Lady, Lady, I Did It!

Chapter 4

He could remember the day they met...

He was waiting in the hallway outside apartment 47, after having pressed the bell button. The door opened suddenly. He had heard no approaching footsteps, and the sudden opening of the door surprised him. Unconsciously, he looked first to the girl’s feet. She was barefoot.

“My name is Bert Kling,” he said. “I’m a cop.”

“You sound like the opening to a television show,” she answered.

She stared at Kling levelly. She was a tall girl. Even barefoot she reached to Kling’s shoulder. In high heels she would give the average American male trouble. Her hair was black. Not brunette, not brownette, but black, a total black, the black of a starless, moonless night. Her eyes were a deep brown, arched with black brows. Her nose was straight and her cheeks were high, and there wasn’t a trace of makeup on her face, not a tint of lipstick on her wide mouth. She wore a white blouse and black toreador pants, which tapered down to her naked ankles and feet. Her toenails were painted a bright red.

She kept staring at him. At last, she said, “Why’d they send you here?”

“They said you knew Jeannie Paige.”

That was the beginning of Claire Townsend, or at least the beginning of her for him. He was still a patrolman at the time, and he had gone to her in plain clothes and on his own time to ask questions about a dead girl named Jeannie Paige, the sister-in-law of an old friend. She answered all his questions graciously and easily, and at last, when there were no more questions to ask, he rose and said, “I’d better be going. That is dinner I smell, isn’t it?”

“My father’ll be home soon,” Claire said. “Mom is dead. I whip something up when I get home from school.”

“Every night?” Kling asked.

“What? I’m sorry...”

He didn’t know whether to press it or not. She hadn’t heard him, and he could easily have shrugged his comment aside. But he chose not to.

“I said, ‘Every night?’ ”

“Every night what?”

She certainly was not making it easy for him. “Do you prepare supper every night? Or do you occasionally get a night off?”

“Oh, I get nights off,” Claire said.

“Maybe you’d enjoy dinner out some night?”

“With you, do you mean?”

“Well, yes. Yes, that’s what I had in mind.”

Claire Townsend looked at him long and hard. At last, she said, “No, I don’t think so. I’m sorry. Thanks. I couldn’t.”

“Well... uh...” Quite suddenly, Kling felt like a horse’s ass. “I... uh... guess I’ll be going then. Thanks for the cognac. It was very nice.”

“Yes,” she said, and he remembered her discussing people who were there and yet not there, and he knew exactly what she meant, because she was not there at all. She was somewhere far away, and he wished he knew where. With sudden, desperate longing, he wished he knew where she was because, curiously, he wanted to be there with her.

“Goodbye,” he said.

She smiled in answer and closed the door behind him...

He could remember.

He sat alone now in the furnished room that was his home. The windows were open. October lay just outside, alive with the sounds of the nighttime city. He sat in a hard straight-backed chair and looked out past the curtains, gently stirring in a breeze far too mild for October. He looked beyond the curtains, and through the window, and into the city itself, into the lighted window slashes in the distance, and a klieg light going against the velvet sky, and an airplane blinking red and green, all the light of the city streets and the city buildings and the air above the city, all the lights, alive.

He could remember the SPRY sign...

Their first date was going badly. They had spent the afternoon together, and now they sat in a restaurant high atop one of the city’s better-known hotels, and they looked through the huge windows that faced the river — and across the river there was a sign.

The sign first said: SPRY.

Then it said: SPRY FOR FRYING.

Then it said: SPRY FOR BAKING.

Then it said again: SPRY.

“What’ll you drink?” Kling asked.

“A whiskey sour, I think,” Claire said.

“No cognac?”

“Later maybe.”

The waiter came over to the table. “Something to drink, sir?” he asked.

“A whiskey sour and a martini.”

“Lemon peel, sir?”

“Olive,” Kling said.

“Thank you, sir. Would you care to see a menu now?”

“We’ll wait until after we’ve had our drinks, thank you. All right, Claire?”

“Yes, fine,” she said.

They sat in silence. Kling looked through the windows.

SPRY FOR FRYING.

“Claire?”

“Yes?”

SPRY FOR BAKING.

“It’s been a bust, hasn’t it?”

“Please, Bert.”

