Do Evil In Return

21

At some time in the past hour a Santa Ana had begun to blow from the desert on the other side of the mountain — a hot, dry, choking wind that harried the trees, hurled the dust down the city streets, swept the people into their houses or into the shelter of doorways where they huddled coughing, shielding their eyes with their hands. Bits of refuse fluttered up and down the road like bold birds, clung convulsively to the windshields of cars for a moment and swooped off again.

The wind was tearing up the city, emptying the streets, stripping the trees, a crazy, confused wind that blew in all directions at once. Charlotte felt that she was a part of it, sharing its wild confusion. She didn’t know where Lewis was or how to find him. She didn’t even know if he was alive.

The moon leered through the leaves of the giant, oaks, veiled, provocative, like a half-told secret: Is he alive? Perhaps, maybe. Where? Somewhere, here or there.

She had no hopes, no plans, but she had to start somewhere. She drove to the building where Lewis had his office. There was a light on the second floor behind the partly closed Venetian blinds. Lewis often worked at night and she had often waited for him, sitting in her car or standing in the entrance hall downstairs pretending to read the directory beside the elevator. H. M. Morris, Electrolysis. Salinda Rental Association. C. Charles Tomlinson, Broker. Ballard and Johnson, Attorneys...

The elevator was locked for the night. An elderly Negro with a white woolly cap of hair was mopping the tiled floor, mopping the same place over and over again, as if his thoughts were far away, dwelling on softer things than tile.

“Hello, Tom.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She knew he didn’t remember her. People walked in and walked out, traded names, traded faces, wore each other’s clothes — so many people they lost their identities in Tom’s mind, and he erased their footprint with his mop.

“Fine clear evening, ma’am,” Tom said. Though it rained, or the city was smothered with fog or mauled by a desert wind, the evenings were always fine and clear to Tom. He stayed inside, slept in the basement, and ate his meals sitting on an upright chair in the broom closet while he read the Bible, or at least held it open on his lap. (“He can’t read,” Lewis had told her once, in front of Tom. “But he’s very religious and he likes to pick out the words he knows, like God and heaven.” “God and heaven is fine words,” Tom said with dignity.)

“Tom...”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Is — have you seen Mr. Ballard tonight?”

“No, ma’am, I don’t r’lect seeing him.”

“There’s a light in his office.”

“Might be. I didn’t r’lect to turn it off.”

“I’ll go up and see.”

“Elevator’s closed, ma’am. Have to walk up.”

“That’s all right, Tom.”

“Steps is wet, you walk easy.”

“I will.”

The corridor upstairs was dim, and smelled of soap and chlorine. The door to Lewis’ office was half open and she could see part of the reception room — the luxurious gold satin love seat and the tropical aquarium that had been built into the wall. The aquarium lights were on, and the miniature fish moved silently behind glass, striped angel fish and velvety black mollies and brilliant neons as tiny as tacks.

She knew, as soon as she saw that the aquarium lights were on, that it couldn’t be Lewis in the office. He paid no attention to the fish; they belonged to Vern Johnson who fed and fussed over them with the same care Miss Schiller gave her cat.

She rapped on the door and said, “Vern?”

“Who is it?”

“Charlotte.”

“Well, come in, come in, Charley.”

She went in and closed the door behind her. Vern Johnson was a big moon-faced man with thick horn-rimmed glasses that gave his face a false aspect of vagueness. She had known him for years, had gone to school with his sister, and turned down his somewhat boozy and brotherly proposals. It was at one of his parties that she had her first personal talk with Lewis, a week after Gwen had introduced him to her. “You know, I asked Vern to invite you, Miss Keating.” She didn’t like the approach. She said distantly, “Did you?” “Yes. I wanted to talk to you. I’ve been planning for two days what I’d say but now I’ve forgotten all of it. The general idea, though, was to impress you with my mind.” “Why should you want to do that?” “Damned if I know, except that you look so competent and superior I’d like to show you that I’m competent and superior, too.” He spoke with a kind of rueful candor. “And are you, Mr. Ballard?” “I’ve always thought so.” She changed the subject, then, with deliberate abruptness. “Mrs. Ballard’s not with you tonight?” “No.” “I hope she’s not ill.” “No, she’s not ill.” He turned and walked away, and a little later Vern came and told her that Lewis had left. “What did you say to him, anyway?” “Why, nothing, nothing at all.” “He’s a hell of a good guy, Charley. Which is a miracle, considering his wife.”

