Strangers on a Train

Twentyfour

For the hundredth time, he examined his face in the bathroom mirror, patiently touched every scratch with the styptic pencil, and repowdered them. He ministered to his face and hands objectively, as if they were not a part of himself. When his eyes met the staring eyes in the mirror, they slipped away as they must have slipped away, Guy thought, that first afternoon on the train, when he had tried to avoid Bruno’s eyes.

He went back and fell down on his bed. There was the rest of today, and tomorrow, Sunday. He needn’t see anyone. He could go to Chicago for a couple of weeks and say he was away on a job. But it might seem suspicious if he left town the day after. Yesterday. Last night. Except for his scratched hands, he might have believed it one of his dreams that he had done it. Because he had not wanted to do it, he thought. It had not been his will. It had been Bruno’s will, working through him. He wanted to curse Bruno, curse him aloud, but he simply had not the energy now. The curious thing was that he felt no guilt, and it seemed to him now that the fact Bruno’s will had motivated him was the explanation. But what was this thing, guilt, that he had felt more after Miriam’s death than now? Now he was merely tired, and unconcerned about anything. Or was this how anyone would feel after killing? He tried to sleep, and his mind retraced the moments on the Long Island bus, the two workmen who had stared at him, his pretense of sleep with the newspaper over his face. He had felt more shame with the workmen….

His knees buckled on the front steps and he almost fell. He did not look to see if he were being observed. It seemed an ordinary thing he did, to go down and buy a paper. But he knew also he hadn’t the strength to look to see if he were being observed, the strength even to care, and he dreaded the time when the strength would come, as a sick or wounded man dreads the next inevitable operation.

The Journal-American had the longest account, with a silhouette of the murderer, composed from the butler’s description, of a man six feet one, weighing about one hundred and seventy to eighty pounds, wearing a dark overcoat and hat. Guy read it with mild surprise, as if it might not have been about him: he was only five nine and weighed about a hundred and forty. And he had not been wearing a hat. He skipped the part of the story that told who Samuel Bruno was, and read with greatest interest the speculation about the murderer’s flight. North along Newhope Road, it said, where it was believed he lost himself in the town of Great Neck, perhaps taking the 12:18 A.M. train out. Actually, he had gone southeast. He felt suddenly relieved, safe. It was an illusion, he warned himself, safety. He stood up, for the first time as panicked as he had been when he floundered in the lot beside the house. The paper was several hours old. They could have found their mistake by now. They could be coming for him, right outside his door, by now. He waited, and there was no sound anywhere, and feeling tired again, he sat down. He forced himself to concentrate on the rest of the long column. The coolness of the murderer was stressed, and the fact it seemed to be an inside job. No fingerprints, no clue except some shoe prints, size nine and a half, and the smudge of a black shoe on the white plaster wall. His clothes, he thought, he must get rid of his clothes and immediately, but when would he find the energy to do it? It was odd they overestimated his shoe size, Guy thought, with the ground so wet.”… an unusually small caliber of bullet,” the paper said. He must get rid of his revolver, too. He felt a little wrench of grief. He would hate that, how he would hate the instant he parted from his revolver! He pulled himself up and went to get more ice for the towel he was holding against his head.

Anne telephoned him in the late afternoon to ask him to go to a party with her Sunday night in Manhattan.

“Helen Heyburn’s party. You know, I told you about it.”

“Yes,” Guy said, not remembering at all. His voice came evenly, “I guess I don’t quite feel like a party, Anne.”

For the last hour or so, he had felt numb. It made Anne’s words distant, irrelevant. He listened to himself saying the right things, not even anticipating, or perhaps not even caring, that Anne might notice any difference. Anne said she might get Chris Nelson to go with her, and Guy said all right, and thought how happy Nelson would be to go with her because Nelson, who had used to see a great deal of Anne before she met Guy, was still in love with her, Guy thought.

“Why don’t I bring in some delicatessen Sunday evening,” Anne said, “and we’ll have a snack together? I could have Chris meet me later.”

“I thought I might go out Sunday, Anne. Sketching.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. I had something to tell you.”

“What?”

“Something I think you’ll like. Well—some other time.”

Guy crept up the stairs, alert for Mrs. McCausland. Anne was cool to him, he thought monotonously, Anne was cool. The next time she saw him, she would know and she would hate him. Anne was through, Anne was through. He kept chanting it until he fell asleep.

