Fritz Leiber - The Sinful Ones

“Oh?” she remarked. “I’m sorry. He really is your friend—potentially. But he’s rather high strung. Indefinite. He was supposed to meet me here…” She glanced toward some distant electric numerals which told the time in order to attract attention to a gigantic bottle of beer.

“Is he afraid of me?” Carr asked.

She shrugged her shoulders. Headlights swept across her gray eyes. At the moment they seemed as enigmatic as those of a sphinx. “I had some vague idea of introducing the two of you,” she said. “But now I’m not so sure. About any of us.” Her voice dropped. The wind blew some strands of her shoulder-length brown hair against her cheek. “I never really thought you’d come, you know. Leaving notes like that is just a stupid way I have of tempting fate. You weren’t supposed to guess. How did you know it was the south lion? I don’t think you even looked at the north one.”

Carr laughed. “Taft’s Great Lakes Fountain is an obsession of mine. I always try to figure out, from the way the bowls the five sisters are holding pour into each other, which sister is which lake. And of course the fountain is nearest the southern lion.”

“Did you walk down here tonight?” she asked.

“Yes. And now I have questions for you. Who are those people you warned me against? That big, blonde, for instance. Why did you let her strike you without doing anything? What sort of hold do they have on you?”

“I don’t want to talk about them.” Her voice was flat. “It’s something obscene and horrible and I don’t want to think about it at all.”

“Are they after the small dark man with glasses too?”

“I said I don’t want to talk about it. It’s not something you can do anything about. If you insist on talking about it, I don’t want to be with you.”

Carr waited. A chillier gust was blowing across the steps and the girl hugged herself.

“All right,” he said. “How about us getting a drink somewhere?”

“If you’ll let me pick the place.”

The last word made him think of Marcia. He quickly linked his arm through the girl’s and said, “Lead the way.”

At the bottom of the steps he asked, “What’s your name?”

“Jane.”

“Jane what?”

She shook her head.

“Mine’s Carr. Two r’s.”

They were half a block from the Art Institute when Carr asked, “What about your friend?”

“I don’t think there’s much chance of his coming now.”

They continued north. The wind and the gloom and the wide empty sidewalk seemed strange and lonely so close to the boulevard with its humming cars and its fringe of people and lights on the other side.

Jane’s arm tightened a little on Carr’s. “This is fun,” she said. “I mean—having a date.”

“I shouldn’t think you’d have any trouble,” he told her.

They were opposite the public library. She led them across the boulevard. It seemed to Carr that the loneliness had followed them, for as they walked past the massive dark façade of the library, they met only two people—a galloping, bleak-faced boy and a shiffling old man in a checked cap and shabby overcoat.

They squinted against blown grit. A sheet of newspaper flapped into their faces. Carr ripped it away and it swooped up into the air. They looked at each other and laughed. Carr took her hand and started across the next street, under the Elevated.

He felt a sharp tug, heard Jane cry, “Look out!” He jumped back out of the path of a dark automobile gliding along without lights.

“You should be more careful,” she said. “They can’t see us, you know.

“Yes,” Carr agreed. “The street’s awfully dark here.”

They walked on a short way. Jane suddenly turned down a cobbled alley chocked with fire escapes. A few steps more and Carr was startled to see the entrance to a little tavern. Steps led down to the sunken door.

The place was dimly lit and almost empty. None of the booths were occupied. At the bar two men were contemplating half-empty glasses of beer. In the shadows were smoky old advertisements and pictures. Carr recognized one—a large print of Custer’s Last Stand.

“What’ll you have?” he asked, heading for the bar.

“Let’s wait a minute,” she said, steering him instead to the last booth, crowded in like an afterthought beside the swinging door to the kitchen, which was evidently not in use, since the little round window was dark. Neither the two drinkers nor the bartender looked up as they went past. The latter was a solemn and fat man, thoughtfully shaving the foam off a small glass of beer.

Jane looked at Carr across the splotched table. Color had come into her cheeks and she was smiling, as if what they were doing was very wonderful. He found himself thinking of his college days, when there had been hip-flasks and roadsters, and checks from home, and classes to cut.

“It’s funny,” he said, “I’ve gone past this alley a hundred times and never noticed this place.”

“Cities are like that,” she said. “You think you know them, when all you know are routes through them. You think that Joe’s Hamburgers and the Cleanspot Laundry and Reagan’s Mortuary and the woman who’s always dusting on the second floor, where the electric wires dip close to the window, are the whole show. One day you turn a corner the wrong way, and after a dozen steps find something you’ve never seen before.”

We’re even beginning to talk about life, thought Carr.

One of the beer-drinkers put two nickels in the jukebox. Low, anticipatory strains eddied out.

Carr looked toward the bar. “I wonder if there’s a waiter,” he said. “Maybe they don’t server at the tables now.”

“Who cares?” she said. “Let’s dance.”

“I don’t imagine it’s allowed,” he said. “They’d have to have another license.”

“Come on,” she said. He shrugged and followed her.

There wasn’t much space, but enough. With what struck Carr as a grave and laudable politeness, the beer-drinkers paid no attention to them, though one softly beat time with the bottom of his glass against his palm.

Jane danced badly, but after a while she got better. Somewhat solemnly they revolved in a modest circle. She was thin. He could feel ribs through the sweater. She said nothing until almost the end of the first number. Then, in a choked voice—

“It’s been so long since I’ve danced with anyone.”

“Not with your man with glasses?” he asked quickly.

She shook her head. “He’s too nervous, serious all the time. He can’t relax—not even pretend.”

The second record started. After a while her expression cleared. She rested her cheek against his shoulder. “I’ve got a theory about life,” she said dreamily.

Yes, thought Carr, it’s exactly like the old days. He put out of his head the momentary suspicion that she was playing with him—very tenderly, but still playing with him. Like a solemn and wide-eyed child telling a story to an adult.

“I think life has a rhythm,” she began, pausing now and then with the music, her phrases drifting. “It keeps changing with the time of day and year, but it’s always really the same. People feel it without knowing it, and it governs their lives.”

Another couple came in, took one of the front booths. The bartender wiped his hands on his apron, pushed up the wicket in the bar and walked over to them.

“I like your theory, Jane,” Carr said. “I like to drift and take things as they come. There’s someone who doesn’t want me to, who’d like to see me fight the current, build a boat—a heavy cruiser with depth charges. But I’d rather follow the rhythm.”

“Oh, but we’re not following the rhythm,” Jane said. “We’ve broken away from it.”