Dark Stain

by Appel, Benjamin

  She said. “What a lug you are.” She was smiling.

  “Why?”

  “You proposed to me on the bus and at the same time you noticed when we came to my block.”

  “Your block haunts me. You know, Suzy, after the hearing last Monday I walked and walked and I walked, without thinking of it, down Columbus Avenue.”

  “We better not stay here,” she said. “Somebody’ll come in.”

  “Goodnight — ”

  “I didn’t mean for you to say goodnight.”

  “What? Suzy — ”

  “Let’s go.”

  “Look,” he said and stopped.

  “I know,” she said.

  They climbed the tiled stairs to the third floor and stood in a tiled corridor with walls painted a greenish blue. All the locked doors were numbered in faded gilt and empty milk bottles stood on guard. “Look,” he said, reaching for her. Without waiting for him to pull her forward, she swayed towards him and into him and he gasped. He kissed her on the neck and then gently poked her round black hat from off her forehead. “Look,” he said.

  “Darling.”

  “I better go. Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight.” She seized his arm and they kissed again.

  “No fooling, we’ll get married soon.”

  “I don’t want you to go.”

  “I don’t either but — ”

  “Don’t go.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t be nuts.”

  “I’m nuts about you.”

  He trembled. “It’s good to know.”

  “Don’t go.”

  “Don’t make it tough for me.”

  “I’m not trying to make it tough for you.”

  “Suzy.”

  “Suppose you were leaving for the Army?”

  “I’m not in the Army. I’m not leaving.”

  “We’d be together. We’d — we’d see all we could of each other, make all the love we could if you were leaving.”

  “I’m not leaving.”

  “Suppose something happens to you?” She pressed her cheek against his chest and he heard her sob convulsively.

  “Suzy.”

  “I don’t want you to go. I don’t want you to go.” She looked at him and her eyes glittered and her voice had a hysterical sing-song tone. “I don’t want you to say goodnight. I don’t want to hear your shoes going down the corridor and down the stairs until I can’t hear your stupid old leather heels and run to the window and watch you on the sidewalk, always leaving me.”

  “Look here, Suzy.”

  “Sam, don’t leave me.”

  “Your mother. All she’ll need! To know!”

  “Mother’s sleeping. She won’t know. I’ll get you up in time. You’ll go before Mother wakes. Oh, damn you for making me think of you going.”

  He took her hand and it seemed that this was the first time in his life that he had held her hand, or known her hand, small and warm and clinging. And he thought that it was no use talking any more for the time for talking and saying goodnight was over between them and suppose something did happen to him in Harlem. He looked at her steadily and this was the first time in his life that he had so seen her, as if the tin latticework of wisecracks had melted away and never been and all that was clear to the eye was her love for him. She was beautiful to him then in her awry black hat, her hair fluffing over her forehead, in her black dress with the monogrammed “S” that now was truly both their names, her face dreamy as it had been downstairs in the lobby but also tense with passion, her lips protruding a little and her face flushed so that her skin seemed alive, so alive, her livingness poured into him and a vision of her body pounded in him, white and sweet-meated, and he felt dizzy.

  “Come,” he said.

  Without another word they walked to her door. She took the key out of her pocketbook and smiled at him. “Lug,” she said.

  “You think your mother’ll be up?”

  “No. You tiptoe down the corridor into the living room.” She inserted the key, unlocked the door, pushed it open. The corridor was a black square in his eyes. She took his hand and led him into the living-room. “Stay here,” she whispered and kissed him. He hugged her and she seemed to collapse against him and then she was squirming out of his grip. She left him and he listened to her, sure-footed in the darkness. Light exploded. He saw Suzy at a maple end table at the head of the studio couch. On the end table, a lamp with a maple base and a parchment shade was glowing. Her mother had already made up the studio couch for sleeping. The pillow shone in his eyes like a mound of snow. She smiled at him and hurried out of the living room. He watched her until she was gone and then tiptoed over to the windows. Both windows were open and he looked out on the street. Singing tipsy voices drifted up to him and he knew that they belonged to the furnished roomers staggering home from the taverns on Columbus Avenue. Suddenly, he yanked down the window shades, one after another, and sat down in the green soft chair opposite the studio couch and the white pillow. He thought he had pulled down the shades for no reason at all. In this street, there were no neighbors; nobody cared what anybody did. In the furnished rooms were cafeteria girls and machinists and laborers; in the tenements the large families; it was a street like a train onto which people were always coming and going and only a few families like the Buckles lingered on in the shabby genteel apartment houses. Restlessly, aching for Suzy to return to him, his eyes roamed about her room. Under the end table, he noticed a pile of cheap white paper magazines, the radical weeklies she was always reading. Near the lamp were a few newspapers. He crossed over and picked up the top newspaper: REDS KILL 12,000 NAZIS. God, he thought, dropping the paper and returning to the soft chair. He sank into its depths and glared at the points of his shoes. His eyes again shifted to the magazines but he didn’t feel like reading about the war and the fascists and copperheads in the land. He wanted Suzy to come back to him. He repeated her name to himself over and over. He tried variations: Soozy, Suzy, Sussy, Soo-zy. He heard the shower in the bathroom and a picture of Suzy sloshing water on her naked body made him tremble. He wondered how he would be able to use the bedroom. He would be in the bathroom, washing and the door would open and Mrs. Buckles in a nightgown would come in and what would he say then. “How do you do Mrs. Buckles? I’ve come to make love to Suzy and you’re going to be my mother-in-law. You see I’m liable to get hurt or killed next week so I hope you don’t mind.” He grinned in a sick way. And what would Mrs. Buckles say? She would hold herself straight and her eyes would be hard behind her glasses and she would say, “I might have expected something of this sort from one of your kind.” Oh, God, Sam thought; come on back Suzy. He dug out his pack of cigarettes, smoked one through and was lighting a second from the coal of the first when Suzy returned. She was smiling as when she had left him but now she wasn’t in the black trim dress and the black lizard-skin shoes. She was wearing green pyjamas and she was wide awake, her face glistening from hot water and soap, and it was morning, bright early morning, that was also and at the same time night, in her eyes. He extinguished the cigarette in an ash tray and leaped out of the chair. Her hair was brushed back straight from her forehead and she seemed to flow towards him like a wave. He held her tight and felt her breasts flatten against his chest and remembered how he had pressed them on the bus ride but they were free now, out of slip and dress, and the sensation that he had already felt several times that night, of having never seen her before, hummed through him and he touched her wide cheekbone and said, “Hello.”

