A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

Life Is Weird Sometimes...

Have you ever seen a woman die? I hope you never have to, never do. I mean in violence, at your own hands. It isn’t a good thing to see. When you see a man die, you see only yourself not someone apart whom you once knelt to in your heart and offered up your love to. Revered and dwelt-on in your reveries. Or if not, some other man did.

She falls from higher than a man, from over the heads of men, whether they’re lovers or husbands or brothers. And whether she was good or she was evil, whatever evil is, she falls with a flash and a fiery trace, like a disintegrating star plunging into the water. A man just falls like a clod; clay back to the clay he came from. That is why judiciaries and law-enforcers so seldom kill women by law, no matter what their crime.

And when it is done by one man alone, personally and individually acting as his own sentencer and his own executioner, as you do now, think how much more affecting and impact-bearing it is.

That face you see before you that has just finished dying will come back palely haunting into every night’s sleep for the rest of your life, no matter how much she deserved it, no matter how tough your mind. You know it will, you know. That scene you saw before you that has just ended will come back meshed into every dream you ever dream again, so that you don’t just kill her once, you kill her a thousand and one times, and she never stays quite dead. And all the brandy and all the barbiturates can’t make it go away.

Those lips that pressed against yours like warm velvet and clung there in soft adhesion, look at them now, twisted into an ellipse, a crevice for a surprise that never finishes coming out. Those eyes that glittered with love and hate and laughter and hate and doubt and hate, and hate and hate and hate, they don’t hate now any more. Those arms that gestured so gracefully in the light, and wound around you so importunately in the dark, paid out on the floor now limp and curlycued, like lengths of wide ribbon that have slipped off their spools. The polish on the fingertips of the one lying face-down looking strangely like five little red seeds burst out of some pod and lying there scattered. A polish that claimed proudly to be long-lasting. I know; I used to see the bottle. This will prove it now: it will outlast her.

The hair your hand strayed through over and over, and found so soft and responsive each time; lying there fanned out and flotsam like a mess of seaweed washed up on the shore.

The body that once was the goal, and the striving, and the will-o’-the-wisp of the act of love...

All of this now devastated, distorted, and in death.

No, it isn’t good to see a woman...

I did a number of banal things that struck me strange, although I had never done this thing before and had no way of knowing whether they were banal or not, strangely out of key or not, or were to be expected to follow anything like that.

I smoothed down the sleeves of my shirt, first of all. They hadn’t been rolled up, but I kept smoothing and straightening them down as though they had been. Then I shot my cuffs back into more conforming place, and felt for their fastenings. One had come open in the swift arm-play that had occurred, and I refastened it.

Then I looked at the watch on my wrist, not to tell the time, but to see if it had suffered any surface-harm. I prized it a great deal; some men do. It showed no signs of any harm, but to guard doubly against that, I stem-wound it briefly but briskly. You weren’t supposed to have to, it was self-winding. But I figured the little added fillip would benefit it. I’d bought it in 1957 at Lambert Brothers for $150, and I’d never regretted it since.

Meanwhile she was dying there on the floor.

I went into the bathroom, and ran a little warm water, and washed off my hands. (Just like you do after you do almost anything.) Then I changed it to cold and smoothed a little of it on my hair. I don’t like warm water on my hair, it opens the pores, I think you catch cold quicker that way.

I was going to use the john, but somehow it seemed indecent, disrespectful, I don’t know how to say it. I didn’t have to very badly anyway, so I didn’t. It had only been a nervous reflex from the killing.

Then I dried off my hands on one of her towels, and came outside again.

By that time she had finished dying on the floor. She was dead now.

I bent down and put my hand to her forehead. It was the last time I ever touched her, out of all the many times I’d touched her before.

Put my hand to her forehead, and said out loud: “You can’t think any more now in back of there, can you? It’s quiet in back of there now, isn’t it?”

What a mysterious thing that is, I thought. How it stops. And once it does, never comes on again.

