Wake Up With a Stranger (20 page)

“Nothing of the sort.” The headmaster shook his head and frowned slightly, as if his word and honor had somehow been questioned. “The contract is binding.”

The headmaster was silent, staring at Enos across the desk. His lower lip began to tremble, and he took it gently between the thumb and index finger and pinched, gradually increasing the pressure until it became quite painful. Enos looked over the headmaster’s shoulder and through the pane of glass at the group of boys on the slope beneath the pines. The boy with pale hair crossed a path of light, from shade to shade. The white fire flared briefly and instantly died.

A shadow of irritation drifted into the pastel blue eyes of the headmaster as he began to understand finally that the situation was really quite abnormal. It was surely only appropriate that a young master facing failure and dismissal should betray some signs of distress, perhaps even plead for another chance, which the headmaster would have been willing to grant, but Enos seemed quite withdrawn and untouched. And as a matter of fact there seemed to be in him a feeling of deep and quiet relief, a profound thankfulness that circumstances had reached their present point of development. What the headmaster resented more than anything else, though he did not concede it even to himself, was the uneasy feeling that he had himself been maneuvered, through a distortion of normal values that he had not followed and could not understand, into a position of subordination. This was intolerable, forcing him to feel the distress that Enos should in all decency have been feeling, and he was forced to exercise careful control of his voice to prevent his resentment from becoming apparent.

“I have an impression that you are, perhaps, not well,” he said. “Have you consulted a doctor?”

“No, I haven’t seen a doctor.”

Enos continued to look through the glass into the remote bright world of the boys under the pines, and he thought of the other pines and of the doctor who had been in the place where the pines were. But now the remembrance did not distress him, for he knew that he would not be compelled to see that doctor again, or any other doctor, and that he was finally through with all such things, with doctors and boys and pines and schools and all distressing things. There were some words that expressed it very well, the words of a poem he had once read, words about one balm for many fevers, but he couldn’t remember them exactly. Anyhow, it did not matter, and it was, under the circumstances, clearly a ridiculous waste of time to sit here any longer in this room with this inadequate little man who was obviously quite determined to make a great deal out of what was, after all, very little.

He stood up abruptly and said, “I’m quite well, there’s no need at all to see a doctor. If you have said all to me that you want to say, I’d like very much to go.”

The headmaster’s lower lip began to tremble again, and he pinched it severely. He did not trust himself to speak and was actually so weakened by a sense of shock that he did not, for the moment, trust himself to rise from his chair. He merely nodded his head and continued to pinch his lip. He remained sitting in the same position for quite a long time after Enos was gone, resenting with unusual bitterness the young master’s pre-emptory attitude. Always afterward, thinking back, he remembered his resentment and was ashamed of it.

Outside, Enos walked down the slope. He walked across the grass and under the trees into the remote and halcyon world at which he had been looking a few minutes earlier, and it was as if the glass were still there, bright and shining and wonderfully protective between him and the world in which he walked and of which he was no part in any real sense. When he came to the boys beneath the pines, several of them looked at him and quickly away, but one of them spoke and said “Good afternoon, Mr. Simon.” He nodded and said “Good afternoon” in a perfectly normal voice, and he knew that they were watching him from behind and were certainly sorry for the part they had played in what had happened to him. But this did not matter to him at all, not in the least, except that he was truly a little amused that they presumed to pity him. He felt very good, remarkably light in a way that could almost be called effervescent, and as he walked in this remarkably light way, hardly bending the grass beneath his feet, he thought of a pleasant little tune and began to whistle it softly. And he kept whistling it over and over until he came to the house at the foot of the slope in which he lived.

