Bending down, Tweany lifted the man and inspected the welt on his forehead. A drizzle of saliva and stomach juices leaked down Nitz’s chin; he stirred and groaned.
“Go in the living room,” Tweany instructed, “and phone a doctor.”
“Yes,” Mary Anne said, and hurried down the hall. At the entrance to the living room she halted; there was the telephone, resting on the small wooden table by the chair. But she could not go in.
In the rapture of the dance, Beth had given herself completely. She had pulled off her clothes, flung them in a heap on the floor, and gone on to greater heights without them. Naked, perspiring, she was lunging about the room, large and pale and gleaming, her breasts wiggling mightily, her bulging hips palpitating with delight. Lemming sat curled up on the carpet, his guitar in his lap, eyes glued happily on the instrument, strumming a weird cacophony that slithered and shimmered in time to the woman’s orgy.
Coombs, still giggling, crept after the fluttering body of his wife, photographing her again and again, dead flashbulbs flying from his camera. None of the three noticed Mary Anne; each was involved in his own world. She remained in the doorway, unable to enter, unable to back out, until, finally, Tweany appeared beside her to find out what was wrong.
“Christ,” Tweany said. He stood behind the girl, moved by what he saw, gazing until Coombs became aware of him and stopped his wary pursuit of his wife’s hams.
An ugly discoloration fled up into Coombs’s cheeks. He squinted, struggled to his feet, advanced a few uneven steps toward Tweany, and said in a thick, hoarse voice: “You nigger, what are you doing? You nigger—get out of here!”
Tweany said nothing.
The sound of Lemming’s guitar dimmed into stillness. Shaking his head, Lemming turned, pulled his horn-rimmed glasses from his pocket, put them on, and peered around him. Beth, unwinding like a tardy mechanical device, came slowly to rest, mouth open, body shaking with fatigue and cold.
“Nigger!” Coombs squealed, trying to scuttle between Tweany and the sweating nakedness of his wife. “Get out! Get out or I’ll kill you!” All of the man’s hatreds rose to the surface; he tottered toward Tweany, peering blindly, circling in a crippled, jerky step that first took him closer and then farther away from the Negro.
“This is my house,” Tweany murmured. His confidence began to seep back into him; pulling himself up he said almost sternly: “Don’t talk to me like that in my house. I do what I want in my house.”
From the stairs outside came a dull drumming; at the same time the whirr of sirens lapsed into a blur in the street below. Before any of them could move, there was a loud banging on the door of the apartment.
Mary Anne whirled to race down the hallway to the door. She twisted the lock back; the door was thrust in her face and she was thrown to one side. Three policemen pushed inside and thundered down the hall toward the living room, leaving her alone.
Without hesitation, she plunged out into the darkness of the porch and down the stairs. Gripping the invisible railing, she descended to the ground and, half-falling, half-rolling, shoved her way into the moist wall of shrubs that grew along the path.
Upstairs, in the darkness, sounded the rattle of voices. More police appeared, flashing lights and muttering commands. In a few minutes—astonishingly few—the first group plodded drearily down the flight of steps: Tweany and Beth Coombs. After them came Danny Coombs and the shivering individual that was Chad Lemming. The four of them were herded into a patrol car; the car came to life and shot away. Porch lights winked on here and there as neighbors, aroused from sleep, appeared.
“That’s them?” one of the policemen was asking. From his patrol car came the enlarged mutter of his radio; he stalked over to it, slid in behind the wheel, and addressed the police operator at the station.
They were leaving. One by one the police assembled, spoke a few words to each other, and climbed back into their cars. In a doorway on the bottom floor of the building stood a dignified Negro man; he watched with righteous solemnity as the police departed. One of them halted long enough to speak to him; the Negro nodded in satisfaction and closed his door.
After a long wait Mary Anne stirred. She was shivering with cold; damp night mist clung to her hair and bits of gravel cut into the palms of her hands as she crawled forward and out of the shrubbery. Her coat was torn and fragments of leaves were embedded in her hair. Shuddering, she stood up, hesitated, and then began ascending the stairs to the third floor.
