Death Is My Dancing Partner

1

The Paris express brought them in at four in the afternoon.

She was in her compartment, watching a line of poplars gliding by outside, like something on a moving belt coming their way from the city, leaving it as they entered.

He knocked on the door. She could tell it was his knock, not the porter’s. She already knew all those things about him: his step, his whistle, his knock on a door. Knew them so well, her heart had auditioned them so often. Knew all the things there were to know about him, except how he kissed, how his arms felt tight around your back, how his whisper sounded close beside your ear. She’d had no practice.

She opened it immediately.

He was all set to leave the train.

Her heart perspired a little inside her, the way it always did at sight of him.

He looked so American. He always looked so American, no matter where they went, no matter where they were. So clean and carefree and — friendly. (But friendly toward all the world, so what good did that do you?) Like a shaving cream ad or an ad of a young man smoking a cigarette. So American. So juvenile, so energetic, so never-tired, so never-dull.

A draft along the corridor was blowing his neck-scarf back across his shoulders, instead of it being tucked sedately under his coat where it belonged. The polka dots on it seemed to fill the air, like little whirling disks.

“All set?” he asked.

“I’m all ready.”

“Help you with anything?” he offered.

“The porter will be back in a minute.”

“Milano,” he said. He’d already learned it the way the Italians said it.

He felt good, she could tell. He always did, whenever they were going to begin a new stand like this.

“Milano, get ready, you’re gonna hear some music like you never heard before.” He winked at her. He perked his elbow out toward her, for her to take his arm.

She took it, but she wanted more than that. She could almost hear her heart say inside her, “Is that all I get?”

She walked down the car corridor like that, on his arm.

Then the train stopped, and they got down, and they all stood around there beside it. Wisps of steam, and echoing noises, and hand-trucks rolling by, and a big vaulted glass roof glooming overhead.

A man in driver’s uniform edged forward, touched the visor of his cap. “Signor Gio-ness? Compliments of Signor Sertuchi, of Excelsior.” And led them outside, to two limousines standing by for their disposal.

They were driven to a hotel, the Principe di Savoia. On the way, he lit a cigarette for her, and patted her twice on the back of her hand. Even though he was looking the other way as he did so.

“Well, I get to be in the same hotel with him, at least,” she consoled herself wryly, as they went up in the elevator.

When they both got out together, he was shown to one door, and she to another. “Well, I get to be on the same floor with him, at least.”

She closed the door.

“It was nice being together,” she mused bitterly, “from the railway station to the hotel.” She looked at the back of her hand, where he’d patted it. “What more do you expect? You’ve had your token for today.”

She went to the windows. Immense cathedral-spires in the middle distance. Tricky little Fiats and pocket-sized Toppolinos scurrying along for dear life. And now and then a lordly Alfa-Romeo.

Milan. She turned away again with a shrug.

It was always the same. Always the same loneliness.

2

He knocked on her door.

“We’re all going down to the Excelsior to meet Sertuchi. Want to come with us?”

“No. I’ll stay here. You do the honors for me. He won’t be put out, will he?”

“No; probably good technique. He expects you to be aloof and uppish. I’ll look after your dressing room and everything for you. I’ll be back and take you to dinner,” he promised.

He knocked again. He was only forty minutes late. But this was Italy; the pace was slower, she supposed. It was the fifth time she’d opened her door, but the first four times there hadn’t been any knock.

He was in his tux. She had on the black lace she’d just bought last week at Dior’s. He had roses and gardenias for her. He had a smile for her.

She made a mistake when she first took the flowers from him. Sunrise came up all over her face.

“Oh, Max...” she breathed gratefully.

“Compliments of your new boss, Signor Rafaele Sertuchi.”

“Oh... I see,” she sighed dismally. Sunset went down all over her face.

“He kisses your hand.”

He kissed her hand. Couldn’t it have come from you? she wondered wistfully.

“Should have been with us. We all had champagne in his private office. And you ought to see what a layout; lives like a king. Thick pile carpet on the floor, gold furniture, crystal chandeliers. These operators over here must sock it away. Wonder how they do it?”

She shrugged; what did she care about that.

He readied his arm for her to take. “What do you say we go down and feed the face?” He didn’t say. How good you look. He didn’t say...

For once she didn’t take it, left it waiting on its own. “Not when you ask me that way.”

He grinned.

He made her a courtly bow, sliced his arm across his stomach. “Signorina?”

“I can get that from the doorman downstairs.”

“What do I have to do, rehearse for a meal?”

