RENDEZVOUS IN BLACK (32 page)

Three or four light freckles beside outside corner each eye.

No make-up, lashes.

No make-up, cheeks.

No make-up, lips.

Sand-colored coat, brass buttons.

Light-blue neck scarf, worn open.

No hat, habitually.

Low-heeled shoes.

The man is working with flesh-colored clay or putty, kneading it into her cheekbones, along her jawline, changing the contours of her face. He takes off a little excess here, adds a little surplus there.

Then he takes a large, pancake-like puff and carefully touches here and there, dulling the shine, blending the whole thing into one. Then he steps back and consults the head on the photo-mat; looks from it to her, from her to it.

"Turn this way a little."

"Now turn that way a little."

"Look down."

"Now look up."

He nods. The two are one. She is facing a reproduction of herself. Photography first copied life; now life has copied photography.

He carefully unpins the towel from her head. The dualism shatters; five hours work is apparently thrown away. The hair is dark, almost black.

He takes the wig up from the stand. He unpins from it something that is at first invisible. A swatch of sample hair, scissored from someone's head. Perhaps even from a head that already lay in a casket, ready for burial; a last memento.

He carefully adjusts the wig over the subject, and the dualism springs back into being; the two are one again.

She gets up and takes off the bib. From a box he takes a light-blue scarf, and carefully, with careless effect, drapes it about her neck, consulting the smaller model, the snapshot, this time. Then from a larger box, a sandcolored reefer. From this, again, he unpins a small jagged sample, taken from some coat perhaps, that hung in a closet for many years, its wearer dead and gone.

She puts this on.

In the snapshot, one of the brass buttons is a little loose, tilts downward on its thread. On the reproduction, one of the brass buttons is a little loose, tilts downward on its thread.

"Open," he cautions her. "Never buttoned. Always open. Even if the wind freezes your tummy."

Then he goes over to the door, knocks on it, as though he were on the outside, not the inside.

A key is put into it from the outside, and a little old lady is ushered in, faltering, by a man behind her.

"Ready?" the latter asks.

"Ready," the expert answers. "I've done all I can. I can't do any more for you."

The girl turns slowly, to face them.

A stifled scream escapes the old lady. She presses her hands to her mouth.

"Dorothy!"

She cowers back against the man who came in with her, tries to hide her face.

"That's my Dorothy--!" she sobs incoherently. "What did ye do--? How'd she get here--?"

The man guiding her pats her head and shoulders consolingly.

"That's all we wanted to know," he says soothingly. "I know it was heartless, but there was no other way. If she can fool your eyes, she can fool. . . ."

The man is Cameron.

He turns her over to someone waiting outside the door and they lead her gently away, whimpering and mumbling and trying to look backward at her dead. Her long-lost dead.

The expert has packed up his things, taken off his smock, he's ready to go.

Cameron shakes hands with him. "You did a good job."

"I never did police work before. But I've made them up for the cameras and the Klieg lights for twenty years, and I think she'll pass."

Cameron hopes she will; because there won't be any retakes on the scene she's set to play. Either she's letterperfect the first time, or she's dead.

The door closes and they're alone, he and the bitplayer. The player for an audience of one.

He takes out a .32 calibre revolver and places it on the dressing table.

She puts it into her handbag. Fits it into speciallyprepared clamps that hold it at firing position. So that it can be used from where it is by dropping her hand to it, without extracting it from the bag.

"Are you ready, Probationer X--?"

"Yes, sir, Inspector."

"Your assignment's under way."

He puts the lights out, but they linger for a moment in the darkness.

He pulls up the window shade, which was down well below the sill.

Opposite, across the square, a sign blazes out, that says "Geety's," and under that, "Drugs."

And every night now, where the macabre drugstore cowboy used to stand, there's a ghost-girl waiting for her date. Someone's forgotten girl, waiting for a boy who doesn't come. Eyes always in the semidistance, haunted, sad, peering, straining, pleading for someone who never comes. Standing in the niche where the toilet waters are, patient, forlorn. Eyes that won't meet any other eyes but some certain pair that they have yet to find.

The crowd passes by like it always passed by and like it always will. Laughing, chatting, pleasure bound, thick as ants. The current in the lights studding the movie marquee, broken at rhythmic intervals, sends ripples coursing around it. And the same line forms outside it, and the same line melts away. Then the ripples freeze and stop, the lights go out, and it's too late to see the last complete show. A man comes out with a stepladder, climbs up aloft, and changes "Cary Grant" to "Bette Davis," Or "Bette Davis" to "Cary Grant." But the show on the outside goes on forever. And your tickets to it are the breath you draw.

They look at her, even more than they used to look at him, for she's a girl and girls draw the eyes more. They look at her with varying meanings and intents, according to their moods, their ages, and their current status of companionship. The girls with other boys look at her comparatively and wonder if they look as good, and measure the discrepancy by the length of time his face stays turned that way. The girls without boys look at her with competitive suspicion and wonder if that's why they haven't had any luck so far this evening. The boys with other girls look at her, and sometimes wish they hadn't been in such a hurry. But once in awhile, once in a great while, one passes by who tightens his arm over his companion's hand and thinks, " I'm satisfied; I wouldn't change." (He'll make a good husband.) The older women in the crowd tilt their noses in disapproval and think, "In my day a girl waited at her house to be called for; didn't come out and meet her beau on a street corner. That's why she's been stood up; no reserve." The older men wish they were the younger men again.

But the younger men without girls are the ones who stop and try to do something about it.

The look becomes a smile, the smile becomes a slowdown. The slow-down becomes a full-fledged halt.

