William Gresham - Nightmare Alley

She stood up and moved closer to him. “Don’t write to me, Stan. And don’t get drunk. Take sedative pills if you have to, but don’t get drunk. Promise me.”

“Sure. Where you going to write to me?”

“Charles Beveridge, General Delivery, Yonkers.”

“Kiss me.”

This time her mouth was warm.

At the door he slid his arm around her, cupping her breast with his hand, and kissed her again. Suddenly he drew up, his face sharp with alarm. “Wait a minute, baby. He’s going to start thinking back on who tipped me to that abortion. And he’s going to think straight to you! Come on, sweetheart, we’ve both got to scram.”

Lilith laughed: two sharp notes like the bark of a fox. “He doesn’t know that I know that. I worked it out from things he wouldn’t say.” Her eyes were still laughing. “Don’t tell me how to look out for myself, lover. Tell me-” A black-gloved hand pressed his arm. “Tell me how you made that precision balance move!”

He grinned and said over his shoulder, “Yonkers,” as he walked swiftly out of the door.

Mustn’t use the car. Cab drivers remember people. Subway to Grand Central. Walk, do not run, to the nearest exit. One hundred and fifty grand. Christ, I could hire a flock of private cops myself.

In a dressing room under the station he opened the traveling bag and pulled out a shirt and a light suit. There was a fifth of Hennessy; he uncapped the bottle for a short one.

A hundred and fifty grand. Standing in his underwear he fastened on a money vest with twelve pockets. Then he took up the roll of currency-one handful-his profits from the church racket. Take a fifty and a few twenties and stash the rest away.

Snapping off the rubber band from the fat roll he peeled off the fifty. The next bill was a single. And the one after it. But he hadn’t cluttered up the convincer boodle with singles! Had he added any money to the pile that night in Lilith’s office? Singles!

He spread out the wad, passing the bills from one hand to the other. Then he turned so that the light above the wash bowl would fall on them and riffled through them again. Except for the outside fifty the whole works was nothing but ones!

Stan’s eyebrows began to itch and he dug at them with his knuckles. His hands smelled of money and faint perfume from bills carried by women.

The Great Stanton took another pull of brandy and sat down carefully on the white dressing stool. What the hell had gone sour now? Counting over showed three hundred and eighty-three dollars in the boodle. There had been eleven thousand- and the “take”? Good Christ!

He let the dollars fall to the floor and snatched at one of the brown envelopes, cutting his thumb as he tore it open.

There was a shuffle of feet outside and the attendant’s white duck trousers appeared beneath the door. “You all right in there, sir?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure.”

This pile ought to be all five-century notes-

“You ain’t feeling faint, is you, mister?”

Oh, good God, leave me alone . “No. I’m okay, I tell you.”

“Well, that’s fine, sir. I just thought I heard noise like some gentleman having a fit. Gentleman have a fit in here last week and I had to crawl under the door and hold him down. Had to get the porter, mop up all the blood where he cut his self.”

“For God’s sake, man, let me get dressed! ” Stan grabbed a dollar from the scattered bills at his feet and held it under the door.

“Oh-oh! Thank you , sir. Thank you .”

Stan tore off the brown paper. Singles!

The other envelope was tough; he ripped into it with his teeth. Again-the thick packet contained nothing but one-dollar bills!

The pastor of the Church of the Heavenly Message crushed a handful of them in his fist, his eyes traveling along the black lines between the tiles of the floor. He let out an explosive sound like a cough; lifting his fist he beat the crumpled paper against his forehead twice. Then he fired the money into a corner and turned on both faucets of the washbowl. In the roaring water he let himself go; he sank his face in the basin and screamed, the sound bubbling up past his ears through the rush of water. He screamed until his diaphragm was sore and he had to stop and sit down on the floor, stuffing a towel in his mouth and tearing it with his teeth.

At last he hoisted himself up and reached for the brandy, swallowing until he had to stop and gasp for breath. In the mirror’s merciless light he saw himself: hair streaming, eyes bloodshot, mouth twisted. Bleeding wounds of Christ!

The gypsy switch.

He stood, swaying, his hair falling damply over his eyes.

Dr. Lilith Ritter said, “Sit down, Mr. Carlisle.”

Her voice was cold, kind, and sad-and as professional as the click of a typewriter.

His head began to shake as if he were saying no to a long series of questions. It went on shaking.

“I’ve done everything I can,” said the sad voice through cigarette smoke. “When you first came to me you were in bad shape. I had hoped that by getting at the roots of your anxiety I could avert a serious upset. Well-” The hand gestured briefly with its star sapphire. “I failed.”

He began rubbing his fingers along the top of the desk, listening to the small whimpering noise of sweat against mahogany.

“Listen to me, Mr. Carlisle.” The doctor leaned forward earnestly. “Try to understand that these delusions are part of your condition. When you first came to me you were tortured by guilt connected with your father-and your mother. All of these things you think you have done-or that have been done to you lately-are merely the guilt of your childhood projected. Do I make myself clear?”

The room was rocking, the lamps were double rings of light, sliding back and forth through each other while the walls billowed. His head shook: no.

“The symbolism is quite obvious, Mr. Carlisle. You were filled with the unconscious desire to kill your father. You picked up somewhere-I don’t know where-the name of Grindle, an industrialist, a man of power, and identified him with your father. You have a very peculiar reaction to older men with a stubble of white beard. It makes you think of fungus on the face of a corpse-the corpse you wanted your father to be.”

The doctor’s voice was very soft now; soothing, kind, unanswerable.

“When you were a child you saw your mother having intercourse. Therefore tonight in hallucination you thought you saw Grindle, the father-image, in intercourse with your mistress- who has come to represent your mother. And that’s not all, Mr. Carlisle. Since I have been your counselor you have made a transference to me-you see me also as your mother. That explains your sexual delusions with regard to me.”

He slid his hands over his face, mashing the palms into his eyes, gripping strands of hair between his fingers and wrenching until pain freed his frozen lungs and let him draw a breath. His thoughts ran over and over, playing the same words until they became meaningless: grindle grindle grindle grindle mother mother mother stop stop stop. The voice didn’t stop.

“There is one thing more you must face, Mr. Carlisle: the thing that is destroying you. Ask yourself why you wanted to kill your father. Why was there so much guilt connected with that wish? Why did you see me-me, the mother-image-in hallucinations both as your mistress and as a thief who had cheated you?”

She was standing up now and leaning across the desk, her face quite near him. She spoke gently.

“You wanted intercourse with your mother, didn’t you?”

His hand went up to cover his eyes again, his mouth opened to make a wordless noise that could have been anything, a yes, a no, or both. He said, “Uh-uh-uh-uh.” Then it seemed that all the pain in him was concentrated in the back of his right hand in a sudden, furious stab like a snake bite. He dropped it and stared at the doctor, momentarily in focus again. She was smiling.