“It’s so simple,” she said. “It’s already half-spoiled, because it should have come from you in the first place. But I’ll brief you for the next time.” She took his hand and placed it a little around her waist. “You lead me a little from here. Just a little. You take my hand in yours and lead me a little with that. Coaxing. But: you mean it a little. You want me to a little. If I don’t come, your evening won’t be quite the same. If I’m not there, there won’t be any lights at your table...”

He held his breath, as though he were actually practising something. “How am I doing?”

“You mean it a little,” she reminded him almost inaudibly.

Suddenly he kissed her. The sun made another of its false starts upward.

“That’s for luck,” he said.

Did you have to spoil it? she said to herself.

They went down to dinner.

Well, he had to eat. She had to eat too. They were both in the same hotel. And if there was plenty of light at the table it was all supplied by the Milan Electric Company.

Always the same loneliness.

A page was standing beside him, waiting to get his attention.

“Telefono, Sigñor.”

“Sure it’s for me?” He didn’t look so surprised, though, she thought.

“Si, Sigñor. Signor Massa-well Gio-ness, non?”

“Roughly, that’s about the name,” he agreed. “Excuse me.” He got up and left her there.

She took a sip of her champagne and it had gone flat. She took a puff of her cigarette and it had gone stale. And she knew if she took a nibble at one of those sugar-coated almonds it would be bitter as hell. So she didn’t.

When he came back he looked a little redder than when he’d left. (Maybe the booth had been warm.)

I’m not going to ask him, she promised herself. I’m not going to ask him.

“What did Sertuchi want?” she said finally.

“When?” he said, and then crossed that out. “Oh, just wanted to make sure we were all comfortable and everything was under control.”

So it wasn’t Sertuchi. So he’d already met someone in Milan. That explained the extra forty minutes. There must have been a party given in those private offices, with just a few hand-picked professionals present to welcome him and his bandsmen.

When they got up from the table, he asked, elaborately casual, “What’re you doing tonight?”

“Nothing.” But she didn’t mean she refused to do anything, she meant she was willing to do anything he suggested.

He twisted it around to fit the first meaning. “Good idea. Neither am I. Think I’ll take it easy the first night. I guess I’ll hit the hay.”

“Right now, you mean? It’s only ten.”

He didn’t answer that. He already had her in the elevator, and since the elevator only went in one direction, up, that’s where they went with it.

He took her to her door.

“Well, gunnight. See you at lunch.”

Hotel breakfasts in Europe are served privately in the room; they’d already got used to that.

She closed her door without saying good night. He hadn’t waited to hear whether she had or not, anyway.

She heard his close down the hall.

Both doors were wasted, though. She could look right through the two of them. Prime your wallet, she told him, make sure you’ve got a heavy enough load in it. Refill your cigarette case. Go over to the glass, give yourself a couple of extra strokes with the hairbrush. Now straighten your tie. Yes, you’ll do, you’ll do. You would have done for me even the way you were before, without all that. But this is Something New, Something Special.

I hope you get the Asiatic Flu from her! I hope you trip over your own shoelace and give yourself a biff right on the chin, the kind of a biff I’d like to give you for myself! I hope... (and with forehead slowly drooping against door-frame), darling, I hope you have a wonderful time from start to finish, and don’t feel like I’m feeling at this minute.

She heard him go by again later. He was whistling. His entrance music for a wonderful evening ahead. One of the old things from the Twenties, Tonight’s my Night with Baby.

She went to the window overlooking the front of the hotel.

She saw him come out below her, and there was someone on his arm. She must have stopped by for him and waited downstairs.

Someone in trailing black velvet and a shawl of gold lace over her head. They got in a car together and drove off.

Always the same loneliness.

3

Their opening was a sensation, the biggest Milan had had in years. Even the American air raids hadn’t rocked the town so.

“La Danza dell’ Morte” it said on every billboard, every kiosk, every wall, and somebody had added the cute idea of a prancing skeleton.

People stood up on chairs. They waved handkerchiefs wildly, and napkins — and in one case even an entire tablecloth. They broke up the place, it was through for the night. It wasn’t a night club any more, it was a mob scene. A woman was pushed through a mirror, and she had to go to the hospital, but she went in evening dress and still holding a bottle of champagne cradled in her arms, and she didn’t need any anaesthetic when they took the stitches, she was so high already. She was still applauding as the doctors sewed up her shoulder, and they thought it was for them (they hadn’t been to the Excelsior) and bowed and thanked her.

