William Gresham - Nightmare Alley

“What do you mean?”

Her glance, raised to his for the first time, was calm and benevolent. “While I was in the bathroom you went into my office and tried out the key you had made for my file cabinet. I saw it on the dressing table after you had taken off your clothes. Now it’s not there. You’ve hidden it. But I recognized the notches. You took the impression from my key the last time you went to bed with me, didn’t you?”

He said nothing but smoked quickly; the ember of his cigarette became long and pointed and angry red.

“I was going to send you home, Stan, but I think you need a little lesson in manners. And I need my toenails fixed. You can help me with the polish. It’s in the drawer of the bed table. Bring it over here.”

Dully he stamped out his cigarette, spilling some of the embers and quickly sweeping them back into the tray. He took the kit of nail polish and went over to her, feeling the air against his naked flesh cold and hostile. He threw his shirt over his shoulders and sat down on the carpet at her feet.

Lilith had taken the drawer marked sapphires from its little cabinet and was lifting the stones with a pair of jeweler’s forceps, holding them in the light of the desk lamp. Without looking at him she shook one foot free of its slipper and placed it on his bare knee. “This is very good for you, darling. Occupational therapy.”

The Great Stanton twisted cotton on the end of an orange-wood stick and dipped it into the bottle of polish remover. It smelled acrid and sharply chemical as he swabbed one tiny toenail with it, taking off the chipped polish evenly. Once he paused to kiss the slender foot at the instep but Lilith was absorbed in her tray of gems. Growing bolder, he drew aside the black silk and kissed her thigh. This time she turned and pulled the robe primly over knees, giving him a glance of amused tolerance. “You’ve had enough sinfulness for one evening, Mr. Carlisle. Be careful not to spill polish on the rug. You wouldn’t want me to rub your nose in it and then throw you out the back door by the scruff of your neck, would you, darling?”

Bracing his hand against the curved instep he began to paint her nails. The rose-colored enamel spread evenly and he thought of the workbench out in the garage and its paint cans. Painting a scooter he had made out of boxes and old baby-carriage wheels. Mother said, “That’s beautiful, Stanton. I have several kitchen chairs you can paint for me.” The old man had been saving that paint for something. That meant another licking.

“Stan, for heaven’s sake, be more careful! You hurt me with the orange stick.”

He had finished the first foot and started on the other without knowing it.

“What would you do for a shoeshine if you didn’t have me around?” He was startled at the amount of hostility in his own voice.

Lilith laid down a sapphire, narrowing her eyes. “I might have another friend of mine do them. Possibly someone who could take me to the theater, who didn’t have to be so afraid of being seen with me. Someone who wouldn’t have to sneak in and out.”

He set down the bottle of polish remover. “Lilith, wait until we make a killing. One big-time believer-” But he didn’t sound convinced himself; his voice died. “I-I want to be seen with you, Lilith. I-I didn’t think up this setup. You were the one who told me to hang on to Molly. If I went back to the carny-”

“Stanton Carlisle. Pastor of the Church of the Heavenly Message. I didn’t think you could be jealous. I didn’t think you had that much of a heart, Stan. I thought all you cared about was money. And power. And more money.”

He stood up, throwing off the shirt, his hands clenched. “Go on, pal. You can tell me about as many other guys as you want. This is fifty-fifty. I’m not jealous if another guy shakes hands with you. How’s that so different from-the other thing?”

She watched him through eyes almost closed. “Not so very different. No. Not different at all. I shook hands regularly with the old judge-the one who set me up in practice when I was a court psychiatrist on a city salary. All cats have gray paws in the dark, you know, Stan. And I can vaguely recall, when I was sixteen, how five boys in our neighborhood waited for me one evening as I was coming home from night school. They took me into a vacant lot and shook hands with me one after the other. I think each came back twice.”

He had turned as she spoke, his mouth hanging open idiotically, his hair falling over his face. He lurched over to the dressing table with its wing mirrors, gaped at his image, his eyes ravaged. Then in a spatter of desperate groping he seized the nail scissors and gouged at his forehead with them.

The stab of pain was followed instantly by a tearing sensation in his right wrist and he saw that Lilith stood beside him, levering his hand behind his shoulder until he dropped the scissors. She had not forgotten to pull up her robe and held it bunched under one arm to keep it from brushing her toes with their wet enamel.

“Put a drop of iodine on it, Stan,” she said crisply. “And don’t try drinking the bottle. There’s not enough in it to do more than make you sick.”

He let the cold water roar past his face and then tore at his hair with the rich, soft towel. His forehead wasn’t bleeding any more.

“Stan, darling-”

“Yeah. Coming.”

“You never do anything by halves, do you, lover? So few men have the courage to do what they really want to do. If you’ll come in here and fuss over me a little more-I love to be fussed over, darling-I’ll tell you a bedtime story, strictly for adults.”

He was putting on his clothes. When he was dressed he pulled up a hassock and said, “Give me your foot.”

Smiling, Lilith put the gems away and leaned back, stretching her arms luxuriously, watching him with the sweetest of proprietary smiles.

“That’s lovely, darling. Much more accurately than I could do it. Now about the bedtime story-for I’ve decided to risk it and ask you to stay over with me. You can, darling. Just this once. Well, I know a man-don’t be silly, darling, he’s a patient. Well, he started as a patient and later became a friend-but not like you, darling. He’s a very shrewd, capable man and he might do us both a lot of good. He’s interested in psychic phenomena.”

Stan looked up at her, holding her foot in both his hands. “How’s he fixed for dough?”

“Very well-heeled as you would put it, darling. He lost a sweetheart when he was in college and he has been weighed down with guilt from it ever since. She died from an abortion. Well, at first I thought I’d have to pass him along to one of my tame Freudians-he seemed likely to get out of hand with me. But then he became interested in the psychic. His company makes electric motors. You’ll recognize the name-Ezra Grindle.”

holds a conqueror. Sphinxes draw him. They turn in opposite directions to rend him apart .

GRINDLE, EZRA, industrialist, b. Bright’s Falls, N. Y. Jan. 3, 1878, s. Matthias Z. and Charlotte (Banks). Brewster Academy and Columbia U. grad. 1900 engineering. m. Eileen Ernst 1918, d. 1927. Joined sales staff, Hobbes Chem. and Dye, 1901, head of Chi. office 1905; installed plants Rio de Janeiro, Manila, Melbourne 1908-10; export mgr. 1912. Dollar-a-year man, Washington, D. C. 1917-18. Amer. Utilities, gen. mgr. 1919, v.p. 1921. Founded Grindle Refrigeration 1924, Manitou Casting and Die 1926 (subsidiary), in 1928 merged five companies to form Grindle Sheet Metal and Stamping. Founded Grindle Electric Motor Corp. 1929, pres. and chairman of board. Author: The Challenge of Organized Labor, 1921; Expediting Production: a Scientific Guide, 1928; Psychology in Factory Management (with R. W. Gilchrist) 1934. Clubs: Iroquois, Gotham Athletic, Engineering Club of Westchester County. Hobbies: billiards, fishing.