Dark Stain (37 page)

B
EFORE
the telephone rang, Sam had been dreaming. He recognized himself in the dream. He was barefooted and he was wearing his policeman’s trousers. His chest was naked except for the police badge that was somehow glued to his left nipple. In each hand he was holding two or three batons. From his belt, the butts of four or five .38’s stuck out. He was parading up and down One Hundred and Twenty-Fifth Street; the buildings were piles of rubble as if they had been bombed. There wasn’t a person on the street. A shining stone in the sky dazzled his eyes. He paraded up and down, searching for Marian Burrow. If only he wasn’t alone, if only he could remember. The telephone jangled and in his dream, the shining stone broke into sprays of light, and all the batons and .38’s began to shoot.

He woke up, listened to the ringing out in the foyer. On the dresser, the radio hands of his alarm clock glowed: 3.47. Who could be calling now? He knew his father and mother would never get out of bed to answer; they held the notion that no decent person called after midnight and if it wasn’t a decent person, why should anybody answer. Sam yawned and groped for his slippers. He couldn’t find them. He put on the reading lamp at the side of his bed. Already, the dream was unravelling. Who could be calling?
They
.

He hurried out into the foyer, to the telephone table. His mouth was clenched so tight that livid streaks, white as burn scars, zigzagged out of his lips. He picked up the receiver and a voice said, “Hello.” His lips sagged wide apart. The voice said, “Sam?”

A shocking joy roared out of the wire. He felt electrocuted by emotions that deafened and blinded and staggered. And then just as furiously, he thought: It’s a fake, it isn’t her.

“Sam, I’m on the corner of Fifty-Ninth Street — Madison Avenue — Sam — Please, darling — Sam, come — ”

“It’s you,” he babbled. “How did — When — I’ll be right over.” He ran back to his bedroom, tugged off his pyjamas. Shorts. Socks. Trousers. Shoes. He snatched his clothes, put them on, rushed down the corridor. Behind him his wakeful mother’s voice sounded; it was like an admonishing finger.

“Is that you, Sammy?”

He shut the door of the apartment, hurrying towards the elevator, and immediately as if he had been thinking about the elevator in secret, his eyes slid to the door. He shuddered. The elevator … He retreated a step and then clattered down the flights of tiled stairs to the lobby.

The street was as deserted as the street he had seen in his dream. The mighty presses of his emotions lifted up and he remembered the dream. In this black street, the windows all black, the pavements empty, he swelled with a fearful thought: Suppose
they
had made Suzy call him. For it was Suzy but they’d kidnapped her to get at him; they wanted him; hadn’t they threatened his life over the phone; Suzy was a come-on. “What am I thinking?” he cried aloud. He had reached Broadway and he was looking, the Sam that encased all the inner torments, was looking for a cab and there was no cab. Late stragglers drooped home shoulders bowed, the Sunday papers under their arms. Sam walked to the subway corner. Inside his head, behind the eyes searching for a cab and focusing on a cab on the corner near the news-stand, there were dozens of pairs of eyes and all the eyes were staring down their own lines of vision into: The basement. The living room with Mrs. Buckles bringing him tea. His own room with Detective Maddigan on the bed. The marihuana room.

Clair’s office. He got into the cab. “Fifty-Ninth Street and Madison. Step on it.” He hauled out his wallet, gave a dollar to the driver. “Step on it.”

“Thanks,” the driver said in an awed voice, looking from the dollar into Sam’s face. “The war must be treating you okay, mister. Thanks.”

The cab sped from the corner as if springing off a board into the avenue. Sam sat on the edge of the seat. “Faster!” he said.

“Doing forty, mister,” the driver answered as the cab went through a red traffic light between garages and automobile showrooms, down to the bottom of the hill and up again as if on a roller-coaster to the buildings of Columbia University.

“Faster!” Sam said. The apartment houses below Columbia lumped up before him like mountains; the lonely lights of all-night cafeterias and bars spotting their bases. “Cop’re all asleep.”

“Don’t gimme that,” the driver disagreed almost plaintively as if saying: I know you give a buck but don’t take advantage. “Cops got three shifts, mister, and that last night owl shift’s the meanest.”