Mari had to fight her way through to the street. Luckily, Sertuchi had policemen there to clear a way, or it would have been la danza dell’ morte in plain fact. It took her car a good fifteen minutes to make the few short yards from the club’s side entrance to the next corner, and even after it was in the clear they still had to pull a few admirers off its roof. She emerged from the side entrance holding two dozen full-blown roses. When she entered her car all she was holding was two dozen stark stems, not even a leaf left on them. Not even a thorn, for that matter. The sidewalk was maybe four yards wide.

It was a scene such as a performer dreams of, dreams of and seldom gets.

They all went out to celebrate afterwards. All of them. Every one but him.

He said he’d come along in a few minutes. He didn’t. The few minutes became a lot.

She turned her head too much. The wrong way, away from the celebration. She asked the time too much.

She saw Dixon smile at Clark, and then Clark smile back at Dixon.

She didn’t have to ask where he was any more after that; she’d already been told.

He never came from first to last.

She went home early. Early for an opening night celebration.

She knocked on his door when she got back, but she really didn’t expect any answer. She didn’t get any.

Always the same loneliness.

4

They didn’t have dinner together the next night.

He showed up only minutes before the performance, all lit up like a hundred-watt bulb. Not from alcohol, it wasn’t that kind of lighting.

He threw her a “How’s the star?” from the dressing-room door.

The star was lonely.

Then he came in, kissed her, went out and again. A kiss of partnership, one of those things.

The shine of him hurt her eyes. She had to close them for a moment after he’d gone. Too bright.

She was walking along the Via San Andrea in the bright afternoon sunshine and she saw him sitting there out in the open at a table.

He had his back to her, he didn’t see her. Then the forward-bending waiter got out of the way, and she saw that he wasn’t alone. There were two at the table. Two of everything. Two little glasses of Carpano. Two cigarettes kissing tip to tip in a dish. Sunshine for two. A little world just for two.

Even just two hands on the table, one for each. Where the other two were wasn’t hard to guess. They were nowhere in sight.

She was very pretty. One of those rarities, an Italian blonde. There are a few in the north. One too many in the north, one too many!

Mari would have turned around and backed away, but it was too late. She was hemmed in by little tables, little glasses of Cinzano, little chairs.

All of a sudden he turned around and saw her.

“Hello, Mari.”

“Hello, Max.”

He stood up. He didn’t blush or act confused. Just acted a little wary, as if to say, “You won’t stay too long, now, will you?”

“Miss Ruyter, the Signorina Malatesta.”

She thought, What would you do if I corrected that ‘Miss’ part? But he knew he was safe. She knew he was too.

“The signorina’s in Italian films,” he said. Proudly, as though he not only already owned her, he owned Italian films as well. She wouldn’t have minded if it was only Italian films he owned.

“How wonderful you dance, Miss Ruyter.”

“Thank you. Were you there?”

“I go every night while I am in Milano.”

“To see me dance?”

“Well, partly that.” Her eyes gave her away, they smiled over his way.

“Oh, I see,” she said. She did. She saw.

He pretended to reach for a chair.

She wouldn’t take it.

He tried to buy her a drink.

She wouldn’t let him.

The Italian tried to be generous, or charming or something. Or maybe she really didn’t guess. “We must find a, how you say, a cavalier, a gentleman escort, for Miss Ruyter, to show her Milano. It is not fair. I have shown it to you, caro mio. Someone should show it to Miss Ruyter.”

“I’ve seen a lot of it from my hotel window,” Mari told her, “and I’m getting to know it by heart from there.”

“You must run, Miss Ruyter?”

He was the one spoke for her. He wasn’t taking any chances. “She has an evening performance coming on. You know how it is.”

You do too, mister, she thought bitterly. And even I do, for that matter. That makes three of us that do. They didn’t have dinner together that night.

5

When the hour hand had finally caught up with the minute hand, and there was just one hand instead of two any more, three-fifteen in the morning, she got up and went over to the window and looked out. A lot of stars flashed up outside, as though somebody had sent up a shower of sparks.

Somebody else’s stars.

“Take five,” she told them moodily. “You’re wasting your time, wrong window.”

She slapped it shut in their faces.

She opened the door and left the room, just the way she was. Wrapper over nylon gown.

She went down the hall to his room. She didn’t knock. She knew he wasn’t in there. She opened the door and went in. She closed it and put on the lights.

He came around her right away — that was what she’d come here for. A leftover whiff from an old cigarette, a hint of bay rum from an old shave. A necktie on the floor, like the shed skin of a snake.

She picked it up, and smoothed it with her fingers, and — just once — with her lips. London, last Christmas. “Thanks, honey; I’ll think of you every time I wear it!”

“Traitor,” she said to it. “A big help you were.”

On the table, telephone messages for him. Fast and furious.

