Night My Friend (32 page)

“In here,” Myra said, unlocking the door with a key.

Granger stepped through the doorway, knowing that Linda Beach would not be there.

She was.

She was not the Linda Beach he had known, not the beautiful young woman who’d smiled at him once across a dinner table. Her hair was rumpled and she wore a faded housecoat stained with the dregs of coffee and life, but this was Linda. How many years later?

“Hello, Linda,” he said softly. “Do you remember me?” The fear had dropped away, to be replaced by another emotion akin to pity.

“I remember you. George…”

“Granger. George Granger.”

“Yes.” Her eyes seemed to fade and drift away.

He turned to Myra. “What’s the matter with her?” he whispered.

“Heroin,” Charlie said, and laughed.

“God!” Granger put down the box and went to her. “Linda, what’s happened to you?” But he knew, without her answer. It was the same thing he’d seen happen to Howard. They’d chosen different paths, but they’d arrived at the same hell.

“Now you found her,” Charlie said. “How about some money?”

Granger turned on them angrily. “Get out of here! Get out of here before I call the police!” Myra backed out of the door, but Charlie took a step forward. He was going toward the box when Granger hit him, a glancing blow on the side of the head.

Charlie cursed and doubled his fist, but Myra grabbed his arm. “Come on, Charlie. We don’t want any trouble.”

He cursed again and then they were gone. Granger listened to the clatter of their footsteps on the stairs, then went to the window to be sure they didn’t think of his car.

When he turned back, Linda Beach was on her feet, swaying. “Thank you,” she said. “They…”

“Never mind. You should have medical care.”

“It’s not as bad as it looks. How is Howard?”

“He was in the hospital. He tried to kill himself.”

“I heard that. I’m sorry.”

“He sent your fur coat and some jewelry.” Granger placed the box next to her on the rumpled bed. She touched the twine and tape uncertainly and he knew what thought was going through her mind. “Will you sell them to buy more drugs?”

She tried to smile. “I’ve sold everything else.”

“Howard was wondering how you were. Perhaps if I tell him, he could come out here and help you.”

“Do you really think he still cares? He hates me.”

“I think he loves you.”

She stared down at her shaking hands. “It’s too late for love now.”

“I don’t think so. Promise me you won’t sell these things, at least for a day or so. Let me phone Howard and see what he says.”

“What he says!” She made it a curse. “What has he said till now?”

“He cares about you.”

“He hates me. He always has.”

Granger sighed and turned to leave. “Let me at least call him.”

She picked up the box and began slowly to untie the knotted twine. “Go. It doesn’t matter what you do.”

He watched her for a moment, wondering what tomorrow might bring. He remembered the woman who’d smiled at him across a dinner table, but he knew that whatever happened, she was gone forever. There was nothing left to do, nothing but to carry a message without hope back to Howard Beach.

“Good-by, Linda,” he said very quietly, looking back at her. As he closed the door, she was pulling the last of the twine from the box.

Granger was halfway down the stairs when the explosion came, blasting the door of the apartment from its hinges and nearly pitching him down the stairs. He looked back in horror at the smoke and flame and knew in a blinding instant what Howard Beach had sent his wife—out of madness or hate. Or desperate love.

C
RAIDY WOKE EARLY THAT MORNING
, as was his habit. He’d never slept well in a strange bed, and with the approach of middle age he’d found himself to be sleeping poorly even in familiar surroundings. Perhaps he needed a woman, or perhaps he only needed a life to live.

His window was at the back of the building, facing on this May morning a snowy field of dead dandelions that ran down the slight hill to Arnie’s Amusement Arcade where he worked. It wasn’t much of a job, but it paid the rent and it allowed him to spend eight to ten hours a day tinkering with the electrical gadgets which had become the most important thing in life to him.

Craidy ate breakfast downstairs in the little lunch counter which would open its fringed front later in the day to transform itself into a hotdog stand for the beach-bound crowds. He never ate there late in the day. It was bad enough in the mornings. After breakfast he strolled slowly down the hill to work, kicking occasionally at the puffy whiteness of the dandelion heads, watching with a sort of pleasure as they disintegrated into tiny windblown snowflakes. It was one of the pleasures in life that was not dependent upon the little room over Arnie’s Arcade, or upon the memory of better days past.

