The Order of Death

by Hugh Fleetwood

  ‘Are you okay Fred?’ he heard a harsh, bright, unsympathetic voice ask.

  He opened his eyes and stared. And now, suddenly, he no longer saw the small plump girl as some nameless force of evil, some dark, threatening, symbolic figure, but as a real person whose face he hadn’t even looked at properly; a person with a face, what was more, that—in spite of the fact that it had changed in the two years since he had last seen it—he recognized. He stared at the over-elaborate, rather old-fashioned and unflat­tering hair style—that was all stiff waves, and curls—he stared at the body, that was really too plump to be encased in blue jeans and a tight sweater and an old fur coat, he stared at the grey eyes, at the small nose, at the red sardonic mouth and the pale moustache above it that was more noticeable now than it had been two years ago, and then, unexpectedly—extraordinarily for him—he laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant laugh, he heard, or even a laugh of amusement; but he couldn’t control himself. It was a laugh of terrible relief.

  ‘Hi Lenore,’ he said, finally.

  She narrowed her eyes, and her mouth twisted into the grim smile she always wore, he remembered, when she was moving into an attack. It was the same smile she had worn, he remem­bered, when he had absurdly asked her, four and a half years ago, to marry him….

  ‘So,’ she cracked, ‘I’m hilarious. But do you have to run away from me when you see me? What the hell are you doing?’

  Fred gazed down at her, and became serious now. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but I just didn’t recognize you. I mean—I didn’t see you.’

  ‘For Chrissake. I was standing next to you on the platform at Forty-Second Street and you looked right at me.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Fred repeated.

  ‘I thought maybe you hadn’t recognized me, or didn’t want to see me. So I got in the next car. But then you came up and looked at me in there. So I thought shit. And then when you got off I thought I’d get off too, and speak to you, and then you looked right through me again. And then I thought I was being ridiculous, so I decided to let you get on this last train by your­self, and I’d wait for the one after. And now—you get right off again. I guess you thought I’d got on.’

  Fred nodded; and then said, once again, ‘I’m sorry Lenore. I just didn’t recognize you. Your hair’s different, and—I dunno. I just wasn’t expecting to see you, and—I dunno. I mean you look—’ he stopped. He was going to say ‘you look like some old Jewish matron’, but he guessed that was rude; what was more it wasn’t—now that he was close to her—true; though it would be in a couple of years. He thought of her as she had been when he had first met her, with her hair long and unstyled and just naturally wavy, and her body thin—well slim, anyway—and tiny.

  Only the voice hadn’t changed; that metallic, oh-so-aware and you-can’t-fool-me voice, that was saying now, in the tones of a lady journalist doing her unsentimental and unflinching research into the quirks and aberrations of human nature, ‘Who the hell were you expecting to see?’

  ‘I dunno,’ Fred murmured, helplessly.

  ‘Oh for Chrissake. You were running away from me—or from whoever you thought I was.’

  ‘No,’ Fred said.

  Lenore thrust her hands into the pocket of her ratty old fur and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. She took one and lit it, defiantly.

  Feeling that it was expected of him, Fred murmured, ‘You can’t smoke here.’

  Lenore paused long enough to thank him, with her eyes, for the opening he had given her, then glanced up and down the platform, and said, ‘There are no cops about, except for you.’

  Fred stared at her.

  ‘Where are you going then, if you won’t tell me who you’re running away from? Off to arrest someone? Or to rip someone off so you won’t have to arrest them?’

  ‘No,’ said Fred, helplessly. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

  Lenore laughed.

  ‘How’s Bob?’

  ‘You’re asking me? You work with him. You must see him more than I do.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. But I haven’t seen him recently.’

  Lenore gazed at him thoughtfully now, and said, quietly, ‘Bob’s scared of the cop-killer.’

  Fred nodded.

  ‘I don’t like him going out by himself.’

  ‘Does he ever?’

  ‘Go out by himself? Oh sure.’ Lenore was still gazing at him. ‘Sometimes he goes out for long walks by himself. To think, he says. I told him he’ll have to think about me, from now on. Until they’ve caught the nut. If they ever do. I get scared when he’s on duty though.’

