The Black Angel (5 page)

After a while, in a carefully controlled voice that wasn't like my own at all, I asked: “How did he take it?”

“With his head up, looking him straight in the eye.”

“I should have been there, somewhere close by, at such a time. He was all alone in that room, poor boy.”

“He said he was glad you weren't there to hear it. He thanked me as they took him out for not letting you come.”

A moment or two went sluggishly by. “I guess I'll go home now,” I said forlornly. “There's nothing to wait here for any more.”

He got up and came outside with me. He said, “I'll take you downstairs and put you in a taxi. Do you want Mort or the girl to ride home with you to your place?”

“No,” I said. “I'll be all right. I'll have to get used to going around alone from now on, I guess.”

After he'd closed the cab door on me and given the driver my address, and just as he was about to turn away I reached out quickly through the open window and clutched him by the sleeve. “When? Tell me the date.”

“Now, why do you want to——?” he protested.

I wouldn't let go his arm. “I've got to know. Please tell me.”

“The week of May sixteenth.”

I sank back against the seat. And all the way home the thought that rode with me was: “I'm only twenty-two, and yet they're going to make me a widow in less than three months.”

4

FAREWELL SCENE

I
T
'
S HARD TO SAY GOOD-BY FOR GOOD AT ANY TIME OR ANY
place. It's harder still to say it through a meshed wire. It crisscrossed his face into little diagonals, gave me only little broken-up molecules of it at a time. It stenciled a cold, rigid frame around every kiss. And nothing should come between the kisses of a man and his wife.

He said things that went right through me. “Everyone's entitled to be forgiven at least once. Even a dog; they give a dog three bites——”

“You are, you were, you have been, long ago, oh, long ago.”

“That was just—well, it must have been one last wild oat left over. I would have been such a good husband from—then on. If they would've only let me. I would have been the best-behaved guy anyone ever had around her. I would have brought you candy or flowers every night when I came home and I would've never kicked about the coffee any more.”

“Don't,” I sobbed. “You'll bring me flowers; you'll bring me candy; you'll kick about the coffee all you want,
all
you want. You will, you will again, you'll see.”

He smiled as though he had his doubts. “But in case, in case I don't, afterward, after it's over—Angel Face, you won't let anyone else bring you flowers home at night or kick about the coffee, will you? Don't let anyone else—I know you're young yet—but that belongs to me.”

“Never,” I panted despairingly, “never anyone else but you. It'll be you or no one at all. Kiss me again. Again. Again. Oh, just once more. Another. They don't stay
on
. Kirk, how can we make them last?” Forever is such a long time.

“There's something else I want to tell you. I've always wanted to, ever since that night. This is my last chance; I have to now; there's only a minute left. You remember that night?”

How could I ever forget it?

“I only went there to tell her I was backing out. That the trip was off. Even the first time, at two. Before I knew what had happened, before I knew it had been taken out of my hands. I'd been thinking it over. I knew it was you, had always been you, would always be you. The other thing was just a week-end spree, a binge, no different from a kid playing hooky from school for one afternoon—and coming home all rashed up with poison ivy afterward, so he don't do it again in a hurry! Only, I was supposed to meet her at the station, and I couldn't just let her stand there waiting and not show up. I didn't want to do
that
to her; she was a woman, after all. So I went over there to try to break it to her ahead of time. No one answered at two, the first time I was there. I went back to the office and I tried to reach her on the phone a couple of times in between. Then when I still couldn't get her I went back again at six, when I left the office. What I'm trying to tell you is I went over there—to tell her it was off.”

He ran his thumbnail ruefully along the wire, like harp strings. “I don't expect you to believe me; I wouldn't blame you if you didn't. It must sound like sour grapes at this late day. But, Angel Face, it's true. I wasn't going with her. That's all I can say.”

I leaned my forehead tenderly against the wire toward him. “Darling,” I said, “I've always been able to tell when you were lying. And I've always been able to tell when you were telling the truth. And I still am, now. So don't be afraid. I believe you.”

“Thanks.” He sighed gratefully. “That'll make it a little easier.”

They came over to take him inside again. So this was it now, and words became just empty sounds. “You'll be back. This isn't good-by. Now remember that—I'm just saying so long to you for a while. Take good care of yourself, darling—until—until I see you again. Oh, wait, just let me kiss him once again——”

“Get ready with some more of that bad coffee, darling, so I'll have something to growl at when I——”

“I'll be waiting with it.”

“So long for a while, Angel Face.”

Isn't it pitiful how two people can kid themselves when they know they're both lying?

The wire stencil that had framed our kiss was empty; his lips were gone. The murmur of his voice hovered about it for a moment more, as if I were still hearing him say it, though I wasn't any more. “So long, Angel Face.”

I had that much back again, at least. He always called me that. That was his name for me when we were by ourselves. That was a special thing, from him to——

5

REVERY BY MATCHLIGHT

T
HE FLAT WAS GONE NOW
,
AND IN ITS PLACE THERE
were the four cramped walls of a furnished room. I wouldn't have wanted the flat any more, even if there had been money enough to hang onto it; I would have run into him a thousand times a day, from every chair, from every corner of it. I would have heard him wheezing in the shower, howling for the towel that was never there; I would have heard him chuckling over there in that corner where the radio used to be; I would have heard him snoring over in the other bed, late at night——

Life was simpler here in this place. Life was a shot of novocain. Life was carpet slippers all day long, and a bathrobe, and hair that wasn't combed. Life was a rickety iron bed that wasn't slept on, just was wept on. Life was a can punched open maybe once a day, not from hunger, just from a sense of duty. Life was a knock on the door and an “Are you all right in there, lady? This is the landlady; I ain't seen you in three or four whole days now, and I just wanted to make sure there wasn't nothing the matter.”