“Morning, Craidy,” someone said, and he saw that it was Arnie himself, just opening for the sprinkling of morning business.

“Hi. Expecting much today?”

Arnie was a big man with a quick leer and shifty eyes. “Getting close to Memorial Day. It’ll be picking up. You almost done rewiring those bowling machines?”

“Yeah. I’ll finish them today.” He went down the long aisle between rows of colorful machines, standing ready for nickels and dimes. There were machines for bowling and baseball and ice hockey play, and even a machine which simulated the flying of a jet plane. Over against one wall, near the back, was a line of pinball machines demoted by reason of age and obsolescence to their present inferior location. The age of the pinball had passed, Craidy decided. It had passed almost unnoticed, in those post-war years when even the sentiments of Saroyan’s play
The Time of Your Life
seemed vaguely old-fashioned. The kids today wanted something else—rayguns to shoot at monster targets, or six-shooters to gun down outlaws who talked back, or driving machines if they were a bit older, or bowling, over by the Coke machine.

He went up the narrow flight of wooden steps and entered the little room above the great arcade. It was the closest thing to home, much closer than the place where he spent his nights. Here, looking out on the activity below while he repaired and rewired the complex electrical systems of the three hundred-odd machines, Craidy felt a peace of mind which was rare. He was never disturbed while working up there, and sometimes he felt himself a sort of god as he watched the teenagers at the machines, the girls lined up at the little fortune-telling booth which was Arnie’s latest innovation.

For a long time, through all the chill of spring, Arnie and Craidy had worked alone in the big arcade, getting ready for the summer crowds that would overflow from the nearby beach. Though he didn’t really respect Arnie, he couldn’t help liking the man, and he’d felt a twinge of regret when Arnie had taken on the pale blonde girl who told fortunes. Her name was Rita O’Blanc, and she was twenty-two years old. While she was working she wore a gray wig to make her look older, but most of the guys who hung around the place in the evening were wise to that, and a few had even gotten to taking her out on dates.

But until that morning, her relationship with Craidy had been confined to a single nod when they passed each other downstairs. It was as if she sensed his feeling and stayed clear of him because of this. Now, as he worked over the intricacies of wiring removed from the back of the bowling machine, she appeared suddenly in the doorway.

“Good morning!”

He looked up, hiding his surprise. “How are you today?”

“Fine. I wondered if you might like a cup of coffee.”

“From that machine downstairs? No thanks.”

“I know, it’s pretty bad. I was thinking of walking up to the hotdog stand. I won’t have any customers for a while yet.”

“Sure, I’ll go for a cup. But let me pay for yours, too.” He handed her two greasy dimes.

She returned some ten minutes later, carrying two steaming paper cups. “It’s longer up there than I thought.”

“Thanks a lot, but you shouldn’t have bothered.” He put down his wire strippers and leaned back against the workbench. She wasn’t bad to look at, really, in the good light.

“You live in that building, don’t you? Over the stand?”

“Yeah. Beautiful view of all the dead dandelions.”

“I like them, alive or dead.” She sipped her coffee. “I don’t think of them as a weed at all. Not really.” Another sip, then, “What are you doing?”

“Fixing up these bowling machines. Damn wiring is like a maze.”

“Is there really enough repair work to keep you busy all summer?”

He’d often thought about that himself. “Well, most of that stuff is pretty old. Arnie bought a lot of it second-hand. It’ll take me another month to have everything working, and after that he thinks maybe he can get me some work from the other concessions.”

“Were you always an electrician, Craidy?”

He smiled, somehow liking her. “Were you always a fortune teller?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact. I can read people’s minds.”

“That must be handy when you’re out on a date.”

“You’re a crazy guy.” She walked over to the window and peered down at the arcade, where she could see a couple of boys playing pinball machines. They were wearing swimming trunks and knitted shirts. “Look at those kids down there! Swimming this early in the season! That water must be freezing.”

“Maybe that’s why they came here instead.” He lit a cigarette and offered her one. “Do you swim?”

“Not till after June first, I don’t.”

“What do you do with yourself evenings? When these guys around here aren’t dating you?”

She laughed and blew out some smoke. “I’m going to the fight tonight. You going?”

