I Married A Dead Man (23 page)

               
Her handbag sprang open and she pulled something out, pitched it at him. "Here's the five dollars you gave me. Remember?" It fell between his shoulderblades, and lay there lengthwise across his spine, caught in the sharp upcurve his back made, oddly like a label or tag loosely pasted across him.

               
"You love money so," she said scathingly. "Now here's the interest Turn around and get it."

               
She'd fired before she'd known she was going to. As though there were some cue in the words for the gun to take of its own accord, without waiting for her. The crash surprised her, she could feel it go up her whole arm, as though someone had stingingly slapped her wristbone, and the fiery spittle that gleamed for a moment at the muzzle made her blink her eyes and swerve her head aside involuntarily.

               
He didn't move. Even the five-dollar bill didn't flutter off him. There was a curious low moaning sound from the tubular rod forming the head of the cot, as when a vibration is slowly dimming, and there was a black pockmark in the plaster of the wall, sharply offto one side of it, that seemed to leap up into being for the first time only as her eyes discovered it.

               
Her hand was at his shoulder now, while her mind was trying to say "I didn't--I didn't--" He turned over lazily, and ebbed down to the floor, in a way that was almost playful, as if she had been threatening to tickle him and he was trying to avoid it.

               
Indolent dalliance, his attitude seemed to express. There was even a sort of gashed grin across his mouth.

               
His eyes seemed to be fixed on her, watching her, with that same detached mockery they'd always shown toward her. As if to say, "What are you going to do now?"

               
You could hardly tell anything was the matter. There was only a little dark streak by the outside corner of one eye, like a patch of patent leather used instead of court plaster; as though he'd hurt himself there and then covered it over. And where that side of his head had come to rest against the lateral thickness of the bedding, there was a peculiar sworled stain, its outer layers of a lighter discoloration than its core.

               
Somebody screamed in the confined little room. Not shrilly, but with a guttural wrench, almost like the bark of a terrified dog. It must have been she, for there was no one in there to scream but her. Her vocal chords hurt, as though they had been strained asunder.

               
"Oh, God!" she sobbed in an undertone. "I didn't need to come--"

               
She cowered away from him, step by faltering step. It wasn't that little glistening streak, that daub of tar, nor yet the way he lay there, relaxed and languid, as if they had had such fun he was exhausted, and it was too much trouble to get up off his back and see her out. It was his eyes that knifed her with fear, over and over, until panic had welled up in her, as though gushing through a sieve. The way they seemed fixed on her, the way they seemed to follow her backward, step by step. She went over a little to one side, and that didn't get her away from them. She went over a little to the other, and that didn't get her away from them either. Contemptuous, patronizing, mocking, to the end; with no real tenderness in them for her, ever. He looked on her in death as he'd looked on her in life.

               
She could almost hear the drawled words that went with that look. "Where d'you think you're going now? What's your hurry? Come back here, you!"

               
Her mind screamed back: "Away from here--! Out of here--! Before somebody comes--! Before anybody sees me!"

               
She turned and fled through the opening, and beat her way through the outside room, flailing with her arms, as though it were an endless treadmill going the other way, trying to carry her back in to him, instead of a space of a brief few yards.

               
She got to the door and collided against it. But then, after the first impact, after her body was stopped against it, instead of stilling, it kept on thumping, and kept on thumping, as though there were dozens of her hurling themselves against it in an endless succession.

               
Wood shouldn't knock so, wood shouldn't bang so-- Her hands flew up to her ears arid clutched them. She was going mad.

               
The blows didn't space themselves and wait between. They were aggressive, demanding, continuous. They were already angered, and they were feeding on their own anger with every second's added delay. They drowned out, in her own ears, her second, smothered scream of anguish. A scream that held more real fear in it than even the first one had, in the other room just now. Fear, not of the supernatural now, but of the personal; a fear more immediate, a fear more strong. Agonizing fear, trapped fear such as she'd never known existed before. The fear of losing the thing you love . The greatest fear there is.

               
For the voice that riddled the door, that welled through, bated but flinty with stern impatience, was Bill's.

               
Her heart knew it before the sound came, and then her ears knew it right as it came, and then its words told her after they had come.

               
"Patrice! Open. Open this door. Patrice! Do you hear me? I knew I'd find you here. Open this door and let me in, or I'll break it down!"

               
A moment too late she thought of the lock, and just a moment in time he thought of it too. That it had been unlocked the whole while, just as she had found it to be earlier. She crushed herself flat against it, with a whimper of despair, just too late, just as the knob gave its turn and the door-seam started to widen.

               
"No!" she ordered breathlessly. "No!" She tried to hold it closed with the full weight of her whole palpitating body.

               
She could almost feel the currents of his straining breath beating into her face. "Patrice, you've--got--to--let--me--in--there!"

               
And between each word she lost ground, her heels scraped futilely backward over the surface of the floor.

               
He could see her now, and she could see him, through the fluctuating gap their opposing pressures made, widening a little, then narrowing again, then widening more than ever. His eyes, so close to her own, were a terrible accusation, far worse than that dead man's had been inside. Don't look at me, don't look at me! she implored them despairingly in her mind. Oh, turn away from me, for I can't bear you!

