How Like a God

XVI

The cat yowled again, and in the silence that followed he heard again the plop of the water dropping into the sink, as he stood in the middle of the hall under the dim wall light. Through force of habit rather than necessity he stood close under the light and looked at the key in his hand to make sure that it was the one with the two large teeth at the end, the other was for the street door downstairs. A sound came from the front room, the muffled sound of a chair being dragged across a rug; and he thought, she’s pulling it closer to the table, to read; that’s good, she’ll be sitting down.

He thought, what do you mean that’s good. What’s the difference? Go on in...

Go on in. Yes, she’ll be sitting down, and you’ll take off your coat and hat, and she’ll say, “You’re late, did you remember to bring some candy?” and you won’t answer, you’ll stand and look at her and presently say, “Mil, this time I’m going to get the truth out of you.”

In a vague sort of way that’s what you thought you’d say, and didn’t, the night you returned from your flight. She was there, alone, in the purple negligee, sewing on buttons and drinking lemonade.

“Hello,” she said, “you should have sent me a telegram, I might not have been here.”

That was two months ago, two months to a day. By the following morning nothing seemed to have changed; instead of ten weeks you might have been gone overnight. Yet there was a change. You couldn’t have put it into words, not indeed feeling it, except as a vague sense of a concluded fate. Hope was gone, and with it irony.

Another winter; in a month it will be Christmas again. You’d better get her another fur coat and bring it Christmas morning. You will at that. If you’re here. Erma says you look like hell and that you’ve got a disposition like the camel she rode that time at Ghardaia. She says you ought to go abroad for a year. Why not? Dick has mentioned it too, three or four times, though he seems to be embarrassed about it. Is he trying to get you out of the way? Not likely; that’s not like him. You should ask him about it, straight, and then you’d know; you should have asked him this morning, when he came in your office and then didn’t seem to know what he’d come for. He said something about Jane’s good judgment. Does Jane know?

If not Dick, why couldn’t you ask Jane? Does it matter so much? But you must know if they know. You’re not going on like this, like a helpless imbecile, with them discussing you behind your back, trying to decide what they’d better do about you...

Exactly what did she say? Did she say she had seen Jane? Yes. Night before last — seems a year ago. You came up after dinner, rather early, and she wasn’t back yet. There was a telephone call you had to make, and as you sat waiting for an answer, with the phone book lying upside down on the table, in front of you, you noted indifferently the chaos of numbers scribbled in pencil all over the cover; it was a habit of Millicent’s that had at one time amused you; and suddenly you saw among that chaos a number that riveted your attention: Chelsea 4343. You hung up the receiver and grabbed up the book and looked at it closely; of course you hadn’t put that number there; but it was quite plain, unmistakable, Chelsea 4343.

It was half an hour before you heard her key in the door. You waited till she had got her hat and coat put away, and then held the book in front of her.

“Did you put that there?”

She looked at it without replying. “Look here,” you said, “if ever you told the truth you’d better tell it now. Did you write that number there?”

She nodded. “Yes, I remember now, I wrote it one day—”

“Whose number is it?”

She didn’t glance at it again; she looked steadily at you, and finally shook her head, “I don’t remember.”

“You might as well sit down, we’re going to have this out,” you said, and took a chair in front of hers, close to her. “You’d better be careful what you tell me, because this is something I can check up on. I want to know when you telephoned my sister Jane, and what for.”

“I really had forgotten it was your sister’s number,” she said.

“All right. Go on.”

It took an hour to get it out of her, and before she was through she had told it a dozen different ways. Was Erma in it? Sometimes she was and sometimes she wasn’t; anyway she hadn’t seen her. At first she said she’d seen Jane twice and then she said only once. It was mostly Dick. As long ago as last spring, Dick had sent for her and offered her fifty thousand dollars if she would let you alone, go away somewhere, and not let you know where she was. When she wouldn’t take it he had doubled his offer. This fall, just recently, he had been after her again; this time when she refused the money he threatened her. Then Jane came, and begged her.

“She begged me all afternoon,” she said. She took a day to think about it, and she put that number there only a week ago, when she phoned Jane that she had decided not to go.

At first you believed it. After you had got all you could out of her and tried to piece it together and decide how much of it was true and how much she had invented, you put on your hat and coat and started for Tenth Street. She didn’t ask where you were going or whether you’d be back; she just sat there, solemn, quietly watching you. Probably two minutes after you left she was reading a book. You never got to Jane’s house; you walked past it, but you didn’t go in. You couldn’t decide what to say.

And then, yesterday, like a coward you didn’t go to the office at all. You packed trunks! And you found the revolver and sat on the edge of the bed for an hour, holding it in your hand and looking at it, as if that was going to put muscles in your insides.

Last night Millicent was surprised to see you. Of course, you hadn’t telephoned, but she was surprised more than that; you could tell by the way she looked at you, though she didn’t say anything. You told her you hadn’t asked Jane and Dick about it, but you were going to, and if you found she’d been lying you’d make her pay for it. She said you wouldn’t ask them. She said it as if it didn’t make any difference one way or the other, “You won’t ask them about it.” Then she said, with no change at all in her voice:

“Anyway, I made it all up.”

And at the end, after all that, after you’d made a whining fool of yourself, she actually thought she could touch you. Her eyes looked like that, not really starting to close, just ready to, tightened up a little. A thousand times you’ve seen them like that. Then they do begin to close, and her lips get straight and thin and very quiet, and her eyes get narrower and tighter...

There goes her chair again, pulled across the rug. Now would have been the time, now that you know she’s sitting down. Go across to the windows and pull down the shades. You pitiful paltry coward. Last night it sounded like she was telling the truth. If she wasn’t, if Dick and Jane — begging her — no matter. What do they matter? If they came up the stairs right now and all three of you went in together — ha, that would be the way to do it. Erma too, the whole damn outfit. You could sit in a corner and listen to them, and they could keep it up all night and all day tomorrow, and forever, and they wouldn’t get anywhere. Begging her.

Oh cut it out. Cut it out! Steady...

Steady...