He went inside and upstairs into his room, and when he was there he went directly across to the window that looked out upon the slope which he had just descended. He stood looking out the window and up the slope at the boys, who were still there beneath the pines, and he began to whistle again the little tune that had got into his head and was very pleasant to listen to. After a while he began to get tired — there was quite an ache in his legs from standing so long without moving — so he got an easy chair and pushed it up to the window and sat down. During all this he continued to whistle the little tune. Eventually he stopped whistling for a few minutes, but he missed it so much, there was such an emptiness without it, that he picked it up again and went on with it. The shade got deeper and deeper on the slope outside, which was the east side of the hill, and the boys walked up the slope and over the crest and were gone.

Pretty soon after that, with the shade getting deeper and the boys gone, he began to think of Donna, of the things they had done together and would never do again, and it was not painful, as it had been before, to think of her. This was also part of the new peace that had come with the acceptance of a very simple solution to everything. As a matter of fact, far from being painful, it was now quite pleasant to think of her; it gave him something to do while he sat in the chair and looked up at the darkening slope. He conceded that she had been very kind, and he was grateful for the kindness and wished that he had not struck her — a very bad thing to have done. If it were possible, he would certainly go back and tell her that he was sorry, but it was clearly not possible. What he had better do instead was to write her a note and tell her how sorry and grateful he was, and that everything would be all right from now on. Thinking about writing the note, he became so absorbed in the problem, whether to do it or not, that he forgot to continue whistling and this time did not even miss it.

In time he came to the conclusion that the note should surely be written, that it was no more than the simplest courtesy which was also an obligation. He got up to write it, but it was too dark; this necessitated turning on a light which he was reluctant to do. It was, altogether, another problem which had to be considered, and he stood in the darkness with his back to the window and thought about it. Because he felt he could not shirk the obligation, he eventually walked across the room and turned on a light and sat down at his desk and began to think about what he should write.

It was necessary and very difficult, he thought, to achieve the right tone. He did not want to be tedious, but neither did he want to be excessively curt, which might be interpreted as a sign of anger or accusation. It seemed best on the whole to write merely what he had been thinking, that he was sorry for what he had done and grateful for what she had given, and so he wrote this as simply as he could on a sheet of paper. Then he folded the paper and put it into an envelope and wrote Donna’s name on the outside of the envelope. Leaving the envelope on the desk, he turned off the light and went back to the chair at the window and sat down and looked out at the pines on the slope. But now, after the writing of the note, he was beset by impatience that developed from a feeling that he had reached a point of completion, that there was nothing more of consequence to do or see or think, and that he was only wasting time inexcusably. The house around him seemed very quiet, and even as he sat and listened to the silence, it was broken by the sound of footsteps in the hall and a sudden knocking on his door. He turned his head and looked over his shoulder toward the door, but otherwise he did not move, and in a few seconds the knocking was repeated, and he still did not move or speak. He knew very well that the knocker was the other master who lived in the house, a fellow named Calkins. It was dinner time, and Calkins was starting up the hill to the dining room, and he wanted to know if Enos cared to go with him — and Enos didn’t. After the second knocking, the footsteps receded in the hall and died on the stairs, and shortly thereafter, looking out the window again, Enos could see the figure of the master ascending the darkening slope. It was then, indeed, time to end delay.

Getting up, he removed his coat and tie and rolled the sleeves of his white shirt above his elbows. He did this in a leisurely way, folding up the sleeves neatly, as if there were some sort of pleasure in the simple act. Afterward, he walked across the room, which was now quite dark, to the dresser. From the top drawer of the dresser he took his safety razor, a small gold instrument which had been given to him as a gift, at Christmas or a birthday or some time, by someone he could not exactly remember, his father or mother, a cousin or someone. Carrying the razor, he went out into the hall and down to the bathroom and inside. He locked the door behind him and snapped on the light and laid the razor on the lavatory and turned on the water in the tub and sat quietly on the commode until the tub was almost full. Then he turned off the water and removed the bright double-edged blade from the razor and stood for several minutes looking at the tub and thinking.

