The pain almost made him faint. He felt warm blood dribbling down over his wrist and into his palm. He stumbled around on the platform, waves of darkness lapping at his feet.
“No, no, no” he sobbed, “I don’t want to.”
He started sharply as a screeching whistle came from the black tunnel. The station grew more clear to his gaze. He found himself looking down at the dead man in horror. What if someone saw him? They would stop him!
“No!”
Without thinking, he grabbed the limp right hand of the man and dragged him along the platform leaving a trail of blood behind. His own left hand hung uselessly at his side. In a moment he’d dragged the body behind a refuse box. Then he hurried out and ran to the edge of the platform. He looked down and saw two white lights approaching and heard the far-off roar of the train. He shook his head to clear the mists from his eyes.
He looked down at his left hand. What if someone saw the blood dripping from the end of it? With his right hand, he hurriedly put the left into the raincoat pocket, gritting his teeth, his face white.
Then he stood there waiting nervously, his stomach throbbing spasmodically. What if they saw the man? What if they stopped him from getting to Bob? What if they saw his arm? He wanted to scream. What if he had no bullets left? What if the girl had called the police? What if the guard had regained consciousness? What if he bled to death?
He stood there shaking and whimpering in terror as the train moved past him, filling his nostrils with hot rushing air. It slowed down and the lights played on his white features.
The train stopped and he saw, with a shock, that there were several people in the train. What if they…?
He closed his eyes tight for a moment and tried to make his mind a blank. He heard the door open and he looked straight ahead as he moved into the fluorescent illuminated car.
He lurched back into the hard straw seat as the train started and couldn’t stop the short cry of pain. His eyes moved nervously over the people. A man sitting across the aisle was looking at him. Vince lowered his head. He bit his lips to keep them from trembling.
He couldn’t keep his eyes down. He had to know if anyone were looking at him. He glanced up cautiously. No one was paying attention. He took a deep, faltering breath. Then he leaned back and relaxed.
Maybe things weren’t so bad after all. He had the raincoat and he was still on his way to kill Bob. If only—he closed his eyes and felt sweat break out on his forehead—if only the man hadn’t shot him. The fool! What right had he to shoot him—all for a miserable ten cents. He kept his eyes closed and the motion of the train began to make him sick. Pain fled about his body, first localizing in his stomach, then in his head, but always coming back sharply into his arm.
The train slowed down and stopped at the next station. Vince felt the blood collecting in his palm. If it didn’t stop it would start to drip on the floor of the train. No, it mustn’t. He had to get to 18th Street first. He looked out of the window. They were in the 80s. He closed his eyes again.
The doors closed and the train started. Vince drew in a ragged breath of the stale air. He opened his eyes and saw that a young Negro couple had come into the train. He looked blankly at them, sitting on the other side of the train and down a little ways. They weren’t talking to each other. Vince’s eyes moved to the girl’s sweater she wore underneath a sport jacket. He swallowed and closed his eyes again.
A rattling sound filled his throat and he shivered violently. It hurts! Suddenly he thought of his playing. Would his left hand be ruined?
What’s the difference? he told himself. I’ve only got one thing to do that matters and that’s to free Ruth.
He started to remember about her. He remembered the party at Stan’s where he’d met her. He remembered how they’d sat on a couch all evening and talked about music. She’d been so lovely and clean with her red knit dress and her shiny blonde hair with the ribbon in it. He had loved her from the start. Then later they had gone into the study and he had played for her. Then—he tightened at the remembrance—Jane had come in and spoiled it all, dragged them back into the noise and the smoke.
Clean, clean, clean. The wheels seemed to say the word as the train rushed through the black tunnel. Not like her. He closed his eyes. It was better she died when she did. If the car hadn’t gone over the embankment someone would have killed her sooner or later, the way she carried on.
Your mother was a bitch, pure and simple.