The weekly fights were held in a little arena a half-mile down the beach. The fighters were mostly one-punch nobodies on their way up, or more often on their way down. Many of them progressed no further than the Beach Arena. “Well, I drop by occasionally,” he admitted.

“Would you take me? I feel funny going alone.”

“So that’s why you came up this morning.” He had to laugh about it. She wasn’t the sort of girl anyone could dislike, and he wondered how he’d avoided her charms for so long. “Isn’t Arnie going?”

“Sure, but I don’t want to go with the boss.”

“What’s so special about tonight, anyway?”

“Frank Wayne’s fighting. The fellow that hangs out here all the time.”

Frank Wayne was an old friend of Arnie’s, a down-and-out boxer with a glass jaw. The only thing that kept him going was a solid right that managed to connect once in a while. For a time he was known as Tiger Wayne, but somewhere along the downward path he’d reverted to just plain Frank.

“I’ll take you,” Craidy said, “if you don’t mind being seen with someone old enough to be your father.”

“Come
on!
You’re only thirty-seven.”

“How’d you find that out?”

“I told you I could read minds,” she answered with a laugh. “It comes in handy sometimes.”

There was some noise from below and they looked down to see Frank Wayne strolling in, calling out a greeting to Arnie. “Let’s go down and see him,” Craidy said, surprised at his own sudden interest in the fight. During the past weeks, the Beach Arena had been nothing more than a destination that need not be reached. Now he was actually taking an interest in this man who would be fighting.

Arnie was talking with Wayne when they reached the arcade, and the two boys in bathing trunks stood watching from a distance, trying to decide on the correct attitude toward this almost-hero. “What kind of shape you in, Tiger?” Arnie asked him.

“I’m not Tiger any more, just Frank. But I’ll take that punk tonight! I’ll flatten him in one round. A cheap punk kid on his way up!”

Arnie smiled. “You’re talking big, Tiger. Here, you know Rita already. This guy’s Craidy—he sits up there like God in his little room and fixes the wires. He keeps the whole damn joint running.”

They shook hands, and Wayne gave it a little extra squeeze to show he was in condition. “Glad to meet you. Coming to see me tonight?”

Craidy nodded. “I’ll be there. We’ll both be there.”

Wayne nodded like a small boy. “Good! After the fight I’ll come back here and beat these machines.”

After he’d gone, Arnie started opening the big overhead doors that lined one side of the arcade. “Going to be a warm one,” he said. “If the rain holds off we’ll have a good crowd today.”

Craidy breathed in some fresh air and took out his cigarettes. “Think Wayne’ll win tonight?”

“He should, but don’t make any bets. That manager of his—Sam Seffer—isn’t above a little hanky-panky. And when you get to Wayne’s age you can’t really do much but go along with it.”

“You mean he might have to throw the fight?” Rita asked, unbelieving.

“He might. This young punk is just getting started. If there’s money behind him, they might be trying to give him the big buildup. You know, fifteen straight knockouts, that sort of thing.”

“Would Wayne do it?”

“What choice has he got?”

Craidy climbed back up the stairs to his little room, feeling suddenly depressed. Frank Wayne was no longer a Tiger, but there was still about his chiseled features and metallic hair the look of an almost-champion, a man of integrity in a world that had too few. He hoped that Arnie was wrong about the fight.

The day clouded up around noon, which turned out to be good for the arcade’s business. The early swimmers were driven inside by the threat of rain, and a good many of them drifted into the aisles of glistening, neoned machines. Craidy watched them come and go from his room, occasionally pausing in his work to give a special bit of attention to a girl in a bathing suit or a boy who looked as if he might cause trouble. Arnie was busy giving change and keeping order and generally running things, and Craidy noted a steady stream of customers—exclusively girls—for Rita O’Blanc’s fortune telling booth. He watched a couple of them giggling in a corner after a session with Rita and decided she must have a pretty good act.

The rain, when it came, was brief and cooling with a sudden wind that churned up little eddies of sand along the length of the beach until the moisture darkened and dampened it. Arnie worked hard, and when the returning sun scattered his customers he relaxed with a cold bottle of beer. “Want one?” he called up to Craidy. “Tastes good.”