You Live Once

Chapter 7

That was Tuesday evening. I fed my martini hunger on spaghetti al dente with sailor sauce, read the evening paper’s rehash of our big murder and went back to my apartment. I parked the car, started toward my door, then decided to walk off the spaghetti heaviness. It was just getting dark. Children shrilled and leaped the barberry hedges. I walked by the yellow house and wondered which window was Toni’s.

I guess I walked aimlessly for nearly an hour, turning right or left on impulse, but gradually circling back toward my place. I suddenly remembered the trash, and my promise to Mrs. Speers. It wouldn’t be too late. I lengthened my stride. From far up the street I saw the lights in my windows. I hadn’t been in to leave any on. I left the sidewalk and started across the grass of the big side lawn. I planned to stare in my windows and see who it was who felt so much at home. One key was in my pocket. I had given the other to Mary Olan, and it had been used to put her in my closet. It made me feel strange to see the lights.

When I moved further to the side I saw something that stopped me. It was a silhouette between me and my lighted window. The hat shape was official and distinctive and unmistakable. A police car was parked beside my car, and a policeman stood quietly in the night, leaning against my car.

I moved to put the safe wide trunk of a big elm between me and the waiting man. It took me closer to him. When bright headlights swung into the driveway, I moved again to keep the elm between me and the lights. It was a noisy vehicle and when it turned, I saw that it was a tow truck. I could see men moving around inside my apartment. The door opened and Captain Kruslov stood in the doorway and looked out. He walked out into the driveway and a thin man followed him.

The tow truck backed into position by my car and when its motor quieted I heard Kruslov saying, “...and Bird can finish the apartment. You ride on in with the car, Danny, and get to work on the trunk right away. See if you can find anything else.”

That “else” chilled my blood. The chain from the hoist on the. wrecker clinked against the front bumper of my car. A man got the hook in place, the hoist whined and the front end lifted off the ground. The thin man got into the truck beside the driver and it went away, my car swaying behind it.

Kruslov watched it go. The patrolman who had been leaning against my car stood beside him. Light shone from my open front door. Into the light came Mrs. Speers, a shawl around her shoulders.

“Did you take Mr. Sewell’s car away?” she asked sharply.

“Yes m’am, we did,” Kruslov replied.

“Mr. Sewell is going to be very angry.”

“I guess so, m’am. You told me he went for a walk. Is that right?”

“Of course it’s right or I wouldn’t have said so. I don’t know what right you have to go into his apartment and take his car away.”

“We’ve got a warrant, m’am. It’s legal.”

“It may be legal, but it isn’t decent. He’s a nice young man.”

“Mrs. Speers, would you mind if I asked you some more questions about last Sunday?”

“Not at all. But if you think that...”

“You said that Mr. Sewell filled up the back end of his car with trash and took it to the city dump. You mind telling me what he put in his car?”

“Cans and bottles and trash. Why the city can’t collect trash the way they do in other places, I’ll never...”

“I mean, m’am, what were the cans and bottles in? Cartons?”

“There was one carton of trash and then he had a big brown canvas thing packed with trash.”

“How big was the canvas thing?”

“Oh, I’d say about as big as a blanket. He had it full of trash and he held it by the four corners, like a sack.”

“Did he handle it as if it was heavy?”

“Of course it was heavy! It was full of trash.”

“Could the Olan girl’s body have been in there?”

I distinctly heard her gasp, and I could imagine the expression on her face. “Why what a ridiculous idea! You must be out of your mind.”

“No, lady, I am not out of my mind.”

“You must be! Why aren’t you out after dangerous criminals, instead of bothering Mr. Sewell?”

“Because I think Mr. Sewell is a dangerous criminal, lady.”

“That’s incredible!”

Kruslov sighed heavily. Their voices had carried well in the night quiet. I was not more than twenty-five feet from them. The police car radio began to make insane sounds — Donald Duck under a tin wash tub. The patrolman’s heels scuffed the gravel as he went quickly over to the car. He spoke a few times in a low voice.

“Nothing yet, sir,” he said to Kruslov.

“You are making a dreadful mistake,” Mrs. Speers said hotly. Her loyalty touched me.

“We’ll see, lady.”

“What makes you think he’d do a thing like that?”

I had sensed the growing irritation of Kruslov. Mrs. Speers had a penetrating, indignant voice, and he had had too little sleep. Perhaps under other circumstances he would have kept police business to himself. But Mrs. Speers had refused to be brushed off. He said in a hard voice, “Lady, I do not know what would make him do a thing like that. All I know is we took a look at his car today, at the plant. An expert opened the trunk and he found an empty tin can. There had been frozen orange juice in it. There was a white thread caught where the metal was ragged. The lab boys say that white thread came off the Olan girl’s skirt. Now why don’t you go back in the house?”