He stared at the floor dizzily. The noise of the train wavered in his ears and he had to keep blinking to keep the view before him from blurring. He swallowed. The air seemed hard to breathe.
His eyes fled across the train. He saw the Negro girl looking down at the floor beside him with a look of revulsion on her face. Quickly he looked down.
A small pool of blood was collecting near his left foot. He almost cried out.
He looked up and gasped as a man got up and started over. Vince shoved up and backed against the door. He drove his right hand into his pocket and gripped the gun. The man stopped and looked at him curiously, then his eyes moved down to the bulge in the coat and he backed away nervously. He bumped into the seat he had just vacated and fell down awkwardly.
Time seemed to stand still. Vince thought he’d scream. The train went on and on, and all the people kept staring at him. He wanted to kick his way through the door. He didn’t care if he was flung into the blackness, but he couldn’t stand to have all these people looking at him.
The train started to slow down. A station, he’d have to get off here. He had to have help. His teeth chattered and he felt a chill run through him. The train stopped and he almost fell out as the door slid open. He bumped into a young couple.
“Say, watch it, Mac,” said the young man irritably.
Vince shoved past them with a sob. The young man said something he didn’t hear and then the door closed. Vince staggered across the platform and was afraid he was going to fall. He heard the train start and saw that no one had followed him out of the car, although several of them were glued to the window looking at him with wide-eyed curiosity.
“Pigs!” he screamed, and was drowned out by the train.
He staggered further and collided with the tile wall. He leaned against it gasping for breath.
Then he saw a sign that read Men, and he pushed away from the wall and made his way to the doorway. He tried to push through the door. It was locked. He stood there staring at it. But he had to have some water! He started to cry and leaned his head against the cold metal while the tears ran down his cheeks.
After a while, he drew his sleeve across his face and started walking along the station, ignoring the way the walls wavered before his eyes. I’m going to kill him, he kept telling himself. I’m going to kill him.
Stan.
2:30 AM
In dark stillness, she lay starkly awake, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. Under the black silk of her nightgown her firm breasts rose and fell and her long white fingers drew in and out at her sides like the delicately pumping claws of a cat. Her red nails made a rasping, scratching sound on the sheet. Her mouth was a stark red line that did not move. Jane was twenty-five and her body lay like a taut spring, waiting for something.
Across the space between the two beds Stan groaned and rolled onto his side, complaining in his sleep. She listened to him rustling on the sheet of his bed, heard the weak thud as he hit his pillow once. Then he cleared his throat and was silent again. She did not look toward him; her eyes remained fastened on the dark ceiling.
He was probably sick again. He was always sick after a party. He drank too much and ate too much and made himself sick. Most men, when they drank too much, didn’t eat at all. They filled their bodies with alcohol but took in no food to offset the breakdown of tissues. That’s why drunkards died usually, she thought. That’s why my dear old daddy died and left me the world he could never handle.
Her still painted lips pressed together now. She felt as if she
had to have something fragile in her hands, something she could crush between her straining fingers.
For a minute she closed her eyes and tried to sleep. She remembered how easy it used to be to sleep. Just a delicious exhaustion filling your body, just a closing of eyes and there you were. Now…
How could you sleep when your mind was like one of those toffee machines you see on amusement piers with those long arms turning and twisting, turning and twisting? Her brain was the toffee. She could almost visualize the metal arms twisting the great grey lengths of her mind. Desire twisted and folded over, frustration twisted and folded over. A deep sighing breath filled her lungs. Abruptly, she turned on her stomach and pressed her body into the bed. Her teeth gritted together and the column of her throat felt as if it were petrifying. God, to have Mickey Gordon in bed with her. Right now, here, even with Stan over there, what did she care? Or Johnny Thompson. Or Bill Fraser. Or Bob McCall, yes, that she’d like. Even if Ruth was her best friend. What was a friend for anyway?