               
Back she went, steadily and irresistibly, and still she tried to bar him, to the last, after his arm was in and his shoulder, straining her whole body insensately against him, flattening her hands till they showed bloodless against the door.

               
Then he gave one final heave to end the unequal contest, and she was swept back along the whole curved arc of the door's path, like a leaf or a piece of limp rag that got caught in the way. And he was in, and he was standing there next to her, his chest rising and falling a little with quickened breath.

               
"No, Bill, no!" she kept pleading mechanically, even after the cause of her plea was lost "Don't come in. Not if you love me. Stay out."

               
"What're you doing here?" he said tersely. "What brought you?"

               
"I want you to love me," was all she could whimper, like a distracted child. "Don't come in. I want you to love me."

               
He took her suddenly, and shook her fiercely by the shoulder for a moment "I saw you. What did you come here to do? What did you come here for, at this hour?" He released her again. "What's this?" He picked up the gun, which she had completely lost track of until now in her turmoil. It must have fallen, or she must have flung it to the floor, in her ifight from the inner room.

               
"Did you bring it with you?" He came back toward her again. "Patrice, answer me!" he said with a flinty ferocity she hadn't known he possessed. "What did you come here for?"

               
Her voice kept backing and filling in her throat, as if unable to rise to the top. At last it overflowed. "To--to--to kill him." She toppled soddenly against him, and his arm had to go around her, tight and firm, to keep her up.

               
Her hands tried to crawl up his lapels, up his shirt-front, toward his face, like wriggling white beggars pleading for alms.

               
A swipe of his hand and they were down again.

               
"And did you?"

               
"Somebody--did. Somebody--has already. In there. He's dead." She shuddered and hid her face against him. There is a point beyond which you can't be alone any more. You have to have someone to cling to. You have to have someone to hold you, even if he is to reject you again in a moment of two and you know it.

               
Suddenly his arm dropped and he'd left her. It was terrible to be alone, even just for that minute. She wondered how she'd stood it all these months, all these years.

               
Life was such a crazy thing, life was such a freak. A man was dead. A love was blasted into nothingness. But a cigarette still sent up smoke in a dish. And an ice cube still hovered unmelted in a highball glass. The things you wanted to last, they didn't, the things it didn't matter about, they hung on forever.

               
Then he reappeared from the other room, stood in the opening looking at her again. Looking at her in such a funny way. A little too long, a little too silent--she couldn't quite make out what it was she didn't like about it, but she didn't like him to look at her that way. Others, it didn't matter. But not him.

               
Then he raised the gun, which he was still holding, and put it near his nose.

               
She saw his head give a grim nod.

               
"No. No. I didn't. Oh, please believe me--"

               
"It's just been fired," he said quietly.

               
There was something rueful about the expression of his eyes now, as if they were trying to say to her: Why don't you want to tell me? Why don't you get it out of the way by telling me, and then I'll understand. He didn't say that, but his eyes seemed to.

               
"No, I didn't. I fired it at him, but I didn't hit him."

               
"All right," he said quietly, with just that trace of weariness you show when you don't believe a thing, but try to gloss it over to spare someone.

               
Suddenly he'd thrust it into the side-pocket of his coat, as though it were no longer important, as though it were a past detail, as though there were things of far greater moment to be attended to now. He buttoned his coat determinedly, strode back to her; his movements had a sort of lithe intensity to them now that they'd lacked before.

               
An impetus, a drive.

               
He swept a sheltering arm around her again. (That sanctuary that she'd been trying to find all her life long. And only had now, too late.) But this time in hurried propulsion toward the door, and not just in support "Get out of here, quick," he ordered grimly. "Get down to the street again fast as you can."

               
He was pulling her along, hurrying her with him, within the curve of his protective arm. "Come on. You can't be found here. You must have been out of your mind to come here like this!"

               
"I was," she sobbed. "I am."

               
She was struggling against him a little now, trying to keep herself from the door. She pried herself away from him suddenly, and stood back, facing him. Her hands kept rebuffing his arms each time they tried to reclaim her.

               
"No, wait There's something you've got to hear first Something you've got to know. I tried to keep you out, but now you're in here with me. I've come this far; I won't go any further." And then she added, "The way I was."

               
He reached out and shook her violently, in his exasperation. As if to get some sense into her. "Not now! Can't you understand? There's a man dead in the next room. Don't you know what it means if you're found here? Any minute somebody's apt to stick his head into this place--"

               
"Oh, you fool," she cried out to him piteously. "You're the one who doesn't understand. The damage has been done already. Can't you see that? I have been found here!" And she murmured halfaudibly, "By the only one who matters to me. What's there to run away and hide from now?" She brushed the back of her hand wearily across her eyes. "Let them come. Bring them on now."

               
"If you won't think of yourself," he urged her savagely, "think of Mother. I thought you loved her, I thought she meant something to you. Don't you know what a thing like this will do to her? What are you trying to do, kill her?"