Selected Stories (38 page)

She loved all these things. She sat in his biggest chair while he stared out at the blue dark hours and she read aloud to him from “The Crock of Gold” and from Thurber and Shakespeare for laughter, and from Shakespeare and William Morris for a good sadness.

She sang, once.

Finally she said, “It’s bedtime. Go and get ready.”

He got up and went into the bedroom and undressed. He showered and rubbed himself pink. Back in the bedroom, he could hear the music she had put on the phonograph. It was the second movement of Prokofiev’s “Classical” Symphony, where the orchestra is asleep and the high strings tiptoe in. It was the third time she had played it. He sat down to wait until the record was over, and when it was, and she didn’t come or speak to him, he went to the living-room door and looked in.

She was gone.

He stood absolutely still and looked around the room. The whole time she had been there she had unostentatiously put everything back after they had looked at it. The amplifier was still on. The phonograph was off, because it shut itself off. The record album of the Prokofiev, standing edge-up on the floor by the amplifier, was waiting to receive the record that was still on the turntable.

He stepped into the room and switched off the amplifier. He was suddenly conscious that in doing so he had removed half of what she had left there. He looked down at the record album; then, without touching it, he turned out the lights and went to bed.

You’ll see her tomorrow, he thought.

He thought, you didn’t so much as touch her hand. If it weren’t for your eyes and ears, you’d have no way of knowing her.

A little later something deep within him turned over and sighed luxuriously. Muhlenberg, it said to him, do you realize that not once during that entire evening did you stop and think: this is an Occasion, this is a Great Day? Not once. The whole thing was easy as breathing.

As he fell asleep he remembered he hadn’t even asked her her name.

He awoke profoundly rested, and looked with amazement at his alarm clock. It was only eight, and after what he had been through at the lab last night, plus what he had drunk, plus staying up so late, this feeling was a bonus indeed. He dressed quickly and got down to the lab early. The phone was already ringing. He told the coroner to bring Regalio and to come right down.

It was all very easy to explain in terms of effects; the burned morgue room took care of that. They beat causes around for an hour or so without any conclusion. Since Muhlenberg was so close to the Police Department, though not a member of it, they agreed to kill the story for the time being. If relatives or a carnival owner or somebody came along, that would be different. Meantime, they’d let it ride. It really wasn’t so bad.

They went away, and Muhlenberg called the paper.

Budgie had not come to work or called. Perhaps she was out on a story, the switchboard suggested.

The day went fast. He got the morgue cleaned up and a lot done on his research project. He didn’t begin to worry until the fourth time he called the paper—that was about five
P.M.
—and Budgie still hadn’t come or called. He got her home phone number and called it. No; she wasn’t there. She’d gone out early to work. Try her at the paper.

He went home and bathed and changed, looked up the address of Shank’s and took a cab there. He was much too early. It was barely seven-fifteen.

Shank’s was a corner bar of the old-fashioned type with plate-glass windows on its corner fronts and flyblown wainscoting behind them. The booths gave a view of the street corner which did the same for the booths. Except for the corner blaze of light, the rest of the place was in darkness, punctuated here and there by the unreal blues and greens of beer signs in neon script.

Muhlenberg glanced at his watch when he entered, and was appalled. He knew now that he had been artificially busier and busier as the day wore on, and that it was only a weak effort to push aside the thoughts of Budgie and what might have happened to her. His busyness had succeeded in getting him into a spot where he would have nothing to do but sit and wait, and think his worries through.

He chose a booth on the mutual margins of the cave-like darkness and the pallid light, and ordered a beer.

Somebody—let’s be conventional and call him Mr. X—had gone way out of his way to destroy two bodies in his morgue. A very thorough operator. Of course, if Mr. X was really interested in suppressing information about the two pathetic halves of the murdered monster in the park, he’d only done part of the job. Regalio, Al, Budgie, and Muhlenberg knew about it. Regalio and Al had been all right when he had seen them this morning, and certainly no attempts had been made on him. On the other hand, he had been in and around the precinct station and its immediate neighborhood all day, and about the same thing applied to the ambulance staff.