European time; in the States they called it two-time.

She went over to the closet door and nestled up against a pendant jacket. She twined the sleeves around her, where they should have known enough to go of their own accord.

She got him, she thought, and I got his old jacket.

Only the dam thing doesn’t hold you tight enough; you have to work for the two of you. A flannel hug, not a muscle in it.

The room door opened without any warning. He was standing there looking at her.

He was a little soused.

“Mari, you oughtn’t to come into a fellow’s room like this. It looksh like hell.”

“I’m sorry, I wouldn’t want to tarnish your reputation, Max.”

“No, it ain’t that. Ish yours.”

Malatesta’s lips were on his left jaw. And on his right jaw. And crosswise over a corner of his own lips. And on his chin.

She gently wiped a pair or two of them off.

“Did you worry just as much about hers, when you were with her just now?”

So then he remembered where he’d been just now. His eyes lit up. But it was indirect current, not for her.

“Wow!” he exploded.

That gave her the picture. It had been all the way, no brakes on.

She moved toward the door.

“Good night, Max,” she said softly.

She looked down at the knob. Then she turned and looked back at him.

“Is she very beautiful, Max?”

She didn’t have to ask that, she’d seen her; but she wanted him to say. He said.

“She puts my eyes out. Man, she’s walking blindness.”

“Are her arms very soft when they go around you, Max?”

She went back toward him, to show him, for purposes of comparison.

“Not only that, but educated.”

Her own dropped as though a whip had been laid across them.

He watched her go back to the door again, and open it. Something had finally penetrated to his Clicquot-dipped senses. A little something, anyway. A very little.

“Hey, you know something? I think you’re lonely. I think you need somebody to love.”

“No thanks, Max,” she answered wanly, in a small, small voice. “I already have.”

She closed the door after her.

6

A long ominous chord. And the lights started going down. Then abruptly a spotlight, like a sack of flour bursting open on the dance floor.

Standing there waiting, she looked out ahead of her.

Hundreds of faces, palely powdered by the spotlight. Hundreds of stilled breaths.

She could see him now. Malatesta was with him, wearing diamonds on her fingers. They were at one of the ringside tables.

Sertuchi was out in the spotlight now, making her introduction. He did that for her himself. An introduction she still couldn’t understand most of, because it was in Italian.

And then his voice went up, the way it always did at the end. “...la danza dell’ morte!”

And then he cued her with his hand, and she came swiftly out from the darkness, and suddenly was in the spotlight.

Malatesta wasn’t looking at her (she’d seen this dance so many times before), she was looking at him.

Mari found that the flat, spade-like head of the symbolic snake was darting outward, more and more, in the direction of that table at which the other woman sat, rather than hovering downward over her own head. It was at though she could not control it. She had drawn nearer to the table than she usually approached any individual table other nights; she was off-center on the floor. But her feet wouldn’t seem to carry her back. She could feel a hot rancor, that was as much like venom as the snake’s own, coursing through her body.

She kept willing death, thinking it, wishing it.

She wanted to kill her; she wanted to see her fall.

Strike out! Strike out there! That way! There!

A little of the spotlight washed over Malatesta, and she suddenly stood out in all her Florentine, blonde loveliness. Malatesta was looking at her now, tautly. She wasn’t looking at Jones any more.

Eyes wide with horror. One hand clutching at her breast. She saw her raise the other, and make the sign of the cross with it.

Mari prepared for the fall. There were no steps here, and it was difficult to do.

Malatesta’s hand still clutched her breast. She was trembling violently. The jewelry on her showed that. Liquid ripples coursed through it, from the vibrations of her body.

Mari fell and lay there, one outstretched arm pointed straight before her at Malatesta’s table.

There were the usual screams and gasps. She got them every night. The back of a chair cracked in overturn, and something heavy dropped to the floor nearby.

She wouldn’t open her eyes.

It has struck her, she gloated. It has struck her. She is dead. It has killed her.

The room was in an uproar now. She could tell people were milling about, by the shuffling sound their shoes made, to and fro. She could tell they were scarcely looking at her any more, something else had their full attention.

She raised her head and looked.

Malatesta and he were clasped together in palpitating embrace, her blonde head gouging into his shoulder. Those ripples were still coursing down her jewelry, from the tremors of her body.

Behind them, in a straight line that passed through her table from the dance floor, the body of a man lay on the floor, mouth open as if in protest at the swiftness of his own death.

7

Toward three o’clock that same morning there was a knock on the door of her room at the hotel.

“Si?” she called out.

“Aperta.” It was a man’s voice. It was authoritative.

“Un momento,” she complained wanly.