He slept until the following noon, then lay in bed the rest of the day in a torpor that made it agony even to cross the room to refill his towel with ice. He felt he would never sleep enough to get back his strength. Retracing, he thought. His body and mind retracing the long road they had traveled. Coming back to what? He lay rigid and afraid, sweating and shivering with fear. Then he had to get up to go to the bathroom. He had a slight case of diarrhea. From fear, he thought. As on a battlefield.

He dreamt in half-sleep that he crossed the lawn toward the house. The house was soft and white and unresisting as a cloud. And he stood there unwilling to shoot, determined to fight it to prove he could conquer it. The gunshot awakened him. He opened his eyes to the dawn in his room. He saw himself standing by his work table, exactly as he stood in the dream, pointing the gun at a bed in the corner, where Samuel Bruno struggled to sit up. The gun roared again. Guy screamed.

He sprang out of bed, staggering. The figure vanished. At his window was the same struggling light he had seen that dawn, the same mingling of life and death. The same light would come every dawn that he lived, would always reveal that room, and the room would grow more distinct with repetition, his horror sharper. Suppose he awakened every dawn that he lived?

The doorbell rang in the kitchenette.

The police are downstairs, he thought. This was just the time they would catch him, at dawn. And he didn’t care, didn’t care at all. He would make a complete confession. He would blurt it all out at once!

He leaned on the release button, then went to his door and listened.

Light quick steps ran up. Anne’s steps. Rather the police than Anne! He turned completely around, stupidly drew his shade. He thrust his hair back with both hands and felt the knot on his head.

“Me,” Anne whispered as she slipped in. “I walked over from Helen’s. It’s a wonderful morning!” She saw his bandage, and the elation left her face. “What happened to your hand?”

He stepped back in the shadow near his bureau. “I got into a fight.”

“When? Last night? And your face, Guy!”

“Yes.” He had to have her, had to keep her with him, he thought. He would perish without her. He started to put his arms around her, but she pushed him back, peering at him in the half light.

“Where, Guy? Who was it?”

“A man I don’t even know,” he said tonelessly, hardly realizing even that he lied, because it was so desperately necessary that he keep her with him. “In a bar. Don’t turn on the light,” he said quickly. “Please, Anne.”

“In a bar?”

“I don’t know how it happened. Suddenly.”

“Someone you’d never seen before?”

“Yes.”, “I don’t believe you.”

She spoke slowly, and Guy was all at once terrified, realizing she was a separate person from himself, a person with a different mind, different reactions.

“How can I?” she went on. “And why should I believe you about the letter, about not knowing who sent it?”

“Because it’s true.”

“Or the man you fought with on the lawn. Was it the same one?”

“You’re keeping something from me, Guy.‘Then she softened, but each simple word seemed to attack him: “What is it, darling? You know I want to help you. But you’ve got to tell me.”

“I’ve told you,” he said, and set his teeth. Behind him, the light was changing already. If he could keep Anne now, he thought, he could survive every dawn. He looked at the straight, pale curtain of her hair, and put out his hand to touch it, but she drew back.

“I don’t see how we can go on like this, Guy. We can’t.”

“It won’t go on. It’s over. I swear to you, Anne. Please believe me.” The moment seemed a test, as if it were now or never again. He should take her in his arms, he thought, hold her fiercely until she stopped struggling against him. But he could not make himself move.

“How do you know?”

He hesitated. “Because it was a state of mind.”

“That letter was a state of mind?”

“The letter contributed to it. I felt tied in a knot. It was my work, Anne!” He bowed his head. Nailing his sins to his work!

“You once said I made you happy,” she said slowly, “or that I could in spite of anything. I don’t see it anymore.”

Certainly he did not make her happy, she meant to say. But if she could still love him now, how he would try to make her happy! How he would worship and serve her! “You do, Anne. I have nothing else.” He bent lower with sudden sobs, shameless, -wracking sobs that did not cease the long moment before Anne touched his shoulder. And though he was grateful, he felt like twisting away from the touch, too, because he felt it was only pity, only humanity that made her touch him at all.

“Shall I fix you some breakfast?”

Even in the note of exasperated patience he heard in her voice, there was a hint of forgiveness that meant total forgiveness, he knew. For fighting in a bar. Never, he thought, would she penetrate to Friday night, because it was already buried too deep for her or for any other person to go.