Collected Fiction

by Kris Neville

  “Let’s go, Shelia,” Gib said nervously. “Let’s get out of here.”

  She pointed the snake at him playfully.

  “Don’t,” he muttered.

  “What’s the matter? You afraid?” she chided gently.

  “Of course not. Don’t be silly. I just don’t like the things. Give it back and let’s go.”

  “All right,” she said. “If you insist.”

  Once more on the midway, Gib said, “Why in the world did you want to handle that damned snake for?”

  She looked up into his face. It was harsh and angular and cold in the vicious electric lights. Her heart was still pounding with the excitement of the swamp symbol, the snake. “You wouldn’t understand,” she said.

  Uncomfortable silence fell between them; neither smiled. He guided her to a booth and bought two candied apples without asking if she wanted one.

  Leaning against the booth, his candied apple in his left hand, he said, “Shelia, that snake—”

  Her eyes darkened. “Look, Gib. Let’s not argue.”

  He flushed under the tan. For a moment he seemed about to snap something, but instead he said, in a quiet voice, “Of course not, Shelia.”

  The hot, southern night was clammy, and the air was stale with sweat and carnival smells.

  She reached up and fingered the opals around her neck. If I should ever lose him, she thought, I should hate as a wild thing hates; as the dark savage I am, deep inside of me. Her fingers moved on the opals. It was the same petting gesture she had given the snake.

  I have these, she thought, if I should ever lose him. All his joys—everything he has—are in these opals. If they are destroyed, he has nothing.

  “Honey,” he said, “Why don’t you let me buy you a string of pearls or something? Whoever heard of opals on a string, and a God-awful red string at that?”

  Her hand dropped away from her throat.

  “In New York—” he began.

  “I’ll wear them there, too,” she said desperately. “Oh, Gib, Gib, Gib, let’s not quarrel!”

  “Gib, you shouldn’t have brought me up here,” Shelia said suddenly.

  He pushed back his breakfast coffee, a hurt, puzzled look in his eyes.

  Nervously, she stood up and crossed to the window. She stared out, over roof tops, along Park Avenue from the Eighty-fourth Street apartment. The buildings were bleak and dirty and squalid, and the large flakes of falling snow were soot-blackened as they fell.

  “I hate this snow,” she said. “I hate the sight of it and the smell of it. I hate this city.” She turned from the window.

  He was standing by the table now and his hands hung loosely at his sides. “I won’t go down today if you don’t want me to.”

  “No,” she said. “Go on.”

  “Look. How’s this? I’ll get a couple of tickets to South Pacific, and—”

  “No!” she snapped. “For God’s sake, is that all you think about? Theater! Cocktail parties! And that damned Italian restaurant on Fifty-second street you’re so fond of!”

  The breakfast nook was neat and clean around them. The silver glistened beside alabaster plates. The thin glassware looked pathetically fragile without linen beneath it. The electric toaster popped and purred.

  “What’s the matter, honey?” he said after a moment.

  “You better go,” she said. “Please. Get out.”

  “Are you . . . sick?”

  “No. Please leave, Gib. Quickly.” After he was gone she stood staring out the window into the vacant cold. The snow was deadening; it covered the warm streets like a giant vampire, sucking out all the aliveness. The sky choked down, trapping the world in slow suffocation. It hungered after her body. She ached for the warm, moist world of the swamp.

  She whirled savagely from the window. She picked up the orange juice glass and dashed it to the floor. It shivered brightly in all directions.

  She went to the bedroom. It still had a warm, masculine odor. She opened the dresser and removed the choke string of opals. They were beautifully matched, tapering in pairs to the single, great, glowing one in the center. She held them in her hands, telling them slowly, as if she were holding a rosary. The opals were milky; they sparkled with rainbow dashes of fire. She held them up to the light, fascinated.

  She heard the maid come in, and she dropped the opals guiltily, and they lay in the drawer, no longer a symbol of love, no longer warm with love; cold with snow, north wind, and strange, city faces. She stared hard at their icy glitter.