  She pushed him away. “Get washed. I’ve left the light on in the bathroom. One minute.” She laughed a little. “Take your shoes off first. Those leather heels,” she giggled and kissed him.

  He took off his shoes and rushed out of the living room to the bathroom. He closed the door. The old-fashioned tub, high off the floor on four legs shaped like lions paws, reminded him of Mrs. Buckles. Sleep on, old woman, he thought madly. He inhaled the scent of
Suzy’s powder and thought: Sleep on for I love her, old woman.

  Suzy was under sheet and blanket when he came back. “Come here,” she said, “and I’ll put the light out.” He walked over to the couch and her hands slid up out of the green full pyjama sleeves and she clasped him around the neck. “You put out the light,” she whispered.

  Blackness. He sat on the edge of the studio couch and felt her body against his thigh. He got out of his clothes and piled them on the floor and slid under the sheet. His hands found her and he said, “I used your towel in the bathroom.” He felt her lips find his and they locked together. “Sam,” she said. “You won’t take any chances?” “What do you mean?” he said. “I’ve taken precautions.” “I don’t mean that.” “Oh, Harlem.” “Yes, Harlem. You won’t take any chances?” “No.” Her body moved closer into his body and she said in a shaking voice, “You’ll be careful, darling?” “Sure.” “You will?” “Sure, don’t worry, I love you.” “I love you.” “When’ll we get married?” “Soon,” and with a flicker of humor she added, “Soon as you help me out of these pyjamas.” Fumbling, he helped her and then crushed her between his arms, his lips on her neck. “I love you,” he whispered, his lips on her neck. “It came to me tonight, next week — I’ll need a week to break it to mother about us getting married,” she murmured. “Wait’ll she meets my folks,” Sam said laughing.

  They smothered their laughter, kissed and between their lips there was nothing any more, no families, no problems, and he kissed her eyelids and kissed her breasts and his hands stroked down the line of her waist and out on the broadening hips, and his lips and his hands weren’t enough to feel and to hold all the beauty of her. His head was burning as if there were a flame inside his head and the flame was in his lips and surged into the ends of his ten fingers, and his lips and his hands weren’t enough for feeling and holding the soft curve of her neck and the round swell of her belly and the angle of her knee and the coolness of her arms and the warmth of her thighs. His breath fanned in and out, and his lips stayed on her burning hot lips and he lifted his body onto her body, trying to hold all of her under him and within him, to feel and to hold forever, and he swelled with passion and the burning seized him and he was fire leaping into a burning darkness and heard her moaning and clutching him with slipping hands and he descended into her, deep into her as if he had climbed slowly and endlessly up into some automatic elevator with her, an elevator a thousand stories high and the cables had snapped and he was falling, falling, falling, a pole of fire down through the shaft and the shaft was on fire, faster, faster, faster, and she was with him and down they were falling together, one together, through the burning shaft, through the endlessness forever with her and with her, with her …

  They lay together quietly for a long time, her head in the crook of his arm.

  “I better go soon, Suzy. It must be near dawn.”

  She bit playfully at his ear. “You heel, you can’t leave me like this. Oh, God, if I think of those leather heels of yours I’ll burst.”

  He smiled. “But your mother.”

  “A fine time to think of my mother.” Her voice was full of laughing even though it was only a whisper. “A fine time to think of my mother. A fine time to — ” She clutched her mouth with her hand and shook with suppressed laughter. “A fine — ”

  “You’re crazy,” he whispered and suddenly caught her fit. He buried his mouth in the pillow.

  “Sam.”

  “Stop,” he choked, his sides splitting. “St — ”

  “The leather heels.”

  “St — stop,” he pleaded.