Two men were standing one on each side of it, when she’d reached it and opened it. They were unsmiling, in a land where everyone smiled all the time (everyone but she). Their liquid black eyes were as hard, as impersonal, as little lumps of coal. One was in police uniform.

The other took something out of his coat, but she didn’t look at the credentials.

“I am Russo, of the metropolitan police.”

He didn’t ask her who she was, nor if she was.

“You are coming down with us to the central headquarters.”

She didn’t pretend not to understand.

“About what happened before?”

“That is correct.”

She had never seen an Italian detective before. She had never even thought of one before. But if she had, he would, most likely, have been totally different from what this one was. No excitability, no florid gestures. Why did they have that reputation, as a race? This one was stolid. Cold as stone. Unemotional as steel. Less human, more of a machine, than even a London or a New York plain-clothesman might have been.

He spoke English. He must have studied it long and hard, at some lyceum.

He had on a light-gray flannel suit, and a gray hat.

He gave the impression of being an extremely competent young man, whom it would be wiser not to fool around with. You not only wouldn’t get anywhere, you’d get decidedly the worst of it if you got him started.

“I am arrested?” she faltered.

“You are not arrested,” he said clippedly. “I would have informed you if you were.”

He acted as if he found this typical layman’s question a nuisance, as if he got it all the time and were sick of answering it. The policeman didn’t even show signs of life, just stood by.

“Can I — just get my purse, and wrap something around my head? It gets chilly at this hour of the night.”

“Make whatever preparation you wish. Only do not close the door between us.”

“I wasn’t going to,” she said meekly.

She twisted a scarf about her head into a turban and joined them.

On the way down the hall she said, “Did I do the wrong thing by coming back here? Nobody told me to stay there.”

“It is not important, Madama,” he let her know curtly, “since you are returning now anyway with me.”

They had kept the elevator waiting for them. It was the first time since she’d been stopping at the hotel that she, or anyone else for that matter, had received immediate service from it.

As they descended, she kept saying to herself, I won’t ask him. I won’t ask him.

“Will — Mr. Jones be there too?”

“He has been,” he said tersely. “The greater part of the night.”

They went out through the lobby, and she tried not to be aware of the stares of the night clerk and the night porter.

On the steps just outside the entrance she stopped short in dismay.

“Not in that?”

It was a van. Backed up, and with its rear doors yawning open.

“We cannot send a private car for each person, Madama,” he answered curtly. “There are not enough of them at our disposal.”

She glanced around her embarrassedly, before descending and stepping inside. “It’s good it’s this late, there’s nobody much around at this hour.”

He supported her by the arm, and guided her before him to a seat. Then sat down opposite her.

The policeman closed the doors on them, then stayed outside on the rear step.

“I’ve never been in a police van before,” she said in a very small voice.

“It is just another machine, Madama.”

“But it’s so dark in here. And you can’t see out.”

“They are not built to be looked out of, Madama,” he said without too much sympathy. “They are not tourist omnibuses.”

She was fumbling in her handbag. She gave a mild exclamation of disappointment.

“I forgot my cigarettes — back at the room. I guess I wasn’t so calm and collected as I pretended to be.”

“Madama,” he said immediately, but in that tight, impersonal voice of his, and held his own out toward her. She could make out the white of the package, that was how she knew where to reach for one.

His lighter winked fitfully between them for a moment. He didn’t take one himself. (He was on a job.) His dark glistening eyes went out again.

“Grazie,” she said, trying to veer over into Italian to thaw things out a little.

He wouldn’t quit English. This was going to be kept impersonal between them, if he could help it. He’d picked her up in English, and he was going to turn her in English. “For nothing, Madama,” he said, from the other side of the Alps.

She puffed smoke. “Why do you keep calling me Madama?” She wondered if Jones had told them yet. If he’d have to.

“I am used to using it,” he said. “It comes to my tongue quicker than the correct English words, ‘mees’ and ‘meestress’. They always hold me up; I have to think which is which.”

Not mistress, she corrected him to herself. But yet, I’d settle even for that — gladly. “You take many women into custody?”

“You are not in custody, mad—”

She laughed. “Now we’ve both made a mistake; that makes us even.”

He didn’t laugh with her. She would have heard it if he had. She knew his face had never even flickered.

She dropped her cigarette, stepped on it in the dark.

“You’re not very kind, Officer Russo,” she sighed despondently. “I’m just a little frightened, riding in this and being brought in like this, and trying hard not to show it. You might have helped me just a little.”

“I am not a governess,” he answered stonily. “I am a civil-clothes police agent.”

