The Outsider (9 page)

At last the doctor emerged, leaving Dot's door open this time. Moving methodically, the doctor placed his black bag on a chair and proceeded to get into his overcoat. He pulled on his hat and looked at Cross with cold eyes. Abruptly he grabbed his bag and went unaided
out of the door. Yes; Dot had identified him to the doctor. Cross felt sick and cheap.

On his tongue was a storm of reproaches he wanted to hurl at Dot, but he checked himself. To lose his temper would be playing into her hands, giving her an opportunity to wallow in an emotional scene. He walked slowly into the room and saw Dot lying with her face to the wall. Myrtle sat huddled on a side of the bed with her head bent forward, her body shaking; she was weeping. The hypodermic needle and the syringe lay on the tray at the foot of the bed. A medicinal odor hung in the air.

“Myrtle, what the hell's eating you?” he demanded.

As he had expected, they had been waiting for this signal; both women started to berate him at once. It was Dot's voice that won out.

“Please, Cross, in the name of God,” Dot begged, without turning to look at him. “Be gentle with Myrtle. She's been waiting on me night and day. She's all I got. Don't insult her.”

“I'm not insulting anybody—”

Myrtle jerked upright, her limbs trembling and her face wet with tears.

“You did! And what have I ever done to you?”

“You started slashing at me the moment I got into this apartment,” he charged her.

“But can't you see what's happening?” Myrtle blazed at him. “This poor child's half out of her mind…Try to be
human
!”

“That's the trouble,” he almost hissed. “I'm simply too
damned
human.”

“If I was Dot, I wouldn't take this off you for a single minute,” Myrtle burst out in a torrent of rage. “Oh, boy, I'd have you in a way that you'd never forget!”

“Do you think I don't know that?”

“I'd get your money, your job, and throw you smack into jail!”

“Oh, Myrtle, no…” Dot protested.

Yes, Myrtle was going further than Dot wanted. Cross looked at the two of them. When he spoke he was not smiling, but there was a note of hard irony in his voice that was worse than laughter.

“Yeah, I know. I'm just a big, bad, black brute. Pushing little girls around. Taking advantage of the helpless. Spoiling innocent children. I've no feelings. I'm just having a damn grand time and making others suffer.” He summed up their case for them and then sat on the edge of the bed beside Myrtle.

“You're a man and you can't dodge your responsibilities,” Myrtle told him wailingly.

“I'm not responsible to
you
for anything,” Cross told her. “And I don't like your meddling. Now, get the hell out of here and let me talk to Dot.”

“You are a
real
bastard,” Myrtle said. “You ought to marry Dot, but I pity her spending a lifetime with
you
.”

“Don't worry,” he taunted her. “I'm not going to spend a lifetime with
you
.”

“Cross, for God's sake,” Dot whimpered. “Don't be that way.”

“That's the only way he can be,” Myrtle said.

“Get out of here, Myrtle,” Cross told her again.

There was silence. He stood his ground. He was determined to wreck their rehearsed appeal to him. He felt that instinct was guiding them, prompting their attitudes and the strategy of their attacks. Both of them were weeping now and he made no move. He would let their tears flow futilely for awhile; they would see that he was not to be easily overcome.

“You're lucky that it's Dot you're dealing with in
stead of me,” Myrtle said. Weeping, she stood and walked from the room.

Cross heard the door close behind his back. He could almost see the little wheels turning in the brains of both girls as they planned their next move. Men had to consult together for concerted action; women simply gravitated together spontaneously, motivated by their situation in life as women. They knew without prior consultation the most effective assaults. Cross was conscious of their consciousness. He knew them as women better than they knew him as man.

“Dot, I want to talk to you,” he began. “Are you up to it, or should I come back in the morning?”

Dot lay without moving. He knew that she was debating. Finally she slowly turned over and faced him, the mass of her tumbling brown tresses framing an oval of face delicate and demure. God, but she's really beautiful…Her deep brown eyes were haunted, empty. She lifted her head an inch from the damp pillow and then let it fall again, as though she was too weak to bear the strain of holding it erect. She managed a wan smile. What an actress! How do they learn it? Is it instinct?

