture. She forgot to ask for room service. The operator obliged. Looking over Jed’s head, posed like a model for a photograph of glamour, the girl repeated her order with exactly the same inflections. It was mimicry, all right.

  But when she hung up her whole face changed. “I’m not Mrs. Jones,” she told him with sly delight. “Mrs. Jones went out” This wasn’t mimicry. It was … odd.

  Jed looked mildly interrogative.