The So Blue Marble (2 page)

    She screamed then. She didn’t know why. Something about his eyes that were so dark, so opaque. Three things happened at once. She screamed. Danny’s thumb and forefinger caught her wrist not softly now, but as if they were pincers. And someone pounded on her door. Three more things happened. She stopped her scream, Danny’s fingers were on her knee, and there was a call, “Griselda, are you home?”

    David spoke softly, “You answer it, Griselda.”

    She was afraid to walk to that door, her back to the twins, but she did. She didn’t hurry but she wanted to.

    And outside was Gig, not six feet tall, not black handsome, nor golden handsome, not in evening attire. Just Gig, hardly taller than she, nondescript hair not combed very well, round spectacles over his round gray eyes, his old tweed working jacket over his pajamas, a book in his hand. She almost flung her arms around him. Gig, nice, sane Gig.

    He said, “I didn’t know you had company. I heard you come in and I’d just found that passage-”

    She spoke rapidly, shrilly, on top of his words. “Come in. I’m not at all busy.” She clung to his arm, pulled him inside. When she turned, the twins had their sticks under their arms, their hats on their heads.

    Danny said, “We’re just leaving.”

    David said, “It’s been fun seeing you, Griselda.”

    They had their coats, their scarves, their gloves as they spoke.

    She sidled Gig and herself past the door, leaving it wide for them.

    Danny echoed, “Great fun, Griselda. See you soon.”

    “See you soon,” David agreed.

    They closed the door behind them. She heard them open the heavy elevator door; it was waiting, no one had used it since they had come up. She heard the whine of the machinery taking the cage downward. Only then did she release Gig’s arm. She plopped down on the floor and began to laugh and cry, to cry and laugh.

    

    

    Gig said, “Stop it! Stop it, Griselda!” He looked so utterly bewildered, woebegone, she laughed harder, cried harder. But she choked out, “Bolt that door. Lock and bolt that door.”

    He told her, “It is bolted. It bolts itself, Griselda. Are you crazy?”

    She hugged her knees. “I think I am. Somebody’s crazy. Or everybody’s crazy.” She couldn’t stop the awful noises she was making.

    He said, “You’ve got to stop it. You’ll make yourself sick.” Then he had an idea. He went into the kitchen and poured out half a tumbler of Scotch. He knelt down and pushed it up to her mouth. She drank it. It made her choke but it quieted her.

    He helped her up from the floor to the couch. “Now can you tell me? What’s happened?”

    She said she didn’t know. She began, “Does Con play mar-mar-mar-” Then she started laughing again but she stopped herself. She couldn’t say it without laughing. It was too ridiculous. Leggy Con, on the floor shooting marbles.

    Gig was troubled. He begged, “Try and tell me, Griselda.” He was so sane. “Or don’t if you’d rather not.”

    She caught his hand. “I want to tell you. Let me have a cigarette first. Then maybe I can make sense.”

    He found the box, as usual he had only a smelly pipe in his pockets, and lit her cigarette.

    She leaned against the pillows. “I’ll tell you. I’ve been nervous ever since I came, Gig, all this past week. I don’t know why. Every night I’ve been sort of-well,-frightened-coming home from the theater, or from Ann’s. Whenever I’ve been out alone, I’ve been-well, just plain scared.”

    She didn’t expect him to understand. He didn’t. He blinked behind his spectacles. He wasn’t an imaginator.

    She explained, “Not really scared, Gig. Just uneasy.” She twisted on the couch until she could see his face. “Do you suppose something inside of us has premonitions-warns us to be careful? And yet if anyone had definitely told me, I’d have laughed. I’d have told them what I told myself. Things don’t happen to people like us.”

    He was packing his pipe. “Well, they don’t happen to people like me. But I’d say from what Con has told me that quite a lot has happened to you in your twenty-four years.”

    “Oh, that. I don’t mean that.” She was impatient. “I mean things like-horrible things-” She shivered a little.

    He was startled. “Was tonight horrible?”

    She could tell it now, although it didn’t sound horrible, nor even as insane as it had been in happening. She told of the corner meeting, the entrance, all but the marbles. She couldn’t speak of that yet.

