Evan Hunter - Nobody Knew They Were There

“Hello, Jean,” I say. “You’re not wearing a mask.”

“Who the hell are you? ” she says.

“Guess,” I say in the same drunken slur. “Where’s Victor?”

“Here someplace,” she says. “He came as a sultan. He’s a goddamn sultan.”

Sara approaches with a sidelong glide, skids to a stop before us, and lifts her half-empty glass so that it is just below Jean’s nose. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, miss?” she asks.

“What?” Jean says.

“Fuck off,” Sara tells her.

“What are you supposed to be?” Jean says.

“A pregnant college girl. Fuck off, I told you.”

“Charming,” Jean says, and swivels off, glancing back at me and wetting her lips once again.

“Charming,” Sara mimicks, and flits away toward the bar, moving in a blur of black ostrich feathers and silk, gleaming rhinestone bracelets, tilted cigarette holder, to embrace the portly sultan who must be Victor Koblenz, advising him as she kisses the tip of his mask nose that his sword is coming out of his scabbard, does he want everyone to see his sword that way in a public place? Koblenz is flabbergasted. He checks his sword, he checks his fly, he glances up quickly to beg elucidation, but Sara is gone again, quicksilver tonight, manic and cruel.

There is no mistaking Hester when she approaches. She is wearing the costume of a shapeless scarecrow, shabby dark suit with straw poking from collar and cuff, a stitched cotton mask covering her face, an old gray fedora jammed down around her ears. But there is something about the walk, something about the stiff carriage and erect head that suggest steel within the straw. The baggy trousers are, after all, trousers nonetheless, and Hester wears her balls like a wrestler.

“Is it you?” she says.

“It is I.”

“Good,” she says, and nods. “Is the party big enough for you?”

“Quite nice, thank you.”

“We try to please.”

“Hester,” I tell her, “I hope I never have the pleasure of working with you again.”

“My, my,” she says. “After all the nice things I said about you last night.”

“A momentary lapse, I’m sure.”

“On the contrary,” she says. “I meant them quite sincerely.”

“In which case, I thank you quite sincerely. I still hope I never see you again.” Because she cannot see my face behind the Old Grad’s mask, I nod for emphasis and wave the pennant twice. “Weglowski wants to be paid early tomorrow morning.”

“Epstein is in charge of money matters.”

“Will you tell him, please, to make delivery? I don’t want to find myself out on a limb because you people stiffed Weglowski.”

“Weglowski will be paid. It’s not your concern.”

Sara is back. She loops her arm through mine and presses herself against me. Her cigarette holder points wildly toward the ceiling. Her green eyes flash angrily through the heavy blue shadow. “What do you want, Pratt?” she says. “Leave him alone.”

Hester’s eyes through the holes in her mask are dark and suspicious. She glances from Sara to me, sensing a solidarity she had not guessed was there, and frightened by it now. Her expression is ludicrous, the featureless mask and the terrified eyes. I am tempted to laugh.

“I think you’ve had too much to drink, Sara,” she says.

“Not half enough,” Sara answers. There is a glittering edge to her voice. Her grip on my arm is fierce and tight The cigarette holder tilts dangerously close to Hester’s face, like a rapier.

“I don’t think we can risk a drunken Sara,” Hester says to me.

“I’m not drunk,” Sara snaps. “Right, Arthur?”

“Right, Sara.”

Hester’s eyes are growing more and more concerned. They peer nervously through the stitched holes in her mask, flashing panic onto the otherwise expressionless face. “Will she be driving tomorrow morning?” she asks me.

“She will be driving tomorrow morning,” Sara answers, and at that moment, someone shouts, “It’s midnight!”

“Show your face and then take her home,” Hester says. “She’s polluted.”

“The whole fucking world’s polluted,” Sara says.

They are taking their masks off everywhere around us. I remove mine quickly. I am here to show my face, and I do not plan to leave until everyone has seen it “I’ll give you five minutes,” Hester says.

“Why? What’s the hurry? Put Arthur to sleep so he can run out to die tomorrow?”

“Nobody’s going to die tomorrow.”

“Except everybody,” Sara says flatly. “We’re staying.”

“You’re leaving,” Hester says.

“Why? I’m the whole life of this whole boring party. I’m the only one here with any life in me.” She suddenly bursts into laughter. “Did you hear that, Arthur? Oh my God, that’s funny!”

“I’ll get your coat,” Hester says.

“Don’t bother, we’re not leaving,” Sara says. She leans against me. She puts her head on my shoulder. She sighs deeply and murmurs, “Oh, dear, dear, dear.” We stand silently, I with my arm around her, she with her head on my shoulder, eyes closed. With the party noises engulfing us, with the now-unmasked guests swirling by in a dazzle of color, exclaiming their surprise or their certainty (“I knew it was you,” the Lone Ranger shouts, recognizable now as Seth Wilson with faithful brassiereless Indian companion Adele by his side, “I knew it all along,” an opinion apparently not shared by Quasimodo who is Ralph the Hotel Eavesdropper, and who says to me snottily, “Cover an old grad face with an old grad mask? You sure had me fooled”), flitting by with oooohs and ahhhhs, I am being seen to the hilt and no one seems to notice the shoes. Koblenz the sultan comes over and says, “Ah, Mr. Sachs, very clever indeed, very clever.” Very clever, I think. We are all very clever. But Sara leans against me in basic black.

Hester returns almost at once.

“Quickly,” she says. “Get her out of here.”

“She is not a leper,” I mention.

I bundle Sara into her coat. She is wearing the long black coat tonight. It overwhelms her. “Thank you,” she says, as I button it over her breasts. “Thank you, Arthur.”

“Hurry,” Hester says.

We move swiftly toward the front door.

“If you need a driver in the morning, call me,” Hester says.

“I will.”

“Good luck,” she says.

In the entrance alcove, Jean Trench is leaning against the bookcases in her chemise and garters, impatiently tapping one high-heeled shoe, wetting her lips and chatting with an unmasked gentleman dressed as Frankenstein’s monster. The front door is open. On the walk outside, I catch a quick glimpse of the Lone Ranger striding swiftly toward a waiting red Volkswagen with a brassiereless Tonto behind the wheel. Sara pauses in the doorway, turns toward Jean Trench, and says, “Are you still here? I thought I told you to fuck off.”

Outside, it has begun to snow.

She has been in the bathroom puking since shortly after midnight, ever since we got back to the hotel. Each time I go in to her, she tells me to go away. She sits on the tiled floor with her head bent over the toilet bowl, retching drily, begging me to leave her alone. I listen to the sounds of her misery, and go back to her again and again, only to be sent away repeatedly. The vomiting does not stop until almost two a.m. I hear the water running in the sink. When she comes out of the bathroom, she is naked and shivering. She turns off the lamp and crawls into bed beside me.

“I’m cold,” she says. “So cold.”

I hold her close, but she continues to shiver, and at last I get out of bed, and go to my suitcase, and remove from it my yellow nightshirt. She refuses to put it on. In the darkness, she shakes her head and says, “I don’t want it, I don’t want it,” until finally I force it over her head, and thrust her arms into it, and she subsides and says, “I thought it was your wife’s nightgown,” and I say, “No, it’s my nightshirt,” and she quietly says, “Thank you.”