Waltz Into Darkness

54

He only breathed freely again when the train had pulled out, and only looked freely from the window again when the last vestiges of the town had fallen behind and the dreary coastal sand flats had begun. The town that he had once loved most of all places in this world.

The train was a rickety, caterpillar-like creeper, that stopped at every crossroads shed and water tank along the way, or so it seemed, and didn’t deposit him at his destination until well onto one in the morning. He found the station vicinity deserted, and all but unlighted; carriageless as well, and had to walk back to their hotel bag in hand, under a panel of brittle (and somehow satiric) stars.

And though the thought of surprising her in some act of treachery had not been the motive for his arriving a half night sooner than he’d said he would, the realization of how fatally enlightening this unheralded return could very well prove to be, slowly grew on him as he walked along, until it had taken hold of him altogether. By the time he had reached the hotel and climbed to their floor and stood before their door, he was almost afraid to take his key to it and open it. Afraid of what he would find. Not afraid of conventional faithlessness so much as her own characteristic kind of faithlessness. Not afraid of finding her in other arms so much as not finding her there at all. Finding her fled and gone in his absence, as he had once before.

He opened softly, and he held his breath back. The room was dark, and the fragrance of violets that greeted him meant nothing, it could have been from yesterday as well as from today. Besides, it was in his heart rather than in his nostrils, so it was no true test.

He took out a little box of wax matches, that clicked and rattled with his trepidation, felt for the sandpaper tab fastened to the wall, and kindled the lamp wick. Then turned to look, as the slow-rising golden tide washed away night.

She was sleeping like a child, as innocent as one, as beautiful as one. (And only in sleep perhaps could she ever obtain such innocence any longer). And as gracefully, as artlessly disposed, as a child. Her hair flooded the pillow, as if her head were lying in the middle of a field of slanting sun-yellowed grass. One arm was hidden, the dimpled point of an elbow protruding from under the pillow all that could be seen of it. The other lay athwart her, to hang straight down over the side of the bed. Its thumb and forefinger were still touching together, making an irregular little loop that had once held something. Under it, on the carpet, lay two cards, the queen of diamonds and the knave of hearts.

The rest of the deck lay scattered about on the counterpane, some of them even on her own recumbent form.

He got down there beside her, at the bedside, on one knee, and took up her dangling hand, and found it softly, yet in a burning gratitude, with his lips. And though he didn’t know it, had fallen into it without thought, his pose was that of the immemorial lover pleading his suit. Pleading his suit to a heart he cannot soften.

He swept off the cards onto the floor, replaced them with the money he had brought from New Orleans. Even raised his arms above her, holding it massed within them, letting it snow down upon her any which way it willed, in a green and orange leafy shower.

Her eyes opened, and following the undulant surface of the counterpane they were so close to, sighted at something, taking on a covetous expression with their whites uppermost, by the fact of their lying so low; but one that was perhaps closer to the truth than not.

“A hundred-dollar bill,” she murmured sleepily.

“Lou’s back,” he whispered. “Look what he’s brought you from New Orleans.” And gathering up some of the fallen certificates, let them stream down all over again. One of them caught in her hair. And she reached up and felt for it there, with an expression of simpering satisfaction. Then having felt it was there, left it there, as though that was where she most wanted it to be.

She stretched out her hands to him, and traced his brows, and the turn of his face, and the point of his ear, in expression of lazy appreciation.

“What were those cards?”

“I was trying to tell our fortunes,” she said. “And I fell asleep doing it. I got the queen of diamonds. The money card. And it came true. I’ll never laugh at those things again.”

“And what did I get?”

“The ace of spades.”

He laughed. “What one’s that?”

He felt her hand, which had been straying in his hair, stop for a moment. “I don’t know.”

He had an idea she did, but didn’t want to tell him.

“What’d you do that for? Try reading them.”

“I wanted to see if you were coming back or not.”

“Didn’t you know I would?”

“I did,” she hedged. “But I wasn’t sure.”

“And I wasn’t sure I’d find you here any longer,” he confessed.

Suddenly she had one of those flashes of stark sincerity she was so capable of, and so seldom exercised. She swept her arms about his neck in a convulsive, despairing, knotted hug. “Oh, God!” she mourned bitterly. “What’s wrong with the two of us anyway, Lou? Isn’t it hell when you can’t trust one another?”

He sighed for answer.

Presently she said, “I’m going back to sleep a little while more.”

Her head came to rest against his, nestled there, in lieu of the pillow.

“Leave the money there,” she purred blissfully. “It feels good lying all over me.”

In a little while he could tell by her breathing she was sleeping again. Her head to his, her arms still twined collarlike about him. He could never get any closer to her than this, somehow he felt. He in her arms, she unconscious of him there.

His heart said a prayer. Not knowing to whom, but asking it of the nothingness around him, that he had plunged himself into of his own accord.

“Make her love me,” he pleaded mutely, “as I love her. Open her heart to me, as mine is open to her. If she can’t love me in a good way, let it be in a bad way. Only, in some way. Any way, at all. This is all I ask. For this I’ll give up everything. For this I’ll take whatever comes, even the ace of spades.”