Cornell Woolrich - Nightwebs (A Collection of Stories)

But he checked himself. He remembered a well-meaning piece of advice a bachelor friend of his had given him before his marriage. And bachelors always seem to know so much about marriage rules! “If she should ever threaten to walk out on you, and they all do at one time or another,” this sage had counseled him, “there’s only one way for you to handle that. Act as though you don’t care; let her go. She’ll come back fast enough, don’t worry. Otherwise, if you beg her not to, she’ll have the upper hand over you from then on.”

He scratched himself behind one ear. “I wonder if he was right?” he muttered. “Well, the only way to find out is to try it.”

So he left the table, went into the living-room, snapped on a reading-lamp, sprawled back in a chair, and opened his evening paper, perfectly unconcerned to all appearances. The only way you could tell he wasn’t, was by the little glances he kept stealing over the top of the paper every once in a while to see if she was really going to carry out her threat.

She acted as if she were. She may have been waiting for him to come running in there after her and beg for forgiveness, and when he didn’t, forced herself to go through with it. Stubborn pride on both their parts. And they were both so young, and this was so new to them. Six weeks the day after tomorrow.

She came bustling in, set down a little black valise in the middle of the room, and put on her gloves. Still waiting for him to make the first overtures for reconciliation. But he kept making the breach worse every time he opened his mouth, all because of what some fool had told him. “Sure you’ve got everything?” he said quietly.

She was so pretty even when she was angry. “I’m glad you’re showing your true colors; I’d rather find out now than later.”

Someone should have pushed their two heads together, probably. But there wasn’t anyone around but just the two of them. “You’re making a mountain out of a molehill. Well, pick a nice comfortable hotel while you’re at it.”

“I don’t have to go to a hotel. I’m not a waif. I’ve got a perfectly good mother who’ll receive me with open arms.”

“Quite a trip in the middle of the night, isn’t it?” And to make matters worse, he opened his wallet as if to give her the money for her fare.

That put the finishing touch to her exasperation. “I’ll get up there without any help from you, Mr. Ed Bliss! And I don’t want any of the things you ever gave me, either! Take your old silver-fox piece!” Fluff . “And take your old diamond ring!” Plink . “And take your old pin money!” Scuff-scuff-slap . “And you can take back that insurance policy you took out on me, too! Simon Legree! Ivan the Terrible!”

He turned the paper back to where the box scores were. He only hoped that bachelor was right. “See you day after tomorrow, or whenever you get tired playing hide-and-seek,” he said calmly.

“You’ll never see me again as long as you live!” It rang in his ears for days afterwards.

She picked up the valise, the front door went boom! and he was single again.

The thing to do now was to pretend he didn’t care, and then she’d never try anything like this again. Otherwise, his life would be made miserable. Every time they had the least little argument, she’d threaten to go back to her mother.

That first night he did all the things he’d always wanted to do, but they didn’t stack up to so much after all. Took off his socks and walked around in his bare feet, let the ashes lie wherever they happened to drop off, drank six bottles of cold beer through their mouths and let them lie all over the room, and went to bed without bothering to shave.

He woke up about four in the morning, and it felt strange knowing she wasn’t in the house with him, and he hoped she was all right wherever she was, and he finally forced himself to go back to sleep again. In the morning there wasn’t anyone to wake him up. Her not being around didn’t seem so strange then simply because he didn’t have time to notice; he was exactly an hour and twenty-two minutes late for work.

But when he came back that night, it did seem strange, not finding anyone there waiting for him, the house dark and empty, and beer bottles rolling all around the living-room floor. Last night’s meal, their last one together, was still strewn around on the table after twenty-four hours. He poked his finger at one of the biscuits, thought remorsefully, “I should have kept quiet. I could have pretended they were good, even if they weren’t.” But it was too late now; the damage had been done.

He had to eat out at a counter by himself, and it was very depressing. He picked up the phone twice that evening, at 10:30 and again at 11:22, on the point of phoning up to her mother’s place and making up with her, or at least finding out how she was. But each time he sort of slapped his own hand, metaphorically speaking, in rebuke and hung up without putting the call through. “I’ll hold out until tomorrow,” he said to himself. “If I give in now, I’m at her mercy.”

The second night was rocky. The bed was no good; they needed to be made up about once every twenty-four hours, he now found out for the first time. A cop poked him in the shoulder with his club at about three in the morning and growled, “What’s your trouble, bud?”

“Nothing that’s got anything to do with what’s in your rule book,” Bliss growled back at him. He picked himself up from the curb and went back inside his house again.

He would have phoned her as soon as he woke up in the morning, but he was late again — only twelve minutes behind, this time, though — and he couldn’t do it from the office without his fellow draftsmen getting wise she had left him.

He finally did it when he came back that evening, the second time, after eating. This was exactly 8:17 P.M. Thursday, two nights after she’d gone.

He said, “I want to talk to Mrs. Belle Alden, in Denby, this state. I don’t know her number. Find it for me and give it to me.” He’d never met Smiles’ mother, incidentally.

While he was waiting for the operator to ring back, he was still figuring how to get out of it; find out how she was without seeming to capitulate. Young pride! Maybe I can talk the mother into not letting on I called to ask about her, so she won’t know I’m weakening. Let it seem like she’s the first one to thaw out.

The phone rang and he picked it up fast, pride or no pride.

“Here’s your party.”

A woman’s voice got on, and he said, “Hello, is this Mrs. Alden?”

The voice said it was.

“This is Ed, Smiles’ husband.”

“Oh, how is she?” she said animatedly.

He sat down at the phone. It took him a minute to get his breath back again. “Isn’t she there?” he said finally.

The voice was surprised. “Here? No. Isn’t she there ?”

For a minute his stomach had felt all hollow. Now he was all right again. He was beginning to get it. Or thought he was. He winked at himself, with the wall in front of him for a reflector. So the mother was going to bat for her. They’d cooked up this little fib between them, to punish him. They were going to throw a little fright into him. He’d thought he was teaching her a lesson, and now she was going to turn the tables on him and teach him one. He was supposed to go rushing up there tearing at his hair and foaming at the mouth. “Where’s Smiles? She’s gone! I can’t find her!” Then she’d step out from behind the door, crack her whip over his head, and threaten: “Are you going to behave? Are you ever going to do that again?” And from then on, she’d lead him around with a ring in his nose.

“You can’t fool me, Mrs. Alden,” he said self-assuredly. “I know she’s there. I know she told you to say that.”