Night My Friend (28 page)

Piles of brick, blackened timbers. Still, after all this time. Perhaps some bodies, too, undiscovered yet in their unmarked tombs. The city would come back, but not the same. Not ever the same.

He paused on the street where Mona Kirst had her apartment, and pressed his face against the damp bark of a tree to stare up at the rectangle of curtained light that was her window. She would not be alone, not even at three in the morning. He wondered vaguely where Visor was that night, and turning to walk back to his hotel caught the distant shrill pitch of sirens heading out of town. Perhaps the burning car had only now been discovered, and Roger China had spent this hour alone in his death.

Ahead, finally, the hotel glowed like a beacon on the dim street. He hurried toward it, suddenly tired, not hearing the voices until they were almost upon him.

“Emerson!”

“That’s him. Get him!” The words were German, but he understood. He turned to see a half-dozen men emerging from the shadows. Some carried clubs, and at least one had a knife.

“We’ve been waiting for you, Emerson. This is for the city. For Augsheim. And for our families.”

He thought he saw the reporter, Burkherdt, watching from across the street. Then he closed his eyes against their hatred as the first blows fell. In that final moment he was once more skimming over the ice-blue clouds in the lead bomber, free and powerful as an eagle.

H
ARRY GORDON SWUNG THE CAR
out of the driveway, belatedly switched on his lights, and began the long drive home. It had been a late party, later than he’d planned, and Lois was already half dozing beside him on the seat. Near the river, the road plunged suddenly into scattered patches of post-midnight fog, and he cursed to himself as he slowed the car to a crawl.

“What’s the matter?” Lois asked, rousing herself from near slumber. “You slowed down.”

“Little fog. Don’t worry about it. Only slowed as a precaution.”

“I told you we should have left earlier. But you had to have one more drink.”

“Go back to sleep. We’ll be home soon.”

She was silent, and he glanced sideways at her. Curled up on the seat with her long blonde hair falling over one eye, she might have been a little girl on the way home from a birthday party. There were times during the past six years when he’d regretted marrying her, but this was not one of them.

He turned back to the fog-patched road, a half-instant too late. The car was headed straight for the steel guard rail on the river side. He twisted hard on the steering wheel and felt the wheels skidding wildly beneath him. There was a grinding, tearing crash, and then a sheet of flame that might have been a dream. And then nothing.

His vision came swimming out of an amber pool, into a tropic oasis where the only sounds were the rustle of white-skirted legs and the tonal beeping of some far-off chimes. The place might almost have been a hospital.

“Harry?”

He started to turn his head and then the pain stopped him. The pain and the bandages. “Is that you, Les?”

Lester Shaw stepped into his vision and bent over the bed. “Thank God you’re all right, Harry.”

“I don’t feel all right. Where am I?” He asked it even though he knew.

“In the hospital. There was an accident, Harry.” Lester’s face was a somber mask that looked like molded putty.

“Lois…?”

“I’m sorry, Harry. She didn’t make it.”

“Lois!” He started out of bed, and had one wobbling foot on the cool floor when the nurse grabbed him and pulled him back. Then his head began to spin and someone plunged a needle into his arm.

Harry was in the hospital only three days. He came out with a slight concussion, two cracked ribs and numerous bruises, in time to attend his wife’s funeral at the little church where they’d worshipped on infrequent occasions. Lester and Muriel Shaw were at his side during the whole service, and the painful, eternal drive to the cemetery afterwards.

It was Muriel who had explained, a bit too bluntly, about the closed coffin at the funeral parlor. (“There was nothing left of her, Harry. She was burned to a cinder.”) And it was Lester who had filled in the details of the accident itself. (“We were about a half-mile behind you, Harry. We saw the car turn over and burst into flames, and we got there in time to pull you clear. But she was a goner from the start.”)

After the funeral they’d driven in silence back to Harry’s house—the rambling ranch on the hill that now seemed too big, too dank, too empty. While Muriel fixed coffee and Lester helped settle things, Harry dug out the folded newspapers from the last few days and read all about it in the clipped jargon of the newsman.

