Francis Nevins - Night and Fear

He extricated himself and regained his feet before the other had. He went over, closed and securely latched-down the window, drew the shade. Then he went back to where the other still lay soddenly inert, stood over him.

“Get up!” he ordered roughly.

Blake had his downward-turned face buried in the crook of one arm. Rogers gave him a nudge with his foot that was just short of a kick.

Blake drew himself slowly together, crawled back to his feet by ascending stages, using the seat of a chair, then the top of a table next to it, until finally he was erect.

They faced one another.

“You won’t let me live, and you won’t even let me die!” Blake’s voice rose almost to a full-pitched scream. “Then whaddya after? Whad-dya want?”

“Nothing.” Rogers’ low-keyed response was almost inaudible coming after the other’s strident hysteria. “I told you that many times, didn’t I? Is there any harm in going around where you go, being around where you are? There’s plenty of room for two, isn’t there?”

Rogers pushed him back on the bed, and Blake lay there sprawled full-length, without attempting to rise again. Rogers took a towel and drenched it in cold water, then wound it around itself into a rope.

He laced it across his face a couple of times, with a heavy, sluggish swing of the arm, trailing a fine curtain of spray through the air after it. Then he flung it down.

When he spoke again his voice had slowed still further, to a sluggard drawl. “Take it easy. What’s there to get all steamed-up about? Here, look this over.”

He reached into his rear trouser-pocket, took out a billfold, extracted a worn letter and spread it open, holding it reversed for the other to see. It was old, he’d been carrying it around with him for months. It was an acknowledgment, on a Police Department letterhead, of his resignation. He held it a long time, to let it sink in. Then he finally put it away again.

Blake quit sniveling after awhile, and was carried off on the tide of alcohol in him into oblivion.

Rogers made no move to leave the room.

He gave the latched window a glance. Then he scuffed over a chair and sat down beside the bed. He lit a cigarette, and just sat there watching him. Like a male nurse on duty at the bedside of a patient.

He wanted him alive and he wanted him in his right mind.

Hatred cannot remain at white heat indefinitely. Neither can fear. The human system would not be able to support them at that pitch, without burning itself out. But nature is great at providing safety-valves. What happens next is one of two things: either the conditions creating that hatred or fear are removed, thus doing away with them automatically. Or else custom, familiarity, creeps in, by unnoticeable degrees, tempering them, blurring them. Pretty soon the hatred is just a dull red glow. Then it is gone entirely. The subject has become used to the object that once aroused hatred or fear—

And that happened to Bonny Blake. He became so accustomed to Rogers that he forgot to be afraid of him — even took to boasting, among his friends, about Rogers’ trailing him.

One night, at a hotel back in New York, there was a knock at the door of Rogers’ room. He opened it and Blake was standing there.

They stood looking at one another a minute.

A tentative grin flickered around the edges of Blake’s mouth. Rogers answered it in kind.

“You doing anything, Rodge?” They were Donny and Rodge to each other now.

“No, come on in,” Rogers answered, stepping back.

Donny Blake nonchalantly leaned in at an angle, from the waist up. “Fellow I used to know, guy named Bill Harkness, just dropped in to the room. Haven’t seen him in years. We been chewing the rag and now we’re fresh out of gab. Thought maybe you’d like to come on over and join us in a little three-handed game, what d’ya say?”

“Only for half an hour or so,” Rogers answered. “I’m turning in early tonight.”

Blake withdrew, leaving the door ajar to speed Rogers on his way in to them. He left his own that way too, opposite it.

Rogers put out his light and got ready to go over to them. Then he stopped there on the threshold, half in, half out, yawned undecidedly, like someone else once had, one night a long time ago, on his way out to get a midnight edition of a newspaper.

He didn’t have to be right at his elbow every night, did he? He could let it ride for one night, couldn’t he, out of so many hundreds of them? He’d be right across the hall from them, he could leave his door slightly ajar. He was tired, and that bed looked awfully good. He was a human being, not a machine. He had his moments of letdown, and this was one of them. Nothing was ever going to happen. All he’d managed to accomplish was play the parole-officer to Blake, keep him straight. And that wasn’t what he’d been after.

He was about to change his mind, go back inside again.

But they’d seen him from where they were, and Blake waved him on. “Coming, Rodge? What’re you standing there thinking about?”

That swung the balance. He closed his own door, crossed over, and went in there with them.

They were sitting there at the table waiting for him to join them. This Harkness struck him as being engaged in some shady line of business. But then that, was an easy guess. Anyone on Blake’s acquaintance list was bound to be from the other side of the fence anyway.

“Pleased to meet you.”

“Likewise.”

He shook hands with him without demur. That was a thing he’d learned to do since he’d been around Blake, shake hands with all manner of crooks.

Blake, to put them at their ease together, trotted out that same worn theme he was so fond of harping on. “Harkness don’t wanna believe you used to be a dick. Tell him yourself.” He told it to everyone he knew, at every opportunity. He seemed to take a perverse pride in it, as though it reflected a sort of distinction on him. A detective had once been after him, and he’d tamed him into harmlessness.

“Don’t you ever get tired of that?” was all Rogers grunted, disgustedly. He took up his cards, shot a covert glance at Blake’s friend. “No folding money, only nickels and dimes.”

Blake took it in good part. “Ain’t that some guy for you?”

The game wore on desultorily. The night wore on desultorily along with it. Just three people at a table, killing time.

Harkness seemed to have a fidgety habit of continually worrying at the cuff of his coat-sleeve.

“I thought they quit hiding them up there years ago,” Blake finally remarked with a grin. “We’re not playing for stakes, anyway.”

“No, you don’t get it, there’s a busted button on my sleeve, and it keeps hooking onto everything every time I reach my arm out.”

Only half of it was left, adhering to the thread, sharp-pointed and annoying as only such trivial things are apt to be. He tried to wrench it off bodily and it defeated him because there wasn’t enough of it left to get a good grip on. All he succeeded in doing was lacerating the edges of his fingers. He swore softly and licked at them.

“Why don’t you take the blame coat off altogether? You don’t need it,” Blake suggested, without evincing any real interest.

Harkness did, and draped it over the back of his chair.

The game wore on again. The night wore on. Rogers’ original half-hour was gone long ago. It had quadrupled itself by now. Finally the game wore out, seemed to quit of its own momentum.

They sat there, half-comatose, around the table a moment or two longer. Rogers’ head was actually beginning to nod. Harkness was the first one to speak. “Look at it, one o’clock. Guess I’ll shove off.” He stood up and got back into his coat. Then he felt at the mangled thatch the game had left in its wake. “Got a comb I can borry before I go.”