101 Mystery Stories

17 The Release Cornell Woolrich

I left the taxi with a splurge, like a man arching his legs to straddle a sidewalk puddle though no puddle was there. He called out something about my change; I showed him the back of my hand.

No elevator ever went so slowly as the one that took me up to Sutphen’s office. There were never so many floors between; so many people never got off, never got on. So many latecomers never made it at the last minute and caused the doors that had already closed to a hair’s width to reopen all the way again. The indicator sweep inside the cab never moved so reluctantly, never stayed on 3 so long, on 4 so long, on 5, on 6. Sweat never prickled so, along the pleats in somebody’s forehead, in the crotches below his arms. A heart never beat so fast before, except in the hurtle finals of the Olympics, and everything else around it so slow, so slow before.

Then at last it was at 7, and I stepped on someone’s toes, knocked someone else’s hat askew, carried still someone else’s handbag halfway out of the car with me, hooked onto the buttons of my coat sleeve.

Then I was out running, and no corridor was ever so long before or had so many people on it getting in your way before, playing that simultaneous impulse game, where they move to the left when you move to the left blocking, and to the right when you do, blocking you all over again.

He’d moved his office. The number on the door hadn’t changed, but it was fifty doors farther down the line now and twenty-five more around the turn. I was on the other side of the door at last. There was a receptionist at the desk. She didn’t try to stop me or ask me who I was. She saw my face, saw what was on it, had seen it before, but never with the shining light that showed all over me now. She just pointed. “In there, door on the left. He’s by himself.”

I pushed the door out of the way. Knocking was for other times; knocking was for times when there was time. And he was in there, walking back and forth.

I caught him doing that — no one with him — walking back and forth, one hand in his pocket like when you’re broke, one hand hooked around the back of his neck like when you’re at a loss. Sour in the face, disturbed, discouraged, disgusted — I couldn’t tell what it was. Some other case, not mine. Mine was over; mine was squared. I didn’t owe the law anything, anymore.

You know how lawyers are. They have dozens of cases. Some of them fizzle; some of them go wrong. You know how lawyers are — they have cases by the carload. He stopped his pacing and looked up to see who had come in. He said the funniest thing to himself. I heard him. He said, “Oh merciful God.”

Then he asked me, after watching me, “What are you doing here? I thought they refused the parole.”

“No parole.” Triumph bubbling, escaping into the open. “A pardon.”

He kept watching me. “How’d you come down here?”

“First by train and then by taxi.” I wondered why he’d asked that. I was here — that was all that mattered — or should have mattered.

“Did it have a radio? Was it on?”

I frowned. “It had a two-way radio, steering it to pickups by its dispatcher. Why?”

“Oh, that kind.” He seemed to lose interest — in the radio, not in me. “Did you tell her to expect you?”

“No, that was the whole idea.” I whipped the thing D’Angelo had signed out of my inside pocket, pushed it at him. “Don’t y’want to see what I’ve got here?” The jubilation was back. I was jabbering staccato. “Don’t y’want to read it? I’m free, like I was born. Free, like I’ll die. Free, like I was meant to be—” My voice slowed and started to dwindle. “Doesn’t it matter?” was the last thing that came out. Then it faltered, and it died.

It didn’t matter. He didn’t say it didn’t, but he showed it didn’t.

He took the paper the statement was on, pleated one end of it like he was making a paper dart out of it, poised it over his desk wastebasket, and speared it in.

I was jolted. “What’d you do that for?”

He just looked at me. Everything that anyone was every sorry for was in that look. You could see it there.

“I can’t tell you. I’ll have to let the radio do it for me. They can do it better.” He went over and thumbed the knob. “I’ll see if I can get one of the all-news stations. It’ll come around again. Sit down a minute.”

He took a cigarette out of a gold-tooled desk box and put it in my mouth — even lit it for me. He put his hand on my shoulder and pressed down hard, as if to say, “Brace yourself.”

In the background familiar names began to sound off dimly, names that were far away, that had nothing to do with me. Hanoi — Cape Kennedy — Lindsay — U Thant — Johnson—

He opened a drawer and took out a bottle of Hanky Bannister. I hadn’t known he kept anything like that there. He didn’t drink himself, not in the office, I mean. He kept it there for clients, I guess, and for sufferers who needed it for imminent shock, like he seemed to think I was going to. He passed me a good-sized drink.

I drank it down, still in happiness, although the happiness was now a little dazed — not dimmed, but dazed by his peculiarity. Even with the happiness I started to get scared by all this indirection— Like a guy waiting for surgery without knowing what form it was going to take.

