Phantom lady (17 page)

They met his. They stayed with his. His had expected them to turn away, frost over. Instead, they accepted his glance, sustained it for as long as he cared to give it. They seemed to say, "Are you interested in me? All right, go ahead, I don't mind."

He was a shade surprised for a moment at this ready acceptance. He kept on looking for all he was worth. He even tried a tentative smile, that was ready to be rubbed out at a moment's notice too.

She accepted that in turn. She even sent him one back, of about the same degree as his. His deepened. Hers did too.

The preliminaries were over, they were getting into— And then, damn it, the buzzer signaled from back curtain. The conductor tapped out attention, spread his arms holding them poised. Flounced them, and the overture was under way, he and she had to break it off.

That was all right, she consoled herself. So far so good.

The show couldn't be straight music all the way through, no show was. There would be rest spells.

The curtain went up. She was aware of voices, lights, figures. She didn't bother with what was going on onstage. She wasn't here to see a show. She minded her own business strictly, and her business was making a musician.

He turned and spoke to her at the start of the intermission, when they were filing out for a rest and a smoke. He was the furthest over, so he was the last to go; that gave him the chance to do it undetected behind the others' backs. The people next to her had gotten up and gone out, so he could tell she was alone, even if her conduct had left him any doubts on that point until now, which it certainly should not have.

"How do you like it so far?"

"It's real good," she purred.

"Doing anything afterwards?"

She pouted. "No, I only wish I was."

He turned to go out after his fellow bandsmen. "You are," he assured her smugly, "now."

She gave her skirt a corrective downward hitch with considerable asperity as soon as he was gone. She felt as though she could have used a scalding shower and plenty of Lifebuoy.

Her face lines slipped back to where they belonged. Even the make-up couldn't hide the alteration. She sat there, pensive, alone, at the end of the empty row of seats. Maybe tonight, darling, maybe tonight.

When the house lights went on again at the final curtain, she lingered behind, pretending to have dropped this, pretending to be adjusting that, while the rest of the audience siphoned slowly up through the aisles.

The band finished playing them out. He gave the cymbal atop his drum a final stroke, steadied it with his fingers, put down his drumsticks, snapped off the light over his rack. He was through for the night, he was on his own time now. He turned around to her slowly, as if already

feeling himself the dominant factor in the situation. "Wait for me around at the stage alley, lovely," he said. "Be with you in five minutes."

There was ignominy attached even to the simple act of waiting for him outside, for some reason she couldn't quite ascertain. Perhaps it was something about his personality that tinged everything that way. She felt crawly, walking up and down out there. And a little afraid. And the way all the other bandsmen, coming out ahead of him (he couldn't even spare her that embarrassment, he had to be the last one out), looked at her as they passed added to her discomfort.

Then suddenly he'd swept her off with him by surprise. , That is to say, before she'd even seen him coming, he had her arm possessively under his and was towing her along with him, without even breaking stride. That was probably characteristic of him, too, she thought.

"How's my new little friend?" he began breezily.

"Fine, how's mine?" she gave him back.

"We'll go where the rest of the gang goes," he said. "I'd catch cold without 'em." She got the idea. She was like a new boutonniere to him, he wanted to show her off. ,

This was at twelve.

By two o'clock she decided he'd been softened up enough by beer for her to begin to go to work on him. They were in the second of two identical places by then, the gang still in the offing. A peculiar sort of etiquette seemed to govern things of this sort. He and she had moved on when the rest of them moved, and yet once they were in the new place they continued their separateness, at a table by themselves. He would get up and join the others every once in a while, and then come back to her again, but the others never came over and joined him, she noticed. Probably because she was his, and they were supposed to stay away from her.

She'd been watching carefully for her opening for some time. She knew she'd better get going at it; after all, the night wouldn't last forever, and she couldn't face the thought of having to go through another one like it.