She drops her eyes.

Up goes the flap of her envelope-bag. And against the lining, where some such articles have mirrors pasted, hers had instead a likeness of a man's face. A composite, drawn by a competent artist from imagination.

Every little line that has gone into it cost someone's life or caused someone heartbreak.

"He had good eyes, that's about all I can remember; they were hazel colored, but they weren't squinty; they were wide and even honest," said Rusty, Sharon's pal who went out with him one night.

"He had a thin, mean mouth; there was something bitter about it; it was always tightened up," said Bill Morrissey who punched it with his fist one night.

"His nose wasn't very wide; it was even turned up a little; he had a cold one time and was blowing it a lot, that's how I came to notice it," said Jack Munson's landlady.

She drops her eyes, as if coquettishly. And then she raises them again. And then she drops them.

It looks like the coy technique in flirting. But the would-be picker-upper never has a chance to find out if it is or not.

Somebody in the crowd behind him jars him, all but shoulders him along with him. "Keep moving, buddy," a voice slurs close to his ear. "You're blocking traffic." Then before they can disentangle themselves, perhaps the lining of a palm has been glimpsed, soldered with the glinting disk of authority. That's sufficient; the intended dallier continues on his way.

She had made a slight gesture of her hand; pulled open her scarf a little. Eased it a little. That meant: no. If she had made the same slight gesture in reverse, tightened her scarf a little at her throat, that would have meant: yes. There would have been a sudden surge of men from everywhere at once, swift baring of guns, savage struggle, maybe even death. So slight a thing to bring so terrible a consequence.

And then it gets late, there are fewer lights, there is no more crowd; the sidewalk patina tarnishes from gold-plate to lead-dross. Her figure dims to a silhouette in the night gloom.

Far across the square a tiny flame winks for an instant, is gone again. Simply some dilatory casual striking a match to a cigarette. But, as if it were a signal for dismissal, somebody's ghost-sweetheart turns and drifts away into the shadows, as somebody himself once did long ago.

Her feet stand there, so still, so small, so pertly-tilted. Planted on the golden-bright sidewalk. And before them in parade, other feet by the dozens, by the score, trudging, shuffling, coursing along. Endlessly, in unbroken succession, almost toe to heel and heel to toe. Anonymous, impersonal, the feet of strangers. They tell you so little, they tell you so much.

Tired, downhearted feet, sloughing along; springy, dancey feet, with a lift and a lilt to them. Anxious feet, in a hurry to get there. Reluctant feet, not caring if they do. The flat, massive feet of men. Achingly-arched feet, with just a toe-hold on the ground. The feet of the town, on the go. A chain-dance of feet, with scarcely a bare patch of sidewalk allowed to show itself between and interrupt their continuity.

Suddenly a crumpled piece of paper falls, cast off by some undetected hand above that was not even seen to move. It doesn't fall idly, it comes down at a tangent, strikes the ground just short of her own two motionless feet, lies there close to them. Almost as if aimed toward them.

Something somebody threw away. Or did they? Why right there where she stood? (Unless they threw without looking, and it just happened to land there.) Why not along the rest of the way, both before coming to her and after going past her, where there was no one standing?

It lies there for long moments, just a little crushed ball of paper, no bigger than a walnut.

Her foot moves out a little, touches it speculatively. Then her foot moves back again, to where it was. The whole excursion is only a matter of six inches. No one has seen her do it.

More moments of indecision.

Something about it-- Why just there where she stood?

Her hand comes down suddenly, contracts over it, and it's gone.

Behind the sheltering flap of her handbag she opens it. Pencilled words strike out. Rough edged, as if done in haste against a brick-pocked wall. A message from death to the already dead.

Dorothy,

I saw you there from off a ways. Last night too, and the night before. I've been watching you three nights. I hated to stand you up, but I'm in trouble. Something tells me not to go to you where you are. I don't know why. I can't talk to you there, too many lights, too many people. They're after me. I'm going to pass by quickly just once and drop this. Hope you pick it up. If you do, start walking away from there slow. Go where it's dark and there are no people around. That's the only way I'll come to you. If I see anyone near you, anyone at all, I can't come.

Johnny.

She swayed a little, though you couldn't have seen it unless you were watching her closely. She moved one hand to the rear and steadied herself against the drugstore glass front. You couldn't see her do that either. Her attitude was, implicitly, that of someone cowering away from something.

Then presently she regained fortitude, her hand left the glass behind her, she straightened up again. She raised her hand, that same one, to her throat and drew her scarf closer over it, as though she felt a chill draught of air. And, prearranged signal or not, that was exactly what she did feel. Closer, closer still, until she was almost holding it taut under her chin. Then her hand let go of it and dropped like a lead weight, and that was the only help she could hope to claim.

Then she turned and started to walk slowly away. Very slowly, driftingly; without looking around her, above all without looking behind her.

For a little while she had the crowd still with her, even had to thread her way through it. Once a man jostled her with his elbow, then apologized mutely with a cursory flick of his hat brim. She showed no awareness of the brief contact, merely tightened her scarf at her throat and continued on her way.

Then the crowd began to thin out, became a scattering, at last an isolated stray or two. As she turned off the square, pursued her unhurried way along one of its feeder thoroughfares, the lights too began to fall behind, dim out. Gaps began to appear in the solid wall of building fronts that lined her way. Black hollows that weren't good to pass.

The street lights stopped, and then the streets themselves stopped, became just countrified roads without sidewalks. And then the houses started stopping, and everything was just wide-open space.