When I came out into the outside room again, I saw her shoe still lying there, where it had come off in the course of our brief wrestle. It looked so pathetic there by itself without an owner, it looked so lonely, it looked so empty. Something made me pick it up and take it in to her. Like when someone’s going away, you help them on with their coat, or their jackboots, or whatever it is they need for going away.

I didn’t try to put it back on her, I just set it down there beside her close at hand. You’re going to need this, I said to her in my mind. You’re starting on a long walk. You’re going to keep walking from now on, looking for your home.

I stopped and wondered for a minute if that was what happened to all of us when we crossed over. Just keep walking, keep on walking, with no ahead and no in-back-of; tramps, vagrants in eternity. With our last hope and horizon — death — already taken away.

In the Middle Ages they had lurid colors, a bright red hell, an azure heaven shot with gold stars. They knew where they were, at least. They could tell the difference. We, in the Twentieth, we just have the long walk, the long walk through the wispy backward-stringing mists of eternity, from nowhere to nowhere, never getting there, until you’re so tired you almost wish you were — alive again.

The gun I picked up and looked around with, not knowing what to do with it, and finally put it into my own pocket. I don’t know why, don’t know what made me. It had been hers in the first place. Just some kind of a tidying-up reflex, I guess. Don’t leave things lying around. You learn that in your boyhood.

Then I opened the door and went out. And it was over.

Standing outside the reclosed door, I lowered my head thoughtfully for a moment and spit on the floor at my feet. Not the way you spit in anger or in insult, or even in disgust. But simply the way you would spit to rid your mouth of a bad aftertaste, to clear it out.

That television that I had noticed the first time, when I crossed the hall on my way in, was still raging away from behind a door at the far end, set at right- (or left-) angles to all the rest of them, depending on which side they were on. No wonder the shot hadn’t been heard around. It would have been drowned in the torrent of noise like a raindrop falling in an ocean.

The only thing I could figure was that whoever was in there with it had it turned or slanted in such a way that the full impact was away from them and toward the door and the hail beyond it, and they didn’t realize what it was doing themselves. Some people are insensitive to television noise anyway; ask a cross-section of average neighbors, they’ll always point one out.

It was belting the hall like a hurricane, only its waves were audial instead of wind and water. “What happened to me,” it bragged at the top of its thundering tubes, “was a simple little pill called Compoz. Now I work relaxed and I sleep relaxed—”

And no one else does, I thought inattentively with a stray lobe of my mind.

I brought the car up to me — it was an automatic — and on the short, sleek glide down, a momentary impulse occurred to me to go up to Charlie when I got down below. He was the doorman. Go up to Charlie, hand him the gun, and say: “Better ring in to the police. I just killed her up there. I just killed twelve-ten.”

But it had started to fade even before I got all the way down. Then when I got out and didn’t see him around anywhere, that scotched it entirely. You don’t hang around waiting to report you’ve killed someone. You do it with your throttle wide open or not at all.

Then when I emerged into the street, I saw where he was. He was one house length down, in front of the next building, helping some people get into a taxi there. It must have dropped a fare off there, and couldn’t roll back to his stop-whistle because of the traffic coming on behind, so he and his party had had to go down there after it. They were bulky, and the furs on the women made them even bulkier, and they took a great deal of handling to shoe-horn in. His attention was fully occupied, and his back was to me.

He hadn’t seen me going in either. Must have gone around the corner for a quick coffee break.

How strange, I thought, he didn’t see me at either of the two points that count. But in between I bet he was killing time hanging around here in front of the entrance with nothing to do. That’s the way those things go sometimes: try not to be seen, and everybody spots you; don’t give a good damn whether or not you are, and everybody looks right through you just as though you weren’t there.

I turned away from him and went on my way, up the street and about my business. The past was dead. The future was resignation, fatality, and could only end one way now. The present was numbness, that could feel nothing. Like Novocaine needled into your heart. What was there in all the dimensions of time for me?