“The rain... and that lousy movie. I didn’t want it to be this way. I wanted—”

“I knew this would happen, Bert. I tried to tell you, didn’t I? Didn’t I try to warn you off? Didn’t I tell you I was the dullest girl in the world? Why did you insist, Bert? Now you make me feel like a... like a—”

“I don’t want you to feel any way,” he said. “I was only going to suggest that we... we start afresh. From now. Forgetting everything that’s... that’s happened.”

“Oh, what’s the use?”

“Claire,” he said evenly, “what the hell’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing.”

“Where do you go when you retreat?”

“What?”

“Where do you—”

“I didn’t think it showed. I’m sorry.”

“It shows,” Kling said. “Who was he?”

Claire looked up sharply. “You’re a better detective than I realized.”

“It doesn’t take much detection,” he said. There was a sad undertone to his voice, as if her confirmation of his suspicions had suddenly taken all the fight out of him. “I don’t mind your carrying a torch. Lots of girls—”

“It’s not that,” she interrupted.

“Lots of girls do,” he continued. “A guy drops them cold, or else it just peters out the way romances sometimes—”

“It’s not that!” she said sharply, and when he looked across the table at her, her eyes were filmed with tears.

“Hey, listen, I—”

“Please, Bert, I don’t want to—”

“But you said it was a guy. You said—”

“All right,” she answered. “All right, Bert.” She bit down on her lip. “All right, there was a guy. And I was in love with him. I was seventeen — just like Jeannie Paige — and he was nineteen. We hit it off right away... Do you know how such things happen, Bert? It happened that way with us. We made a lot of plans, big plans. We were young, and we were strong, and we were in love.”

“I... I don’t understand,” he said.

“He was killed in Korea.”

Across the river, the sign blared: SPRY FOR FRYING.

The tears. The bitter tears, starting slowly at first, forcing their way past clenched eyelids, trickling silently down her cheeks. Her shoulders began to heave, and she sat as still as a stone, her hands clasped in her lap, her shoulders heaving, sobbing silently while the tears coursed down her face. He had never seen such honest misery before. He turned his face away. He did not want to watch her. She sobbed steadily for several moments, and then the tears stopped as suddenly as they had begun, leaving her face looking as clean as a city street after a sudden summer storm.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Don’t be.”

“I should have cried a long time ago.”

“Yes.”

The waiter brought the drinks. Kling lifted his glass. “To a new beginning,” he said.

Claire studied him. It took her a long time to reach for the drink before her. Finally her hand closed around the glass. She lifted it and touched the rim of Kling’s glass. “To a new beginning,” she said. She threw off the drink quickly.

She looked across at him as if she were seeing him for the first time. The tears had put a sparkle into her eyes. “It... it may take time, Bert,” she said. Her voice came from a long way off.

“I’ve got all the time in the world,” he said. And then, almost afraid she would laugh at him, he added, “All I’ve been doing is killing time, Claire, waiting for you to come along.”

She seemed ready to cry again. He reached across the table and covered her hand with his. “You’re... you’re very good, Bert,” she said, her voice growing thin, the way a voice does before it collapses into tears. “You’re good, and kind, and gentle, and you’re quite beautiful, do you know that? I... I think you’re very beautiful.”

“You should see me when my hair is combed,” he said, smiling, squeezing her hand.

“I’m not joking,” she said. “You always think I’m joking, and you really shouldn’t, because I’m... I’m a serious girl.”

“I know.”

“Bert,” she said. “Bert.” And she put her other hand over his, so that three hands formed a pyramid on the table. Her face grew very serious. “Thank you, Bert. Thank you so very, very much.”

He didn’t know what to say. He felt embarrassed and stupid and happy and very big. He felt about eighty feet tall.

She leaned forward suddenly and kissed him, a quick sudden kiss that fleetingly touched his mouth and then was gone. She sat back again, seeming very unsure of herself, seeming like a frightened little girl at her first party. “You... you must be patient,” she said.

“I will,” he promised.

The waiter suddenly appeared. The waiter was smiling. He coughed discreetly. “I thought,” he said gently, “perhaps a little candlelight at the table, sir? The lady will look even more lovely by candlelight.”

“The lady looks lovely just as she is,” Kling said.

The waiter seemed disappointed. “But...”

“But the candlelight, certainly,” Kling said. “By all means, the candlelight.”