One offered itself finally, just what she wanted, in one of the rancid compliments he'd been shoveling at her all evening—whenever he thought of it. Somewhat like an absent-minded stoker keeping a fixe going.

"You say I'm the prettiest thing ever sat in that seat. But there must have been other times you turned around and saw someone you liked sitting there right behind you. Tell me about some of them."

"Not in it with you, wouldn't waste my breath."

"Well, just for fun, I'm not jealous. Tell me: if you had your choice, out of all the attractive women you ever saw sitting behind you, in that same seat where I was tonight, since you've been playing in theaters, which was the one you would have rather taken out?"

"You, of course."

"I knew you'd say that. But after me; which would your second choice be? I want to see just how far back you can remember. I bet you can't remember their faces from one night to the next."

"Can't I? Well just to show you. I turn around one night and there's a dame sitting there right on the other side of the rail from me—"

Under the table she was holding the soft inside curve of her arm with her own hand, squeezing it tightly as though it ached unendurably.

"This was at the other house, the Casino. I don't know, something about her got me—"

A succession of attenuated shadows slipped across their table one by one; the last one of all stood still for a minute. "We're going to pitch a jam-session downstairs in the basement. Coming?"

Her gripping hand relaxed its hold on her arm, fell away frustratedly down by the side of her chair. They'd all gotten up, were piling in through a basement entrance at the back.

"No, stay up here with me," she urged, reaching out to hold him. "Finish what you—"

He'd already risen. "Come on, you don't want to miss this, snooks."

"Don't you do enough playing all evening at the theater?"

"Yeah, but that's for pay. This is for myself. You're going to hear something now."

He was going to leave her anyway, she saw, this had a stronger pull than she had, so she rose reluctantly to her feet and trailed after him down narrow brick-walled stairs to the restaurant basement. They were all in a large room down there, with instruments in it already that they must have used at previous times. Even an upright piano. There was a single large but smoky bulb hanging on a loose wire from the center of the ceiling, and to supplement this they had candles stuck in bottles. There was a battered wooden table in the middle, and they put bottles of gin on it, nearly one to a man. One of them spread a piece of brown wrapping paper out and dumped quantities of cigarettes on it, for anyone to help themselves at will. Not the kind the world upstairs smoked; black-filled things; reefers, she heard them call them.

They closed and bolted the door, as soon as she and Mil-burn had come in, to keep themselves free from interruption. She was the only girl among them.

There were packing cases and empty cartons and even a keg or two to sit on. A clarinet tootled mournfully, and mania had begun.

The next two hours were a sort of Dantesque Inferno. She knew as soon as it was over she wouldn't believe it had actually been real at all. It wasn't the music, the music was good. It was the phantasmagoria of their shadows, looming black, wavering ceiling high on the walls. It was the actuality of their faces, possessed, demonic, peering out here and there on sudden notes, then seeming to recede again. It was the gin and the marihuana cigarettes, filling the air with haze and flux. It was the wildness that got into them, that at times made her cower into a far corner or climb up on a packing case with both feet. Certain ones of them

would come at her at times, individually, crowding her back, driving her before them shrinking against the wall, singling her out because she was a girl, blowing their wind instruments full into her face, deafening her, stirring her hair with them, bringing terror into her soul.

"Come on, get up on the barrel and dance!"

"I can't! I don't know how!"

"It don't have to be your feet. Do it with what else you've got, that's what it's for. Never mind your dress, we're all friends."

"Darling," she thought, sidling away from a rabid saxophone player until he gave up following her any more with a final ceilingward blat of unutterable woe, "Oh, darling, you're costing me dear."

Futuristic rhythm, never on the beat,

Any near drum, in my eardrum, throws me off my feet.

She managed to work her way around two sides of the room until she got to the boiler factory that was the trap drum. She caught his pistoning arms, held them down, restrained them long enough to make herself heard. "Cliff, take me out of here. I can't stand it! I can't stand any more of it, I tell you! I'm going to keel over in another minute."