“I'm all right. Sure, I'm great. Don't worry if you don't see me or hear me, even for a week at a time. I'm still here; I'll still be sitting in here.”

“Do you want me to get you a paper, help you to pass the time?”

I screamed it, but she didn't hear it because I screamed it inside of me. “I don't want the time to pass! It's going too quick already! I want it to stand still! I want it to
freeze!”

“No, thanks, there isn't anything I want to read about or know about.”

Life was like that.

I reached the low point of the whole thing, the bottommost dip of the graph, the night someone from the Police Property Clerk's Office came around to return his things. They give them back to you, it seems; they give you back everything but the main thing: who was in them. That they keep; that's theirs, to plug into the lighting system and then throw away.

This was just routine, the usual procedure when they send them up to
that place
, but I didn't know that, and at first sight of them hanging over his arm, empty, it gave me a horrible twinge, as though—it was over and he was gone already. I took them and I signed something and thanked him and closed the door. And if I let out all the stops afterward, that was just between me and those clothes of his.

I knew, though, as I lay there, face burrowing into the folds of his jacket, that I could never be so utterly, heart-brokenly, abandonedly forlorn again as I was there in that little room, with just the light bulb overhead to see me. From then on, whether there was hope or not, whether there was a chance or not, the curve was bound to be upward. Things could never look so dismal to me again. You can only cry like that once. Once and for one man. I gave him that. That was my testament of love.

Afterward, I remember, I was sitting dully on the edge of the bed, stroking the empty sleeve of his coat across my lap and slowly pulling myself together after the recent drenching outburst. The things that had been in his pockets that last night were in a couple of little manila envelopes, fastened to a buttonhole of the coat. I detached them and emptied them out. The money he'd been carrying and his wrist watch and his key holder, and even his seal ring, were in one. And less valuable things in the other. A chromium pencil (that had always been out of lead) and a business letter or two and a laundry ticket with a Chinese character on it, standing for shirts that were still waiting for him somewhere and that he'd never call for now.

It was like a poignant rosary of the commonplace, to pay out these things one by one before my eyes.

And a battered package of his brand of cigarettes, with still the same two leftovers in it that must have been in it that night. Oh, they were so honest, these police! They wouldn't touch a convicted man's last two cigarettes. But they'd send him, for something he hadn't done, up to meet his——

And a pair of those lucky-number counterfoils from the last time we'd been to a show together. You know the kind. You detach the stubs and drop them in a box on your way in. And then a week from Thursday, if that particular number happens to be drawn——The remark he'd made that night came back to me: “I never had any luck with one of these stunts yet!” He hadn't been lucky in more things than that, poor boy.

The envelopes were empty now. The pitiful collection was all spread out on my lap. No, wait—one last thing. It came sidling out at a shake of the envelope.

Nothing. The ultimate in valuelessness. A folder of matches. Even that they'd conscientiously returned to me. Everything, everything but him himself they'd seen to it that I got back.

It was one of
hers
, in the bargain. I recognized it by the turquoise cover, the inevitable double
M
. One superimposed on the other, so that it really looked like a single
M
with double outlines.

That, I couldn't help thinking, was rubbing it in a little, although most of the sting was gone at this late day. He must have picked it up to use the last time he was there and then absent-mindedly put it into his own pocket instead of returning it to wherever it had been lying. As anyone might be apt to do. And here it was now, in my palm. About all that was left of her pitiful, ephemeral glamour. That had expressed itself, thought the quintessence of elegance was to stamp initials wholesale all over everything—on match covers and highball glasses and, I supposed, lingerie. I didn't hate her. I found, tonight, I never had. I'd been badly frightened for an hour or two that day. And ever since I'd just been sorry for her. Still, I got a peculiar mordant satisfaction from shredding the remaining match or two that were all that still clung to this battered token. Striking them, to flash transiently for a moment, like she had. And then—she was gone now. She was gone like this:
Phwit!
And there it was, on the floor, something to be thrown out.

A little thing came into my mind. I don't know how or from where. And as I thought of it, dwelt on the thought of it, it grew bigger and bigger, until it was crowding everything else out. I had seen one of these match covers up there myself. It had been wedged into the seam of the door, to keep the latch from closing fast. I had noticed it as I was standing there waiting to slip out, and I had picked it up, unfolded it, thrown it down again. It was just like this one; it had an
M
on it, and the pasteboard was blue on the outside.

But here was the little thought that grew bigger and bigger: It
wasn't
just like this one.

It had been blue, but not turquoise, a far deeper shade. And the
M
on it wasn't a double-lined
M;
it was single-lined.

Why would she go to the trouble of selecting a certain trick monogram—naïve though it was—and then have it scattered around on everything in sight, if she was going to allow a variation of it, a symbol that didn't quite match, to appear on one item? It wouldn't have been in character. To her, monogramming spelt chic, and not to have carried it out identically on everything at once would have been a flaw.

Besides, this very cover in my hand now showed she had carried it out on her matches as well as on everything else. Therefore, that other cover that I'd seen up there was
not
hers.

That initial was somebody else's. It stood for somebody else whose name began with an
M
. And that somebody else had killed her.

There was a triple coincidence there that had kept me from realizing that fact until now. Both names, hers and her killer's, began with the same letter. Just as Kirk's own did, for that matter, although it would never have occurred to him to go around carrying his initials on match folders and things; he would have laughed at the idea as it deserved to be laughed at. And, secondly, this unknown seemed to have the same crass flair she did for having his things personalized with an initial. And, thirdly, it happened that the piece of pasteboard involved was blue, though of a quite different shade from the tone she had seemed to dote on.