  She crossed to the mirror and studied her face: her jet black hair, her creamy skin, her almost too large, sensuous mouth, her midnight eyes. Hard, vicious lines tightened in the corners of her mouth, and her hands curled tightly . . .

  When he came home from nine hours in the business world, Gib said, kissing her on the passively-offered cheek, “Shall we stay home tonight like old married folks?”

  “I want to go out,” she said.

  “Oh?” he said, raising his eyebrows. “I thought you said this morning . . . Well, all right, dear. If you want to. Shall I phone Elmer and Mary, and we’ll make it a foursome? How does the Waldorf sound?”

  “No,” she said, her eyes strange swamp pools. “I hate Mary!”

  He took off his heavy top coat. He hung the coat carefully on the hall tree. “What’s come over you, darling?”

  “Nothing,” she lied. “Nothing at all.”

  “The way you snap at me, it seems like whatever I say is going to be wrong.”

  Her lips curled too much at the “corners.

  “Look, Shelia. Now, see here!” But he couldn’t think of anything to continue with, so he turned uncertainly to adjust his top coat; he brushed at the sleeves and plucked at the collar. After a moment he said, “Where would you like to go tonight?”

  “Out,” she said. “Somewhere wild. Harlem. Somewhere where people drink and fight and sing and love and hate. Somewhere real!”

  He fumbled for a cigarette. “Look, Shelia. Why don’t you take a month and run down to your home? I’ll make the arrangements for you at—”

  “No,” she said very slowly. “No, I think I want to stay near you.” Her voice was husky. “I think I want to stay right here.”

  She picked up a man, without ever really looking at his face, in a little bar out somewhere near One-twenty-fifth Street. She took him back in a taxi, and he followed her up after loitering outside the apartment house for a few minutes, smoking restlessly. He pretended to be very skillful in such affairs, and he smelled of some astringent lotion and some cloying hair tonic and shoe polish. When it was over, she had difficulty getting him out of the apartment; and difficulty convincing him not to come back and not to phone.

  He was gone, and she sat alone on the disarrayed bed, giggling. She drank again from the nearly empty fifth of gin that she had brought back with her. Benny, their cocker, lying before the bed, beat a ceaseless tattoo on the deep rug with his nervous tail. She laughed a bit hysterically at the sound, and with drink-heavy hands she tried to smooth the bed. The shadows, slipping in with coming night, were alive and pulsing and sad.

  She drank again, and the bottle was empty, and she threw it to the silencing carpet where it lay on its flat, etched side, next to the dog.

  Her hair was twisted and awry. The choker string of opals was tight on her neck: she had worn them since morning. Her wrinkled, pink slip spilled from the broken strap of her left shoulder.

  The shadows muttered.

  She heard him at the door. She heard the elevator click shut and fall away, sighing.

  She ran from the bedroom, and Benny padded silently after her. She ran to her husband, barefoot, and simpering with eagerness.

  Gig saw at a glance and, disgusted, brushed past her.

  She followed him from the outer door down the short hallway, but at the doorway opening on the two steps down into the living room, she stopped. “Why’n’cha say somethin’ ?” she lisped.

  Staring not at her, b
ut at the trunk from Ceylon that rested on a squat stand against the far wall beside the flexible lamp, he said, “You’re drunk, Shelia.”

  “Why’n’cha tell me I’m no good?” she demanded, screwing her face savagely in fury.

  Still without looking at her, pity in his eyes now, he said, “You better go take a cold shower, Shelia.”

  “Why’n’cha tell me I’m no good?” she insisted. “Why’n’cha say you wish I was dead?”

  Muscles jumped in his lean jaw. “Anyone can get drunk one time.”

  “There was a . . . man here . . . she said.

  His face changed and, for the first time since his initial inspection, he turned to look at her. His eyes were suddenly understanding. “Is it about your parents?” he asked quietly. “Did something happen to your parents? What is it?”

  She hiccoughed. “Nothin’ happen’ to my parents. There was a man here’s all.”

  “You’re drunk, Shelia.”

  “I slep’ with him!” she cried in drunken glee. “There was a man here, an’ I slep’ with him!”

  There was a shocked instant of silence, during which even the shadows were still.