Mrs. Speers was defeated. She left without a word. I was defeated too. I remembered climbing down the slope to get the can. If I’d remembered Mrs. Speers’ trash on Monday night, the can would now be in the dump and covered up, white thread and all. Maybe there was a moral there, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I stood in the night behind the tree and felt as naked as the day I was born.

A man carrying a black case came out of my apartment. “You through, Bird?” Kruslov asked.

“I’m through.”

Kruslov turned to the patrolman. “You wait in the apartment with the door locked and the lights out. Just because it’s dark don’t go to sleep. I’ll take the car in now. If he’s missed by the other cars, you take him when he comes in. Don’t take any chances. Cuff him to the radiator and phone in. I’ll bet a buck he went to the movies or a bar. If he was still walking, they’d have him.”

Kruslov and Bird got in the car and went away. The patrolman stood in the doorway. He took out a cigar, bit the end off and lighted it. He looked at the night for a while and then went into my apartment. The lights went off. I moved slowly back across the side yard, keeping the tree trunk between me and the apartment. There was a high hedge at the far end of the side yard. I wedged myself into it and tried to do some constructive thinking, but my mind wouldn’t work. If I turned myself in I would have to try to explain why, after finding the body, I had gotten rid of it. The action seemed to scream of guilt. I kept plaguing myself by asking myself why I’d taken the body away in the first place. It was hardly constructive thought.

Fear grew larger and larger in my mind, fear that I was not going to get out of this. I’d taken her into my apartment and strangled her. I’d driven her car away and abandoned it. I’d come back and slept and disposed of the body the next day. My prints were on her car. Now they’d be looking for the tarp and they’d find it. It seemed to me I’d read that they could type sweat, and my hands had certainly been sweaty when I’d lifted the tarp with her body in it. It had been my belt around her throat, and they’d find that too. I wanted to start running through the night. I wanted to run hard out across the night fields, away from this place.

I thought of everybody I knew, and I could think of only two people in the whole world who would listen to me and believe me. Tory Wylan and Toni MacRae. Tory was far away, but Toni was close.

I moved like a thief through the adjoining back yard. Through a window I saw a woman washing dishes, white dishes with blue rims under hard white fluorescence. I kicked a child’s tin toy and scurried into deeper shadows and waited until my heart quieted. I stood by a lilac bush and looked at the lighted windows of the big yellow house. I had an insane wish to throw my head back and yell, “Toni! Toni!” Cry of terror; plea for help. Child in the night.

I circled the big yellow house, all but the front side, staying back far enough so I could see the high windows, but I did not see her. I worked my way back to the original place. I saw her then, in a second story window near the rear of the house. She walked by in front of the window, wearing a yellow robe, both hands fooling with her hair at the back of her dark head. I crouched and felt the ground and found three small stones. The first one rapped off the wood beside her window. The second made a clear sharp clink against the glass. Toni appeared in the window. The light was behind her so that I couldn’t see her expression. I threw the last one and it hit the glass, startling her. No one was looking out the other windows. I took my lighter out and held it near my chin and lighted it. The night wind wavered the flame. I put my hand in the area of light and crooked my finger a few times in a beckoning gesture before a stronger puff of wind blew the flame out.

She stood there, not moving. I could guess what was going on in her head: the boss was now reaching for the payoff. I guessed at her anger, yet knew somehow that curiosity would bring her down — and besides, she would want a chance to express indignation. She moved away from the window. When she appeared again she was dressed. She looked down and then left the window. A minute or so later she came walking down through the grass beside the house.

Twenty feet from me she said in a clear voice that seemed audible all over the city, “Mr. Sewell, exactly what do you think you’re doing?”

“Hush! Please!” My voice was a frightened croak.

She must have sensed the way I felt. She came close to me and whispered, “What on earth is the trouble?”

“The police are looking for me, Toni. They want to arrest me for the murder of Mary Olan.”

“That’s simply stupid! You couldn’t kill anybody.”

“Please, please don’t raise your voice like that, Toni. I didn’t kill her. But I’ll tell you what I did do. I found her body in my closet Sunday morning. I put the body in my car and took it out and left it where they found it. Now they can prove I did that. And if they can prove I did that...”

She stood silently in the darkness. “You fool, Clint! You utter damn fool!”

“I know, I know. I did it, I was stupid, I can’t take it back.”

“You better go right on down there and tell them just what you did.”

“You don’t know the whole thing. You don’t know how bad it looks.”

“You can’t tell them the truth?”

“I didn’t tell them in the beginning. I don’t dare to now.”

“What do you expect me to do?”

“This sounds silly as hell. I don’t know what I expect you to do. I just wanted to tell somebody. I just wanted to tell you. So it’s stupid. All right.”

