The Open Curtain (28 page)

He began to pace back and forth.

At last he put his water glass down on the table, dropped wearily to his knees, and with the back of his hand parted the skirt surrounding the sink.

The girl was there, still folded up. There was, he realized, a rag stuffed into her mouth, filling it. Had that been there before? He didn’t remember it. He reached out and very carefully tugged it free. It kept coming and coming.

“Please,” the dead girl said, once it was completely free of her mouth. “You don’t have to do this to me. Untie me.”

“But you’re not tied up,” he said. “You’re just folded up. And you’re dead.”

The girl was silent a long moment. “I want you to listen,” she finally said. He could hear her words clearly but somehow did not see her lips move. “See these? These are ropes. I want you to untie them.”

But see what?
he wondered. She hadn’t moved, not at all. What did she think she was showing him? It was like fingernails or hair, he thought, growing on after death. Her voice didn’t know she was dead yet.

“This is some sort of trick,” he said.

“No,” the body was saying, and went on about the ropes. But what was that, fluttering, on her shoulder?

“You’re having a bad dream, Anna,” he told her, and reached out and took from her shoulder a small perfectly uniform piece of yellow paper.

Do not hold converse with the dead,
it read.

Good advice,
he thought.

“Anna?” she was saying. “But who’s Anna? I’m—”

But luckily he had already begun tucking the rag back into her mouth. Soon the skirt was hanging properly again, and she was nowhere to be seen.

W
hat he needed, he realized, was a trunk. A large trunk. He would put the body in that and smuggle it from the house. No one would be the wiser. He would get it out of the house and then they would have no way of implicating him in the crime. Or Elling either. Where was Elling? He had thought it would be, considering Elling’s own proclivities for men, safe to leave him with the girl—he and Anna had been alone before, never to disastrous result. But apparently he had been wrong. Elling had killed the girl, who admittedly was a sinner.
An acquaintance and a sinner,
he wanted to say for some reason. They were never that close, despite what Anna herself had hoped for. But he had not killed her; Elling had killed her. Or at least that was what, if asked, he would tell the police.

What was the truth of it? The truth was that he couldn’t remember. Better then not to go to the police. Better simply to divest himself of the body and continue on as if nothing had happened.

The trunk, then. Easy enough to acquire. He simply stepped out into the street and spoke to a boy who struck him as oddly familiar. A few coins were exchanged and moments later the boy came back down the street, lugging an empty trunk behind him.

Inside the apartment, boy dismissed, Hooper opened the trunk and looked in.
It will do,
he thought. He could tuck her in and carry her out; she was small enough to fit, if he bent her right, if she wasn’t stiff yet. He reached his hand in past the sink’s skirt, felt her. No, she was still warm, not stiff yet. She must not have been dead long.

Should he put her in the trunk now? No, he thought, better to hide it in the closet out of sight and wait for nightfall.

He sat on the bed, staring out the window, waiting. The sky, he could see, was going slowly dark. He felt drained, physically exhausted. He sat and stared.

When it was fully dark he drew the curtains and got the trunk out, dragging it across the bedroom floor and into the kitchen. He had just begun to tug the body out from under the sink when someone spun the ringer of the door.

He stopped, stayed still, holding the girl’s legs in his arms. After a moment’s silence, he tugged her the rest of the way out. He had just lifted her off the floor and was beginning to push her into the box when the ringer spun again.

He steadied her on the lip of the box, tried to decide what he should do.

“William?” said a voice through the door. “Is it you, William?”

“Who is it?” he called. It was awkward holding her, crouched over the box as he was. He let go of her head and her torso fell into the open box, her legs still hanging over the edge. Her body was much suppler than he imagined it would be, this long after death. And her eyes were blinking at him again.

“It’s me,” the voice behind the door claimed. “May I come in?”

Me? he
wondered.
Me who?

He lifted her legs and forced them into the trunk, let the lid fall. He went to the door, opened it a crack. A man, well-groomed, stood there.

“Yes?” said Hooper. “Can I help you?”

The man shook his head. “What a strange thing to say, William,” he said. “Don’t you recognize me?”

He looked at the man a long moment, his thin face, bright eyes. “Elling?” he said.

The man laughed. “Not Elling, William. One of the elders. From across the hall.”

Behind his back, Hooper could hear a dull thumping. He half turned, saw the lid of the box give a leap.

“Yes,” said Hooper. “I go by Hooper.”

“Ah,” said the elder. “As you wish, Hooper. Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

“Can’t,” said Hooper. He glanced quickly behind. She had gotten one foot mostly out. What would it take for her to realize she was dead?

“Can’t?”

“Indisposed.”

The other man regarded him quizzically. “Indisposed?” he asked.

Hooper nodded.

The elder nodded. “Well,” he said. “I can deliver my message from the doorstep, as it were. My companion and I wanted to invite you across the hall to join us for dinner. Do you care to come?”

In just a moment,
he thought,
she will start screaming.

“Can’t,” he said.

“Can’t?” the man said.

Hooper shook his head. “Indisposed,” he said. “Terribly sorry.”

“Ah,” said the elder. “Indeed. I wish you the best, then.”

“And I you.”

The man started to say something more but Hooper was already closing the door. He turned and went back to the trunk, forced her foot back in. He closed the latches and bound the straps, then sat down on top of the lid to smoke. His hands, he realized, were shaking.

Some time later he heard a sharp rap at the door. Like a man in a trance, he found himself moving to it, watched his hand turn the handle.

The door slid open. It was a man who looked neither young nor old, wearing gloves. “Charles,” Hooper said.

“Hooper,” said the man. “You didn’t imagine I’d abandon a friend in need, did you?”

“I admit the thought had crossed my mind.”