Mrs.
Lois Gordon, 33, prominent socialite and wife of insurance man Harry G. Gordon, died early this morning in the flaming crash of their car on Route 17. Mr. & Mrs. Gordon were returning home after a party at the home of Joseph Angora when the accident occurred. Gordon, who was driving, was hospitalized with undetermined injuries, and is listed in fair condition.

There was a picture of her too, a recent one with her long blonde hair in all its glory. Some anxious photographer had flopped the negative, though, so that the familiar little mole was on her right cheek instead of the left. It was almost as if he were seeing her in a mirror, and somehow it made her seem still alive.

“I suppose it’s a good thing there aren’t any children,” Muriel said with her usual tact. “It would be terribly hard on them.”

“It’s hard on me,” Harry told her, sipping the coffee that was a poor imitation of Lois’ brew.

“Would you rather be alone tonight?” Lester asked.

“I think so, Les. Why don’t you two run along? Thanks for everything. Thanks for saving my life.” He didn’t add that they might better have let him burn along with her.

Later, when he was alone, he got out the bankbooks and stock certificates, and tried to figure out the financial meaning of Lois dead. Much of the money had been in her name, but there were two joint bank accounts and some other things like the house and car. Her mother had died a year after their marriage, leaving her close to a quarter of a million dollars.

Staring at the figures until they started to blur before his eyes, Harry Gordon wondered if it had been Lois or only the money that he’d loved. Now Lois was gone and the money remained, and he was afraid of what he might be learning about himself.

He went back to the office the next day, with his head still bandaged and his ribs taped. The injuries didn’t bother him, but the smothering air of careful solicitude drove him from the office after only an hour. Joseph Angora phoned him for lunch, and he used it as an excuse to say he’d be gone the remainder of the day.

Angora was a middle-aged balding man who ran an export business of vague dimensions and hovered at the fringes of Long Island society. Since his wife Betty was crippled and confined to a wheel chair, Angora did more than his share of party-giving at the big old house out beyond Garden City. Harry and Lois had been returning from one of Angora’s parties when the accident occurred.

“Sorry I couldn’t get to the funeral,” he said with a somber shake of Harry’s hand. “Betty and I just couldn’t believe it.”

“Thanks for the flowers,” Harry said.

They ordered drinks and talked about it, in the matter-of-fact manner of mature men. To Harry it was a relief, after the solicitude of the office. But then, over the second drink, Angora suddenly looked away. “You know, Betty doesn’t think she’s dead.”

“What?”

“Well, you know how Betty is, stuck in that chair all the time. Sometimes she gets some pretty strange ideas. She doesn’t think Lois is dead.”

“Who does she think we buried?” Harry asked, somehow becoming angry at this sudden turn in the conversation.

Angora tried hard to chuckle, apparently sorry he’d mentioned the subject. “Forget it, Harry. Forget it! It’s getting late. We’d better order our food.”

But though no more was said, the seed of thought had been planted. All that afternoon, Harry tried to remember Lois as she had been, tried to summon up in his mind a picture of Lois alive, not Lois dead. It was foolish, of course. She was dead and buried, and Betty Angora’s ramblings would never bring her back.

On the weekend, Harry bought a new car and drove into Manhattan. The city had never seemed quite so lonely to him as it did that Saturday night, and when he finally parked in an all-night ramp to walk the streets for a while he found that a light spring drizzle had deprived him of even the companionship of the sidewalk.

He finally settled for two beers in a Greenwich Village bar, but even there he could not be free of the memory of Lois. They’d come here once or twice, and over the second drink he found himself sneaking a look at the folded newspaper clipping that told about her death. He tried to tell himself that such feelings were only natural just a week after her death, but somehow rationalization didn’t help. He left the bar and found that the drizzle had stopped. The streets of the Village were beginning to fill once more.

And then he saw her—Lois.

His heart seemed to stop beating, and a cold sweat covered every inch of his body. Lois, her blonde hair hanging free, dressed in a shabby raincoat and slacks, carrying a paper bag from an all night delicatessen.

He started after her, hurrying as she threaded a rapid passage through the suddenly crowded sidewalk. She’s not dead, Betty Angora had said. She’s not dead.

“Lois!”

