Night My Friend (33 page)

Craidy came down to join him, and after the beer he finished rewiring the last of the bowling machines. He played a game to be certain it was working properly, and Rita came out of her booth to watch. “You’re pretty good at this,” she said.

“It’s all a trick. After working on them for a solid week I know just where you have to hit those pins to trip the scoring mechanism.”

“Life is pretty much of a trick to you, isn’t it?”

“I guess maybe you can read minds. Mine, at least.”

The evening was cool, and after supper he met Rita back at the arcade, wondering vaguely where she lived. He supposed that she had an apartment nearby much like his own, but he’d never really had occasion to think about it before. They walked the short distance to the arena, under a sky turning dark as clouds once more obscured the setting sun.

“It’ll rain tomorrow,” Rita said. “Not good for the holiday weekend.”

“Is that a guess or a prediction?”

“We’ll see tomorrow,” she answered with a laugh.

He was surprised at the crowd in the Beach Arena. Generally, the promoters considered it a good night when they could fill half the seats, but tonight the little place was loaded almost to capacity and a cloud of blue cigarette smoke was already visible near the ceiling lights.

They sat in bored relaxation through the first two bouts, watching a boy not yet twenty flatten a colored youth in the second round, then two older fighters who went the limit as if the whole thing were a dull spring dance. They were earning their money, but just barely. During this last bout Craidy went outside for a smoke and some popcorn, unable to gear his body to the hour of uneventful sitting. He amused himself by studying the lights and wiring of the place for a time, and then returned to Rita with the box of popcorn.

“Did I miss anything?”

She shook her head. “Wayne’s fighting next, though. That’s the other guy, just getting into the ring.”

Frank Wayne’s opponent was a youth in his early twenties who carried himself already as if the television cameras were on him. He had sandy, wavy hair, and a body like a Greek god, and his name was Blaze Dungan. “He looks good,” Craidy commented.

Rita munched her popcorn. “He’s got six knockouts.”

“Think it’ll be like Arnie said?”

“I hope to hell not.”

The smoke had grown thicker during the first two bouts, and now the fighters in the ring appeared as if in a dream—a half-remembered fog of action that lacked the hard sharp outlines of waking truth. They came out at the bell, clashing like iron-chested gladiators, and Wayne’s first punch was only a glancing blow to the neck. Blaze Dungan danced back, bobbed and weaved with professional stance, and landed a neat right to Wayne’s jaw. To Craidy the two seemed evenly matched, though even this early in the bout Dungan’s youth was beginning to show. What he lacked in experience he more than made up for in sheer guts.

At ringside, Craidy could see a fuzzy little man with a damp cigar urging Wayne on, wringing a towel between his hands. This would be Sam Seffer, the manager, a man obviously acclimated to the shoddy, smoky squalor of the Beach Arena. At the end of the first round he was up there, massaging Wayne’s shoulders, whispering words of battle into his ear. They might have been the same words spoken by every manager to every fighter, and Craidy wondered if Wayne even heard them, in spite of the nodding of his head.

They came out for the second round a bit more slowly, a bit more respectfully. In the center of the ring, almost lost in the smoke and overhead lights, they traded punches to the gradually rising throb of the crowd. Then, suddenly, Blaze Dungan landed a solid left to the body, a right to the jaw, and Wayne began to cave in, all at once.

“Craidy! He’s down!” Rita gripped his arm in sudden alarm.

They left their seats and ran down to ringside as the referee counted Wayne out. Rita clawed at the canvas floor of the ring and shouted his name over the roar of the crowd, but he only lifted his head a bit and stared at her through bloodshot eyes. They were not the glazed eyes of a semi-conscious man, but rather the sad eyes of a lost man, lost in a world he never made.

As the referee held Blaze Dungan’s right arm high in victory, Rita turned away and brushed past Craidy. There were tears in her eyes.

“He threw it! He threw the fight!” she said later, as they walked back along the beach in the darkness.

“You don’t know that.”

“I know it.”

“I suppose you read his mind,” Craidy said. He was beginning to get just a little annoyed with Rita O’Blanc.

“Yes, I did! But you don’t have to believe that if you don’t want to. All you had to do was look into his eyes to know the truth.”