The waiter beamed. “Ah, yes, sir. Yes, sir. And then we will order, yes? I have some suggestions, sir, whenever you’re ready.” He paused, his smile lighting his face. “It’s a beautiful night, sir, isn’t it?”

“It’s a wonderful night,” Claire answered...

Alone in the night, alone in the light-blinking silence of his furnished room, he tried to tell himself she was not dead. He had spoken to her this afternoon. She had told him about her new bra. She was not dead. She was still alive and vibrant. She was still Claire Townsend.

She was dead.

He sat staring through the window.

He felt numb and cold. There was no feeling in his hands. If he moved his fingers, he knew they would not respond. He sat heavily, shivering in the warm October breeze, staring through the window at the myriad lights of the city, how gently the curtain rustled in the caressing wind, he felt nothing but an empty coldness, something hard and rigid and frighteningly cold at the pit of his stomach, he could not move, he could not cry, he could not feel.

She was dead.

No, he told himself, and he allowed a faint smile to turn the corners of his mouth; no, don’t be ridiculous. Claire dead? Don’t be ridiculous. I spoke to her this afternoon. She called me at the squadroom, the way she always calls. Meyer was making jokes about it. Carella was there — he could tell you. He remembers. She called me, and they were both there, so I know I wasn’t dreaming, and if she called me she must be alive, isn’t that so? That’s only logical. She called me, so I know she’s alive. Carella was there. Ask Carella. He’ll tell you. He’ll tell you Claire is alive.

He could remember talking to Carella once not too long ago in a diner, the plate-glass window splashed with rain. There had been an intimacy to the place, a rained-in snugness as they had discussed the case they were working, as they had lifted steaming coffee mugs. And into the intimate mood of the moment, into the rain-protected comfort of the room, Carella had said, “When are you going to marry that girl?”

“She wants to get her master’s degree before we get married,” Kling said.

“Why?”

“How do I know? She’s insecure. She’s psychotic. How do I know?”

“What does she want after the master’s? A doctorate?”

“Maybe.” Kling had shrugged. “Listen, I ask her to marry me every time I see her. She wants the master’s. So what can I do? I’m in love with her. Can I tell her to go to hell?”

“I suppose not.”

“Well, I can’t.” Kling had paused. “You want to know something, Steve?”

“What?”

“I wish I could keep my hands off her. You know, I wish we didn’t have to... well, you know, my landlady looks at me cockeyed every time I bring Claire upstairs. And then I have to rush her home because her father is the strictest guy who ever walked the earth. I’m surprised he’s leaving her alone this weekend. But what I mean is... well, damn it, what the hell does she need that master’s for, Steve? I mean, I wish I could leave her alone until we were married, but I just can’t. I mean, all I have to do is be with her, and my mouth goes dry. Is it that way with... well, never mind, I didn’t mean to get personal.”

“It’s that way,” Carella had said.

She’s alive, Kling reasoned.

Of course, she’s alive. She’s going for her master’s degree. She’s already doing social field work. Why, just today, on the telephone, she told me she’d be a little late: I have to pick up some texts.

Interviewing: Its Principles and Methods, he thought.

Patterns of Culture, he thought.

The Sane Society, he thought.

She’s dead, he thought.

“NO!”

He screamed the word aloud into the silence of the room. The scream brought him physically out of the chair, as if the force of its explosion had lifted him.

“No,” he said again, very softly, and he walked to the window, and he rested his head against the curtain, and he looked down into the street, looking for Claire. She should have been here by now. It was almost... What time was it? What time? He knew her walk. He would recognize her the moment she turned into the block — a white blouse, she had said; that and a black skirt — yes, he would know her instantly. He wondered abruptly what the bra looked like, and again he smiled, the curtain soft and reassuring against his cheek, the lights of the restaurant across the way staining his face in alternating red and green neon.

I wonder what’s keeping her, he thought

Well, she’s dead, you know, he thought.

He turned away from the window. He walked to the bed, and he looked at it unseeingly, and then he walked to the dresser, and he stared down at its cluttered top, and picked up the hairbrush, and saw strands of her black hair tangled in its bristles, and put down the brush, and looked at his watch, and did not see the time.

It was almost midnight.

He walked back to the window and stared down into the street again, waiting for her.

By 6:00 A.M. the next morning he knew she was not coming.

He knew he would never see her again.