I turned left at the first up-and-down transverse I came to, and went down it for a block, and stopped in for a drink at a place. I needed one bad, I was beginning to feel shaky inside now. I’d been in this place before. It was called Felix’s (a close enough approximation, with a change of just one letter). It was three or four steps down, what you might call semi-below-side-walk-level. It was kept in a state of chronic dimness, a sort of half-light. Some said so you couldn’t see how cut and watered your drinks were.

It was just the place for me though. I didn’t want a bright light shining on me. That would come quick enough, in some precinct back room.

My invisibility had run out though. I had no sooner sat down than, before my drink had even had time to get in front of me, a girl came over to me. From behind, naturally; that was the only way she could. She tapped me on the shoulder with two fingers.

I didn’t know her, but she knew me, at second hand, it seemed. I leaned my ear toward her a little, so if she said anything I could hear what it was.

“Your friend wants to know why you don’t recognize him any more,” was what she said, reproachfully. And with that prim propriety that sometimes comes with a certain amount of alcohol — and almost invariably when a feeling of social unsurety goes with it — she added, “You shouldn’t be that way. He only wanted you to come over and join us.”

“What friend? Where?” I said grudgingly.

She pointed with the hand that was holding the change left over from the record player she’d just been to, which impeded the accuracy of her point somewhat because she had to keep three fingers bunched over in order to hang onto the coins. “In the booth. Don’t you see him?”

“How can I see anybody from here?” I asked her sullenly. “They’re all wearing shadow masks halfway up their faces. All I can see is their foreheads.” (The edge of the bar drew a line at about that height all around the room; the lights were below it, on the inside.)

“But he could see you,” she challenged. “And so could I.”

“Well, he’s been in here longer than me. I only just now walked in through the door.” I thought that would get rid of her and break it up. Instead it brought on a controversy.

She gave the sort of little-girl grimace that goes with the expression “Oo, what you just said,” or “Oo, I’m going to tell on you.” Rounded her mouth to a big O, and her eyes to match. Which sat strangely on her along with the come-on makeup and the Martinis or whatever they had been.

“You’ve been buzzing around up here for the better part of an hour. First you were sitting in one place, then in another, then you went over to the cigarette machine. Then you were gone for a while — I guess to the telephone or the men’s room — and then you came back again. We had our eyes on you the whole time. Every time he hollered your name out, you’d look and then you’d look away again. So it wasn’t that you didn’t hear, it was you didn’t want to h—”

“What is my name then, if he hollered it so many times?”

I nearly fell over. She gave me my name; both of them in fact. Not quite accurately, but close enough to do.

Still unconvinced, but willing to be, I went over with her to take a look at him. He was in a sour mood by now over the fancied slight. He wouldn’t get up. He wouldn’t smile. He wouldn’t shake hands. He was also more than a little smashed. His head kept going around on his shoulders; the shoulders didn’t, just the head.

I didn’t know him well at all, but I did know him. But this wasn’t the night nor the particular segment of it to become enmeshed with stray one- or two-time acquaintances. All I kept thinking, with inwardly raised eyes, was: Why did I pick this particular place? There’s a line of bars all along this avenue. Why did I have to come in here and run into these two?

“I appreciate this no end,” he said sarcastically.

“You got your wires crossed,” I told him briefly. “I just came in.”

“You tell him,” he said to the girl.

“Look,” she catalogued, “we saw everything you got on. Just like you have it on you now.”

(“But not on me, on someone else,” I put in.)

“This same light-gray shortie coat—” She plucked it with her fingers.

(“There’s been a rash of them all over New York this season.”)

“And a shave-head haircut?”

(“Who hasn’t one?”)

“And even a shiny tie clip that flashed in my eyes from the light every time you turned a certain way?”

(“Everyone carries some kind of hardware across the front.”)

“But all three of them match up,” she expostulated. “You’re wearing them all.”

“So was somebody else. Half an hour ago, or maybe twenty minutes, sitting on the same stool I was, that’s all. It was a double-take.” And I omitted to add: You’re both blurry with booze, anyway.