He was not concerned about pain, for he remembered from the first time, the abortive time, that there was very little. Primarily, he wondered about the best position to assume, and he wished that there were a low stool available so that he could sit comfortably. A kneeling position seemed to be the only one that would serve, and so he got down on his knees beside the tub. At the same time, without being aware that he was doing it, he began to whistle the pleasant little tune again. Kneeling and whistling, he submerged both forearms in the water with the palm of his left hand turned up and the palm of his right hand turned down. With the small blade in his right hand, he opened the artery in his left wrist. And as he remembered it from the time before, there was only the slightest burning sensation.

A thin red ribbon rose in the water from his wrist and diffused and darkened the water around, and the water grew slowly darker and darker, and the darkness spread from the water over everything, and he died kneeling in the darkness.

At five-thirty, Tyler called.

“I’m relieved to find you still there,” he said. “I was afraid you might have gone.”

“No, I’m still working,” Donna said. “I’ll be here for at least another hour.”

“Have you had a good day?”

“Yes. Everything has gone well. I’m looking forward to seeing you tonight, of course.”

“Well, that’s what I’m calling about. Something has developed to prevent my coming. It’s a nuisance, I know, but I simply can’t avoid it.”

“I’m sorry.”

He was silent for a moment, and she could hear faintly in the background the lilting sound of music — strings and brass and reeds forming the light and perishable pattern of a popular tune. She listened to the tune and liked it and was able to name it.
Lisbon Antigua.
A jukebox. She wondered if he was calling from the small bar to which she had first gone to meet him and where she still frequently met him. She was sure that he was there, and she could suddenly see and feel the place as truly as if she were there, and she wished that she were. Without forewarning, with the faint and perishable tune on the wire between them, it was quite abruptly an instant of crisis, a point from which her life would move inexorably one way or another, and she felt in the instant a surge of panic. He was calling to put an end to things. Already, she was certain, he had simply gone away, leaving the wire open to the inconsequential tune as a kind of commentary on the inconsequential affair he had initiated and tolerated and was now ending, for his own reasons, in this contemptuous manner.

“Are you there?” she said.

“Yes,” he said, “I’m here.”

“Are you at our bar?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“I can hear music.
Lisbon Antigua.”

“Oh. I see. There’s a fellow here who seems to like it. He insists on playing it over and over. Would you like me to explain why I can’t come tonight?”

“If you want to.”

“It would be easier if you were here. Can you come for a drink, or does that work have to be done immediately?”

“It can wait.”

“Shall I have a drink ready for you?”

“A Martini, please.”

“All right. I’ll be expecting you.”

She hung up and went out into the salon. Gussie was standing at the rear alone, a cigarette hanging loosely from her lips and leaking smoke in a thin ascending wisp. She spoke without removing the cigarette, squinting through the smoke.

“Leaving, darling?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Tyler again?”

“Yes. I’m meeting him for a drink.”

“How are things going?”

“About the loan?”

“Yes, of course, darling. Did you think I was being inquisitive about your sex life?”

“I think it may work out all right, Gussie.”

“Well, it seems to me that it’s taking a hell of a long time. Why don’t you simply tell him to crap or get off the pot?”

Donna laughed. She loved Gussie and was never offended by what she said, and she knew quite well that Gussie’s vulgarities were a kind of derision directed toward her own sentimentality.

“I’m afraid he might get off,” she said.

“Sure. I can see where that would leave us, all right. Right up that well-known creek without a paddle. Do you think this joint is really worth the trouble?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“I guess it is, at that. For you, anyhow.”

“It takes time, Gussie. We have to be patient.”

“I know, I know. I’m just a sour bitch, and you mustn’t pay the least attention to me. I think I need a hobby or something. You know. Something to take my mind off things after hours. Isn’t that a hell of a confession for a woman to make? Time was I had an entertaining hobby that just came naturally, but I’m getting too old for it. But then, no one wants what I haven’t got any longer, so it comes out even in the end. Maybe I’ll buy myself a motorcycle.”