But Budgie …

Not only was she vulnerable, she wasn’t even likely to be missed for hours by anyone since she was so frequently out on stories. Stories! Why—as a reporter she presented the greatest menace of all to anyone who wanted to hide information!

With that thought came its corollary: Budgie was missing, and if she had been taken care of he, Muhlenberg, was next on the list. Had to be. He was the only one who had been able to take a good long look at the bodies. He was the one who had given the information to the reporter and the one who still had it to give. In other words, if Budgie had been taken care of, he could expect some sort of attack too, and quickly.

He looked around the place with narrowing eyes. This was a rugged section of town. Why was he here?

He had a lurching sense of shock and pain. The girl he’d met last night—that couldn’t be a part of this thing. It mustn’t be. And yet because of her he found himself here, like a sitting duck.

He suddenly understood his unwillingness to think about the significance of Budgie’s disappearance.

“Oh, no,” he said aloud.

Should he run?

Should he—and perhaps be wrong? He visualized the girl coming there, waiting for him, perhaps getting in some trouble in this dingy place, just because he’d gotten the wind up over his own fantasies.

He couldn’t leave. Not until after eight anyway. What else then? If they got him, who would be next? Regalio, certainly. Then Al. Then the coroner himself.

Warn Regalio. That at least he might do, before it was too late. He jumped up.

There was, of course, someone in the phone booth. A woman. He swore and pulled the door open.
“Budgie!”

He reached in almost hysterically, pulled her out. She spun limply into his arms, and for an awful split second his thoughts were indescribable. Then she moved. She squeezed him, looked up incredulously, squeezed him again. “Muley! Oh, Muley, I’m so glad it’s you!”

“Budgie, you lunkhead—where’ve you been?”

“Oh, I’ve had the most awful—the most wonderful—”

“Hey, yesterday you cried. Isn’t that your quota for the year?”

“Oh, shut up. Muley, Muley, no one could get mixed up more than I’ve been!”

“Oh,” he said reflectively, “I dunno. Come on over here. Sit down. Bartender! Two double whiskey sodas!” Inwardly, he smiled at the difference in a man’s attitude toward the world when he has something to protect. “Tell me.” He cupped her chin. “First of all, where have you been? You had me scared half to death.”

She looked up at him, at each of his eyes in turn. There was a beseeching expression in her whole pose. “You won’t laugh at me, Muley?”

“Some of this business is real un-funny.”

“Can I
really
talk to you? I never tried.” She said, as if there were no change of subject, “You don’t know who I am.”

“Talk then, so I’ll know.”

“Well,” she began, “it was this morning. When I woke up. It was such a beautiful day! I went down to the corner to get the bus. I said to the man at the newsstand,
‘Post?’
and dropped my nickel in his cup, and right in chorus with me was this man …”

“This man,” he prompted.

“Yes. Well, he was a young man, about—oh, I don’t know how old. Just right, anyway. And the newsdealer didn’t know who to give the paper to because he had only one left. We looked at each other, this fellow and I, and laughed out loud. The newsy heard my voice loudest, I guess, or was being chivalrous, and he handed the paper to me. The bus came along then and we got in, and the fellow, the young one, I mean, he was going to take a seat by himself but I said come on—help me read the paper—you helped me buy it.”

She paused while the one-eyed bartender brought the drinks.

“We never did look at the paper. We sort of … talked. I never met anyone I could talk to like that. Not even you, Muley, even now when I’m trying so. The things that came out … as if I’d known him all my—no,” she said, shaking her head violently, “not even like that. I don’t know. I can’t say. It was fine.

“We crossed the bridge and the bus ran alongside the meadow, out there between the park and the fairgrounds. The grass was too green and the sky was too blue and there was something in me that just wanted to explode. But good, I mean, good. I said I was going to play hookey. I didn’t say I’d like to, or I felt like it. I said I was going to. And he said let’s, as if I’d asked him, and I didn’t question that, not one bit. I don’t know where he was going or what he was giving up, but we pulled the cord and the bus stopped and we got out and headed cross country.”

“What did you do all day?” Muhlenberg asked as she sipped.