  ‘He’s never alone when he’s on duty.’

  ‘I know, but—’ the thoughtful gaze continued.

  Fred, to make her stop, said, ‘When did you get back?’

  ‘This morning. How’d you know I’d been away?’

  ‘Bob told me.’

  ‘I thought you hadn’t seen him recently.’

  Oh, she was sharp….

  ‘I haven’t. Not really. But I see him for a minute or two every now and then. He told me you were away. I asked after you.’

  ‘That was thoughtful of you Fred.’

  Another train came into the station. Lenore said, ‘Are you taking this one, or am I, or are we both?’

  ‘You take it,’ Fred muttered, as if there were only one available place. ‘I think I’ll walk for a while.’

  Once more the thoughtful gaze settled on him. ‘You’re crazy,’ Lenore said, as pleasantly as she knew how. ‘You know that, don’t your?’

  Fred nodded.

  ‘Okay then. Look after yourself, O’Connor.’

  Fred attempted a smile, and watched Lenore as she got on to the train. He waited for the doors to close.

  They didn’t.

  Lenore was standing near them, and Fred said, ‘Where are you going?’

  Lenore laughed. ‘I’m going to have lunch with some old chums of mine who have just moved back to New York. They’ve bought a grand apartment on Central Park West, and want to show it off to me. Schmucks.’

  ‘What number?’ Fred said—casually, but guessing, already, the reply.

  ‘Eight-eight. Why? Do you,’ Lenore mocked, ‘have some old chums at eighty-eight, by any chance?’

  Fred was saved from having to answer by the doors, at last, closing. He just managed to say, ‘See you soon.’

  He saw Lenore murmur something, and stare at him through the glass.

  And then the train pulled out.

  He walked up to the street. It was a grey and yellow day, and was obviously going to snow again any second. But he hardly noticed the weather, or anything else. He felt too exhausted by his meeting with Lenore. He felt too exhausted to feel bad about his behaviour—about the absurd hide and seek he had played with her, about not having recognized her immediately—he felt too exhausted to be ashamed of his ridiculous answers to her questions, he felt too exhausted to be angry about her man­ner, and he felt too exhausted even to worry, or consider the im­plications, of her final words. So—she knew about the apartment. Bob had told her, or she had followed Bob. Or she really was going to have lunch with some old chums—how he hated the way she spoke!—who just happened to have an apartment in the same block as his. It would be a coincidence of course, but Lenore was the sort of person who would have friends living there. Fashionable, liberal friends, who just adored Lenore, and would adore Bob when they met him, if they hadn’t, and didn’t already. His compassion would be great enough even for them, and they would—without a hint of sarcasm in their voices—say ‘he’s a really fine, good person’. Oh yes, they would adore him, and think him a saint, and their adoration would be completely genuine and uncondescending. Because being Lenore’s friends, they would be truly liberal….

  But he didn’t care. If Lenore knew or not, it was all the same. He was too exhausted. Perhaps, he thought, if he ever did actually meet Smith, he would find that he knew him too. Per­haps he was Lenore’s brother….

  He raised his hand,
stopped an empty cab, and told the driver to take him to Central Park West.

  *

  It was just a big empty apartment. That was all. There was nothing secret about it, nothing special about it. Everyone knew about it, and no one cared. It was Fred O’Connor’s soul, and it was a big empty space. They probably laughed about it, and him, and his passion for it. They probably said to each other, ‘You can’t even take Fred’s corruption seriously. It’s so innocent really. And so sad, and boring. At least if he took fancy girls out to fancy restaurants, or took fancy vacations or bought fancy foreign cars. But no—just a big, empty apartment. Poor Fred. Poor, poor Fred …’ Oh, he could hear them all say it. All of them, in their different ways. All of whom? All of them, he told himself savagely as he sat hopelessly in his armchair, looking round his empty room. All of them. And They had sent Smith to him just to amuse Themselves; just to see him flit around him, and torture him, like a fly round the nose of a bull who is lying wounded in the ring, too weak to move, but not yet dead—nor likely to die for a long long time. After all—why stick that little knife in behind his neck, when it was so amusing, so much fun to see him lying there, twitching on the hot and bloody sand, being driven insane by that fly who was buzzing round him, settling on his nostrils, in his ears, in his eyes….

