Vanish in an Instant

23

Alice was waiting for him in his car, a black scarf covering her bright hair, so that he didn’t see her until he opened the door.

“Hello,” Meecham said.

“Hello.”

“Going anywhere?”

“Anywhere at all,” she said. “Wherever you go.”

“All right.” He let the car coast down the driveway to the street. He felt an intense activity inside his body, like hundreds of wheels turning in all directions. He was almost afraid to speak because of what the wheels might do to his voice. But when he finally spoke he sounded quite calm and detached. “I’m going home.”

“Then that’s where I’ll go too.”

“Maybe you’d better not.”

“I’m twenty-three,” she said with naive pride, as if twenty-three was a very special age that conferred great wisdom and rightness on its wearer.

“I was twenty-three once too,” Meecham said, “along with a lot of other people. I often made mistakes.”

“I won’t.”

The traffic in the center of town was congested with cars that slid ghostlike along the streets, and students bundled like mummies against the cold. The bell tower was striking 9:15 when Meecham stopped the car in front of a small white duplex.

Hand in hand, they walked across the unshoveled sidewalk and up the porch steps of the right side of the duplex. A card above the doorbell said Eric Meecham. Two bottles of milk stood in a drift of snow outside the door. The milk had frozen and grown out of the tops of the bottles like strange white fungus that springs up overnight after a summer rain.

“I guess I forgot to bring in the milk,” Meecham said.

“Does it always do that in the winter?”

“When it’s very cold.”

“It looks funny. I’ll have to get used to a lot of different things, won’t I, Meecham?”

“Yes.” He tried to unlock the door but the key stuck and wouldn’t move. He made three attempts before the door finally opened and a warm draft of air swept out to meet them like a friendly hostess.

Meecham turned on the hall light. “It’s not very clean, I guess. It looks clean enough to me, but to a woman...”

“It’s very clean.”

“Is it?”

“I don’t see how it could be any cleaner, really. I... Oh, Meecham. Frozen milk and the place being clean — what does anything matter?”

He untied the scarf that was knotted under her chin and it fell soft and unnoticed to the floor like a leaf.

“You’re beautiful, Alice.”

“Oh, I hope so. I couldn’t live if you didn’t like the way I looked.”

She was clinging to him with all her strength, like a vine that had been growing alone and whose seeking tendrils had at last touched a tree. He held her tightly in his arms and kissed her, and the wheels inside him began to move with such furious speed that their noise whirred and pounded in his ears. When the telephone rang he hardly recognized it at first as a new and separate sound, but its sharp insistence gradually penetrated his mind like a pain.

Alice stirred in his arms and shook her head as if to shake off the intrusion. “I guess — that’s the phone.”

“Let it ring,” he said.

“Do other women call you very often?”

“Sometimes.”

The telephone continued to ring, five, six, seven times.

“You could answer,” she said, “and then if it’s another woman tell her you’re very busy and you’ll be busy for a long time.”

“How long?”

“Years. Forever.”

“All right.” He picked up the phone from the hall table. His hands were shaking and his knees felt weak. “Hello.”

“Is that you, Mr. Meecham?”

“Yes.”

“This is me, Victor Garino. You remember?”

“Of course. Where are you?”

“Here at home, in Kincaid. I’ve been trying to reach you ever since before supper. Mama and me, we’re having a bad time with Mrs. Loftus. It’s about the money.”

“What money?”

“The rest of Earl’s seven hundred dollars. You shouldn’t have sent it to her, Mr. Meecham.”

Meecham felt the inside breast pocket of his coat. The envelope containing the rest of Loftus’ money was still there.

“She’s going wild,” Garino said. “Buying not just liquor but everything, everything she sees. Records, dozens of records, and nothing to play them on. And a dress for Mama, a great big dress so big Mama could get into it twice. And for me, a new hat and a lamp and a case of wine, a whole case...”

“What do you think I can do about it?” Meecham said.

“You must come and take the money back again, what’s left of it. I asked her to let me keep it for her and she said no, if I kept it she’d never see more than a dollar at a time like in the old days when Birdie gave her an allowance. I have no right to take the money from her. But you have, Mr. Meecham. You sent it to her and you can take it back again. That would be lawful, wouldn’t it?”

“No, it wouldn’t, because I didn’t send her any money.”

There was a silence at the other end of the line. Then Garino’s voice again, talking not into the telephone but to someone beside him. “He says he didn’t send it, Mama.”

“He must have. Where else would she...?”

“She borrowed it, maybe.”

“Who from? Who’d lend her money?”

“She wouldn’t steal.”

Then there was another silence, and Mrs. Garino said in a barely audible voice, “I never leave my purse around anymore.”

Meecham spoke sharply into the phone: “Garino?”

“I’m here, Mr. Meecham. I was talking to Mama. She says to tell you we’re very sorry we bothered you, and... and what else, Mama?”

“Merry Christmas,” Mrs. Garino said.

“Oh yes, and a merry Christmas,” Garino said gravely.

“Wait a minute, Garino.”

“I am embarrassed, making such a big mistake, thinking you sent the...”

“Forget it. Is Mrs. Loftus home now?”

“Yes.”

“Keep her there.”

“By this time she is too drunk to go out anyway.”

“I want to talk to her,” Meecham said. “It’s very important. I can leave right away and I should be there in a little over an hour.”

He put the phone down and turned to Alice. She was smiling at him, but not very convincingly.

“You left me behind once tonight,” she said. “I don’t want to be left behind again.”

“Do you like long winter drives in the country?”

“Very much.”

“Sure?”

“I adore them.” She reached down slowly, bending at the knees, and picked up her scarf from the floor. She said, without rising, “I could sit right down here and bawl.”

“Please don’t.” He pulled her gently to her feet. “Remember, you’re twenty-three.”

“You’re laughing at me.”

“No. Here, I’ll put on your scarf for you. Will you let me?”

“I guess.” She watched him as he tied the scarf awkwardly under her chin. “Meecham, do we have to go?”

“We have to.” He switched off the hall light and for a moment they stood in the dark facing each other but not touching. “You’re not angry?”

“No.” She shook her head, rather sadly. “But I don’t think I’m twenty-three any more. I think I’m older.”