Флетчер Флора - Leave Her to Hell

Faith Salem returned with the snapshot and the Christmas card. I took them from her and finshed my bourbon and looked first at the picture. I don’t know if I would have seen in it what I did if I hadn’t already heard about Constance Markley what I had. It’s impossible to know how much of what we see, or think we see, is the result of suggestion. Constance and Faith were standing side by side. Constance was shorter, slighter of build, less striking in effect. Faith was looking directly into the camera, but Constance was looking around and up at the face of Faith. It seemed to me that her expression was one of adoration. This was what might have been no more than the result of suggestion. I don’t know.

I took the Christmas card out of its envelope. It had clearly been expensive, as cards go, and had probably been selected with particular care. On the back, Constance Markley had written a note. It said how miserable and lonely she was at home, how the days were interminable, how she longed for the time to come when she could return to Amity and Faith. Christmas vacation, I thought, must have lasted all of two weeks. I read the note with ambivalence. I felt pity, and I felt irritation.

Faith Salem had finished her bourbon and was looking at me over the empty glass. Her eyes were clouded, and she shook her head slowly from side to side.

“I guess you’ve got an idea,” she said.

“That’s an exaggeration,” I said.

“Why are you interested in all this? I don’t understand.”

“Maybe it’s just that I’m naturally suspicious of a coincidence. Every time I come across one, I get curious.”

“What coincidence?”

“Never mind. If I put it in words, I’d probably decide it sounded too weak to bother with. I think I’ll drive down to Amity, and the trip’ll hike expenses. You’d better give me a hundred bucks.”

“All right. I’ll get it for you.”

She got up and went out of the room again. I watched her out and stood up to watch her in. From both angles and both sides she still looked good. She handed me the hundred bucks, and I took it and shoved it in a pocket and put my arms around her and kissed her. She had meant what she had said. She had said she wouldn’t kiss me again, and she didn’t. She only stood quietly and let me kiss her, which was different and not half so pleasant. I took my arms away and stepped back.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“So am I,” she said.

Then we said good-bye, and I left. Going, I met Graham Markley in the hall, coming. We spoke politely, and he asked me how the investigation was getting along. I said it was getting along all right. He didn’t even seem curious about the condition of my face.

I stopped in a package liquor store and bought a fifth of Jim Beam. Carrying Jim, I climbed the stairs to my room. It was a long way up there — a long, long way. My head ached, and my legs ached, and my feet dragged on the treads. I was filled with a kind of ebullient and impotent anger, and the cause of the anger, aside from what had been done to me, was that I had come to a time and condition where I wanted to quit doing what I was committed to do, but I could not quit in good faith with myself. Not that I’m a hero. Not that I’m as ethical as I’ve been accused of being. It is only that I must, in order to live with him compatibly, sustain a certain amount of respect and fondness for Percy Hand.

Holding Jim like a suckling in the cradle of my right arm, I used my left hand to find a key and open the door to my room. Inside in the close and comforting darkness, I leaned against the door and took three long and leisurely breaths. Then I had the sudden feeling that the darkness was breathing too — had stirred and made the slightest sound — and it was as suddenly a threat and no longer a comfort. Straightening, pulling away from the door, I took Jim by the neck and made a club of the suckling. Tensed against the rush of darkness toward me, I felt on the wall with my free hand for a switch.

“Don’t turn on the lights,” Robin Robbins said.

Aware that I had not breathed for a while, I started again.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I said.

“At the moment, I’m standing here by the window looking at you. Before you came, I was standing here at the window looking down into the street.”

“It’s not much of a view. I can’t imagine why you chose it.”

“I didn’t choose it. I was here, and so was it, and we got together. I was thinking. I always like to stand at a window and look down into a street when I’m thinking. It’s somehow helpful. I guess it’s psychological.”

“Psychology again? The last time we got psychological, it ended badly for both of us.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

I could tell from the sound and simplicity of her words that she meant them. She said she was sorry, and she was. Not for herself, but for me. Probably, in all her life, she had not wasted as much as an hour feeling sorry for herself. In her tough little psyche, whatever a psyche is, she had sheltered and somehow sustained a sense of fairness according to her notion, the capacity to regret the hurt she did and the trouble she caused. Robin Robbins was becoming a girl I was beginning to like.

“How did you get in here?” I said.

“I persuaded the janitor. By telling him I needed to see you on urgent business, I managed to convince him that I only wanted to spend the night for fun. He came up and unlocked the door for me, and it was clear that he was sympathetic and in favor of people enjoying themselves. He’s very partial to you, incidentally. He thinks you’re a fine fellow, and I think so too.”

“You’re only trying to compensate for getting the hell beat out of me.”

“And me. Not that it matters. It was my fault for being obvious, and I said I was sorry.”

“Forget it. My pride was hurt, but otherwise nothing seriously. When looking out of windows to assist your thinking, do you always do it in the dark?”

“Whenever there is dark to do it in. I like the dark. Do you know that there are other things about the dark besides the look of it? You can feel it too. It feels different from light, and you can close your eyes and feel the difference around you. If I were blind, I would always know whether it was day or night by the feel. It smells different too, and sounds are heard differently in it. Small sounds are bigger, and big sounds are smaller. In the dark it doesn’t matter so much what has happened or what may happen. Nothing matters so much in the dark.”

During the time of our conversation, the pupils of my eyes had dilated in adjustment to the darkness she liked, and I could see her by the window. Beside her and a little beyond her, the glass below the blind was thinly glazed by the soiled light of a lamp in the street below.

“Nevertheless,” I said, “I think it would be better now if we had a light. Do you mind if I turn one on?”

“Wait a minute first. Do you know that you’re being followed?”

“Yes. By you.”

“Not by me. I came here ahead of you and waited. That isn’t following. By someone in a small black sedan. He drove up a minute or two after you did, and he’s now parked across the street. He went to the corner and turned and came back, and I’m sure he was following you, because he got out of the car and stood for a moment looking up at this window, and then he got back into the car. Would you like to see?”

I walked across to the window and looked down into the street, and the small black sedan was there by the curb, as she had said, and I could see in the dense darkness of its interior the tiny glow of a bright coal when someone drew on a cigarette. I could smell Robin Robbins beside me. I could hear her breathing, and I had a notion that I could hear, if I listened intently, the beating of her heart. She smelled good, and the soft sound of her life, which breathing is, was at once comforting and exciting.