Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 123, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 751 & 752, March/April 2004

Won’t You Come Out Tonight? by Josh Pachter

In 1969, after the publication of his first short story in EQMM, Josh Pachter became the youngest active member in the history of the MWA. Since then, more than fifty of his stories have appeared in the pages of EQMM, AHMM, and dozens of other magazines and anthologies published in the U.S. and around the world. Mr. Pachter is also an award-winning translator who recently provided a story from the Dutch for our Passport to Crime series.

The envelope was precisely centered on her desk when she returned from lunch at the McDonald’s across the street. No address, no return address, of course no stamp or cancellation. Just her first name, misspelled “Sherry,” neatly printed in the exact center of the white oblong.

Sheri Lane set down her steaming foam cup, shrugged out of her parka, and sat. She pulled the lid off the cup, stirred two and a half packets of Equal into her coffee, took a cautious sip. Hot! She parked the coffee, picked up the envelope, and turned it over. The other side was blank, except for “SWAK” lettered in miniature on the flap. The acronym took her back twenty years, almost half her life, to junior high school romances she thought she’d long since forgotten. Sealed with a kiss.

She picked up the jeweled souvenir dagger she used as a letter opener, slit the envelope open carefully, and slid out a folded sheet of cream-colored notepaper. She unfolded it and read the two lines of printing just above and below the fold: “Sherry, baby: Won’t you come out tonight?”

Although the office was at least forty degrees warmer than the bitter December day outside, she shivered.

“Well?”

She looked up from a sheaf of projections for next-quarter sales. The man standing at the side of her desk, half a step too close for comfort, was vaguely familiar. He was new, she thought. She had the impression she’d noticed him in the elevator once or twice, but she wasn’t sure. He was thin, not quite gawky but not far from it, in a suit that had been in style not long ago and would undoubtedly someday be back in style again. A sprinkling of acne scars marred an otherwise not unpleasant face. His intense brown eyes were his best feature, but they were almost hidden behind thick lenses in an old-fashioned John Lennon wire frame.

“Well?” she echoed, pushing her chair back a foot to reestablish proper social distance between them.

“My note,” he said, smiling, sitting himself easily on the edge of her desk. “ ‘Won’t you come out tonight?’ ”

Her face cleared. “That was you,” she said. “How did you know?”

Now it was his turn to look confused. “Know?”

“The song. It was number one the week I was born, and my mother had a crush on Frankie Valli, so she named me after the song. My father made her change the spelling, though. One r and an i.”

“Oh, God, I had no idea. I pointed you out to John Testa in Marketing yesterday, and he told me your name, and I just thought of the song and left the note.”

“And the SWAK?”

He grimaced. “Just being goofy. I hope you don’t mind.”

She turned away from him, put out a hand to her McDonald’s cup. The cup was empty, but she knew that. She picked it up and drank a fake swallow, buying time.

“It doesn’t really matter,” she said at last, dismissing not only the high-school kiss but the note itself, and him.

Then, realizing she’d been ruder than the situation called for, she tacked on a questioning, “And you are—?”

He washed a hand across his chin. “Darrin,” he said. “Darrin Stephens.”

She blinked.

“No, really,” he said.

“You mean—?” She twitched her nose.

He nodded. “Same spelling, too. Nothing to do with Bewitched, though. My parents never even heard of the show.”

“Poor you. You must have taken a lot of kidding, growing up.”

He was still nodding. “Yup. So, what do you say?”

“Say?”

“About my note? Won’t you come out tonight? For dinner, maybe?”

“Oh.” She shook her head. “Appreciate your asking. I’ve got plans, though. Sorry.”

He hitched himself an inch closer. “Tomorrow, then? We could have lunch, maybe, or just a drink after work, if you’d prefer?”

She took a deep breath, sighed it out. “Thanks, Darrin, but no, I don’t think so.”

His broad smile finally began to fade. “Boyfriend?” he asked.

She refused to be drawn into revelations about her personal life. “I don’t date men from the office, Darrin. I just don’t. But thanks for asking.”

He looked at her closely for a long moment, then lifted his hands in an “Oh, well” gesture and stood up. “I guess I’ll be seeing you around,” he said, and walked off before she could say goodbye.

Lynn Kasza squeezed into the chair across the white linoleum table from her, unwrapped her Filet-O-Fish, ripped open a packet of ketchup and smothered her fries, stripped the paper from a straw and squeaked it through the plastic lid atop her cup. “So?” she demanded. “Is he as geeky as he looks, or what?”

Sheri looked up from her salad. “I beg your pardon?”

“Don’t be coy, girlfriend — inquiring minds want to know.” She took a huge bite of her sandwich, chewed and swallowed, and washed the fish down with chocolate milkshake.