“I looked into his eyes.” He lit a cigarette, blinking as the flare of the match blinded him for a moment. “So maybe he did throw the fight. So what? That’s life—it happens every day.”

“Not to a man like Frank Wayne.”

Craidy kicked at a floundering piece of driftwood, sending it splashing into the surf. “What’s with you, anyway? Do you really believe this bit about reading people’s minds?”

“I learned that I could quite early in life, actually. When I was twelve my mother took me to a doctor who’d studied such matters. He gave us a long speech about every human mind being different, about some minds being below normal and some being above normal. He said what I had was a great gift. My mother didn’t look at it that way. She just wanted a normal daughter, without any gifts. I remember she kept asking the doctor how I’d gotten that way—as if the thing was some sort of disease. And all he answered was that it happens, sometimes.”

Somehow he believed her. He couldn’t help believing her. “How did you end up telling fortunes at Arnie’s, of all places?”

“I left home when I was seventeen, and went to New York. Some friends I met there told me about the experiments in extrasensory perception going on at Duke University, and I went down there for a time. They were quite impressed, actually—Doctor Rhine and the others—but I guess I wasn’t really as unique as I’d supposed. They ran me through a series of tests with a special deck of cards, and I scored high—but not perfect. This ESP of mine seems only a sometimes thing. After a while I left Duke and went back to New York. I tried to get a job using this talent, but it—or I—wasn’t good enough for a nightclub act or anything like that. I drifted for a couple of years, through a few jobs as a secretary, a waitress, just about anything. It was hell, though, having this thing—like taking dictation from your boss and
knowing
what he was thinking about when he looked at you. Finally I just decided I was safer and happier just telling fortunes at a place like Arnie’s. He gave me a job and I like it.”

“Does he know you can read minds?”

“I told him, but of course he doesn’t much believe it.”

Craidy flipped his dying cigarette into the water. “You been reading my mind much?”

“Not much, really. I guess you interested me, up there in your little room. That’s one of the reasons I wanted you to bring me tonight. I was able to tell your age by ESP, though. That’s easy, once I get you thinking about it.”

“And Wayne?”

She was suddenly somber. “I knew he threw the fight, knew it was tearing at his insides as he was being counted out. I guess that’s why I started to cry.”

Ahead of them, the lights of Arnie’s Arcade came into view. Arnie had gotten one of the beach hangers-on to look after the place while he went to the fight, but now they saw he was back already, standing in the wide entrance with the neon shimmering around him like a giant halo.

“You two took forever,” he said as they came up off the beach.

“We were talking,” Craidy explained, a bit weakly.

“Have you seen Wayne since the fight?”

“No, why?”

Arnie’s face was hard in the neon light. “The cops were just here. Blaze Dungan was beaten to death in an alley right after the fight, and it looks like Wayne did it.”

Arnie pulled down the big overhead doors and closed the place a half-hour before midnight. The three of them sat in his office drinking beer by the light of his little desk lamp. For Craidy, it was an unreal experience—a dream night of dark fantastic conversation. He felt once like leaping up and telling them both he wanted no part of people, telling them both he wanted only the safety of his little upstairs room. Where he could be merely an observer.

“Murder?”
Rita O’Blanc was saying. “Who could possibly call it murder?”

“If it was just a fight, it couldn’t be more than manslaughter,” Craidy said, his mind growing thick with beer and sleep and frustration.

But Arnie waved a hand in disagreement. “In the eyes of the law, a boxer’s fists constitute a deadly weapon. Assault with a deadly weapon is a felony, and murder during commission of a felony is first-degree murder, even if it was unintentional. It would depend a lot on the District Attorney, but they could throw the book at him if they wanted to.”

Rita shook her head as if to clear it. “But they were fighting in the ring only minutes before! If Wayne had killed him there it would have been nothing—nothing but an unfortunate accident!”

“That’s right. But they weren’t in the ring. I think we all know what happened. Sam Seffer forced Wayne to throw the fight. But afterwards, something got to Wayne. He sought out Blaze in that alley just to prove to both of them who was the better man. I suppose he just kept on hitting him, maybe waiting for the referee to stop it.” He took a sip of beer. “Only there wasn’t any referee out in that alley.”