She looked down and kicked lightly at the grass. “If you run and hide it’ll look even worse.”

“I know that! But what can I do. I can’t keep standing here. I wish I could tell you the whole thing.”

“Without any lies? Without leaving out any part of it?”

“I’m off lies, Toni. I’ve given them up. They don’t pay off.”

“You ought to go right to the police.”

“We can’t argue that here.”

She turned and looked at the house. There was just enough light from the house for me to see she was biting her underlip.

“I don’t want to get you involved,” I said.

“Shut up a minute. Have you got your car?”

“They took it away.”

“I suppose they’re watching your place.”

“There’s a man in there waiting for me to come home. They think I went out for a walk. They’re cruising around looking for me.”

“You can come to my room it you do exactly what I tell you to do.”

“I don’t want to get you involved.”

“I am involved. Now listen. There’s back stairs. They start from the back hall, outside the kitchen. Take your shoes off.”

She handled it like an expert. She went into the kitchen to create a diversion while I crept partway up the narrow staircase. She left the kitchen and walked noisily up the stairs. As soon as she passed me, I followed in her wake, stepping in her same cadence. I waited at the top, behind the door, while she went down the hall to her room. She opened her room door, looked back toward me and nodded. I moved silently down the hall and slipped into her room. She came in behind me, closed her door and locked it. She crossed the room and closed the blinds at the two windows. I felt weak and shaken. There was one overstuffed chair. I sat in it and lighted a cigarette.

After a few moments I was able to look around the room. It was an ugly room but she had worked hard on it. The high double bed dominated the room. The walls were an unhappy green. Two small lamps with opaque shades muted the ugliness. I could see through the half open door into a small private bath. She had a small corner bookshelf, a wrought iron magazine rack, a double hotplate atop a small cabinet for dishes. It distressed me that the life of Toni should be compressed into this characterless room. I imagined she dated often, she was certainly handsome enough. But there cannot be a date every night. There had to be the alone nights, washing out things, reading, doing her hair and nails, listening to the small coral-plastic radio. The closet door was ajar. Her clothes hung neatly racked, shoes neatly aligned on the floor. She moved over and closed the closet door. The room had a clean smell of her. Fragrant soap, touch of perfume, hint of starch and rustle.

She put an ash tray beside me, moved a straight chair over directly in front of me, and sat there, so close our knees nearly touched. She leaned forward and whispered, “Don’t even whisper loudly, Clint. She’d make me move out tonight if she knew I had a man in here.”

“All right. I’ll tell it from the beginning.”

“Not from the time you found her body. From the very, very beginning, the day you met her.”

There was a certain avidity in Toni’s dark eyes. She wanted to know all. So I told her all there was to tell. It took a long time. She would ask questions, not often. She looked almost sick when I told about getting the body into the car, about the way it had rolled down the little hill until the tree stopped it. When I told about the can and the thread, she said, “I don’t understand.”

“That was one of the cans I used to disguise the shape of her in the tarp. When I pushed it down into the tarp it tore that thread off her skirt. I didn’t see it when I threw the can into the back end of the car.”

“Can they prove it came from her skirt?”

“I’m sure they can. They have ways.”

We stopped talking as someone walked heavily down the hall right by her door. She asked a few more questions. She got up restlessly and walked around the room, touching things absently, straightening them. She sat on the bed, frowning beyond me. She looked at me and tried to smile, then blushed and looked away. Her blush underlined our nearness, the strangeness of the situation.

I went over and stood looking down at her. “Now do you think I should turn myself in?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“While they’re looking for me they won’t be looking for who really did it.”

“I know, but will they look anyway, after they have you?”

“I doubt it.”

“Somebody killed her, Clint.”

“I know that.”

“Mr. Raymond?”

“I don’t think so. There’s too much coldness there, under all that boyish good nature. Too much calculation. He wouldn’t do anything that stupid. Why should he kill her? He was perfectly confident that now and then she would jump into bed with him.”

“It’s all so... nasty,” she said, looking up at me.

“Right.”

“Clint, I don’t think you should turn yourself in yet.”

“So what do I do?”

She blushed more violently than before. “You can stay here tonight. Tomorrow I can find out how... how convinced they are. Somehow. If they aren’t completely sure, then you should go in. If they think they can... kill you, then you’ll have to go away. I can get you away somehow. I know I can.”

It could have been the way she said that. Or the way she looked. Or it could have been a lot of half noticed things adding up in my mind, to make a sudden startling total. Maybe it was merely what she was, and how she was, and who she was. And she was definitely somebody. She was Toni MacRae. She was superbly, uniquely herself. Anyway, it happened to me at that moment. Like, according to the books, it is supposed to happen to everybody.