Sheri just looked at her blankly.

“Mrs. Stephens’s little boy,” Lynn prodded. “What’s he really like?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Duh?” Lynn wagged an admonishing French fry. “Your date? With Darrin Stephens? How’d it go?”

“I didn’t go out with Darrin Stephens.” She frowned. “You know I don’t date guys from work.”

“Well, that’s what I thought,” Lynn said. “But Carrie said Lisa said he said you went out.”

“Carrie said —? He said we went out? Where? When?”

“To dinner at Angelo’s. Très chic, non? And then you went up to his place and—” She made quotation marks on either side of her face with her fingers — “hung out for a couple of hours.”

Sheri tossed down her plastic fork. “That bastard! I did not go out with him, Lynn, and I—”

“—wouldn’t go out with you even if liked you, which, believe me, I most certainly do not!”

She stormed out of his cubicle and slammed the door behind her, then turned around and went back inside, leaving the door open. She leaned over his desk, her weight resting on clenched fists. “I’m going to pretend this didn’t happen, Darrin, but I swear to God, if you so much as mention my name to anybody here again, I am going straight to Mr. Brownlee and you will be out on the street so fast your head won’t stop spinning for a week.”

Darrin smiled, a crooked smile that made him almost attractive. “I don’t think so,” he said.

Sheri stared at him. “You don’t think I’ll go to Mr. Brownlee? You just try me, buster, and—”

“I don’t think he’ll can me.” He was wearing the same suit he’d had on the other day, this time with a flamboyant Jerry Garcia tie. The jacket was buttoned, but beneath it Sheri swore there was a plastic holder full of pens in his shirt pocket. “He’s my uncle, Sheri. Uncle Bobby, my mother’s baby brother. He got me this job in the first place. So who do you think he’ll believe, you or me?”

He looked so smug, Sheri wanted to punch him right in the nose. “You son of a bitch,” she said instead, and went away from there.

The phone was ringing when she got home that evening. There was no one she much felt like talking to, so she let the machine pick it up. “I’m sorry,” her voice said, “but I can’t come to the phone right now. Please leave a message when you hear the tone, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

There was a long beep, and then she heard him singing: “Sheh-heh-heh-eh-eh-eh-ree-ee, bay-ay-bee, Sheri, baby, Sheh-heh-ree, won’t you come out tonight?”

She snatched up the receiver. “I don’t care if he is your uncle,” she said tightly. “I don’t want you calling me, I don’t want you talking to my friends, I don’t want you following me around. I told you, I don’t date where I work, and I damn well don’t date creeps like you. So just leave me alone, okay? Just leave — me — alone!”

She paused, breathing deeply, enraged. At the other end of the line, she heard a faint click, and then a dial tone.

“How about that booth over there by the window?” He touched her elbow and tried to turn her, but she jerked her arm free and walked ahead of him to the bar. There were four vacant stools in a row at the far end, but she chose a single between a truck driver drinking Bud from a longneck and two secretaries gossiping over strawberry daquiris.

Darrin stood too close behind her, unbuttoning his London Fog and loosening his tie. When the bartender came over, he ordered a Manhattan. She had never heard anyone order a Manhattan before. She wasn’t sure she knew what it was. “Scotch,” she said. “Single malt. In a glass.”

The barman raised an eyebrow. “That was good.” He nodded. “Can you do the thing with your upper lip?”

The truck driver set down his empty bottle, stifled a belch, and went away, and Darrin settled onto his stool. “What thing is that?” he asked.

She exchanged glances with the bartender. “Nobody watches the black-and-white ones anymore,” he mourned, and set glasses in front of them.

“Black-and-white?” Darrin said. “What’s that all—?”

“Never mind. Just drink your drink.” She looked at her watch impatiently. She had to be crazy, coming out with him like this. “One drink, right? And then you’ll leave me alone?”

His chocolate-brown eyes glittered. “Promise,” he said, his hand on his heart. “I mean, if you have a good time, if you decide you want to go out with me again, well, great — but all I wanted from the beginning was one shot.”

“One shot,” she said, raising her glass and draining it. The smooth burn almost melted the knot in her stomach. Not quite, though.

“Thank you for the drink, Darrin,” she said. “It’s been real. Good night.”

There were roses in a cut-glass vase on her desk when she got to work in the morning, ten of them, nicely arranged with ferns and a spray of baby’s breath. Her name was spelled correctly on the small envelope tucked in among the flowers.

They don’t have to be from him, she told herself. But when she saw the SWAK on the back of the envelope, she pitched the whole shebang in the trash — roses, vase, unopened envelope and all. She knew what it would say on the card.