“Sit down, Charley,” Vern said.

“Thanks.”

“Looking for Lewis?”

“I... Yes.”

“That makes three of us. Gwen’s been calling all day.”

She didn’t sit down. She said, “I won’t disturb you if you’re busy, Vern.”

“I’m not busy.” He picked up a small glass bowl from the table and held it up to the light. It contained a single black mollie, no more than an inch and a half long. “See this little lady? She doesn’t look much like it but she’s about to become a mother. The trouble is, her feeding instincts are considerably stronger than her maternal instincts, so I have to wait around and see that she doesn’t eat her offspring.”

“Vern — when did you see him last?”

“Three days ago.”

“Hasn’t he phoned?”

“Yesterday morning. He was drunk.”

“Drunk?”

“Sounded like it.” He put the glass bowl back on the table, but he kept his eye on the mollie as he talked. “What gives with Lewis, anyway?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Won’t tell me.”

“Both.”

“Top secret, eh? My guess is that Gwen is kicking up a row because she’s found out about you and Lewis. Our Gwen isn’t as dumb as she looks. She’s nutty as a fruitcake, but she’s not one hundred percent dumb.”

“She hasn’t found out. This has nothing to do with Gwen. It’s more — serious.”

“I see.”

“Vern, when he phoned did he tell you where he was?”

“No. All I know is that it was a local call and that he wasn’t phoning from a booth. There was a lot of noise in the background, people talking and dishes rattling, and the sound of a cash register. He must have been in some café or bar where they had no private phone booth.”

“Didn’t you ask him where he was?”

“Certainly. He didn’t answer. Apparently he’d had some land of quarrel with Gwen, because he asked me to call her up and tell her he was sorry but not to try and find him. I called her, but by that time she’d already phoned the police. Gwen has a pretty talent for doing the wrong thing.”

The mollie dropped her first offspring. It looked like a quarter of an inch of narrow black velvet ribbon, but it was alive and it was complete. It began immediately to swim around the bowl, as indifferent to its mother as she was to it; spending its first moment of life as it would spend its last — in the pursuit of food.

Vern’s face was excited. “Well, here we go again. By God, isn’t he a cute little fellow? You know, last time she had twenty-two of them. It took her over four hours.”

She looked at the mollie who had just demonstrated with the bored ease of an expert the miracle of birth. She thought of a human baby, itself a fish, but helpless, boneless, blind and deaf and fed through a cord — its growth slow; its birth cruel. And between the two violences, the shock of birth and the shock of death, its life was incalculable.

The mollie spotted her offspring, circled it, and lost interest because she had already eaten.

“Charley,” Vern said.

She looked up at him, wearily.

“Charley, for nearly a year, off and on, I’ve been thinking that I should apologize to you.”

“Why?”

“I guess I shouldn’t have fooled around playing cupid. Remember the first night you met Lewis at my house?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t think things would turn out the way they have.”

“No one did.”

“I thought — well, damn it, I’m so fond of you both, and I wanted you to get together. You seemed a natural, you know? And I hoped — well, I guess what I really hoped was that Gwen would drop dead or something. What a dreamer I am, eh?”

“I’ve had a happy year,” Charlotte said. “I should thank you for it.”

“Well, don’t,” he said sharply. “I feel responsible.”

“You shouldn’t. I was ready to fall in love and I did. I had never loved anyone before.”