“I'm sorry, Cross,” she whispered.

And he was truly sorry too. He wanted in that instant to take her in his arms and comfort her, but he knew that she would at once take advantage of it, would exploit it, would try to wring out of a simple act of compassion a promise of marriage. Goddamn! He reined in his feelings. She was gazing toward the window and the thought shot through his mind: She's about to switch her tactics…His eyes traveled along the slight outlines of her body stretching under the blanket; she was so tiny and yet somehow so strong, this girl. Woman as body of woman was not in his consciousness now, but there was rolling teasingly through his memory a mem
ory of it. He did not really want to hurt her, but what was he to do? How could he avoid it?

“Dot, let's start from the beginning,” he commenced. “Are you going to do what I suggested?”

“What do you mean, Cross?” she hedged, sparring for time, her eyes swimming helplessly at him.

“About the child,” he told her. “I've got it all arranged.”

She leapt to a sitting position. Her body rocked to and fro; she clenched her fists and shook them at him, her mouth gaping in protest.

“No, no, no!” she pealed hysterically. “Don't ask me
that
again! Please, Cross, if you do—”

“I
am
asking you,” he said. “There's nothing else I can do.”

She sprang from the bed in her nylon gown and screamed, then ran on bare, scampering feet across the room to the window. He walked toward her, calmly. The door burst open and Myrtle stood staring at them with parted lips and tense eyes.

“If you ask me that again, I'll jump out of the window! I swear I will! I swear, I swear…” Dot sobbed, clawing blindly at the window latch.

“Oh, God!” Myrtle exclaimed, grabbing Dot with both arms. “Darling, don't! You don't know what you are doing!” She looked beseechingly at Cross who stood near Dot. Cross had not budged; he regarded Dot coldly. “Please, Cross, help me to get her back to bed…”

“Get back in bed, Dot,” Cross said in a detached voice; he still did not touch her.

Dot sobbed brokenly, clinging convulsively to Myrtle. Then she slid heavily to the wooden floor, resting on her bare knees. The nylon gown was pulled taut across the curves of her firm, yellow thighs and through the sheer white translucence of the tissue he could see
the dark smudge of her pubic hair. She beat her knees frantically with her fists, violently shaking her head, tears oozing from her eyes, her body rocking back and forth. She keened: “No, no! I'll
never
kill my child! I'll die first! You can't make me
murder…
! It's my child and I'll keep it and love it like I love my own life…! Oh, God, don't let this happen to me!” She gulped for breath and fell prone to the floor, her body jerking with nervous spasms.

“Help me, Cross,” Myrtle begged, struggling with Dot.

He did not move; he stood looking silently at both of them. Myrtle stood over Dot, looking from him to Dot. Yes, she's trying to weigh how much influence this is having on me, he thought. A woman's business is emotion and her trade is carried on in cash of tears…He would help to keep Dot from leaping out of the window, but that was all he was prepared to do at the moment. And, besides, he was not convinced that she would leap.

“Come, darling,” Myrtle coaxed, lifting Dot.

Dot allowed herself finally to be led back to the bed. Myrtle eased her upon it and Dot sat and sobbed with tears streaming through the fingers of her hands which covered her face.

“I won't kill my child,” Dot took up the refrain. “I
won't…
”

“Darling, get in bed,” Myrtle cooed. “The doctor said you had to be careful. You're not well, you know.”

Cross knew that these words were aimed at him. When Dot was once more in bed, Myrtle turned to him.

“Why do you treat her like that?” she demanded. “The doctor said—”

“Leave me alone!” he shouted; he did not relent; he could not.

“I never dreamed anyone like you existed,” Myrtle said.

“You know better now,” he said tersely.

Myrtle ran from the room. Cross sat on the edge of the bed and tenderly touched Dot's shaking shoulder.

“Dot,” he began, “try to listen calmly. This may be the last time I can talk to you like this—”

“Don't say that, Cross. You're going to leave me?” she asked.