“God help the girl you love, if there is one,” she slurred rapidly, half to herself.

“There is,” he answered frigidly. “And you are not she.”

And on that amiable note the ride ended.

The Milan headquarters building was centuries-old, and drab, and thick-walled, and like all public buildings in Italy, chilly and cavernous on the inside. It would have been gloomy and depressing even in broad daylight, but at this advanced hour of the night it was like entering a tomb to go in there. She shuddered and hugged her own sides as they entered.

“I should have brought something warmer.”

No answer.

They went down long corridors, poorly lit and draughty as the cutting edges of razor blades.

“Through this door, miss.”

(I bet he’s been rehearsing the right word to use ever since we got out of the van.)

Malatesta was in the first room they came to, waiting for Max.

She turned and saw Mari and her escort. “This is stupid, Mees Ruyter! But is this not stuppid? My poor Mox, half the night in there! And tonight we have an invitation to go to a party they are giving, specially for us. What will they think, those people? What shall we tell them? Oh, I tell you, I am ashame’ for to be an Italian at all!”

But never a word of sympathy for Mari herself. They went on in and the door closed. There was a man at a desk.

“Have a seat, Miss Ruyter. We will be ready for you in a moment.”

Jones was there, on a chair against the wall. Hunched forward in a sort of dejected vacuity, forearms projecting way out past his knees, cravanette topcoat in a puddle on his lap, fiddling with the expensive Swiss wristwatch he’d bought himself since they’d been here. Showing, if nothing else, how the time was on his mind. It had about everything on it: the minutes, the seconds, the date, the day of the week. Everything but one thing: when he was going to get out of here and go to that party, with her.

For the first time since Russo had knocked on her door, she found she didn’t mind being detained quite as much as she’d thought she had. Just as long as he was also being detained along with her. Kept from that party.

He corrugated his forehead ruefully as he saw her come in, and gave her a moody nod. As if to say, “What d’you think of this? Isn’t it great?”

She tried to veer over toward him and sit down on the chair next to him. The man at the desk didn’t raise his eyes at all. “Over on this side of the room, Miss Ruyter.” His hand went out.

She had to go all the way across to the far wall and sit down by that.

He looked over at her, Jones, from where he was, and she looked over at him, from where she was.

She took out a little mirror from her handbag, to see what she looked like to him. How her chances were now.

Suddenly, without any warning, without the man at the desk raising his head, or looking her way, or anything else, the questioning was already under way, she was a whole question behind in it.

“You have ever had this happen before?”

“I said to you, you have ever had this happen before?”

“Oh, excuse me, I didn’t know you were talking to — I don’t understand you.”

Russo took over. “The question is plain enough, miss.

What Inspector Gentile is asking is, did anyone ever fall dead, pass away like this, during one of your former performances?”

She didn’t know if she should tell them this. Had Jones? If he had already, then there was no choice. But if he hadn’t, and they still didn’t know about it, why...?

“You do not wish to answer, Miss Ruyter?” Gentile again.

That was making it look bad.

“Oh, I do. I do.”

“Very well, then, do.”

“It happened in Montreal, at the Club Perroquet, on — on St. Catherine Street; that was back two seasons ago.” They nodded.

Just like the police, they d already known it anyway. And she’d spoiled it by hesitating.

“And?”

“And in New York, about — about a month before that. It was just a rehearsal — No, not even a rehearsal; I was auditioning for our — for our agent.”

They nodded again.

Just like the police—

She felt very guilty of something, and couldn’t make out what it was. She looked down at the floor. Very guilty, almost criminal.

“You had ever seen this man before?”

She had to come back again to where she was. I’d make a rotten suspect. If I ever really did do anything, I’d be sunk in no time. “The man at the table?”

“What other man would you say we are talking about?”

“I not only never saw him before, I didn’t even see him there after he was already at the table.” It was true; she had been looking at Malatesta the entire time. “The first time I saw him, he was already on the floor.”

“You are married, Miss Ruyter?”

Now what’ll I do? Adroitly, her eyes went past Jones. They didn’t stop there, just went by. They brushed across his eyes like a kiss.

He gave the ghost of all winks. Never had an eyelid moved so slightly. Never had it moved so unmistakably.

Because she is out there, in the very next room, and might hear about it afterwards.

She looked down at the floor. Then she looked up at the inspector. “I am the wife of nobody. I am nobody’s wife at all.”

It was the truth. Nothing had ever been truer.

“You are infuriated about something, Miss Ruyter?” They must have caught it on her face.