The living room was a shambles. The lights, still on, blazed impotently. From the open door a chill gust of wind billowed in; Mary Anne closed the door, locked it, and passed on inside. Beth’s clothing lay where she had shed it; she had been hustled down the stairs in Tweany’s overcoat. There, in the corner, was Coombs’s camera, a dead flashbulb still in the holder. The floor was strewn with broken bulbs; drops of blood glinted where Beth’s naked feet had dripped, cut by the particles of glass.
Automatically, Mary Anne picked up Lemming’s guitar and placed it upright in the corner. Then she went to the bathroom and looked timidly in.
Paul Nitz was sitting up, leaning his head against the side of the tub. Partly conscious, he was feebly exploring the injured bump where his head had struck the toilet. Noticing her, he blinked, grinned a little, and tried to stand.
“Don’t,” Mary Anne said, hurrying in and bending down beside him. “I’ll help you.”
“They missed me,” Nitz murmured. “Thanks, Mary. I’m okay—I got sick and passed out.”
Holding onto him, she got him from the bathroom into the chaotic living room. There she dropped down on the couch, pulled him down beside her, and dragged his damaged head into her lap. For a while he passed into semiconsciousness; she sat clinging to his limp shoulders, rocking back and forth, gazing vacantly ahead of her. Finally he stirred and pulled himself up.
“Thanks,” he repeated weakly. “You’re good.”
She said nothing.
“They missed me,” Nitz declared with pride. “I got the door shut and I didn’t make any sound. They didn’t know I was there.”
Hugging him futilely, Mary Anne pressed her face against his forehead.
“Nobody else but us,” Nitz murmured defiantly. “They took them all. All gone. Only the two of us left, now.”
Outside, in the darkness, a bird made a few dismal noises. In an hour or so it would be dawn.
11
• • • • • • • •
Daniel Coombs, as soon as his wife had left the apartment, put on his hat and coat and departed. It was his first full day of freedom. They had, all four of them, been booked on one count of disturbing the peace and one count of disorderly conduct. Each had spent the night in jail, in a separate cell.
Now, on his way downtown, Daniel Coombs brooded over the imbalances of the universe. His wife had the morals of a pig. She had slept with men as they came along, had exhibited and then opened herself for Joseph Schilling and then an Italian boy who ran a vegetable concession and then a music pupil and another music pupil and after that a confused procession that had wound up with a Negro named Carleton Tweany. It could go no further.
He recalled the depravity of that night, and his pace increased. By the time he had reached the business section of Pacific Park, he was almost running.
On a side street in the slum area, among cafés and pool halls and cigar stores, was a gun shop. Coombs entered and stood at the glass-topped display case, waiting for the proprietor. Presently a bald person in vest and pin-striped trousers made his appearance.
“Yes, sir,” he said, in a New England twang. “What can I do for you?”
Coombs spent an hour selecting the gun he wanted. It was a tarnished Remington .32 repeating pistol, which cost him more than he had anticipated. An additional fifteen minutes was spent haggling over the price. Finally, the sale completed, he left the gun shop.
On foot, he tramped out of the slum section, past the residential area, and into the open cou
ntry beyond. A meager tangle of trees and brush grew a few miles from the highway; Coombs crossed the fields in that direction. Soon he was wandering in the cold gloom, looking for something to shoot, something to practice on. He hadn’t fired a gun since his days in the National Guard.
Some birds fluttered overhead and he shot into the group at random. Nothing came of it, except a startled panic and a rain of detached feathers. Moodily, he poked around, kicking the damp underbrush and wondering if a bird had fallen anywhere. Apparently not. Now the woods were still. He could hear, from the distant highway, the swish of tires and occasionally the burble of a truck horn.
Two boys came thrashing their way along, followed by a scampering springer spaniel. Coombs retired behind a heap of rusting trash and vines until the boys had passed. The dog, nosing, stopped within a few yards of him. Coombs raised his pistol and shot the dog. A cloud of gray smoke drifted up from his gun; ears ringing from the noise, Coombs backed away into the shadows.