It came. It hit. Before I knew it, it was already over. And the slow-spreading after-sting had only just started in.

He brought it up — the sound. I mean. Touched it with his finger. And I noticed as he did so he didn’t look at me but looked the other way, as if he didn’t like to look at me right then — couldn’t face my face.

The cigarette fell out of my hand. Nothing much else happened. How much has to happen to show your life just ended, your heart just broken? Nothing shows it — nothing. Your cigarette falls on the carpet. After a while your head goes down lower, then lower, then lower. You stare, but you don’t see. No words, no tears, no anything. It’s a quiet thing. It’s a your-own thing that no one else can share. You reach up behind you and turn your coat collar up and hold it close to your throat in front with your fingers, though you know the room is warm for anyone else.

You’re cold, you’re hungry, you’re thirsty, you’re scared, you’re lonely, you’re lost. And you’re all those things together at one time.

“I saw her only two days ago,” I heard him saying. “I spoke to her. I think she tried to tell me then what was going to happen, only I didn’t catch on. ‘It’s too late now for both of us,’ she said. ‘We can’t win anymore now; we’ve already lost. Get together again? Two strangers hardly knowing each other, grubbing around in the debris looking for something they once had? Two ghosts sitting in the twilight, with a bottle somewhere between them? After a while, if we didn’t swallow the bottle, the bottle would swallow us. Both of those are worse than any prison is.’ ”

I looked up at him and I complained. “I hurt all over.”

But he couldn’t help me. He wasn’t a bandage.

I stood up finally and turned to the door, and he said, “Where are you going?” and he tried to hold me back.

“Home. I’m going home.”

“You can’t. You know that, Cleve. There isn’t any home anymore for you. Stay here in the office awhile first. Lie down on the couch. I’ll take you with me when I leave. I’ll put you in a hotel for a week or two, pay all the expenses, see that you’re taken care of until the worst is over.”

“No. I’m going home. Home.”

And when he tried to hold me, I shrugged him off. And when he tried to do it again, I swerved violently, flinging his hands off.

“I’m going home. Don’t stop me.”

“Or come up with me for a week to my place. We live in Bronxville. I have two kids, but we’ll keep them away from you — you won’t hear them. You don’t even have to have your meals with us.”

“No,” I said doggedly. “I’m going home.”

“But you haven’t any anymore, Cleve.”

“Everyone has — someplace.”

The last thing he said to me was, “You’ll die, left on your own. I hate to see you die, Cleve. It seems such a waste; you loved so well and so hard!”

“Don’t worry,” I assured him gravely. “Don’t worry about me, Steve. I have to meet someone. I’m going out tonight. I’m late for it now.”

And I closed the door behind me. And he didn’t try to come after me, because he knew every man must find his own peace, his own answers. There is a point beyond which no man can accompany another, without intrusion. And no man must do that. It’s not allowable. That’s about all we’re given, our privacy.

As I went hustling down the corridor (which had become very short again now), I heard a curious sound from inside where I’d left him. It sounded like a whack. I think he must have swung his fist around, punching into some leather chair with all his might. I wondered why he’d do a thing like that, what its meaning was. But I didn’t have time to figure it out.

In the second taxi, the one that took me away from there, the driver did have his radio going this time. Unlike the one coming over, the one that Sutphen had asked me about, this one was only playing music — I guess to take the edge off the traffic sounds the cabby lived in all day long.

It was burbling away there. I didn’t pay much attention until suddenly I seemed to hear the words.

“That’s right,” I thought, “that’s where I’m going now.” I spoke to the driver. “Stop at the next flower shop you come to,” I told him. “I think there’s one just up ahead.”

I bought some yellow roses, barely opened, just past the bud stage, and those little things that look like yellow pom-poms. He wrapped them for me like I hope he would for festive giving — first in tissue, then in smooth lustrous green, then folded flat across the top and stapled into a cone. When I came back to the cab with them, I felt like her young lover all over again.

I rang. I wanted her to come to the door. I wanted to make a big splash with the flowers, shake them out, spread them in front of her face, and say, “A guy sent these to you, lady, with his love.” But she didn’t come, so I put my key in it instead and went in on my own.

I didn’t see her, so I knew she must be in the bathroom, doing something to her hair or things like they do. I’d often found her in there when I came home nights like this.

I called her name. “Jannie, I’m back,” like that. I didn’t hear her answer, but that was all right. I guess she couldn’t at the moment. Maybe shampoo was running down her forehead. I knew she’d heard me, because she had the door open in there.