“I was infuriated for a moment,” she admitted with charming candor, “at the thought that I am not married. It just came to me now. All we women are that way—” Suddenly the door had opened, and a young woman was in the room, accompanied by one of Russo’s fellow-agents. For a mistaken instant, as she started to turn her head, she thought it would be Malatesta, but it wasn’t, it was someone entirely different.

The entry must have been by prearrangement. There had been no knock, no signal or summons from Gentile at the desk.

She was heavily veiled, and already in full mourning-black. It must have been at hand from some previous occasion, to be donned so quickly. The little puckers her veil made, near the mouth, showed that she was’ still weeping behind it, if silently.

She had no eyes for the men. She stared hard at Mari. Remorselessly hard, protractedly. Her gloved hand, finally, went up toward her own headgear.

“Take off the wrap you have about your hair, Miss Ruyter,” Gentile requested.

She undid the turban-arrangement in which she’d come to Headquarters.

The veil stirred sibilantly. She was saying something to her detective-escort. He went over to Gentile. Gentile beckoned Mari, held up his desk phone toward her.

“Say something, Miss Ruyter. Say something into this telephone. Speak into it.”

“But what shall I—?” She took it from him, put it toward her ear. “Hello? How are you—?”

He sliced his hand. “No. No. Say something in Italian.”

“But I don’t speak Italian. I’ve only been in Milan—”

Again the veil stirred with some delphic message. The detective brought it over. Gentile jotted it down on a blank card, handed that to Mari. “Say this,” he ordered. “Say it over three times. And say it slowly each time. And clearly.”

She picked up the card, she read from it into the telephone, “Pronto? La casa di signor Cortese? Chi parla?” She said it three times.

She put down the phone.

She looked around, and the veiled figure was gone. “Look, Inspector—” Jones protested in a querulous drawl, as if wearied beyond the point of endurance.

“Silenzio.” He turned to her. “It was not your voice, who has been calling up this man at his house. That was his older daughter, who just made the comparison.”

“You seriously thought that I...?”

He spread his palms. “It had to be proved, no? That is what we are for, we.” He glanced over a paper. “This man was Giulio Cortese, manufacturer, aged fifty-two. A widower, with two grown daughters. An adventuress, a woman of mystery, came into his life, so the daughters say. They only saw her with him once, in the distance. Fortunately, she does not resemble you. She called up his house many times, and they heard her voice. Fortunately, it is not the same as yours. They objected to his marrying her, in order to protect the — the, how you say it? the legacy which will come to them some day, the rights of inheritance to his money. They succeed’ in dissuading him. He broke off. The woman foun’ out the reason. She sent this man at least one threatening letter, that they saw with their own eyes. They admitted to me privately they intercept’ much of his correspondence with her, in order to quicken up the breaking-off. And two week ago, a box of crystallize’ fruit came to their house, with no name they think by mistake. They have a little poodle. He get hold of one, he die in two hours.”

She was speechless. She felt as you do when a sharp-edged axe or some other lethal blade has fallen from above you and just missed your head by fractions of inches. That cool, quivery, astringent feeling.

“There is just one more formality to be completed, and then—” As he spoke, the telephone she had used for a sounding-board before began to peal in a tinkling falsetto. He listened carefully, said a word or two, then nodded and replaced it.

“You can go now,” he said. “The autopsy has just been completed. Cortese died of an acute heart attack.” He stared hard at her. “For which you are morally responsible, if not criminally. Your dance frightened him to death.”

They both jumped heatedly to their feet at once, she and Jones.

“If you had not danced in front of his table tonight, he would still be alive.”

He slapped his hand down on the desk.

“It is too dangerous, and I will not permit it any more. Your permit will be revoked, and I will take it up to the proper authorities, so that you are asked to leave Italy at the earliest opportunity.”

“You’re deporting us?” Jones glared at him as if he were going to take a flying broad-jump across the desk at him.

She quickly edged him aside, and turned the door. “Don’t — you’ll only make it worse.”

“You don’t have to deport us!” Jones brayed at him. “We’ll take the first train out — and the first boat! We wouldn’t stay here if you—”

“Good,” said Gentile drily. “Do it that way, then. It will save a great deal of telegraph-forms and official paperwork.”

Jones thrust her almost roughly out of the room before him, as though she were some kind of a puppet, and slammed the door on him. On the other side of it he instantly forgot her existence, while he tied himself up into a four-arm knot with Malatesta, told her all his troubles, and she in turn stroked back his hair, smoothed down his lapels, and otherwise consoled him and condoled with him. Love can be so exclusive.

They turned around and saw her, then, so then they remembered her. Remembered she was there with them.

“Give you a lift back to the hotel, Mari?” he wanted to know.