He turned to address the girl, as a way of showing me what his feelings toward me were. “He’s copping a plea. You think you know a guy, and then you’re not good enough for him.”

“Your knowing me ended right now,” I said tersely.

He pushed his underlip out in hostility. “Then stand away from my table. Don’t crowd us like that.”

He got up in his seat and gave me a stiff-arm back, hand against chest.

I shoved him in return, also hand against chest, and he sat down again.

This time he got up and came out and around from behind the table and swung a roundhouse at me. I can’t remember whether it clipped or not. Probably not or I’d be able to.

I swung back at him and could feel it land, but he only gave a little. Maybe a step back with one foot.

His second swing, and the third of the whole capsule fight, and I went sprawling back on my shoulders across the floor. He was springier than he looked in his liquored condition.

The whole thing didn’t take a half-minute, but already everyone in the place was around us in a tight little circle, the way they always are at such a time. The bartender came running out from behind, cautioning, “All right, all right,” in an excited voice. All-right what he didn’t specify.

He helped me up, and then continued the process by arming me all the way over to the door and just beyond it, before I knew what was happening. He didn’t throw me out, simply sort of urged me out by one arm. There he let go my arm, told me, “Now go away from here. Go someplace else and do that.” And closed the door in my face.

I guess I was the one selected to be evicted because the other fellow had had a girl with him, and from where the bartender stood it looked as if I had gone over and accosted them, said something out of the way to her. The pantomime of what he had witnessed alone would have been enough to suggest that to him, without the need of an accompanying sound track.

He had turned his back to me, and was walking away from the door, when I reopened it wide enough to insert my head, one foot and one shoulder past it, and to protest indignantly: “I still have a drink coming to me. I paid you for it, and I never got it. Now where is it?”

“You’ve had enough,” he said arbitrarily and quite inaccurately. I hadn’t had anything. “You’re cut off.”

And with that he came back toward me, and this time did push me, gave me a good hearty shove out through the partial aperture I had been standing in. So tempestuous a one in fact that I went all the way back and over, and again sprawled on my shoulder blades in a sort of arrested skid across the sidewalk.

This time he locked the door from the inside (evidently a temporary measure until I should go away) and pulled down a shade across the grimy glass portion of it in final dismissal.

It was the second time I’d been toppled in about three minutes and I blew a fuse.

I got up into a crouched-over position, like a runner on his mark just before the start of a race. I swung my head around, this way and that, looking for something to throw. There was a fire hydrant, but it was immovable. There was one of those Department of Sanitation wire-lattice litter baskets that stud the sidewalks of New York. I went over to that, still at a crouch, and looked in it for something heavy. All I could see from the top was layers of newspapers. So instead of throwing something from its contents, I threw the whole receptacle itself.

Lifted it clear, hoisted it overhead, took a few running steps with it, scraps of litter raining out of it, and let it fly.

The door responded with an ear-splitting bang like the backfire from a heavy truck’s exhaust tube.

But it wasn’t strong enough to break the glass, which was what I’d been trying for, or my throw wasn’t strong enough, or there was a wire-mesh backing protecting the glass. It just fractured it and rolled off, leaving behind a star-shaped cicatrice that looked like it was made of powdered sugar.

The barman flew out and grabbed me. I never saw anyone come out of anywhere so fast. Everyone else came out too, and some stayed and some skipped out on their drinks.

A couple of patrol cars knifed up in pincers formation, one with the traffic, one against the traffic, dome lights dead for surprise value, and caught me in between them.

The next thing I knew I was standing in front of a police sergeant’s desk.

The barkeeper said his door pane was worth fifty-five dollars. I felt like saying his whole place wasn’t worth fifty-five dollars, but I wasn’t in a position to submit appraisals. The desk sergeant asked him if he would be willing to drop the complaint if I made good on the fifty-five dollars. He said he would. The desk sergeant asked me if I had fifty-five dollars. I checked myself out, and said I didn’t have. The desk sergeant asked me if I could get fifty-five dollars. I said I’d try. The desk sergeant said I could use his phone.