“Chased rabbits. Ran. Lay in the sun. Fed ducks. Laughed a lot. Talked. Talked a
whole
lot.” Her eyes came back to the present, back to Muhlenberg. “Gosh, I don’t know, Muley. I tried to tell myself all about it after he left me. I couldn’t. Not so I’d believe it if I listened.”

“And all this wound up in a crummy telephone booth?”

She sobered instantly. “I was supposed to meet him here. I couldn’t just wait around home. I couldn’t stomach the first faint thought of the office. So I just came here.

“I sat down to wait. I don’t know why he asked me to meet him in a place like—what on earth is the matter with you?”

“Nothing,” choked Muhlenberg. “I was having an original thought called ‘It’s a small world.’” He waved her forthcoming questions away. “Don’t let me interrupt. You first, then me. There’s something weird and wonderful going on here.”

“Where was I? Oh. Well, I sat here waiting and feeling happy, and gradually the feeling went away and the gloom began to seep in. Then I thought about you, and the murder in the park, and that fantastic business at your lab last night, and I began to get scared. I didn’t know what to do. I was going to run from here, and then I had a reaction, and wondered if I was just scaring myself. Suppose he came and I wasn’t here? I couldn’t bear that. Then I got scared again and—wondered if he was part of the whole thing, the Siamese-twin murder and all. And I hated myself for even thinking such a thing. I went into a real hassle. At last I squared myself away and figured the only thing to do was to call you up. And you weren’t at the lab. And the coroner didn’t know where you’d gone and—oh-h-h,
Muley!
”

“It meant that much?”

She nodded.

“Fickle bitch! Minutes after having your lover-boy—”

She put her hand over his mouth. “Watch what you say,” she said fiercely. “This was no gay escapade, Muley. This was like—like nothing I’ve ever heard of. He didn’t touch me, or act as if he wanted to. He didn’t have to; it wasn’t called for. The whole thing
was
the whole thing, and not a preliminary to anything else. It was—it was—oh,
damn
this language!”

Muhlenberg thought about the Prokofiev album standing upright by his amplifier. Damn it indeed, he thought. “What was his name?” he asked gently.

“His—” She snapped her head up, turned slowly to him. She whispered, “I never asked him. …” and her eyes went quite round.

“I thought not.” Why did I say that? he asked himself. I almost know. …

He said, suddenly, “Budgie, do you love him?”

Her face showed surprise. “I hadn’t thought about it. Maybe I don’t know what love is. I thought I knew. But it was less than this.” She frowned. “It was more than this, though, some ways.”

“Tell me something. When he left you, even after a day like that, did you feel … that you’d lost something?”

She thought about it. “Why … no. No, I didn’t. I was full up to here, and what he gave me he left with me. That’s the big difference. No love’s like that. Can you beat that? I didn’t
lose
anything!”

He nodded. “Neither did I,” he said.

“You
what?
”

But he wasn’t listening. He was rising slowly, his eyes on the door.

The girl was there. She was dressed differently, she looked trim and balanced. Her face was the same, though, and her incredible eyes. She wore blue jeans, loafers, a heavy, rather loose sweater, and two soft-collar points gleamed against her neck and chin. Her hair hardly longer than his own, but beautiful, beautiful. …

He looked down, as he would have looked away from a great light. He saw his watch. It was eight o’clock. And he became aware of Budgie looking fixedly at the figure in the door, her face radiant. “Muley, come on. Come on, Muley. There he is!”

The girl in the doorway saw him then and smiled. She waved and pointed at the corner booth, the one with windows on two streets. Muhlenberg and Budgie went to her.

She sat down as they came to her. “Hello. Sit there. Both of you.”

Side by side they sat opposite her. Budgie stared in open admiration. Muhlenberg stared too, and something in the back of his mind began to grow, and grow, and—“No,” he said, incredulously.

“Yes,” she said, directly to him. “It’s true.” She looked at Budgie. “She doesn’t know yet, does she?”

Muhlenberg shook his head. “I hadn’t time to tell her.”

“Perhaps you shouldn’t,” said the girl.

Budgie turned excitedly to Muhlenberg. “You know him!”

Muhlenberg said, with difficulty, “I know … know—”

The girl laughed aloud. “You’re looking for a pronoun.”

Budgie said, “Muley, what’s he mean? Let me in on it.”