At lunch on Tuesday, Lynn told her it was all over the building she’d slept with him. She debated confronting him again, but what was the use? The man was out of his mind. Not only couldn’t he take a hint, he couldn’t read a billboard. Lynn suggested the police, but Sheri’d read that the state’s new stalker law was a joke.

When she got home that evening, there were ten white envelopes taped to her front door, all of them sealed with kisses. She was so outraged that she opened them. Every single one of them held a cream notecard, and each notecard said, “Won’t you come out tonight?” in a different color ink.

Something awoke her after midnight. She sat up in bed, her head throbbing. She’d finished off almost half a bottle of vodka that evening, watching Darrin’s notecards burn in her fireplace.

There it was again. There was someone at her door.

She grabbed a thick terrycloth robe and shrugged it on, stole down the hall to the foyer, put an eye to the peephole.

Nothing.

She left the chain in place and opened the door a crack. On the porch was a cut-glass vase holding ten red roses. She couldn’t see a card. She released the chain and swung the door wide.

There were ten white envelopes taped to the door.

She bought the pistol the next day at lunch.

There was nothing in the Yellow Pages under “Firearms,” but under “Guns & Gunsmiths” she found four columns of listings and a half-dozen display ads. Metropolitan Arms and Armor was only four blocks from the office. She left her car in the lot and walked. The salesman, a squat homunculus with a salt-and-pepper spade beard and the unidentifiable edge of an old tattoo peeking out from beneath the rolled-up sleeve of his red flannel shirt, recommended the Beretta .380 ACP, a 9mm. short with a magazine holding 13 cartridges, and offered to throw in a box of 20 Federal Hydra-Shoc hollow points to sweeten the deal, but $350 was much more than she wanted to spend, so she settled on a Taurus Model 65 six-shot revolver, a .38 Special. All the caliber numbers and model numbers and firepower statistics were meaningless to her — the salesman assured her the Taurus was easy to use and well suited for self-defense, the price was only $180, and her birthday was at the end of April, so Taurus was her sign.

“Can I... I don’t know how to say it — try it out, first?” she asked.

He looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “Lady, I don’t have a range in here,” he explained, excessively patient, “and even if I did, I let you fire it and you decide not to buy it, it’s all of a sudden a used gun and I have to knock fifty bucks off the price.”

She nodded, understanding, and he showed her at least how to load it and fire it. When she asked him where the safety was, he sighed and explained that a revolver has no safety, but would, in fact, be safer for her to carry and use than the Beretta, as long as she made sure to leave it uncocked.

The five-day waiting period wasn’t due to take effect for another four months, so all she had to do was show her driver’s license and fill out Federal Firearms Transaction Form 4473. No, she was not a convicted felon, she was not currently under indictment, she was not addicted to drugs or alcohol, she had not been judged mentally incompetent, she was not an alien residing illegally in the United States.

She marveled at the inanity of the form, wondering if even those who had been judged mentally incompetent would be foolish enough to check “yes” in response to any of these questions.

Including $12.95 for a box of Winchester Silvertips, their aluminum-jacketed soft-lead bodies unexpectedly heavy yet comforting in her palm, and state sales tax, the total came to a little over $200. She didn’t have that much cash on her, so she put the purchase on her VISA.

She named the gun Bull, after Taurus, and then thought of the tall bald bailiff on Night Court and smiled.

She decided not to carry Bull around with her: At the office, in town, she felt perfectly safe. It was only at home that she felt vulnerable, so she kept Bull on an end table beside the sofa during the evening, as she watched television or read, and moved him to the nightstand beside her bed when she went to sleep. From time to time, she reached out a hand and touched him, and the cool solidity of him reassured her.

For the next two days, Darrin left her alone, almost as if he knew she had brought Bull into her home.

Did he know? Could he have followed her to the gun shop and seen her make the purchase? It was just as well if he had, if that’s what was keeping him away from her.

Then, Friday at lunch, Lynn said, “Your boyfriend’ll be back in town tonight. I bet you’re thrilled and delighted.”

Sheri stared at her.

“Darrin,” Lynn explained. “They sent him to Chicago for the RFC, didn’t you know? And I was kidding about the ‘boyfriend,’ girlfriend. Don’t look so stricken.”

“When—” Her throat was constricted, and she started again — “When did he leave?”

Lynn dipped a McNugget thoughtfully in sweet-and-sour sauce. “Day before yesterday, I think. Why?”

Sheri stood up and put on her parka and scarf and gloves and went away, her food scarely touched.

He called her four times that evening, and there were more roses on the porch when she went out to get the paper Saturday morning. She called the operator and asked about getting her phone number changed and unlisted, but there was nothing anyone could do about it until Monday morning. She switched off the ringer and turned the speaker volume down to zero. By 11 P.M., eight messages had accumulated; one was a hangup, and the other seven were all him, all singing that damn song.