He smiled then, a friendly, but rather sad little smile. “Not even me?”

“No.”

“My trouble is that I’ve got to wait around for a woman who likes fish, or who likes me well enough to get to like fish.” He saw her glance towards the door and said, “Don’t leave yet.”

“I have to.”

“If he doesn’t want to be found, don’t look for him, Charley. He may have reasons.”

“I have reasons, too.”

“In that case.” He opened the door for her. “Good luck, anyway.”

“Thank you, Vern.”

Downstairs in the lobby the old Negro was still mopping the tiled floor, humming to himself as he worked.

“Good night, Tom.”

“Floor’s wet, you walk easy.”

“Yes, I will.”

“A fine clear evening, ma’am.”

She stepped out into the dusty street.

The wind went everywhere, like an inquisitive ghost through keyholes, down chimneys; under the cracks of doors; and everything felt gritty to the touch.

The beach was littered with the broken shafts of palm trees. In the little café near the breakwater the tables were layered with fine sand that blew in when the door was opened and gradually settled over everything. Sam, the proprietor, went around muttering to himself and making futile swipes with a dish towel.

Charlotte sat at the counter and ordered a cup of coffee. The phone was where she remembered it, at the end of the counter beside the cash register. The hope grew in her mind that it was the phone Lewis had used yesterday morning to call Vern. She and Lewis had often come here for a late supper. The food was terrible and the dishes never quite clean, but it was the sort of place where neither of them would be likely to meet people they knew. Besides, in the rear booth where they usually sat, there was a tiny window like a square porthole, with a view of the breakers crawling up the beach. Our view, Lewis called it, with a kind of sadness in his voice, as if he meant that it was the only view they would have together, from the small murky window.

Sam brought the coffee. He was a Greek from Brooklyn, a fat curious-eyed man with spindly legs and narrow, delicate feet that could hardly support his weight. He talked a lot, always in a whisper out of the side of his mouth like a movie spy.

“How come you’re sitting up here? The back booth’s empty.”

“I’m alone tonight.”

“Mother of pearl, aren’t we all,” Sam said gloomily. “I’m thinking myself of maybe getting married again. I have the type of lady in mind, a nice widow with a little something in the bank and a little insurance. But they’re hard to find and in this business the dice are loaded against you. Take a nice widow coming in here for instance — sees me in this lousy apron and don’t see no further than the apron. Get what I mean? Sure ya do.” He leaned his elbows on the counter to ease the weight off his feet. “That your steady boyfriend you come in here with?”

“Yes. In fact, I’m looking for him now.”

“Anything the matter?”

“No, I just — well, yes. We had a quarrel. I want to find him to apologize.”

“He hasn’t been in today. Say, he’s got class, you know? I guess it’s the clothes, nifty tweeds instead of a lousy apron like...”

“What about yesterday?”

“Oh yesterday, sure. He came in early for breakfast. Ate a couple of eggs, drank some coffee and asked if he could use the phone. I said sure, go ahead. Though I’m telling you, confidentially, that I don’t encourage people to use the phone. How do I know they aren’t going to call their Aunt Daisy in Jersey City?”

He paused long enough to turn over a couple of hamburgers that were cooking on the gas grill.

“Well, he made the call, and then he bought a loaf of bread and a quart of milk and some cigarettes. He wasn’t looking himself. He had on a pair of dungarees and an old mackinaw. I said, kidding-like, ‘Going on a fishing trip?’ He didn’t answer. Paid his check and walked out. I was kind of curious, so I went to the window and watched where he went. He was heading hell for leather down the breakwater where all those dinghies are tied up. Well, then this girl in pink shorts happened to walk past with a rod and reel, and well, you know how it is. My eye kind of wandered. I’m very interested in rods and reels.” He chuckled at his own joke, supporting his heaving stomach with the palms of his hands.

Charlotte didn’t hear him. She knew now where Lewis was.