Long After Midnight (18 page)

 
          
Her
voice was very sad. "If you have to think a thing over, it will never be.
When you finish a book you know if you like it, yes? At the end of a play you
are awake or asleep, yes? Well, a beautiful woman is a beautiful woman, isn't
she, and a good life a good life?"

 
          
"Why
won't you come out in the light? How do I know you're beautiful?"

 
          
"You
can't know unless you step into the dark. Can't you tell by my voice? No? Poor
man. If you don't trust me now, you can't have me, ever."

 
          
"I
need time to think! I'll come back tomorrow night! What can twenty-four hours
mean?"

 
          
"To
someone your age, everything."

 
          
"I'm
only forty!"

 
          
"I
speak of your soul, and
that
is
late."

 
          
"Give
me one more night!"

 
          
"You'll
take it, anyway, at your own risk."

 
          
"Oh,
God, oh, God, oh, God, God," he said, shutting his eyes.

 
          
"I
wish He could help you right now. You'd better go. You're an ancient child.
Pity. Pity. Is your mother alive?"

 
          
"Dead
ten years."

 
          
"No,
alive," she said. He backed off toward the door and stopped, trying to
still his confused heart, trying to move his leaden tongue:

 
          
"How
long have you been in this place?"

 
          
She
laughed, with the faintest touch of bitterness.

 
          
"Three
summers now. And, in those three years, only six men have come into my shop.
Two ran immediately. Two stayed awhile but left. One came back a second time,
and vanished. The sixth man finally had to admit, after three visits, he didn't
Believe. You see, no one Believes a really all-encompassing and protective love
when they see it clear. A
farmboy
might have stayed
forever, in his simplicity, which is rain and wind and seed. A New Yorker?
Suspects everything.

 
          
"Whoever,
whatever, you are, O good sir, stay and milk the cow and put the fresh milk in
the dim cooling shed under the shade of the oak tree which grows in my attic.
Stay and pick the watercress to clean your teeth. Stay in the North Pantry with
the scent of persimmons and kumquats and grapes. Stay and stop my tongue so I
can cease talking this way. Stay and stop my mouth so I can't breathe. Stay,
for I am weary of speech and must need love. Stay. Stay."

 
          
So
ardent was her voice, so tremulous, so gentle, so sweet, that he knew he was
lost if he did not run.

 
          
"Tomorrow
night!" he cried.

 
          
His
shoe struck something. There on the floor lay a sharp icicle fallen from the
long block of ice.

 
          
He
bent, seized the icicle, and ran.

 
          
The
door
slammed.
The lights blinked out.
Rushing, he could not see the sign: MELISSA toad, witch.

 
          
Ugly,
he thought, running. A beast, he thought, she
must
be a beast and ugly. Yes, that's it! Lies! All of it, lies!
She-He collided with someone.

 
          
In
the midst of the street, they gripped, they held, they stared.

 
          
Ned
Amminger
! My God, it was Old Ned!

 
          
It
was four in the morning, the air still white-hot. And here was Ned
Amminger
sleepwalking after cool winds, his clothes
scrolled on his hot flesh in rosettes, his face dripping sweat, his eyes dead,
his feet creaking in their hot baked leather shoes.

 
          
They
swayed in the moment of collision.

 
          
A
spasm of malice shook Will Morgan. He seized Old Ned
Amminger
,
spun him about, and pointed him into the dark alley. Far off deep in there, had
that shop-window light blinked
on
again?
Yes!

 
          
"Ned!
That
way! Go
there!"

 
          
Heat-blinded,
dead-weary Old Ned
Amminger
stumbled off down the
alley.

 
          
"Wait!"
cried Will Morgan, regretting his malice.

 
          
But
Amminger
was gone.

 
          
In
the subway, Will Morgan tasted the icicle.

 
          
It
was Love. It was Delight. It was Woman.

 
          
By
the time his train roared in, his hands were empty, his body rusted with
perspiration. And the sweet taste in his mouth? Dust.

 
          
Seven
a.m. and no sleep.

 
          
Somewhere
a huge blast furnace opened its door and burned New York to ruins.

 
          
Get
up, thought Will Morgan. Quick! Run to the Village!

 
          
For
he remembered that sign:

 
          
LAUNDRY SERVICE: CHECK YOUR PROBLEMS

 
          
HERE BY NINE A.M. PICK THEM UP,
FRESH-CLEANED, AT NIGHT

 
          
He
did not go to the Village. He rose, showered, and went off into the furnace to
lose his job forever.