“No thanks,” she said. “I’ll be all right.” And walked on out.

8

She was back in her own room now.

She sat down at her dressing-table mirror to attend to her face, as though she were going out.

She was.

She put on a little powder.

“All this is for someone else,” She said to him. “I have another date now. I could never get one with you. But I have one with someone else now. Someone who is not so hard-to-get. You would not be jealous. His kisses are so cold. His eyes are so hollow. But once you’ve dated him, at least he never throws you over.”

She put on a little scent. It was called Je serai libre ce soir.

She opened the night-stand drawer. She took out the little bottle. She poured a glassful of water from the bedside pitcher and stood it there. She uncapped the bottle and took the cotton out of its neck.

No more tomorrow nights. They never came anyway.

She put two of the little pellets into her mouth, drank a swallow of water.

She waited a moment. Then she lighted a cigarette. She put that down on a small glass tray within reach.

She put two more into her mouth. Drank another swallow of water.

Then she smoked quietly for another moment.

Two more, and another swallow of water.

Suddenly she emptied out all that remained in the bottle into the hollow of her hand, held that to her mouth, swallowed convulsively a few times.

She drank several swallows of water in succession, and it was all over. As simple as that.

She poked the cigarette out. She dropped the little empty bottle into the wastebasket.

That was all there was to it. No more than that.

The world tiptoed away, as if trying not to wake her.

“Keep walking, keep walking, don’t stop for a moment,” the doctor warned Max. “A moment is all that is needed...” He made a pass with his hand to indicate ‘finished’.

“Hold your arm around me tighter, Max,” she mumbled, half audibly.

“Not too tight. She must breathe,” the doctor cautioned.

“You mind your own business,” she tried to snap at him, but the snap was all limp.

“Where we going, Max?”

“Taking a little walk.”

He kissed her.

“Don’t do that again!” the doctor cried out sharply. “It makes her close her eyes. It relaxes her.”

She tried to turn her face expectantly toward Max, but no more kisses. Doctor’s orders.

“You can stop now,” the doctor said, after listening intently all over her chest. “It is safe. She will live.”

Ah, who wants that? she protested to herself...

A morning in bed. The nurse sitting there in a chair, but without him.

“Where is he?”

The nurse was obtuse. “The gentleman from last right?”

That was about right.

“Yes,” she said bitterly, “the gentleman from last right.”

“He worked very hard to save you.” The nurse looked at her curiously. “You know him?”

“Yes,” she said. “I know him from a distance. I know him — how you say it? — by sight. I’ve seen him around.” she turned her face disgustedly the other way on the pillows.

The doctor came at noon, took her pulse. She could get up now.

The nurse left.

The doctor bowed, and prepared to leave.

“Momento. My handbag is over there somewhere—”

The doctor raised a denying palm. “That has been arranged. The young man will pay the bill. He will pay for everything.”

Her eyes narrowed to slits of malevolent promise. “He will, dottore,” she assured him. “You can say that again. And again, and again. He will pay for everything, is right. And not from here—” She touched herself where a man’s pocket is supposed to be. “But from ’way up here.” She put her finger against her nose for a moment. “In currency of brightest red.”

The doctor shrugged. “Non capisco inglese.”

“It’s the same in any language, in any language. Payment through the nose.”

“You feel good. I can see,” the doctor said. “Your eyes, they blaze so.”

“I don’t feel at all. And that’s what’s good about it. The part you feel with, that got left behind. You saved me, doctor. But there’s one part of me you didn’t pull through. My heart. From now on, I go on without it.

“I’m going to hurt him the way he’s hurt me,” she promised, grimly joyful. “And when we’re even, and he’s all paid up, then I’m going back to the beginning, and I’m going to start in all over again hurting him, from scratch, just for good measure. I’m going to see him bleed, and I’m going to see him writhe, and I’m going to plant my foot right in the middle of his heart, and push down hard the way you step on a caterpillar.”

The doctor looked at her dubiously. She was like a volcano priming for an eruption.

The compartment door opened. Everything repeated itself. Only nothing ever does; it fools you. His polka dots were blowing in the other direction, over the left shoulder. He came in and closed the door after him.

“How’s it?” he said.

“How’s it,” she said back.

Just two casuals in a railway compartment. Two business associates.

“Sit down for a minute?”

“Lots of room.”

He took a look at the perambulating poplars. A church-spire had got meshed in with them, and was being carried along. “Well, I’m not sorry to see that place go.”

“I left my heart there.”

He gave her a look.

She didn’t tell him what she meant. She just said it a second time, more grimly inflexible than before. “I left my heart there.”