“I don't know what I'm going to do,” he said.

Dot lay very still. Cross heard an “L” train thundering past outside. Night was falling and a dark blue sheen of sky stood at the windowpane.

“You promised not to tell anybody about this without first telling me,” he began.

“Oh, Cross, I
had
to tell the doctor,” she said in a rush of words. “I was so nervous and he kept asking me what was the matter—”

“I'm not talking about
that
!”

Dot's eyes showed helpless bewilderment. He knew that her pretended naïveté was particularly dangerous, for in it was a pathetic appeal for love that his heart yearned to answer. He knew that her deception stemmed from her craving for security and that she was expecting him, if he ever caught her in it, to forgive her.

“Don't you know that if you destroy me, you're hurting yourself?” he asked her. “This calling in a lawyer—”

“Oh, Cross!” she wailed. “I didn't! You don't
understand
!”

“I understand more than you think,” he told her.

She flung herself into his arms and clutched him frantically. All grief and despair vanished from her face as quickly as a summer rain, and he could not help but marvel at the weapons of a woman when she fought.
Her volatile emotions altered with dialectical suddenness, changing into their opposites, disappearing, hiding under new guises.

“Mary phoned and told me to tell you that she had a lawyer for you,” he told her.

“That was Mary on the phone a while back?” she asked with wide eyes.

“Yes.”

Dot sighed with such relief that Cross wondered if she had other plots cooking…

“Oh, Mary…She's crazy,” Dot explained it away in a childlike voice. “I don't have to obey her, Cross. The lawyer was her idea.”

He would now try to see what was really on her mind.

“Dot, how old are you?” he asked her softly.

She did not look at him; her eyes were steadily before her and yet he knew that she knew that he was staring at her and waiting for an answer.

“Did you hear what I asked you, Dot?” he demanded.

She still did not answer or look at him. Well, he would wait her out. He had been intimately tender with this girl and now he had caught her acting most cruelly against him. What excuse would she give? Then he guessed her strategy; she would give none. She would just be a helpless, hard-put-upon, suffering woman playing her oldest and strongest role.

“Dot, I'm talking to you,” he said. “How old are you?”

The knowledge of the criminal threat she held over him stood between them like an invisible wall. She still could not turn to look at him; then she bent suddenly forward, covered her face with her hands and sobbed.

“I don't know what to do,” she gulped.

She had failed to answer; instead, she had let him see
the emotional dilemma in which she was caught, let him glimpse the terrible weapon she held in her hand, let him surmise how reluctantly she would use it, but use it she would.

“Look, Dot, you can haul me before a court and get me convicted, but I swear to you that I'll find some way out, you hear?” he warned her. “You lied to me. You told me you were seventeen. You led me to this crime, if you call it a crime. Now, how old are you?”

“I'll be sixteen in June,” she breathed, not looking at him.

Cross sighed. “Why did you lie to me?”

“I wanted you,” she whispered, her eyelashes nestling against her cheeks.

“And now you want me put into jail for ten, maybe twenty years?”

Myrtle entered and lifted the tray from the bed.

“Darling, I'll never do that to you,” Dot said sweetly, too sweetly.

“If you do, you'll never win,” he warned her solemnly.

“Maybe Superman'll kill himself and escape everybody?” Myrtle gave forth a brittle laugh. “You
could
run off to South America, too.”

She went briskly through the door and Cross balled his fingers in fury. He turned again to Dot.

“Look, start with Ma. Why did you go to her?”

Again Dot became too weak to talk; through tears she groped blindly for Cross's hand and gripped it.

“I was wild—Even my mother won't speak to me,” she whimpered.

“Your mother? Does
she
know?” he demanded, amazed.

She gave him a look that begged forgiveness. She had not kept her word. He would never be dumb enough to
trust anybody again. Dot's face suddenly brightened with joy.

“Your mother's wonderful,” she sang.

Goddammit! Wouldn't Dot ever learn that these assumed poses would never work.