  “You brought me up here,” she shrieked, “and you made me come up here, and now you’ve trapped me here, an’ I’m caught in th’ walls an’ a li’le bit of me is in the skies an’ I’ve got to get all of me back! You made me do it. You made me sleep with him, an’ I won’ forget . . . Why’n’cha tell me I’m no good!”

  His head bowed. He turned toward the bedroom. His lips were a thin line.

  “Ain’t’cha gonna call me a bitch!” she screamed.” Why’n’cha tell me I’m a nogood bitch?”

  He left the room.

  “I guess I showed you you couldn’t treat me like—like—like . . . I guess I showed you!” she screamed after him.

  He was packing. After a while she heard a suitcase lid slam and the lock catch. He came out of the bedroom and she stood waiting, and he brushed her aside angrily, calling, “Here, Benny! Here, Benny! Here, Benny!”

  She weaved after him. “You think it’s my fault, a’m’fault, don’ ya?”

  He knelt to take the dog. “Don’ ya, don’ ya!”

  “No,” he said. “I blame myself, too.” He held out his hand. “Here, Benny, come on, old boy.”

  “You should!” she crowed. “You should. It is your fault, all your ownswee’li’le fault, an’ I’m gonna remember it!”

  Gib put the squirming dog under his right arm and seized the suitcase viciously in his left hand. He stood up. “I’ll send for the rest of my stuff.”

  “I’m gonna go home,” she said drunkenly. “I’m all apart, an’ I can’t leave’anything.” She began to sob. “When I get myself back, I’m gonna go home.”

  He stared at her.

  “Get out!” she cried hysterically.

  After the door closed behind him arid the dog, she stood dazed and unmoving. Finally, in a dream-like stupor, she reached up and freed her neck of the opals, breaking the string, spilling the gems loose into her hand. She selected a small one, placed the rest in a careful pile on the mantelpiece. She looked at the small opal, and her eyes were feverish. Hypnotized by it, she walked leadenly to the kitchen. She put the opal on the floor. She took the electric iron, seldom used, from its dusty shelf. She pounded the opal with the base of the iron, and when it splintered into tiny fragments, she pounded them, and then she began to cry.

  Downstairs, Benny squirmed out of Gib’s arms and dashed in front of a hurrying Checkered Cab. There was a squeal of brakes, an excited snarl, a simultaneous thump and yip, and Benny lay dead and mangled in the slush.

  “Hello,” Elmer said nervously, avoiding Shelia’s eyes. He hesitated a moment, his upper lip twitching angrily. “May I come in?”

  She stepped back from the door.

  She did not offer to take his coat, and he stood awkwardly beside her in the narrow hall. She did not look at him. She studied the Japanese print of a dove on a twisted branch that was hanging beside the hall mirror. The week-old flowers on the table were withered and dead.

  “We better go in and sit down,” he said.

  Silently, she led the way.

  When they were seated, he hunted beneath his top coat for his cigarette case, and without asking permission, he lit a cigarette. “I’ve just come from Gib,” he said. “He was getting drunk again. He’s never tried to drink much; I guess you know that. He gets drunk and keeps on drinking. See here, now, Shelia, he’s had a very bad week.”

  Shelia crossed to the mantelpiece, rising from her chair as if in a dream. The opals were there in a box of white cotton, and four of them were missing. She fingered the box. “He phoned me to say I Benny was dead,” she said. “I told him not to phone me anymore. But I think he was trying to call today. I didn’t answer the phone.”

  Elmer jerked the cigarette nervously. “He’s actually physically sick, Shelia. He’ll ruin his health. I think you should see him.”

  “No.”

  “He lost the wedding band you gave him. He’s almost hysterical j about it. He wants to know if he lost it while he was packing here?” She fingered a spot where an opal had lain. “No,” she said, “He didn’t lose it here.”

  Elmer put the cigarette in the ash tray; his face was frozen in harsh lines. “He got a telegram this morning. His mother is very ill. He was too drunk when it j came to make much sense out of it. And now he’s getting drunk all over again. If you’d see him, maybe you could straighten him out enough to go up to see her.” She smiled faintly, rubbing the pot where the opal she had shattered last night had lain. “I can’t go back to him,” she said. The remaining deadly opals were dark lire.