Craidy looked at Rita, and saw that she was as uneasy as he was. “It’s late,” he managed to say finally. “We’d better be going.” He wanted no more talk of murder and beatings and the dark things of the world. He wanted only to be alone.

Rita set her glass carefully on the table. “Will you walk me home, Craidy? I have a room just a few blocks away.”

“Sure.” He shot a glance at Arnie. “You coming?”

“No. I…” He hesitated, then said, “I think he might come by here, if he needs help. I’m going to stay awhile.”

Rita put a hand on his shoulder. “I know he’s a friend of yours, but don’t get yourself in a jam.”

“Never fear,” Arnie said, and he unlocked the side door to let them out. “See you both bright and early for the holiday. We’ll be getting busy right after the parade. I might even need you down on the floor, Craidy.”

“Yeah,” Craidy answered, not too happy at the prospect.

When they were a block away, Rita broke the unnatural silence between them. “I caused it all,” she said quietly. “Running up to the ringside like that. When he saw me, and knew that I knew—I think it was too much for his pride.”

“Don’t be silly. He probably didn’t even see you there.”

“He saw me.”

They parted a few moments later at the door of her apartment, a place much like Craidy’s own, a place for lone and lonely people. He thought of kissing her goodnight, but there was no real reason for it. “Good night,” he said simply.

“Good night. And thanks.”

“For what?”

“For not doing it. It wouldn’t be right, tonight.”

He went out into the street without another word, and walked quickly back to his own apartment. For the first time in years he was afraid, and he felt the fear knotting his stomach. He was afraid of this girl who read minds, afraid of the fighter named Wayne, afraid of people. He wanted to be alone again.

Alone.

Memorial Day. And the sun was already too high in the morning sky when he opened his eyes and sat up in the rumpled bed. Distantly, muffled by a mile or more of space, he felt rather than clearly heard the throbbing of the drums from the parade. Everyone would be there, watching, and when it broke up they’d head as always for the beach and the swimming and Arnie’s. It was his first summer there, but he knew what to expect.

Arnie gave him only the briefest nod when he arrived, and he didn’t see Rita at all, though the drapes of her little booth were pulled shut. He climbed the stairs to his room, thankful for at least a brief time alone. By noon the parade was finished, and below he could see the occasional uniforms beginning their mingle with the crowd. A girl in the brief, spangled costume of a drum majorette, and a limping veteran—obviously drunk—for whom the day was his big excuse for dusting off the row of medals across his chest. All of them came to Arnie’s.

Finally he saw Rita come out of her booth and walk across the crowded floor to the tiny ladies’ room. He could tell from up there that she was warm. The wig she wore wasn’t made for sitting by the hour in a stuffy little booth. He went back to his job, wiring an electric fox-and-geese game that Arnie had picked up somewhere, and was intent on it when Rita entered his room a few moments later.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Hi, but it’s after noon. How are you?”

“Fine, I guess.”

He glanced out his window. “Shouldn’t you be down there? You’ve got a line.”

“They can wait. Craidy…”

“What? What’s the trouble?”

“Wayne is here.”

“Here?”
He glanced to the corners of the room, as if expecting the fighter to be lurking there.

She nodded. “In Arnie’s office.”

“Did you see him?”

“I don’t have to. He’s there.”

“All right,” Craidy said, annoyed at being drawn once more into the web of circumstance. “What do you want me to do about it?”

“Go down and see if I’m right.”

“I thought you were always right,” he told her. Then, seeing the look of hurt in her eyes, he added, “I’ll take a look.”

He left her there and went down the steps to the arcade, dodging between two groups of giggling girls intent on attracting the attention of some nearby sailors. Through the open doorways he could see the beach already crowded with afternoon swimmers brave enough to tackle the still-chilled water. It was a holiday time.

The door to Arnie’s office was locked, and when he tapped his fist to the wood he heard Arnie mumble something from inside. After a moment the door opened a crack. “What do you want?” he asked.

“Is Wayne in there?” Craidy asked quietly.

Arnie sighed and stepped aside. “Who else knows?”