James Cain: The Magician's Wife

“So! You made a sap of yourself, didn’t you? Talking about her navel — now, there was an idea for you, something to thrill any girl! And then when she smacked you down you had to blow your top — get sore, like any third-rate jerk, like some goddam truck driver. Aren’t you ever going to learn? Well, you never have... Forget her! She could have said, couldn’t she? Then it wouldn’t have happened! Why the hell didn’t she say? You asked her plain enough, and — knock it off, will you, forget her! You want to set yourself NUTS?”

He got this off to his mirror, a full-length one set in the closet door in his bedroom, for, like many who live alone, he had formed the habit of mumbling while tramping from room to room — but sometimes went further than this and had things out with himself directly. He calmed himself down, however, went into the living room, and without turning the floor lamps on, sat down in a chair by a window and stared out at the gathering dusk. After some time the phone rang. “Mr. Lockwood?” asked a girl when he answered.

“Speaking,” he said.

“This is Sally Alexis.”

“Oh!” he exclaimed, and then again: “Oh!” But his voice sounded muffled and queer, and she seemed nonplused when she said: “You — remember me? The girl who served your lunch?”

“Why, sure I remember you. Why, yes — of course I do. Over at Portico. Well, what’s on your mind?”

But he sounded queerer than ever, and moments of silence went by while he cupped the phone with one hand and banged his brow with the other, telling himself, “Snap out of it. What the hell, has the cat got your tongue?” Then her voice cut across his, asking if he was Mr. Lockwood. Of Grant’s? Mr. Clay Lockwood? Then at last he regained control and was able to speak like himself, with a fair imitation of naturalness. Yes, he told her, he was Clay Lockwood of Grant’s, and if he sounded funny, it was probably from force of habit, keeping his voice down, what with people out in the hall — “so as not to be overheard.” With apparent relief she said then that that explained it, and then, drawing a deep breath, went on: Well — what I called about—!”

“Yes?” he said. “What did you?”

“Two things, actually. First, your five dollars.”

“Please, forget my five dollars.”

“Well, I certainly won’t. Mr. Lockwood, girls don’t acknowledge their tips, and I don’t encourage them to — for all sorts of reasons. It just doesn’t work out and, besides, could lead to things we’d better not go into. So you won’t be hearing from Ida, but I’m not a waitress, so I can tell you that getting a tip like that meant something to her. She has all kinds of trouble at home, and trouble always costs. So her face really lit up when I handed that money over, and I just wanted to let you know.”

“Then, O.K. — but please, no more about it.”

“So now. So now. So now.”

“Yeah?” he said, and then echoed: “So now? ”

They laughed, a bit breathlessly, both seeming to know that things were about to be said that would mean a lot more than five dollars. She drew an audible breath, then declaimed: “Mr. Lockwood, you did not overstep!”

“Oh, I did. No argument about it at all.”

“You did not. I won’t have it that way!”

“And — that’s the real reason you called?”

“Well, maybe so. It was nice, just the same, that you did leave Ida five dollars, so I had such a pleasant excuse. So all right, it could be the real reason at that — why I looked you up in the book, counted ten — and dialed.”

“To say I did not overstep?”

“It wouldn’t drop out of my mind.”

“I made a pass, though.”

“So? Who minds a little pass?”

“I talked about your navel.”

“Well, as I told you, it’s there.”

“I’d love to wobble my finger in it.”

“Listen! Are you starting all over again?”

“I’d like to. Why didn’t you say you were married?”

“Mr. Lockwood, that’s the sixty-four-dollar question that I’ve been asking myself ever since you went out the door. And I’m not sure I know — how do you like that? Now that I have you, at a distance — a safe distance, I mean — on the other end of a phone and can talk in a natural way, be myself, without getting all fussed — I may just as well tell the truth and own up, I didn’t want to say. I was having a very good time, enjoying it, passes and all. I kept holding it back on purpose, Mr. Lockwood.”

“Who’s this Mr. Lockwood? To you I’m Clay.”

“Then why don’t you call me Sally?”

“Sally, where are you calling from?”

“Home. Why?”

“Who else is there?”

“Nobody — I’m alone.” And then, getting the point: “Oh, you mean my husband? He’s not here, Clay — he works at night. He’s in show business. He’s a magician. You must have heard of him — he has the act at the Lilac Flamingo... Well, what do you think? That I’d be dumb enough to put in this call to you with somebody listening in?”

“Just asking, that’s all.”

“Well, certainly not! ”

“Then — we’re back where we were before. Where would you like to go? To step out a little with me? And where do I pick you up?”

“But I couldn’t go anywhere.”

“If not, why not, Sally?”

“I’m too well known, that’s why. Clay, I see hundreds of people a day, and a lot of them know who I am. And even if they don’t—”

“O.K., visit me here.”

“Said the spider to the fly.”

“Where do you live? I’ll come get you.”

“No! No! No!”

She whimpered it like a child, and when he insisted, she hung up to “think things over,” saying she’d “call him back.” He thought things over too, again in the chair by the window, and thought them over hard. He wasn’t a stranger to women, and in the games he had played with them had scored a bit, and most pleasantly. There had been the girl in high school at Trenton, New Jersey, where he was born, and the guilty year with her before they both went off to college. There had been the woman at Easton, Pennsylvania, who had rented him a room his first few weeks as a student, and her liberal ideas about payment. There had been a bank teller at Coatsville, where he had herded cows one summer after getting interested in meat. But the games a student plays aren’t really for keeps, and so he had gone his way blithely, with no wounds to mar his memories. Now, however, he would have to play as a pro, and as he looked down at the lights, prickles ran up his back, as though to warn him of danger. When the phone rang, he hesitated. It rang twice before he answered.

If possible, she was even more frightened than he was, or at least seemed to be, and took five minutes on his instructions, “so we don’t have any slip-up.” She lived on Elm, near Kennedy, just a few blocks away, but the problem was “nosy neighbors,” as she put it, so she must leave the house on foot, “dressed as I always am when I go to the picture show — so don’t expect any Zsa Zsa Gabor iced up for a personal appearance.” She would have to buy a ticket “at the Harlow Theater on Elm Street, from that dumb blonde cashier who lives three doors from me, and be checked by the doorman, who’s her husband and doubles as ticket taker.” But then “I can slip out the fire door, which is out of sight from the lobby, and if you’re parked up the street and wink your lights when I come, I can be in your car in a flash and — you can take it from there. But I must be back, must be seen leaving the theater, when the late show lets out! Promise you’ll get me there! On time!”