  “Look here, damn it!” Elmer snapped, his face reddening with anger. “By God, after what he’s done for you, I think you could show a little concern! He brought you up here and gave you a beautiful home and beautiful clothes and did everything he could in God’s green earth to make you happy! I don’t know what kind of a person you are, but I can’t imagine anyone asking for better treatment than you got! I think at least for that, if not for anything else, you could see him! I think you owe him that much! You owe him at least that!”

  She stared at the box in silence.

  “My God, woman, what are you after!”

  She whirled on him. “Myself!” she cried. “I’m after myself! He took me! Don’t you see, I’ve got to get myself back! There’s some one in this hideous cold room, and there’s some of me in his mother. There was some of me in Benny and the ring. I’ve got to get it all back so I can be whole again! He brought me up here and little by little I lost pieces of myself because he couldn’t hold me together, and little by little I’ve got to get them back, and then I can go away. He brought me here to this hungry city, and I want to hurt him like he hurt me, but most of all I’ve got to be whole again!” She was sobbing. “I hate him! I hate him!”

  “What are you trying to do to him!”

  “Shut up! Shut up!”

  “You crazy, sadistic bitch!”

  “I hate him,” she cried.

  Then the door slammed, and Elmer was gone. Shelia went to a chair and sat unmoving, her lips parted, her breathing shallow. Seconds fell like the dust of Caesar. And then she stirred. Her hand, like a dying bird, fluttered weakly.

  The day after Elmer called, she went out and slipped her address—in a note that she put beneath the saucer along with a twenty-dollar bill—to a soda jerk. He came as soon as he could, as she had known he would.

  She made him sit down. He twisted nervously in the chair, staring around at the expensive apartment. He smiled nervously.

  “It’s all in these opals,” she said. “They were put in the opals.”

  In the corner, although the soda jerk would not see her, the witch chuckled dryly, like dead, burning leaves.

  “That’s all my husband’s joys, don’t you see?” she said intently. “I have to punish him for what he did to me. But that’s not all. No. I’
m not whole any more, not until I get all of myself back! Until I get all our night whispers and love words and caresses and laughter and hot sweat and moans and tears and everything!”

  The soda jerk squirmed, twisting his head on his skinny neck.

  She leaned toward him, smelling of perfume. “I wish you were a garbage collector,” she said thickly. “I wanna find a garbage collector, so me and him can go to the Stork Club.”

  The soda jerk massaged his bony Adam’s apple, and Shelia frowned drunkenly. “That’ll show him,” she said. “I want to hurt him.” She held out her arms. “Come here. I want you to . . . Come here!”

  “Gosh, Miss . . . I . . . I don’t understand you at all, not at all.”

  She bit her lip. She hesitated. Then she crossed nervously to the phonograph, put on a stack of records.

  “Let’s dance,” she said, breathing heavily. “You can understand me. I’m easy to understand.”

  The soda jerk refused to look into her eyes.

  The witch fell silent in the corner when the music came, but the shadows beyond the lamp waited restlessly, and the opal fire on the mantelpiece pulsed uneasily.

  The soda jerk was gone. He had fled, and she sat by herself on the sofa for some time. The telephone began ringing. She walked the apartment without answering it.

  She took another drink, and the old witch said, “Shelia Larson’s afraid!”

  The opals pulsed hate. Her breathing was shallow. She picked up an opal, replaced it. It lay glittering. Repelling and attracting, and all the room focused waiting on the opal, and the witch said, “Shelia Larson’s afraid!” And the opal fire twisted sinuously.

  She went to the bath and turned on the shower, and flowing through routine movements undressed and got beneath it.

  The water was spring rain upon white lilies, and her body trembled, and dripping down the drain the water said, “One, two, three, four . . .”

  She stood, drying, before the mirror. She studied her sweaty face. Quickly she turned away and slipped into the robe. She knotted the belt with trembling fingers.

  Back in the living room, the phonograph was still playing. She poured herself a drink when she came out of the bathroom.