Her white hands closed into tight fists. Her nails dug into her palms and she thought she was going to scream. Anyone! Even that gaunt and crazy Vince. Yes, maybe especially that gaunt and crazy Vince. That was what happened when you became a jaded connoisseur of the flesh, a jaundiced gourmet of love’s old song—no longer sweet but in need of new spices. You tired of the plain fares, you wearied of the common menu. You craved something exotic, something new. And, in consequence, you positively threw up at the thought of your husband—at best, a tasteless mush.
She dug her nails into the sheets now and writhed her hot body on the bed until the gown had worked its way past her hips. God, I’m going crazy, she thought. I’ll end up like Vince. One night I’ll get up quite calm and secure in my maniac shell and drive something sharp and final into the worthless corpulence I married.
A rising, whining sound filled her throat. No, stop that, she demanded of herself. That sort of thing made Stan raise upon an elbow and whisper into the darkness his hateful, nauseous concern.
She had always thought of Stan in terms of an old nursery rhyme. Compendium of snails and puppy-dog tails—that was Stan, Mr. Sheldon. Snails for sluggishness of mind and movement. And puppy-dog tails—those flapping, flopping, rug-thumping indications of utter devotion, of adolescent, stomach-turning love. That was Stan too.
God, can’t I stop thinking about him! her mind screamed. Oh, give me the empty, useless solace of a man’s body here and now and let me forget the torture of mind.
In a minute she got up and went slowly into the living room. She felt her way among the glasses and plates strewn on the floor, feeling an occasional wet patch where some unstable reveler had dropped or spilled or kicked over his glass of whiskey and soda, or gin and soda, or vodka and soda or anything and soda. Ploppo, into the carpet. After the parties they’d had here, it was a wonder there was any carpet left at all.
She turned on the small lamp on the table beside the couch. She blinked and closed her eyes for a moment, then sank down on the couch and looked around the room.
She saw the end result of social tornado. Here in this penthouse, decorated by whosis of Fifth Avenue, furnished by what’s-his-name and draped by the best non-entities in town—here, in this upholstered sewer, gaiety had reigned. People mixed drinks and company, told lewd jokes, crept searching fingers over the other men’s wives and other wives’ husbands. Flung the mud of their minds against the walls. Stolen into darkened bedrooms for quick sensation. Let the gyroscopes of their minds be swallowed under tides of liquor. Stumbled and laughed and threw up and screamed vile laughter and let the mask fall for an instant from the face of the beast. Showed the fangs and the hatreds and the endless lusts.
Jane reached over and picked up somebody’s drink. I hope it was a man’s drink, she thought and placed the glass to her lips. Cheap kiss, she thought, kissing a glass. As the warmish, watery liquor trickled down her throat the ultimate thought came—the party is over.
Oh God, come and take me, someone!
She wanted to scream it out in the silence of the apartment. She wanted to rip the flimsy gown off her body and give the sweetmeats of her flesh to any and all comers. Step up, line forms on the right. Jane Sheldon, wife of Stan Sheldon, has the pleasure of announcing her availability to all and sundry. Come one, come all.
She slumped down on the couch, shivering without control. Her hungry eyes ran down over her lean body, over the two hard points of her breasts, the flat stomach, the long perfectly shaped legs. She ran one hand over her stomach and it made her shudder. She finished the drink and sat staring into the empty glass, watching the tiny amber bubble on the bottom slide back and forth as she tilted the glass from side to side; slipping and gliding like a fat pig on a frozen lake.
Kill me, someone.
The thought crept into her mind, looked around, saw no resistance and took over.
***
He had lain there and watched her rise. He had seen her standing in the living room in her nightgown, the dark outline of her body showing against the lamp’s glow.
Now he lay there in the dark bedroom staring at her as she sat slumped on the couch. He watched her run a hand over her smooth stomach and something twisted in his guts. It had been so long, so horribly long. She never let him touch her anymore. They were married, but she never let him touch her.
