Корнелл Вулрич - A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

He hadn’t seen me going in either. Must have gone around the corner for a quick coffee break.

How strange, I thought, he didn’t see me at either of the two points that count. But in between I bet he was killing time hanging around here in front of the entrance with nothing to do. That’s the way those things go sometimes: try not to be seen, and everybody spots you; don’t give a good damn whether or not you are, and everybody looks right through you just as though you weren’t there.

I turned away from him and went on my way, up the street and about my business. The past was dead. The future was resignation, fatality, and could only end one way now. The present was numbness, that could feel nothing. Like Novocaine needled into your heart. What was there in all the dimensions of time for me?

I turned left at the first up-and-down transverse I came to, and went down it for a block, and stopped in for a drink at a place. I needed one bad, I was beginning to feel shaky inside now. I’d been in this place before. It was called Felix’s (a close enough approximation, with a change of just one letter). It was three or four steps down, what you might call semi-below-side-walk-level. It was kept in a state of chronic dimness, a sort of half-light. Some said so you couldn’t see how cut and watered your drinks were.

It was just the place for me though. I didn’t want a bright light shining on me. That would come quick enough, in some precinct back room.

My invisibility had run out though. I had no sooner sat down than, before my drink had even had time to get in front of me, a girl came over to me. From behind, naturally; that was the only way she could. She tapped me on the shoulder with two fingers.

I didn’t know her, but she knew me, at second hand, it seemed. I leaned my ear toward her a little, so if she said anything I could hear what it was.

“Your friend wants to know why you don’t recognize him any more,” was what she said, reproachfully. And with that prim propriety that sometimes comes with a certain amount of alcohol — and almost invariably when a feeling of social unsurety goes with it — she added, “You shouldn’t be that way. He only wanted you to come over and join us.”

“What friend? Where?” I said grudgingly.

She pointed with the hand that was holding the change left over from the record player she’d just been to, which impeded the accuracy of her point somewhat because she had to keep three fingers bunched over in order to hang onto the coins. “In the booth. Don’t you see him?”

“How can I see anybody from here?” I asked her sullenly. “They’re all wearing shadow masks halfway up their faces. All I can see is their foreheads.” (The edge of the bar drew a line at about that height all around the room; the lights were below it, on the inside.)

“But he could see you ,” she challenged. “And so could I.”

“Well, he’s been in here longer than me. I only just now walked in through the door.” I thought that would get rid of her and break it up. Instead it brought on a controversy.

She gave the sort of little-girl grimace that goes with the expression “Oo, what you just said,” or “Oo, I’m going to tell on you.” Rounded her mouth to a big O, and her eyes to match. Which sat strangely on her along with the come-on makeup and the Martinis or whatever they had been.

“You’ve been buzzing around up here for the better part of an hour. First you were sitting in one place, then in another, then you went over to the cigarette machine. Then you were gone for a while — I guess to the telephone or the men’s room — and then you came back again. We had our eyes on you the whole time. Every time he hollered your name out, you’d look and then you’d look away again. So it wasn’t that you didn’t hear, it was you didn’t want to h—”

“What is my name then, if he hollered it so many times?”

I nearly fell over. She gave me my name; both of them in fact. Not quite accurately, but close enough to do.

Still unconvinced, but willing to be, I went over with her to take a look at him. He was in a sour mood by now over the fancied slight. He wouldn’t get up. He wouldn’t smile. He wouldn’t shake hands. He was also more than a little smashed. His head kept going around on his shoulders; the shoulders didn’t, just the head.

I didn’t know him well at all, but I did know him. But this wasn’t the night nor the particular segment of it to become enmeshed with stray one- or two-time acquaintances. All I kept thinking, with inwardly raised eyes, was: Why did I pick this particular place? There’s a line of bars all along this avenue. Why did I have to come in here and run into these two?

“I appreciate this no end,” he said sarcastically.

“You got your wires crossed,” I told him briefly. “I just came in.”

“You tell him,” he said to the girl.

“Look,” she catalogued, “we saw everything you got on. Just like you have it on you now.”

(“But not on me, on someone else,” I put in.)

“This same light-gray shortie coat—” She plucked it with her fingers.

(“There’s been a rash of them all over New York this season.”)

“And a shave-head haircut?”

(“Who hasn’t one?”)

“And even a shiny tie clip that flashed in my eyes from the light every time you turned a certain way?”

(“Everyone carries some kind of hardware across the front.”)

“But all three of them match up,” she expostulated. “You’re wearing them all.”

“So was somebody else. Half an hour ago, or maybe twenty minutes, sitting on the same stool I was, that’s all. It was a double-take.” And I omitted to add: You’re both blurry with booze, anyway.

He turned to address the girl, as a way of showing me what his feelings toward me were. “He’s copping a plea. You think you know a guy, and then you’re not good enough for him.”

“Your knowing me ended right now,” I said tersely.

He pushed his underlip out in hostility. “Then stand away from my table. Don’t crowd us like that.”

He got up in his seat and gave me a stiff-arm back, hand against chest.

I shoved him in return, also hand against chest, and he sat down again.

This time he got up and came out and around from behind the table and swung a roundhouse at me. I can’t remember whether it clipped or not. Probably not or I’d be able to.

I swung back at him and could feel it land, but he only gave a little. Maybe a step back with one foot.

His second swing, and the third of the whole capsule fight, and I went sprawling back on my shoulders across the floor. He was springier than he looked in his liquored condition.

The whole thing didn’t take a half-minute, but already everyone in the place was around us in a tight little circle, the way they always are at such a time. The bartender came running out from behind, cautioning, “All right, all right,” in an excited voice. All-right what he didn’t specify.

He helped me up, and then continued the process by arming me all the way over to the door and just beyond it, before I knew what was happening. He didn’t throw me out, simply sort of urged me out by one arm. There he let go my arm, told me, “Now go away from here. Go someplace else and do that.” And closed the door in my face.

I guess I was the one selected to be evicted because the other fellow had had a girl with him, and from where the bartender stood it looked as if I had gone over and accosted them, said something out of the way to her. The pantomime of what he had witnessed alone would have been enough to suggest that to him, without the need of an accompanying sound track.

He had turned his back to me, and was walking away from the door, when I reopened it wide enough to insert my head, one foot and one shoulder past it, and to protest indignantly: “I still have a drink coming to me. I paid you for it, and I never got it. Now where is it?”