 
          
He
knew this as he rode up in the raving-hot elevator with Mr.
Binns
,
the sunburned and furious personnel manager.
Binns's
eyebrows were jumping, his mouth worked over his teeth with unspoken curses.
Beneath his suit, you could feel porcupines of boiled hair needling to the
surface. By the time they reached the fortieth floor,
Binns
was anthropoid.

 
          
Around
them, employees wandered like an Italian army coming to attend a lost war.

 
          
"Where's
Old
Amminger
?" asked Will Morgan, staring at an
empty desk.

 
          
"Called
in sick. Heat prostration. Be here at noon," someone said.

 
          
Long
before noon the water cooler was empty, and the air-conditioning system?—committed
suicide at 11:32. Two hundred people became raw beasts chained to desks by
windows which had been invented not to open.

 
          
At
one minute to twelve, Mr.
Binns
, over the intercom,
told them to line up by their desks. They lined up. They waited, swaying. The
temperature stood at ninety-seven. Slowly,
Binns
began to stalk down the long line. A white-hot sizzle of invisible flies hung
about him.

 
          
"All
right, ladies and gentlemen," he said. "You all know there is a
recession, no matter how happily the President of the United States put it. I
would rather knife you in the stomach than stab you in the back. Now, as I move
down the line, I will nod and whisper, 'You.' To those of you who hear this
single word, turn, clean out your desks, and be gone. Four weeks' severance pay
awaits you on the way out. Hold on! Someone's
missingl
"

 
          
"Old
Ned
Amminger
," said Will Morgan, and bit his
tongue.

 
          
"Old
Ned?" said Mr.
Binns
, glaring. "Old?
Old?"

 
          
Mr.
Binns
and Ned
Amminger
were
exactly the same age.

 
          
Mr.
Binns
waited, ticking.

 
          
"Ned,"
said Will Morgan, strangling on self-curses, "should be here-"

 
          
"Now,"
said a voice.

 
          
They
all turned.

 
          
At
the far end of the line, in the door, stood Old Ned or Ned
Amminger
.
He looked at the assembly of lost souls, read destruction in
Binns's
face, flinched, but then slunk into line next to
Will Morgan.

 
          
"All
right," said
Binns
. "Here goes."

 
          
He
began to move, whisper, move, whisper. Two people, four, then six turned to
clean out their desks.

 
          
Will
Morgan took a deep breath, held it, waited.

 
          
Binns
came to a full stop in front of him.

 
          
Don't
say it? thought Morgan.
Don'tl

 
          
"You,"
whispered
Binns
.

 
          
Morgan
spun about and caught hold of his heaving desk. You, the word cracked in his
head,
youl

 
          
Binns
stepped to confront Ned
Amminger
.

 
          
"Well,
old
Ned," he said.

 
          
Morgan,
eyes shut, thought: Say it, say it to him, you're fired, Ned,
fired!

 
          
"Old
Ned," said
Binns
, lovingly.

 
          
Morgan
shrank at the strange, the friendly, the sweet sound of
Binns's
voice.

 
          
An
idle South Seas wind passed softly on the air. Morgan blinked and stood up,
sniffing. The sun-blasted room was filled with scent of surf and cool white
sand.

 
          
"Ned,
why dear old Ned," said Mr.
Binns
, gently.

 
          
Stunned,
Will Morgan waited. I am mad, he thought.

 
          
"Ned,"
said Mr.
Binns
, gently. "Stay with us. Stay
on."

 
          
Then,
swiftly: "That's all, everyone. Lunch!"

 
          
And
Binns
was gone and the wounded and dying were leaving
the field. And Will Morgan turned at last to look full at Old Ned
Amminger
, thinking, Why, God,
why?

 
          
And
got his answer . . .

 
          
Ned
Amminger
stood there, not old, not young, but somehow
in-between. And he was not the Ned
Amminger
who had
leaned crazily out a hot train window last midnight or shambled in Washington
Square at four in the morning.

 
          
This
Ned
Amminger
stood quietly, as if hearing far green
country sounds, wind and leaves and an amiable time which wandered in a fresh
lake breeze.

 
          
The
perspiration had dried on his fresh pink face. His eyes were not bloodshot but
steady, blue and quiet. He was an island oasis in this dead and unmoving sea of
desks and typewriters which might start up and scream like electric insects. He
stood watching the walking-dead depart. And he cared not. He was kept in a
splendid and beautiful isolation within his own calm cool beautiful skin.

 
          
"No!"
cried Will Morgan, and fled.