    He asked, puzzled. “They called you by name? And you didn’t know them?”

    “I’ve never seen them before in all my life. It might have been a joke. Do you think-did Con know them? Have you seen them before?”

    He hadn’t. “Of course I don’t know about Con. He has multitudes of friends. I don’t know many of them by sight or otherwise. Living across the hall as we do we still don’t see much of each other. You know New York. That’s why I was surprised to see you. I didn’t even know you were coming East.”

    She said, “I know,” but she wasn’t thinking about Gig’s surprised face when he came out of his apartment and saw her, surrounded by bags, opening the door of Con’s apartment. She was thinking of marbles, of the ludicrousness of Con and marbles.

    He asked, “You don’t know who these men are?”

    It wasn’t a question but she answered, “They called each other David and Danny.” She repeated, “David-Danny.”

    He was thoughtful. “There’s Dave Cling-used to be on the
Times
with Con, but it wasn’t he.” And then he asked, all at sea, “But what did they want?”

    She could tell him now, speak the insane words soberly, “They wanted their marbles.”

    Gig’s mild eyes blinked.

    “Particularly a very blue marble.” She let him take it in before asking, “Does that mean anything to you?”

    He repeated, “Their marbles-a very blue marble.”

    She asked, “Did Con ever play marbles?”

    “My God, no!” He said, “I’ve never heard anything like it. Marbles-blue marbles-”

    “One blue marble,” she corrected.

    He was thoughtful, “Do you think they were crazy?”

    She nodded. “Part of the time I thought so, but”-she had to admit it-”they were saner than I was.”

    ”Were they-”he didn’t know how to phrase it-”did they offer any violence to you?”

    She said they didn’t, then she remembered tight fingers on her wrist, but she didn’t correct herself.

    He wondered, sucking at his pipe, if they should notify the police. She shook her head. “There’s nothing to notify about that I can see. They didn’t do anything. Besides I don’t know who they are.” She yawned. That tumbler was beginning to have effect.

    He asked, “I don’t suppose you’ve seen anything of any marbles around here-or one blue marble?”

    She yawned again. “Of course not, Gig. I haven’t gone through Con’s boxes in there, nor the drawers he left filled. But I don’t think I’d find marbles if I did.”

    “I don’t imagine that you would,” he agreed. “It is strange. It’s the strangest thing I’ve ever heard of. What can we do? What can I do?”

    She stood on her feet, a little dizzy from the dose. She said, “You can stay here tonight.”

    “I couldn’t do that!”

    She was firm. “You’ll have to. Or let me stay with you. I won’t be alone, Gig. I’m afraid.”

    He twittered, “I couldn’t stay all night with you, Griselda.”

    “You must. I wouldn’t dare be alone.”

    He didn’t believe the men would return, but he didn’t speak with much sincerity.

    She told him, “You heard what they said.”

    He had heard. But he didn’t think they’d return tonight.

    She was serious, yawning again. “It would be like them to come back tonight They are-” She couldn’t find the word.

    He supplied, “Erratic.”

    “Yes. Crazy.” She started to the bedroom but her toes stopped on the edge of the rug. “You don’t mind looking in there first Gig?”

    He stammered, “N-no. Of course I don’t.” He was a professor and not very tall but his shoulders were brawny.

    Only two rooms at Con’s, an old apartment building in the middle of the city. Shops on the street floor and the first floor. Only four floors of apartments, two to the floor, and the small single above where the superintendent lived. Fourth floor was safe, Con’s on the front, Gig’s on the back. Two rooms at Con’s, the great high-ceilinged living room with the wood-burning fireplace, the extra large closet, the cupboard kitchen; bedroom with the same high ceiling, the like fireplace, a smaller closet, and a great bathroom. No way to get into the bathroom but the bedroom door had a small skylight window opening into a shaft. But in the bedroom a door leading to the backstairs which you must use if the elevator was out of order or stuck. Con had warned of the peculiarities of the elevator but it hadn’t gone wrong in her week of residence. Double bolts on the door to the backstairs. Each night she had peered at those bolts, making certain they were caught. But she hadn’t touched them; she was afraid something might be standing outside. She heard Gig there now opening those bolts and the door. She shivered. She heard him close and bolt again.