He was already doped with marihuana. She could tell by his eyes. "Where'll we go, my place?"

She had to say yes, she could see that was the only thing that would get him out of there.

He got up, guided her before him toward the door, stumbling a little. He got it open for her, and she fled through it like something released from a slingshot. Then he came out after her. He seemed free to leave at will, without an explanation or farewell. The rest didn't even seem to notice his defection. The closing of the door cut the frenzied turmoil in half, as with the clean sweep of a knife, and there was sudden silence, so strange at first.

You're the unexpected, disconnected time. Let me think in, sleep and drink in —

The restaurant upstairs was dark and empty, save for a night light left burning far at the back, and when she had gained the sidewalk in front, the open air made her almost light-headed, it was so cool and rare and crystal clear after that fever chamber. She thought she'd never breathed anything so sweet and pure before. She leaned there against the side of the building, drinking it in, her cheek pressed to the wall like someone prostrated. He took a moment longer to come out after her, adjusting the door or something.

It must have been four by now, but it was still dark and the town was asleep all around them. For a moment there was a temptation to flee for dear life down the street, away from him, and have done with the whole thing. She could have outrun him, she knew; he was in no condition to go after her.

She stayed there, passive. She had seen a photograph in her room. She knew that was the first thing that would meet her eyes when she opened the door. Then he was beside her, and the chance was gone.

They went over in a cab. It was in one of a row of old houses done over into apartments, a single one to a floor. He took her up to the second floor and unlocked it and turned on the lights for her. It was a depressing sort of place; age-blackened flooring underneath a thin application of varnish, remote ceilings, high, coffinlike window embrasures. It wasn't a place to come to at four in the morning. Not with anyone, much less him.

She shivered a little and stood still, close by the door, trying not to be too aware of the over-elaborate way he was securing it on the inside. She wanted to keep her thinking as clear and as relaxed as she possibly could, and that thought would only muddy it.

He'd finished locking her in. "We don't need these," he said.

"No, leave it on," she said matter-of-factly, "I'm cold."

There wasn't very much time.

"What're you going to do, just stand there?"

"No," she said with absent-minded docility, "no, I'm not going to just stand here." She moved one foot inattentively forward, almost like a skater trying out the ice.

She kept looking around. Desperately looking around. What would start it? The color. Orange. Something orange.

"Well what're you looking for?" he said querulously. "It's just a room. Didn't you ever see a room before?"

She'd found it at last. A cheap rayon shade on a lamp far over at the other end of the room. She went over to it, turned it on. It cast a small glow in the shape of a halo above itself against the wall. She put her hand on it, turned to him. "I love this color."

He didn't pay any attention.

She kept her hand on it. "You're not listening. I said this is my favorite color."

This time he looked Wearily over. "All right, what about it?"

"I wish I had a hat this color."

"I'll buy you one. T'morrow or the next day."

"Look, like this, this is how I mean." She picked up the small base bodily, held it riding on her shoulder with the light still on inside the shade. Then she turned toward him so that the shade seemed to be topping her head. "Look at me. Look at me good. Didn't you ever see anyone wearing a hat this color? Doesn't this remind you of someone you once saw?"

He blinked twice, with owl-like solemnity.

"Keep looking," she pleaded. "Just keep looking like that. You can remember if you want to. Didn't you ever see anyone sitting right behind you in the theater, in the same seat I was in tonight, wearing a hat this color?"

He said, quite momentously, quite incomprehensibly. "Oh

—that was that five hundred smackeroos I got!" And then suddenly shading his eyes with one hand as if in perplexity, "Hey, I wasn't supposed to tell anyone about that." Then he looked up and asked with a sort of trustful blankness, "Have I already told you?"

"Yes, sure." That was the only answer to give. He might balk at telling her the first time, but not at repeating it, if the damage was already done. Those cigarettes probably did something to their powers of memory.