She didn’t turn, only kept going. At the south end of Washington Square she turned suddenly and entered the dimly lit hallway of an apartment house. It was there that he caught her by the arm. “Lois—you’re alive!”

She turned to him in the harsh light of the overhead bulb. “Take your hand off me, mister, or you’ll be dead.”

“I…” There was still an amazing resemblance, but now, up close, he could see his mistake. The eyes were different, harder, and there was no mole. Even the long hair was not exactly the right shade. It was not Lois. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

“You thought I was somebody else. That’s an old line, mister.”

“I thought you were my wife. She died last week.”

“Well! That’s the first time I’ve ever been mistaken for a ghost!”

“I—I’m sorry,” he repeated. “Could I make up for it by buying you a drink?”

“I’ve got a whole bagful of beer right here, and a party going upstairs.” He started to turn away and she stopped him. “Let me drop the beer and I’ll come out for a quick one, mister. I guess you owe me something after scaring me half to death. Be right back.”

She was back down in a few moments, with a drunken male voice calling after her, “Don’t be long, Rosie.”

He took her back to the same bar and introduced himself over a beer. She smiled and said, “I’m Rosie Yates. Rosemary, but nobody calls me that. I’m an actress, I guess. Been in some off-Broadway stuff by Albee and Beckett. Now tell me about this wife of yours.”

“She was killed in an auto accident last week.” He touched the bruise on his forehead where the bandage had been. “From a distance, in the street, you looked like her. Besides that, some crazy woman I know thinks Lois is still alive.”

“Well, if she is, I’m sure not her.”

“I know that now. I also know that Lois is dead.”

“Do you want to come back to my party?”

“I don’t think so, thanks.”

They had another beer, and talked, and it was almost the way it used to be. It had been a long time since he’d spoken to a girl like this. “Come see me in a play some time,” she said.

“I’d like to. I hope it’s up in Times Square.”

“I’m getting old for the big time. Almost thirty. Playwrights don’t write leads for women my age any more.”

Harry shrugged. “Not unless they’re Tennessee Williams or Edward Albee.”

“I think I’d like to do comedy somehow. Life is tragic every day. It’s tragic when the bills come in and you’re out of a job, and you’ve got a big choice of sleeping with your producer or starving.”

He shook his head sadly. “And I thought the insurance business was bad.”

He walked back to the apartment with her and left her at the bottom of the stairs. “Goodnight, Rosie.”

She smiled, just for a second. “Goodnight, Harry.”

Outside, it was starting to drizzle again.

Harry spent Sunday with Lester and Muriel, and was thankful for their company. The day dragged toward evening, with all of them too conscious of Lois. Dead, she contributed more of a presence than she ever had in life.

Monday morning he went to the office early for the first time. The daily routine had taken hold, and no one gave him more than a passing glance. He flipped through his mail, noting the return addresses, and opened a few. There were sympathy notes from business associates, and one or two letters from friends. A square white envelope finally attracted his attention and he opened it.

The message was brief and typewritten:
Harry
—
Please help me. I didn’t die in the accident, but I’m in terrible trouble. I’ll try to reach you later today.
It was signed
Lois,
but in a shaky handwriting he barely recognized.

His first thought was that the thing was some sort of horrible joke. He sat staring at the letter for a long time, wondering which of his friends could have been guilty of such a thing. It certainly wasn’t from Lois. She rarely typed her letters, and the signature wasn’t much like hers at all. And besides, she was dead.

Besides, she was dead.

But for a moment he’d almost forgotten that fact. For a moment, while checking off the reasons why the letter couldn’t be from Lois, he’d almost imagined she was still alive!

He turned over the envelope and studied the inky black postmark. Early Sunday morning from New York. Grand Central Station. It could have been mailed Saturday night or Sunday morning.

Terrible trouble.

He picked up the telephone and called Lester Shaw at his office across town. “Les, something’s come up. Can I meet you for lunch?”

“Sure, Harry. Noon all right?”

They met at the same place he’d lunched with Angora a few days earlier. There was never much of a crowd on Monday noons, and he sometimes wondered what people did on Mondays instead of eating lunch.