(“How’d it go?” she asked me. I could almost hear her.)

“Arrh,” I said with habitual distraction. “Same old treadmill, same old grind. Want me to fix you a drink?”

(I could almost hear her. “Not too strong, though—”)

I built us two Martinis from the serving pantry and the case I’d brought from the club; we hadn’t run through it yet. One tiger’s milk, the other weak as tears.

First I was going to take hers in to her, but I didn’t. The bathroom is no place to drink a drink or toast a toast — all that soap around.

I called out, “Let’s go out tonight. Let’s go out like we used to at the start. Let’s go somewhere and dance and eat where they have candles on the table. Let’s forget the world and all its troubles.”

(“What’s the big occasion?” I could hear her ask.)

“Who knows how long we have?”

(“That’s a cheerful thought.” I could detect the little make-believe shudder that went with it.)

“Stella’s, over on Second. Or the Living Room. Or Copain. Or that little Italian place on Forty-eighth where they have the bottles of wine in wicker baskets hanging round the walls and the man plays „Come Prima“ for you on his guitar if you ask him. You name it.”

(I could see her put the tip of her finger against her upper lip. like she always does when making a choice. “All right, the little Italian place on Forty-eighth, then.”)

“What dress d’you want? I’ll take it out for you, save time.”

(“Even if I told you, you wouldn’t find it.”)

“Try me.”

(“All right. That one you like the best. The one I got at Macy’s Little Shop. You know, the one that’s all gleamy and dreamy.”)

I found it easy and right away and took it out and off its hanger. The scent of her faint but unforgettable and unforgotten perfume came up to me from it. More like the extract of her personality than any literal blending of alcohol and attar of roses. She had never used much of it, if any.

While I was waiting for her to come out, I put on that record we’d often danced to before, back in the first days. It was a favorite of ours. It expressed us. It said for us what we wanted to say for ourselves, thought of, and couldn’t.

Then she came out, in all her sweetness and desirability, in all her tender understanding and compassion for a guy and his poor clumsy heart. All the things we live for and dream about and die without: a man’s wife and his sweetheart, his mistress and his madonna. All things in one. Woman. The woman. The one woman.

Rose-petal pink from her showering in there. Sweet and soft and just a touch of moistness still lingering here and there. The two little strips crossing her in front, the bra and the waistband, both narrow as hair ribbons, separating revealed beauty from veiled. And the terry cloth robe slung carelessly over her back, as I’d seen her come out so many times.

She infiltrated into the dress I’d been holding ready for her, and I helped her close the back of it, as I had so many times. Once, in sliding the zipper, I’d accidentally nipped her, and she’d turned partly around and pinched the tip of my nose and playfully shook it back and forth.

We started to dance, her dress floating in my arms, fluttering, rippling, as if it were empty. First in small pivots in the very center of the room. Then expanding into larger but still compact, still tight-knit circles. Then wider all the time, wider and wider still. Wider each moment and wider each move.

I put my hand down on one shoulder, then quickly brought it up again before it even had time to touch. “I just want your voice in my ear. Just want to hear your voice in my ear. Just say my name, just say Cleve, like you used to say Cleve. Just say it once, that’ll be my forever, that’ll be my all-time, my eternity, I don’t want God. This isn’t a triangle. There’s no room for outsiders in my love for you. Just say it one time more. If you can’t say it whole, then say it broken. If you can’t say it full, then say it whispered. Cleve.”

Then, because it warms you — dancing in a stuffy room — I broke off just long enough to throw both halves of the window apart as far as they would go. It was a picture window and nearly wall-wide. The city smiled in on us from out there, friendly, seeming to understand, sharing our joy and our rapture.

Back again to the spinning rounds of the dance, its tempo slowly mounting in a whirl. The lights, the sky, the monolith in the background swung now to this side, now to that, then all the way around and back again to where they were before, like a painted cyclorama around the outside of a merry-go-round.

Then at last, when we were as far as we could get from it, and it was as far as it could get from us, from all the way back at the back of the room, we turned as one and with one accord started to run, devotedly, determinedly, yet somehow without grimness, toward it, our arms tight around one another, cheek pressed to cheek. Then at the last moment, instead of turning aside, we crossed the low sill and the ledge beyond with a spread-legged leap, a buoyant arc, that never came down again — never ever came down again.

And as the suction funneled up around us and life rushed past our heads like the pull of a tornado gone into reverse, I heard someone cry out, “Wait! Let me catch up. Wait for the boy who loves you.”

And the empty music played in an empty room, to a gone love, two gone lives.