She turned the machine off altogether when she went to bed, and kept Bull beneath her pillow, and still slept badly. When she did sleep, she dreamed of a beautiful witch with a twitching nose, imprisoned in a dark dungeon.

Well, duh, she thought when she awoke, sweating, her blankets hopelessly twisted.

He was listed in the book. She waited until eight Sunday morning, and then she called him.

“Sheri?” he said blearily.

“No,” she spat, “it’s Laura Bush. Now, you listen to me, you bastard. I don’t want you calling me, I don’t want your stupid flowers, I don’t want your notes.”

“Why don’t you just go out with me?” he said, awake now. “If you got to know me, you’d really like me.”

“I went out with you, Darrin. I got to know you. I really don’t like you.”

“But I—”

“Shut up!” Her voice was tighter than she could ever remember it. “I don’t know what your problem is, Darrin, and I don’t care. But it’s your problem, not mine. I’ll tell you what: I’ve been very patient with you, but my patience is gone. It’s time for you to leave me alone.”

She slammed down the phone.

Ten seconds later, it rang. She gripped the receiver, but stopped herself from lifting it. Instead, she pushed the button to reactivate the machine. It picked up on the third ring.

“Sheri?” Darrin said after the beep. “I know you’re there, Sheri.”

There was a pause, and then he began to sing.

“Has the caller made physical threats against your person, ma’am?”

“No, he—”

“Has the caller used obscene or abusive language?”

“No, Sergeant, he just keeps asking me out.”

“Well, I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do, unless he’s threatened you or been obscene or abusive, ma’am. Your best bet is to call the telephone company’s business office and report the—”

“There’s nobody there until tomorrow morning, Sergeant, that’s why I’m—”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m afraid there’s nothing we can—”

“—do,” she said. “Can you believe it? This little cretin can do whatever he wants, and the police can’t do a thing to stop him?”

“Did you try talking to Uncle Bob?” Lynn said. “Maybe he—”

“Uncle Bobby,” Sheri corrected. “Can you just see the Honorable Robert Brownlee, Esquire, answering to ‘Uncle Bobby’? I tried to get in to see him the other day, but Doris just gave me that I-pity-you look of hers and wouldn’t even let me make an appointment.”

“What about writing him an e-mail?”

“And say what? ‘I’m sorry to bother you, Mr. Brownlee, but your sister’s little Darrin has been sending me flowers and I want you to make him stop’?”

“Well, you have to — oh gosh, Sheri, there’s Donald, I gotta go. You hang in there, girlfriend. See you tomorrow morning.”

Sheri set down the receiver, and the phone rang immediately, burning her fingers.

Finally, a few minutes before midnight, she unplugged it and crawled into bed, pulled the covers over her head, and tried to sleep.

The doorbell rang at 1:22 A.M., and she plugged in the phone and called the police and reported a prowler. By the time the black-and-white pulled up before her bungalow, though, Darrin was long gone. The officers looked suspiciously at her wild hair and red eyes, made only the sketchiest of notes, and drove off with vague promises.

At 3:41, the doorbell rang again. This time, it took forty-five minutes for the patrol car to arrive, and the same two bored officers stayed less than a quarter of an hour and didn’t even bother to take out their notebooks.

At 4:45, only moments after the police had gone and Sheri had returned to her bedroom, the doorbell rang again. She didn’t bother to dial 911, just crushed her pillow tightly against her ears and hummed into her percale top sheet in a hollow attempt to drown out the chime.

When she noticed what song she was humming, she bit her lower lip hard enough to draw blood.

At 7:00, she was sitting on the edge of the couch, waiting for him. When the doorbell rang at 7:16, she jumped up, grabbed Bull from the end table, and strode to the front door. “Leave me the hell alone!” she screamed.

The recoil when she pulled the trigger was enormous, vastly more powerful than she would have believed possible. The revolver bucked in her hand as she fired again and again and again through the panels of the closed door.

At last the six chambers were empty. She stood there in the foyer, shaking with rage, with hatred, with fear.

The telephone rang.

She turned to stare across the room at it, then swiveled slowly back to the door, released the chain, touched the cool brass knob, swung the door wide.

Crumpled on her porch was the body of a man.

Behind her, her own voice said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t come to the phone right now. Please leave a message when you hear the tone, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

The man held a plain white envelope in his hand. The letters S-W-A were visible between his splayed fingers. His overcoat was tattered and patched and covered with blood. He had wild gray hair and a rough beard.

She had no idea who he was.

“Sheh-heh-heh-eh-eh-eh-ree-ee, bay-ay-bee,” Darrin Stephens sang from her answering machine’s speaker. “Sheh-heh-ree, won’t you come out tonight?”