How Like a God

XV

Only two or three steps from the top, he could see, ill-defined in the dim light, his own door at the end of the hall.

There was a soft yellow glow through the shade which covered the small, single electric light. Standing quietly, he could hear from the kitchenette the recurrent faint plop of a single drop of water from the leaky faucet into the sink, a full two seconds’ interval between; and somewhere from outside came the yowl of a wandering cat.

Plop... plop...

In the morning, when you were ready to leave she was still sound asleep.

You were not long in suspense about Dick, for the afternoon of that same day he suddenly said:

“By the way, what about our old college friend? Did you see her yesterday?”

“Yes, she said she’d seen you,” you replied prepared.

“Did she tell you that cock and bull story about her husband?”

“Why... yes... she’s been married.”

“Married hell! Did you fall for it?”

“Sure.” You managed a grin. “I’d fall for anything.”

“Funny.” He turned back from the door. “I’d better be careful though, you smashed me over her. Remember? Battling Bill.” He laughed. “Funny woman — homely as hell and yet, she has a look in her eyes that makes you curious. You’d better look out, Bill. What does she want?”

“Money, of course.”

“Sure, but how much? You’d better be careful how you give it to her. Do you want me in on it?”

You could read Dick like an open book; it appeared certain that he suspected nothing beyond a compassionate gesture to a woman in trouble, for old times’ sake.

A year ago, almost; yes, actually nearly twelve months of hours and minutes since that night, each day confronted with the next, an ordeal not to be tolerated. “It wasn’t very nice of me to have Mr. Martin here,” she said that night, “I won’t do that any more.” So utterly weary that the force of gravity itself seemed overpowering and irritating, you were relaxed, a dead weight, in the leather chair. Whereas formerly you had shrunk only from her, only in her had felt an alienness and a threat, henceforth all was foreign, each thing there was an enemy.

Erma was too preoccupied with herself to take much notice of you, and when she suddenly decided to go to Florida, around the last of January, it was at first a great relief. But soon you were considering that the important thing was to get rid of time somehow, even disagreeably, and wishing her back again.

You moved to the club, and still you seldom went to Eighty-fifth Street. And you never went without phoning in advance, and you never phoned without a feeling of unreality, a feeling that you were doing something too implausible to be believed in. Put to the torture, you could not have answered the question, why do you do this? She was homely, vulgar, illiterate. She was false and treacherous. She was evil. That’s why! She is evil, and you get a kick out of it. No. You get revulsion, disgust, hatred. Bitter and burning hatred. But you have harbored her for twenty years.

She always seemed to be afraid of words; she wouldn’t even answer questions if she could help it. Like the day you asked her about Dick. That was in late spring, around the middle of May. Erma had returned from Florida and was talking of going to Scotland for the summer, and wanted you to go along. You and she had dined with friends and, allured by the mild May air, she had suggested a walk. As you were crossing the avenue at Fifty-seventh you got caught in the center and stood there at the edge of the solid slow-moving traffic, glancing carelessly at the cars as they crept past; and suddenly your careless glance became a stare as you saw Dick and Millicent side by side in a taxicab not ten feet away. They were looking the other way and obviously had not seen you, nor had Erma seen them.

“How far are we?” said Erma. “I’m getting tired. Come along to Scotland and we’ll ride around on ponies — we’re too old to walk.”

You were conscious of no particular emotion, except curiosity. It was not conceivable that Dick — and yet he had married Mary Alaire Carew Bellowes. This was rich— Oh this was juicy!

The next day was Saturday and Dick didn’t come in. In the evening you went to Eighty-fifth Street early, before dinner, and after you had glanced through the evening paper you found an opportunity to say casually, with your eye on her face:

“Have you seen Dick since that day at the office?”

She displayed not the slightest change of expression.

“Dick? You mean Mr. Carr?”

“Yes, I mean Dick Carr. Have you seen him?”

“Why yes, we saw him that evening at the theatre, don’t you remember?”

“No. It wasn’t me. You were probably with Mr. Peft or Mr. Gowan or Mr. Rockefeller.”