I called up Stewart Sutphen, my lawyer. I knew it was no use calling his office at that hour of the night, so I called his home instead. He wasn’t there either. He was up in the country somewhere. He was always up in the country somewhere whenever you tried to reach him, I reflected rather disgruntledly. He had been the last time too, I remembered. He was the out-of-towningest attorney I ever heard of. He’d once told me he liked to go over his briefs up where it was quiet and peaceful and there were no distractions, at one of these little country hotels or wayside stopping-off places. I often wondered if anyone went along to help him turn the pages, but that was a loaded question. And none of my business besides. He seemed to be happily enough married. I’d met his wife.

I left my name and where I was, and asked her to tell him to come down in the morning with the fifty-five dollars.

The fifty-five being in default, my pocket-fill was taken away from me, stacked into an oblong manila folder, the flap of this was wetly and sloppily licked by a police property clerk who seemed to be over-salivated, and it was then pummeled into adhesion, and held, to be returned to me on exit. My name and my other details were entered on the blotter, and I was booked and remanded into a cell to be held overnight on a D. and D. charge.

I’d never been in one of them before. Actually, it wasn’t so bad. If you closed your eyes a minute and didn’t stop to tell yourself what it was, it could have been any barren little room, except that the light was on the outside and never went off all night.

I was alone in it. There were two bunks in it, but the other one was fallow. D. and D., drunk and disorderly (conduct), must have been on the scarce side that night. There are runs on various types of charges at certain times, the cops will tell you that in their line of work. The blanket smelled of creosote, that’s the part I remember most. I could hear somebody nearby snoring heavily, but I didn’t mind that, it took a little of the aloneness away.

Even the breakfast wasn’t too bad. No worse than you’d get in an average elbow-rest cafeteria. And of course, on the city. They passed it in about six, a little earlier than I usually had mine. Oatmeal, and white bread, and a thick mug of coffee. I skipped the first two, because I don’t like soupy oatmeal and because I don’t like cottony white bread, but I asked for a refill on the coffee and was given it not only willingly but even (I thought I detected) with a touch of fellow feeling by him outside there in the corridor. I guess I wasn’t the usual type he got in there.

And meanwhile I kept thinking: Don’t they know yet? Don’t they know what I’ve done? Why is it taking them so long to find out? I thought they were so fast, so infallible.

Sutphen came around ten in the morning and paid out my damages, and in due course they unlocked me and indicated me out. On our way down the front steps of the detention house side by side, he shook his head full of tightly spun pepper-and-salt clinkers at me and gave me a mildly chiding: “A man your age. Breaking bar windows. Brawling. Trying to do, act like a perpetual juvenile?” Beyond that he had nothing else much to say. I suppose to him it was too trifling, and not a legal matter at all but one of loss of temper.

I didn’t tell him either what I’d done. I don’t know why; I couldn’t bring myself to. He was more the one to tell than the cops. My friend and lawyer in one. It would have given him a head start at least on figuring out what was best to do for me. But I was tired and beat. I hadn’t closed my eyes all night in the detention cell. I knew once I told I wouldn’t be left alone; I’d be dragged here and lugged there and hustled the next place. I wanted time to sleep on it and time to think it out and time to tighten my belt for what was coming to me.

He asked me if he could drop me off, in a perfunctory way. But I knew he was anxious to get back to his office routine and not play anyone’s door-to-door driver. And I wanted to be alone too. I had a lot of thinking to catch up on. I didn’t want anyone right on top of me for a while. So I told him no and I walked away from him down the street on my own and by my lonesome.

And thus the night finally came to its long-drawn-out end, the memorable unforgettable night that it had been.

I felt rotten, inside and out and all over. Like when you’ve had a tooth that hurts, and have had it taken out, and then the hole where it was hurts almost as bad as before. You can’t tell the duff.

But the paradox of the whole thing was this: on the night that I committed a murder, I was only locked up on disorderly conduct charges.