One minute she was a handsome gal with a good mind, good taste, and far better equipment than average. All that one minute — and then she was suddenly Toni MacRae. Not a pastime, not a hobby, not a target for tonight. Toni. Part of my life. Most of my life. All of my life.

Love at first sight is too trite. When it comes it doesn’t creep. It pounces. It isn’t even love like I thought of love. It is something else. It is a necessity. It is a place in the road. You get there, turn oblique right, and take a road you never saw before.

She became, all of a sudden, Toni MacRae, indisputable, irreplaceable, unanswerable — as necessary to me as lungs, legs and blood. There is no other way to say it.

I stood there and stared at her. She was miracles. Lips, legs, eyes, breasts. All miracles, all precious.

She was still red. “Just because I say you can stay here doesn’t mean that...”

“I know.”

“What do you mean, you know?”

“All of a sudden, just like that, I know what you mean before you say anything. We could sit without words and carry on whole conversations. Your eyes are wonderful.”

“Too loud!” she hissed.

“Sorry.” I sat on my heels on the floor so I could look up at her face. I took her hand. She tried to pull it away and then let it rest in mine, unresponsive. “Toni,” I said. “Toni!”

“Too loud!”

“Look, it doesn’t make any difference if you lock me in your bathroom. Or if I sleep under the bed. One night doesn’t matter. We’ve got us ten thousand coming up.”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“I told you, I’m not sure. How can we help not get married, Toni?”

“How can we help... what?”

“It’s an accomplished fact, anyway. So they stamp a paper for us for the file. Toni, Toni.”

She yanked her hand away. “Whatever this is, it isn’t funny, Mr. Sewell.”

“I know it isn’t funny. Toni, I started at the wrong place. I’m disorganized. Let’s start at a standard place. I love you.”

“Oh sure,” she said dubiously.

“All of a sudden. You just sat there, all of you, perfectly miraculous, and it came to me, like it fell on my head.”

“This is all just because...”

I rocked back on my heels. “Just because I’m going to stay here? It’s a fat line. I tell it to all the girls who hide me from the cops. You haven’t got any fire around here I can hold my hand in. I’ve outgrown crossing my heart and spitting. About the only way I can show sincerity is to go trudging out of here. Bake me a cake and bring it to the dungeon. They can’t electrocute Sewell. He has to get married. Suddenly I’m confident. Even Kruslov loves me.”

I unlocked the door, opened it and started down the hall. She caught my arm with astonishing strength and whirled me around. Her face was like chalk. She got me back into the room, locked the door, leaned against it and closed her eyes. Her color came back slowly. She opened her eyes and looked at me. She looked at me steadily and for a long time. I looked back. I looked back until the room misted out and there was nothing there but her eyes.

She reached me in three small fragile steps. “True?” she whispered.

“True,” I said.

She put her hands on my shoulders. I didn’t touch her. She put her head a little on the side, still looking, still cautious, still tentative. She put her lips evenly, steadily against mine — firm-soft, warm-cool. All her vulnerability, so sweet you could cry. She was something in my arms. She was a lot of girl. Then she put the side of her dark head against my cheek and we held tight in a drowning world. She shuddered and it went away and she shuddered again and again.

“What’s the matter?” I whispered.

“I don’t know. So long... The... the ice going out, maybe?” She leaned back to give me a crooked grin, but the grin turned into the pinched child-face of tears. She went face down diagonally across the bed, hitting it hard enough to bounce a little. I sat beside her and didn’t touch her.

She couldn’t possibly feel the same. I sank into a grey swamp — loving and unloved. Then she defeated the tears, turned and curled, and snagged me and hauled me down. This one was a salty kiss. She put the words with it, and the words were fine. It had come true for her some months back and she had been carrying it around, waiting, without much hope.

We lay facing each other, noses touching, her eyes like sooty saucers. When she breathed I took her warm breath deep into my lungs. My hands were on the concave softness of her waist. Her fists lay against my chest. We told each other how wonderful it was. Everything slowly became more heated, crowded, excited. We had started up the slant of a dangerous spiral. I moved away from her.

We whispered until one. We fixed my bed, spare blankets on the floor under the windows, with a sheet and her winter coat over me, and her extra pillow under my head. I was all tucked in in the dark room when she came out of the bathroom, the light behind her. Her summer pajamas might have been hung between two shrubs by a self-respecting spider. She turned out the light and the floor creaked as she came over to me. She knelt and kissed me.

“Sleep well, darling,” she breathed against my cheek. She smelled of all the summer gardens of my childhood, with a dash of Pepsodent. I slid my arm around her waist. She pulled back a little.

Then leaning against my arm, she made a funny sound way down deep in her throat and came toward me.

It was a foolish and desperate chance, born of haste and greed. It could have been cheap. It could have spoiled too many things.

But it was magical.