  And Lenore, he was sure, was their ringleader. Bright, smart Lenore with her harsh, smart voice and her moustache, who had always wanted to get her revenge on him for having once made love to her, for having dared to ask her to marry him, and for, possibly, having introduced her to Bob, who she had married. Bright, smart Lenore, journalist and author of one critically praised but hardly sold novel, who had caught for an instant a glimpse of his dream—and who had, for an instant, been fascinated by it. And he, Fred thought, like a fool, had taken her fascination for approval; had taken it even as a longing to share in that dream. Wasn’t she, after all, the literary lady, one of the great apostles of clear, classical writing; wasn’t she the great champion of editors, and editing, who believed that the book of life, as it were, could always be improved by a thorough purge of the careless, of the romantic, of the personal and subjective, so that what remained was the clear, perfect image; the bright, diamond hard object. She had told him so, at any rate, and he had believed her. But he had also believed that her vision wasn’t limited only to the world of books. He had believed she was trying to tell him something more. Oh, what a fool he’d been. He should have realized that she had discussed literature with him simply in the hope that he wouldn’t understand what she was talking about, or simply as a hint that his vision—his romantic, personal, subjective vision—could do with some editing; just as he should have realized that her brief fascination with him was the fascination of a city-bred person who goes to a zoo to stare at an exotic and rather hideous animal, and thanks God that—con­servationist that one is, of course—there ain’t no such animals in one’s own life.

  What a fool, what a fool he had been. Because, taken in by Lenore, and believing that her love-making had been serious—whereas it had only been the literary lady, eager for experience, indulging in a bit of bestiality; the literary lady from the city taking notes on the jungle—and being, according to his own lights, an honest man, a man of integrity, he had gone straight home and told Helen. And Helen—the good, kind, friendless Mrs. O’Connor—hadn’t said a word; had simply, when he was working next day, packed her bags, and left him. He had got, soon after, a letter from her lawyer, telling him that she was starting divorce proceedings. She hadn’t wanted alimony; she hadn’t wanted anything. She had simply decided that she couldn’t remain married to an adulterer; someone who couldn’t stick to the rules—those rules which were, after all, the only thing that bound them together. Fred had considered going after her; going to beg her to come back to him. But he hadn’t; partly because he knew she was right—one couldn’t break the rules and hope to get away with it—and partly—mainly—because he was, in spite of his being upset by her departure, and furiously angry with Lenore for having tricked him, betrayed him, humiliated him, glad to be alone; glad that nothing stood be­tween him and his private life; his real life; his apartment.

  Of course Lenore, when he told her what had happened, was properly contrite and apologetic, and even went so far as to suggest that she should go to Helen and say it was all her fault; that she, Moll Flanders of Greenwich Village, had seduced Mr. O’Connor, and had never imagined that her action would have led to anything as drastic as a separation or a divorce. But again, partly because he was basically glad to be alone, and partly be­cause, decent man as he was, he wanted to spare Helen from bright, teacherous Lenore; spare her the literary lady’s explana­tions, and the lecture—such as she had given him—on how the breaking of the rules, just once, only made one more conscious of them; made one realize the importance of them; made one realize that ugly though it may seem to be (though it wasn’t, really) compromise and acceptance, not an ideal, were the true basis of a real relationship, he told her not to bother; forbade her to in fact.