Startled by the sound, the two boys began to circle cautiously back. One of them, in a low, abashed voice, called again and again: “Corky! Corky!” The wounded dog, not yet dead, whined dismally and tried to crawl toward the voice. Coombs was reloading his gun when the boys burst out into the clearing and gathered around the remains of their pet.
Watching the boys try unsuccessfully to collect the animal, Coombs reflected on the vanity of life. Finally they located a rotting board and laid the dog on it. Each holding an end, the boys lugged the board and its bleeding occupant from the clearing toward the highway. Having nothing else to do, Coombs followed.
At the edge of the woods the boys, exhausted, halted and laid down the board. While they were resting, Coombs, on impulse, stepped out and said: “What’s the matter! What happened?”
Face streaked with tears, one of the boys cried: “Somebody shot our dog!”
The other said nothing; he was staring at the gun in Coombs’s hand.
“That’s terrible,” Coombs said. Again on impulse, for reasons unknown to him, he brought out a ten-dollar bill and pushed it into the first boy’s hand. “Go flag down a car,” he instructed him, although neither boy seemed able to hear. “It’s still alive; you can get it to the vet.”
Both boys, smeared with blood, gazed dumbly after him as he departed. A quarter mile away—across an open marsh—he stopped and lifted his gun; taking aim toward the figures at the edge of the woods, he fired. The shot dissolved into the morning air, and Coombs went on.
By ten o’clock he was back in Pacific Park. His Ford was still parked on Elm Street, in front of the great slatternly house in which Carleton Tweany lived. Coombs, the gun in his pocket, stood undecidedly by the car; then, his mind made up, he walked over to the stairs and proceeded to climb.
There was no response to his knock. He shielded his eyes against the window of the door and peered in. A littered hall and room were visible; clothes were strewn everywhere. But nothing stirred; there was no evidence of Tweany. Coombs tried the knob, but the door was locked. Resigned, he descended the stairs, got into his car, and drove away.
When he reached a Standard station he shifted into second and drove up onto the concrete. He had been intending to do this all week; the appearance of the gas station had tripped a suprarational reflex. Climbing out, he said to the service station attendant: “How long would it take to get my car greased? It’s been two thousand miles at least.”
The man pondered. “About half an hour.”
“Fine,” Coombs said, reaching back to put the car in gear. He wandered next door to a lunch counter, but after he had ordered he discovered he wasn’t hungry. Leaving his soup untouched, he paid the tab and walked out.
Gratifyingly, his Ford was already up on the rack. Strolling over, he critically supervised the men as they squirted grease up into the transmission. He created a lively discussion about weights of motor oil, heatedly demanding, in spite of their advice, a crankcase full of detergent oil, ten-thirty weight. Fussily he paced around until he had what he wanted. The attendants finished the greasing, lowered the car, and wrote out a bill.
At eleven-thirty he drove up Elm Street and parked a block from Tweany’s house. He was close enough to see who came in and who went out. Clicking on the car radio, he tuned in the good-music station at San Mateo and listened to the Brahms Third Symphony. Now and then somebody passed along the sidewalk, but for the most part there was no sign of life.
Doubt assailed him. Perhaps Tweany had appeared during his absence.
His gun bumping around in his pocket, he climbed out, crossed the street, and walked toward the house. But again, when he tapped on the door, there was no response. Satisfied, he returned to the car and clicked the radio back on. Now they were playing the Berlioz Roman Carnival Overture. He wondered if there was an opera called Roman Carnival or if it was one of those overtures. Schilling would know. Schilling knew everything there was—about music, at least. Outside of that, he wasn’t too bright; he certainly was a pushover for a piece of tail. For the space of one Berlioz overture Coombs considered driving around to the record shop, but then he changed his mind. Max Figuera would be hanging close by. It was, as always, too risky.