Suzy walked to him on the corner of Fifty-Ninth Street and Madison. He wanted to say something. He couldn’t. His knees felt as if they would break under him. He rushed to her, squeezed her close. There were tears in his eyes. He held her tight and choked out, “Suzy, Suzy, baby.” Only now did time arrange itself, neat and orderly, in his consciousness; Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday; he couldn’t believe she had been gone so many days and that he had managed to exist without her, had eaten, slept, worked without her. His fingers tightened on her body.

A passer-by laughed. “What the hell’s going on in this town.”

A second passer-by remarked. “It’s anything goes these days.”

Sam looked over Suzy’s shoulders at two men on the sidewalk. Their harsh voices were the voice of the Saturday night city. He patted Suzy’s hair. She wasn’t wearing a hat and he wondered what had happened to her hat. He felt her body close to his own, he heard her sobbing and he wondered where her hat was. He touched her ear. He touched the skin of her neck. His finger tips felt cold metal and he traced the shapes of safety pins. Slowly, he realized her dress had been torn and that she had used the safety pins to keep her dress together. “Baby, baby,” he said, stricken. The pins seemed to open up, to needle into his heart. The pins were all the days she had been missing.

“Sam,” she cried.

He circled his arm around her waist. His face whitened at the joy of being with her, of hearing her voice. His feet seemed to lift off the sidewalks and he was mounting out of the days without her, up up up up into the joy of having her back again. He wanted to cry, to laugh, to shout. He was gasping as if he had really flown up from the streets of the city, up out of the basements into a clear pure innocent sky. He felt winged, on a thunderbolt, a comet, a plane. Below, below, seen and not seen was the city below, the night-birds and newspaper peddlers on the streets, the cabs circling around in the gutter, their headlights peering momentarily into the sleeping plate glass windows. She, too, was unseen by him in the sense of objective seeing. Was she tall or short? Slim or plump? Pretty or not pretty? Red of hair or black of hair? He knew her again as the shape of all his love, his girl. And he saw her, clear and pure and innocent as the emotions agitating him.

They walked by the row of hansoms, horses, coachmen at Fifty-Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue. They looked like any other pair of late-hour lovers. They sat down on a bench in front of a low stone wall; behind the wall Central Park was a blackness of tree and shrub. He folded both his arms around her. “I’ll never let you go,” he whispered. They sat that way a long time. At first, she hardly moved, her face buried in his chest. She was like a frightened child fled into the body of its mother, into the cave of mother. Then, he felt her hands stroke his cheeks. He felt her hands in his hair. He heard her short rapid breathing deepen into waves of air. “Suzy,” he said to her, “Baby, Suzy, darling.”

“Sam — ” Her voice broke.

“Don’t tell me now, honey, if — ”

“So glad, Sam — ”

He thought of the pins and bit on his lips. He kissed her as gently as he had spoken and peered through the shadow into her face, into the wide cheekboned face and he was overwhelmed by a hundred thoughts of her. She was with him on the bench. She was with him. It was real. She was with him. The way she walked, the way she laughed, the way she joked — she was with him.

“Sam — ”

“Yes?”

“Talk — to me — ”

“Hello,” he said numbly. He thought: She’s here with me; she’s alive; if she’d been killed … He lifted her fingers to his lips. He kissed her fingers in turn. He kissed her thumb, her forefinger, her middle finger, her ring finger. He kissed her end finger twice as if he needed the reality of arithmetic, the one, two, three, four, five of the count to convince himself that she was here with him on this bench. He was blinking incessantly and the dark even line of Fifth Avenue swayed in front of him. His hand glided to her shoulder, to the pins. He sank his face into the curve of her neck and shoulder. “How do you feel, Suzy?” He felt her tremble at his question. “I’m a damn fool. Don’t you worry, Suzy. You’re back. That’s the main thing! You’re back. I love you. Always. Don’t worry, Suzy, you hear?”

“I hear,” she said dutifully like a little child.

“That’s fine. Fine.” The tone of her voice frightened him. This wasn’t his Suzy. This was another Suzy, the Suzy of the pins. He looked at her. Yes, she had come back to him but it was as if he were seeing her with hair turned white.

“Sam.”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Sam, it — ”

“Don’t talk if — ”

“How’s ma?”

“Fine. She was swell. I saw her — ”

“Did you?”

“The same night. I slept over. I didn’t want to leave her alone — ”

She sobbed.