    When he returned he said, “It’s perfectly safe. I even looked in the shower curtain and under the bed.” No one could get under that low-set modern bed. He felt the stem of his pipe. “But if you’re afraid I will stay here on the couch.”

    She said, “No, you won’t. You’ll stay in the bedroom. I’ll sleep in a chair and you take the bed. Or if you insist I’ll help you move the couch in there. But I won’t stay alone.” She touched his sleeve. “I’m not afraid of you, Gig. I’m afraid of them.”

    He didn’t look at her. “Whatever you say, Griselda.” He began picking up the empty glasses and taking them to the kitchen. She went in the bedroom but she didn’t close the door between. For his sake she undressed in the bathroom, put on her white satin pajamas and her white tweed man-like dressing gown. She turned down the bed and called to him.

    He came in. He said, “I suppose I shouldn’t have washed the tumblers.”

    She shook her head. “Of course not. Bette comes at nine.”

    ”I mean fingerprints.’’

    Her mouth made an O. “I didn’t think. But it wouldn’t do any good.” She took two extra blankets from the old cherrywood cabinet. “There’s no reason for either of us to sleep in the chair. The bed’s enormous, I’ll sleep inside and you out.” She felt mid-Victorian, but he was such a mouse. She spoke coaxingly, “You’ll be more comfortable than in a chair and you have to teach tomorrow.”

    He was like a little boy. “All right, Griselda.” He took off his spectacles and laid them on the left bed table.

    She put her white coat on the foot of the bed and edged into the right-hand place. He lay far at the left and pulled the blankets over him. He didn’t remove his coat.

    She asked, “Do you think it would hurt to leave one lamp on?”

    He didn’t complain but he did say, “I can’t sleep with a light on.”

    He had been too helpful. She turned out the lamp. It was like being in bed alone, but she could hear breathing. She felt safe. Then she asked, “What did you mean-plenty of things happen to me?”

    He was apologetic. “It seems as if they do. Going to California four years ago to visit your aunt, like any popular society girl, and having the movies insist on starring you. Being really a great star when barely out of your teens-then leaving pictures entirely in one year despite all the offers they made. And now starting out again as a designer-” He broke off, “Con told me this.”

    She yawned. “Uh-huh. But that isn’t really having things happen. I just photograph.”

    He said professorially, “Acting takes more than photography. Although you have beauty.”

    She didn’t answer. People thought she had beauty. She didn’t. Regular features were to be expected in ordinary people, and gray eyes were nothing. Hers looked big and bright because she needed glasses. Without glasses the straining widened the pupils. Her only real beauty was her hair, freak hair, naturally golden. It had retained unaided the gold of a child’s hair, of a princess. She liked the way she wore it now, like a wig it was, turned below her ears, smoothed away from her forehead. Her skin and figure were good but that too was ordinary, to be expected when one swam and danced and rode and didn’t gorge on sugars. Nothing sensational about her. She had hated being in the pictures even that one year, being fussed over.

    He wondered, “Perhaps they had seen you in pictures.”

    She said sleepily, “But they called me by my own name, Griselda-not Mariel York. And I’ve been off the screen three years.”

    He spoke as sleepily, “That’s right.”

    She was almost sliding into deep sleep when he spoke again.

    “I really don’t like staying here. Con is my friend.”

    She broke in rudely, “Don’t be ridiculous. You know Con and I have been divorced for four years.”

    

    

    

    She opened her eyes wide and startled. She must have expected to see those twin faces but the room was empty and there was sun chinking through the Venetian blinds. The extra blankets were folded neatly on the chair. The sound in the other room was the maid. Bette alone picked her feet up and laid them down with such softness and placidity.

    Then the phone rang again and she jumped a little. It was that which had wakened her, of course. She reached into the lower shelf of the bed stand and took it off the cradle.

    Ann’s voice answered her salutation. “Griselda-I’ve been calling and calling. Don’t you ever get up? It’s almost eleven.”