She hardly even let him see her. Once in a while, maybe, if she thought he was still asleep in the morning, she would let the nightgown drop rustling off her satiny body and, while she hooked and pulled and fastened and zipped, through half-closed lids he would drink in the sight of her breasts arching out from her chest, the flat smoothness of her stomach and buttocks, the curve of her legs. His own wife made him feel like a Peeping Tom, like some sub-species of voyeur.
His throat moved. Why didn’t he go in there and just demand his rights? Why didn’t he take her in his arms and conquer her resistance? The situation struck him in all its insulting absurdity.
Anyone else could have her but he couldn’t.
He moved on the mattress and suddenly he froze, seeing that she was looking in at him. He lay there shivering while her eyes looked into the dark bedroom. He didn’t think she saw him because she didn’t say anything and, in a moment, she turned her head away. But for that moment, he had seen, in her eyes, how much she despised him. It had been no novelty. He saw it all day, too. But there was something faintly hideous about seeing it on her face when she didn’t even think he was looking. It showed how ingrained her hatred was, how burned into her mind.
He lay there on his side looking with bleak, unhappy eyes at his wife sitting on the couch. He saw her finish the drink she’d picked up. Now she was staring into the glass, tilting it from side to side. What did she see in the glass? What was she thinking? Once he thought he had glimmers of her mind. Now she was more a stranger with each passing day. Once he could almost say they were in love. Now all he could say was that he paid the bills for the things she bought. And there were plenty of things.
A shudder made his muscles jerk abruptly and he closed his eyes to shut away the sight of her. No, he couldn’t go in there and demand her body as if it were some patronage. He couldn’t even talk to her.
Like some silly robot he would host her parties, pouring drinks, laughing at bad jokes, trying to ignore the sight of her on the couch or on a chair with some man, her open mouth writhing under his, her fingers raking across the man’s back, that obvious dark flush filling her cheeks. Trying to ignore the moments when she would disappear and be gone from the living room. Then he knew that in the darkness of the bedroom, maybe on his own bed…
And he was a jellyfish. He could no more have gone in the bedroom when she was there with some man and confront them than he could have broken into the bedroom of the White House and demanded, What the hell are you doing, Mr. President!
He would go on pouring drinks and laughing at bad jokes and, maybe, if the pain in his flesh and mind got too unbearable he
would make a faltering pass at some woman that no one else would make a pass at.
He started quickly to his elbow as Jane stood up and moved for the balcony.
He pulled back the covers, his heart thudding with fear. Everything was forgotten in an instant; his hate, his frustration, his despair. He was, once again, the simple, uncomplicated man who could do nothing but adore. Quickly he ran across the living room rug, his heavy body rocking from side to side, feet thumping on the rug. “Please don’t, Jane. Darling, please don’t. I’ll make it up to you. I’ll try to be what you…”
Jane turned from the railing and looked at him coldly.
“What do you want?” she asked, her voice flat.
The way she said “you.” It was a knife turning in him.
“I—I thought maybe….”
“Thought maybe I was going to jump?” she asked acidly.
“No,” he said. “I mean, I just thought…”
She didn’t say anything and they stood there looking at each other in silence in the early morning. She stood there on the terrace flagstones like Venus in Manhattan, like a debauched Aphrodite in a sheer Tiffany creation.
“Don’t you—think you should come in?” he said falteringly, “It’s a little cold for just that.”
“Just what?”
“I—I—that gown. I mean it’s awfully thin.”
Her eyes on him were like blue ice.
“You’ll catch your death of cold,” he offered.
“That would be wonderful,” she said in a deceptive calm.
But, after a moment, she came in and went to the bar to make herself a drink.
He closed the French doors and stood there awkwardly, watching her make a drink that was nine-tenths whiskey. He swallowed and then straightened out the wrinkled twists of his pajamas. They were silly looking pajamas. He knew that. He often thought she bought them for him because she knew he would look ridiculous in them, with their little pink elephants sporting on the cloth.