  “Then go to sleep.”

  “Who’ll wake me?”

  “I will. I promise.” She kissed him swiftly. “Sam, I promise,” she said and her voice was serious and intense and eager.

  “Oh, I promise, Sam.”

  CHAPTER 8

  UNLOCKING the door of the apartment on Columbia Heights, Bill switched on the light. He was standing in a small kitchen with walls painted buff; he took a drink of water at the sink, locked the door and entered the living room. The two windows on the street reached from the floor to the white-scrolled plaster ceiling. The fireplace and mantel were marble, carved with stony cherries. Once this room had been the front parlor of some Brooklynite’s mansion, a huge room that stayed full of shadows as Bill turned on the floor lamp near the fireplace. Bamboo shades covered the windows and green portieres almost covered the shades. Bill sat down in a Morris chair, stretched his legs and glanced at his wrist watch. It was almost midnight. Hayden was due any minute and he better look alive, he thought; better shine up the old face with that success and confidence smile. Sitting there, worried and frowning, he hated this meeting place. It was a morgue house in a morgue street in a morgue part of the city, he brooded.

  Below Columbia Heights were the warehouses of Forman street. When the wind blew west, pepper and vinegar smells would eddy up into the apartment. Brooklyn Heights was a pepper and vinegar neighborhood, preserved almost intact out of the horse and carriage era. West of the warehouses, the docks fingered out into the scummy rainbow-oiled waters of the Harbor. Even now as he strained to hear Hayden’s footsteps on the echoing sidewalk outside the windows, the sirens of tugs bumping the freighters out to sea sounded mournful, yet menacing and always challenging. He hated it all, hated the towering St. George, where he and Isabelle had a room, and which seemed to be dropped into the middle of Brooklyn Heights, gigantic above the five-story houses, all modern plumbing and a swimming pool and subways moving in its depths like steel mice in a steel building. The St. George was of the new city, a mighty fragment that seemed to have been detached from the Wall Street skyscrapers across the Harbor in Manhattan. Every time Bill came to this apartment from the St. George, he had to wait for Hayden; he was always waiting; Hayden was always late.

  The door bell rang. Bill hastened to press the ticker in the kitchen. Downstairs, he heard the hall door click click click and then Hayden’s shoes ascending on the groaning stairs.

  Hatless, a short pipe in his mouth and wearing a brown sport jacket and a thin sleeveless white sweater, Hayden bounced lightly into the living room. He put his pipe on the mantel, dropped into the Morris chair. Hayden’s outfit for the night, Bill noted, was as usual, semi-countryish. “It’s a wonderful evening,” Hayden said, his long blond eyelashes almost meeting together, his eyes invisible. They were both sitting in the light of the floor lamp near the fireplace.

  “Yes,” Bill said and waited for Hayden to make his usual remark about the neighborhood. Hayden always did. Hayden liked Brooklyn Heights as Bill had discovered with astonishment, Hayden, this emotionless plotter for a new future, liked to live among the artists, the old men in brown derbies, the grey ladies subsisting on the increment of dusty real estate deals and who shopped by taxi, the wives of the Navy officers, the schoolteachers, the Wall Street secretaries.

  “On my way here I saw a troopship come by under Brooklyn Bridge,” Hayden said. “They’re always coming by.”

  He had said his usual remark, Bill realized but it hadn’t been one of the more customary Norris Hayden footnotes on Brooklyn Heights history. “I met Big Boy this morning after I left here,” Bill said. “He wants more money.”

  “How much more?”

  “Five hundred.”

  “For what?”

  “For Aden again. He wants it at eleven tomorrow morning.

  “Give it to him.”

  “The damn nigger’s milking us. He’s only done one job. He’s pocketing the money, Hayden.”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Aden reports directly to Dent and Dent reports to me. I assure you that Aden will receive the five hundred.”

  Aden-Dent, Bill thought bitterly: the fixer and the nigger.

  Hayden continued, “The morning newspapers carry all the confirmation we need of Bose’s reliability. The Italian bar owners are sending a delegation to protest to both the Mayor a
nd the Police Commissioner.” He stood up, retrieved his pipe, knocking the ashes into the fireplace and filling the bowl with brown stringy tobacco. “Coming here tonight, I have been thinking of how eager Bose was to undertake this Italian assignment.”

  “Some of them tie up with the white numbers crowd. That’s why.”

  “What do you think of a stench bomb attack on a dozen or so of the larger bars?”

  “Now?”

  “Wednesday night if possible.”

  “It’s too soon, Hayden.”

  “We have an excellent chemist in the organization, Lester Darton. Lester can supply us with the stench bombs. An invaluable man, Lester — ”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Hayden, but I think it’s too soon.”

  “I must warn you about Lester, Bill. He is a reckless sort of individual, an anarchistic type. He is an excellent chemist, his work among the splinters is invaluable but his temperament — ”

  Bill was listening intently like an eager salesman who hoards every scrap of gossip about the personnel of the corporation for whom he works. He knew that keeping in touch with the splinter remnants of the one-time large groups disbanded by publicity, by the F.B.I. or other Government action was an important job.