“Suzy, your mother was fine. Next day I drove her out to Queens, to your cousin.” As he spoke, the thread of time was already stitching him back into what had happened and his voice steadied and he became surer of himself; time hadn’t cut her loose from him and from what they had known and felt together; they were together, this minute.

“Sam — ”

“Don’t tell me now. I’ve got you back. That’s all that counts.” He kissed her passionately and then shocked as if afraid his embrace had broken her in two, he unlocked his arms.

“I was in a bag all the way in!”

“A bag? Not now — ”

“It was so dark, Sam.” She was shaking in his arms as if she had the chills. He thought: God, what can I say.

He said, “It’ll upset you too much. Wait until you’re stronger.”

“Have you been all right?”

“Forget about me.”

“Poor Sam, you must’ve gone crazy. And ma — ”

“No!” he said and his lips were hard. “I hated them too much to go crazy.”

“Poor Sam.”

“Poor nothing. Oh, Suzy, I was broken up. I didn’t even want to see your mother. I couldn’t bear the idea. My nerves were all gone, I guess. Johnny made me.”

“How’s Johnny?”

He laughed a tearing laugh. “Wajek.”

“What did you say?”

“Wajek. He wanted your description. I gave it to him. You’re beautiful. Beautiful! I’ll phone him. Wajek, she’s beautiful.”

“They just drove me in, Sam.”

“Who did?”

“I was in that bag all the way. On the floor.”

“Where’d they drive you from?”

“I don’t know?”

“Did you call the police?”

“No. Only you. I wanted to take a cab but I was afraid.”

“Suzy, this is enough. No more.”

“I’m afraid of cars. Isn’t that silly, Sam?”

“We better let the police know.”

“Not yet. I just want to stay here.”

“I’ll take you out to your mother.”

“All right. Sam — ”

“Yes, darling.”

“We’ll have to think it out.”

“That can wait.”

“No, no. Sam, I didn’t have a nickel. Your ring’s worth a dime.”

“Go slow, I’m dumb tonight.”

“Your ring — ”

“What about my ring?”

She held up her hand. “See? It’s gone. Ten cents. I needed a nickel to phone you. I bought the pins with the other nickel.”

“From who?”

“The cashier in the cafeteria. He’s got your ring.”

“You mean you hocked it?”

“Yes.”

“You’re a corker. A cop would’ve helped you out.”

“Only cop I want’s — ” And she laughed faintly.

“Sleep. You need sleep.”

“Not yet.”

“We can’t stay here all night.”

“I must tell you, Sam. When they took me out of the bag all I was thinking of was my dress was above my knees. I was so scared I jumped to my feet right away — ”

“When was this?”

“When they drove me out there.”

“There?”

“Where I was until tonight. They carried me up a flight of stairs into a room. They took the blindfold from my eyes and I almost went crazy — ”

“How about some coffee?”

“I thought I was blind. I began to cry: ‘I can’t see. What’ve you done to me.’ I thought they’d blinded me. It was stupid, wasn’t it? Then the Negro said: ‘You’re in a dark room.’ He said to behave myself and he’d bring me some food. I tried to run away. I couldn’t see where I was but neither could he. He was shouting I was trying to run out. I groped along the wall and he caught me and pushed me back into the room. He locked the door. Tonight, tonight — Sam, it was worse tonight!” She gasped. “But I must — ”

“You don’t. You don’t.”

“I didn’t sleep that first night.”

“Did you eat?”

“They brought me stuff to eat. I sat on the floor — ”

“I know,” he said. He was thinking that she better get it out of her system.

“Morning always came. I could tell. Lines of light’d show in two places in the wall. They were the windows. The lines of light were the windows.”

“Boarded up?”

“The light came through the boards. I took the food to the windows. They must have driven me over Queensboro Bridge.”

“Why do you say that?”

“In that house, I could smell the sea. I’d think of the sea and the summers my folks went out to the sea on Long Island. Dad was still alive. We went three or four summers.”

His arm was around her shoulders. His jaws were joined together like two pieces of metal. “You could’ve been near the sea somewhere else — ”

“It was Long Island.”

“How can you be sure? Because we’re near the Bridge?”

“The milk containers.”

“What about them?”

“They brought me milk in containers. Time was so long, Sam. I’d read the print over and over.”

“On the containers?”

“Yes. They came from Amityville. Poor Sam — ”