Slightly after noon, a figure came hurrying up the sidewalk, a brown-haired girl in a cloth coat, with hooped earrings and heels. It was Tweany’s friend Mary Anne Reynolds.
Without hesitating, the girl left the sidewalk and dashed up the flight of wooden stairs to Tweany’s apartment. She didn’t bother to knock; producing a key, she unlocked the door and pushed it open. Disappearing inside, she slammed the door after her. For a time the street was silent. Then, one after another, the windows of Tweany’s apartment flew open. The sounds of activity filtered out. At last came the roar of a vacuum cleaner: the girl was cleaning the apartment.
Lounging in the warmth of his Ford, Coombs continued to wait. Time passed, so much and so uniform that he lost all sense of it and drifted into a doze. Somewhere along the line his car battery gave out and the radio faded away. Coombs was unaffected. He remained inert until two o’clock in the afternoon, when, without warning of any kind, Carleton Tweany hove into sight at the far end of the block, his arm around a woman. The woman was Beth Coombs. The two of them, chattering, ascended the stairs and, like a pair of mud wasps, squeezed into the apartment. The door closed after them.
Pulling himself together, Coombs stepped from the car. One leg was asleep; he had to stamp it on the pavement to restore circulation. Then, one hand in his coat pocket, he started at a jog toward the three-story house.
12
• • • • • • • •
That morning, not having to be at the telephone company until three o’clock, Mary Anne showed up at the business office of the Pacific Park Leader.
Evading the information counter, she went directly into the inner offices. “Hello, Mr. Gordon. Can I come inside and sit down?”
Arnold Gordon was pleased to see what he imagined and hoped was his son’s fiancee. “Certainly, Mary,” he said, getting up and showing her to a chair. “How are you today?”
“Great. How’s the newspaper business?”
“Expanding all the time. Well, what can I do for you?”
“You can give me a job. I’m sick and tired of the telephone company.”
Her request was no surprise to him. Gravely, Arnold Gordon said: “Mary, you know how much I’d like to.”
“Sure,” Mary Anne said, recognizing that it was indeed a lost cause.
“But,” Arnold Gordon said, and it was true, “this is a small-town newspaper operating on a small budget. We have sixteen employees, not counting carriers. Most of those are typesetters and union men working in the shop. You don’t mean that kind of job, do you?”
“Okay, I’m convinced.” She got to her feet. “I’ll see you again, Mr. Gordon.”
“Going?” Eyes twinkling, he observed: “When you’re finished with something, you’re really finished.”
“I have a lot t
o get done.”
“How’ve you and David been getting along?”
She shrugged. “The same as usual. We went dancing last Thursday.”
“Any date set, yet?”
“No, and there isn’t going to be unless he wises up.”
“What do you mean?”
“That gas station. He could be taking some kind of correspondence course. If I was a man I would; I wouldn’t sit around doing nothing, just drifting, waiting. He could take business management. He could learn TV repairing, like you see in the ads.”
“Or grow giant mushrooms in your basement? You’re not really a practical person, Mary. You appear very efficient and realistic, but underneath that you’re—” He searched for the term. “You’re an idealist. If you had been born earlier, you’d have been a New Dealer.”
Mary Anne started out the door. “Can I drop over for dinner some Sunday? I get sick of my roommate.”
“Any time you want,” Arnold Gordon said. “Mary—”
“What?”
“I think in spite of our differences you and I are going to get along well.”
Mary Anne disappeared, and he was alone. Chuckling self-consciously, Arnold Gordon seated himself and lit his pipe. She was quite a girl. Were they all that way, now? A generation of oddly mature young people, more adult in some ways than he approved of. Blunt, without piety, unable to find anyone or anything they could respect…looking for something real enough to believe in: looking for something worth their respect. And, he realized, they could not be fooled. They could see through sham.
Uncomfortably, he realized how his way of life looked to her. False and empty platitudes, ceremonies without content. A world of hollow manners. She made him feel slow and foolish. She made him feel that he had somehow fallen short, had not, in some mysterious fashion, lived up to a standard. She made him feel ashamed.