She chuckled. “I remember now, it was Grace. She thought he was very good-looking.”

“Well, have you seen him since? — Oh what’s the use. I just wondered how you would handle it. I saw you and Dick in a taxicab on Fifth Avenue last evening. I suppose you were on your way here?” you sneered, trying not to.

She was standing the way she so often does, her arms hanging at her sides, her head languidly erect. “I’m sorry you saw us,” she said. “I didn’t want you to know until it was all done.”

“Really!” You put the paper down and stared at her. “Really!”

“I think he is going to give me a lot of money,” she went on. “I’ve only seen him twice, and we don’t do anything you wouldn’t like. Even if I would he wouldn’t want to. He said he wouldn’t. He used to give me money a long time ago — when I knew you. He’s just sorry for me, and he’s so rich...”

“I thought you didn’t care for money.”

“I didn’t say that. I said I didn’t want money from you. I’d take all I could get from him. I think he’s going to give me one hundred thousand dollars. He says I could live on the interest.”

“Where were you going last night?”

“We ate dinner at a restaurant downtown to talk it over, and he was bringing me home. He didn’t come upstairs though.”

“What restaurant?”

“Why, I didn’t notice. He took me.”

“Where did you meet him?”

“At the corner of Broadway and Fulton Street.”

You got to your feet, shoved your hands into your pockets, and walked to the window and back again.

“I don’t believe a word of it,” you said.

She didn’t reply; but after a long pause, seeing that you weren’t going to speak again, she said, “It’s all true. I wouldn’t lie to you about Mr. Carr.”

Always before that, in your occasional conversations about him, she had called him Dick.

Of course, you got nothing more out of her. Late that night, walking home, as you often did, you considered the amazing fact that, while you might not have been greatly affected by an admission from her that Dick was sharing her favors with you, you were furiously humiliated by the idea of his making a princely gift that would mean financial independence for her.

Did you know that Dick had been here, in the apartment? No, you don’t know it even now for a certainty, though for a while you thought you did, that evening you found the inscription on the statue. That was June, late in June, just before Erma sailed for Scotland. You had been here before dinner, and for an hour or two afterward, before you noticed it; you saw it when you went over to take a book from the table. There it was, printed in big black sprawling letters on the rough unpolished marble of the column: BATTLING BILL.

“Who did that?” you demanded.

“I did, this morning, I just happened to think of it,” she replied.

You approached her chair. “Why?”

“One of the girls downstairs that’s studying art gave me the crayon. She said it was art crayon. I guess that’s what made me think of it, I wanted to use it on something.”

Still you thought it must have been Dick; she didn’t have wit enough. Was it Dick, had he been here? Probably; but just as probably not. There’s no telling—

With that trivial episode something seemed to break. You knew you must do something. Finally and inescapably you must do something. Go to Scotland with Erma? Huh! Go to Paul, in Rome; he was your son, tell him so; what was a son for? Bury yourself in his life — sure. It didn’t take long to dispose of that.

All right, but you must do something...

You were afraid to tell Millicent you were going to leave her and never see her again, afraid of the unconcerned disbelief you knew you would see in her face. You told her merely that you were going away alone and didn’t know when you would be back, but she must have remarked that your manner of saying it was odd. When you told Dick, briefly, that you needed a change and were leaving for an indefinite period he didn’t seem surprised, but was considerably concerned; and you didn’t even write to Jane, who was at the seashore with the children. Even if you had wanted to you couldn’t have replied definitely to Dick’s anxious questions, for beyond the first step you had no plans.

One evening around the middle of July you went to the Pennsylvania Station and got on a westbound train. You were running away, a beaten coward, but that didn’t trouble you. Where you going and what were you going to do? You were going — from nothing into nothing. You were running away from what would never be left behind — it was there with you, tenaciously and eternally; it was buried in your heart, in your flesh and bones.

There was no imaginable way out. You sat there in the train, ashamed and afraid, wondering in sober earnest if you were going mad.