  He forbade her to; but up in the apartment, in the great pano­ramic space of his soul, he planned his revenge. And it had been almost too easy. Because Lenore’s sharpness, wit, and snappy intelligence were, ultimately, no match for his world-embracing vision, his perfectly trained instinct for the laws—the real laws —of nature. After all, what was Lenore, for all her city shape, if not a rather pathetic snake; a glittering poisonous creature with a flickering tongue and bright beady eyes, who knew that if she lay in the sun too long, her blood would boil; and who had therefore learned to live in the shade and wait for the dumber, more lovely animals to wander past, so that she could destroy their grace, and their chance of wandering in the day where she could never go. She was a snake, and she rejoiced in the fear and awe which she inspired, and thought that her poison and her fangs made her superior to—and safer than—the other animals who blundered past her. And they would have done, but for one thing; if she hadn’t had, deep down in her serpent body and mind, a longing to forget her dangerous blood; a longing just to lie in the forbidden sun, and be dumb as the other animals; and a great pity for herself because she couldn’t. And this pity made her vulnerable; made her weak and helpless before anyone who was able to see it, and who could offer her the compassion that she so deeply longed for; who could feel sorry for her poison and her fangs and her condemnation to the shade.

  And the one man who did have compassion enough even for poisonous Lenore was, of course, Bob. And so, one day, he had introduced them….

  The beauty of this revenge was, of course, that it was double-edged. Because while Lenore would be rendered weak and vulnerable by the compassionate Bob, she would also hate him for the power he had over her, and while she was—as she had told Fred icily one day six months before her marriage—passion­ately in love with Bob, she would also, involuntarily, be searching for a chance to re-assert her snake nature, and bite him. And she would find her chance, one day. Maybe she would find out about the apartment, or maybe something else would happen. But she would find it, and she would bite. And while Bob—as he had told Fred mournfully one day—was passionately in love with her, he knew this, and was frightened of her. Just as he was frightened of Fred, sorry for him though he was too, because he knew that Fred had in turn the power to give Lenore the chance she was searching for….

  Oh, it was perfect! At least, it had seemed perfect, when it had all happened, just as he had planned it. But now, as he sat alone in his apartment, it no longer seemed so perfect. It no longer seemed perfect at all. It just seemed like an empty, silly game he had played—and a game, what was more, that was going to backfire. Because, it suddenly and dreadfully came to him, the only possible explanation of Smith was that the youth, whoever he was—perhaps his name really was Smith—was a journalist of some sort, working for Lenore. Bob had obviously told Lenore about ‘poor Fred’s’ apartment—without, equally obviously, saying that he was half owner of it, or indeed had anything
to do with it—and Lenore, in a slack moment, and not knowing what to write about, had decided to do another story about the police. Only this piece, unlike the articles she had been writing when she had first met Fred, which had been about the mystique of the police, and their social and psychological signi­ficance, was going to be about the corruption of the police. And while, before, she had found Fred unsuitable as material, now—no doubt with joy—she had found him more than suitable. He could just imagine her article; a cleverly angled little gem, more about human folly than corruption. ‘Take the example of one Officer known to me; what does he do with his money? He buys an empty apartment …’

  She would probably win the Pulitzer Prize; and she would almost certainly destroy him. And the fact that he could tell her about Bob’s involvement didn’t really help him in any way. Sure, it would break up their marriage; but what satisfaction would that be if he had lost his apartment, been thrown out of the police, and was maybe serving time?

  He put his head in his hands. It was all so clear now. Every­thing. Bob had told Lenore about the apartment as a sort of safety measure, so that if she ever found out he’d been going there—well, he could say that everyone went to visit poor Fred sometimes. And then Lenore had decided to write her article, and had hired Smith to do some research for her; get a look at the apartment if possible, maybe have a talk with ‘poor Fred’. And when she had told Bob what she was doing, Bob had probably first tried to persuade her not to, and then, when that was useless, and he had realized that his part in it might get known, he had asked Fred to buy him out; hoping that all the papers could be signed and dealt with before the article appeared —or at least before Fred himself suspected what was going on. That way there was only one owner of the apartment—Fred O’Connor—and there would be less danger of Lenore, or any­one else, finding out the truth. And finally, Fred thought, he was certain that Lenore wouldn’t have told Bob about Smith. He would never have approved. That would have been too cruel….