Elling came in, peeling off first one glove then the other, then held them like a bouquet in one hand. “She’s in the trunk?” he asked.

“Who?” asked Hooper.

“The woman,” said Elling. “Mrs. Pulitzer. You didn’t leave her in the closet again, did you? I thought we talked about that. I thought you’d understood.”

“No,” said Hooper. “She’s in the trunk.”

“Good,” said Elling. “Why didn’t you say so from the beginning?”

He went to the trunk, opened it up, stared in. The girl was inside, knees folded up near her chest.

“What exactly do you have to do with this?” asked Hooper.

“Me?” said Elling, turning. “What makes you think I have anything to do with it?”

“Come on,” Hooper said. “Why did you kill her?”

“Kill her?” asked Elling, smiling. “But I didn’t kill her, Hooper.”

He turned back around and fastened down the trunk. Putting his gloves on again, he took one of the handles of the trunk. “Give me a hand with this, Hooper. A cab is stationed below.”

He sat beside Elling on the driver’s board, listening to the horses’ hooves. The trunk was behind them and inside the closed cab.
Did I kill her?
he wondered. He had no memory of doing any such thing. But if he hadn’t killed her, why would Elling suggest he had?

Unless he wanted to protect himself.

He turned and regarded the man beside him. He was wrapped in his coat, barely visible. How well did he know Elling? He couldn’t remember.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

The wrapped figure turned slightly, regarded him. “To free ourselves of this awful burden,” he said.

Before long they reached the outskirts of the city, and soon too they had arrived at a drawbridge. Elling called out for the bridgeman, who came down and held up his lantern. Hooper turned his head away, and saw that Elling was doing the same.

“Where are you going?” the bridgeman asked.

“Across the bridge,” said Elling, his voice strange and hoarse.

The man kept his lantern up a moment more and then turned. He went to his wheel, worked the drawbridge down.

They crossed in silence. “We shall return a different way,” said Elling.

They followed the road west down to where it crossed a canal over a stone-sided, wood-slatted bridge just wide enough for a narrow road and a brace of trolley rails.

“As good a place as any,” said Elling.

Hooper swallowed. “I suppose,” he said.

Elling smiled. He tied the reins back and stepped down from the cab. Hooper followed him. They opened the door of the cab and dragged the trunk out.

“Do we throw the whole thing in?” asked Hooper.

“No point wasting a good trunk,” said Elling.

He put his hands under the girl’s arms and pulled her out. “Take her legs,” he told Hooper, who did so. They carried her onto the bridge and rested her on the wall to one side.

“We need something to weigh her down,” Elling said. “Otherwise she’ll float.”

Hooper stood dumbly.

“Go find something, Hooper,” Elling said. “And hurry.”

Hooper nodded and turned away. What was there? A stone from the walls of the bridge? They were, it seemed, mortared in place. Was there anything in the cab? No. But on the floor of the cab was a square of yellow paper and on it, he could just make out in the moonlight, the word
under.

He stooped down. And he could see, hanging between the horses and the cab proper, a hitching weight. It looked absurd and in flux in the darkness, as if its shape had yet to be determined. Even after he had unhooked it and taken it in his hands it remained troublingly protean.

He carried it back to Elling. “Will this do?” he asked.

Elling regarded it, nodded. “A lodestone,” he said. “To be slung around the neck.” He fished a leather strap from one pocket and threaded it through the weight, then tied it around the woman’s waist.

“I thought you said neck,” said Hooper.

“Manner of speaking,” said Elling. “Up we go then, brother Hooper.”

He took her again by the shoulders, waited for Hooper to grab the legs. Together they lifted the body over the side of the bridge, and let it fall into the canal below.

It hit with a hard sound, like a stick striking rock, and was quickly swallowed up. It was too dark in any case to see much of anything.

They walked together back toward the cab, climbed in. They sat in silence for a moment, unmoving.

“Well, that’s that,” said Hooper.

“Don’t be too sure, friend,” Elling said, regarding him with a piercing eye. “Don’t be too sure.”

It was nearing light by the time they got back to Young’s father’s apartments. There was already the bustle of noise and bodies in the streets, torpid still, just a few figures here and there, but growing.

Elling pulled the wagon up short. Holding the reins in one hand he reached over to clasp Hooper’s hand with the other.

Hooper took the hand dully, then slowly climbed down.

“And the wagon, then?” asked Hooper, looking up.

“Rented,” said Elling. “I’ll drive it about the streets a few hours and then return it.”

Hooper nodded. He turned and walked to the street door, which he opened with a key he discovered in his pocket. When he turned about again, the street was empty, the cab gone.

He climbed the stairs as quietly as he could, crossed the landing, and went into his apartment, locking the door behind him. Inside it was dark, a little dim light flitting through the windows. He felt his way through the kitchen and into the bedroom, let himself fall on the bed, fell almost immediately asleep.

When he awoke, it took him a moment to understand where he was. At first there was only a gray space, featureless, unlit, as tight upon and around him as a coffin, which slowly began to congeal, if congeal was the right word, into something else. There, the edge of a cabinet, glass-fronted and snug against the wall, there a television, its screen lit and sound oozing—

“Not a television,” said Elling, behind him. “Wrong place. No such thing as a television yet.”

“What?” said Hooper. “How did you get in? How long have you been here?”

But Elling was nowhere to be seen. Had he been imagining things? He sat up in bed, examined the room more closely. It was, he realized, his father’s room, in New York. He knew exactly where he was, exactly.

But why had he slept in the bed where Anna had been killed? It made his skin crawl to think about it. He got up and brushed off his clothes. Her clothes, he realized, were still there, in the apartment, bundled in the closet with the sheets. He should have dumped them into the canal along with her corpse, shouldn’t he have? No, perhaps not. They wouldn’t have sunk like the body had.