Evan Hunter - Nobody Knew They Were There

She is silent for several moments. Then she says, “I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right.”

“I’m so ashamed of myself.”

“There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I’m sorry you had to see me that way. Why did you keep coming back, Arthur?”

“To help you.”

“So ashamed.”

“You were sick…”

“Drunk, drunk.”

“I wanted to help you, that’s all. To take care of you.”

“Yes, now,” she says.

“What?”

“I have to throw up again, Arthur.”

She scrambles quickly out of bed, her hand cupped to her mouth. I follow immediately behind her. This time, she allows me to assist her. I support her head, I brush her long hair away from her face as she heaves drily. Afterward, I wet a cloth and take it to her where she lies pale and spent in bed. I put it on her forehead. She nods.

“Getting to be a goddamn habit,” she says.

“Shhh.”

“I’m so ashamed of myself.”

“Try to get some sleep, Sara. We have to get up early.”

“I wanted to make love,” she says. “Instead, I get so stupid drunk.”

“Never mind, darling. Go to sleep.”

“Forgive me.”

“It’s all right.” I turn off the lamp again, and settle into my pillow.

“Arthur, please forgive me,” she says in the darkness. “I didn’t mean to.”

“I know, darling, it’s all right.”

“I love you so much,” she says, and sighs. The room is still. She breathes evenly beside me. I find myself thinking of the bridge again. I look at my watch. It is almost two-thirty. I go over a checklist in my mind. I have rented a car with snow tires and skid chains; it is in the hotel garage next door. I have purchased a one-way airplane ticket to New York. I have packed my single suitcase, leaving out only my nightshirt (both nightshirts now), my toilet articles, and what I will wear in the morning.

“Arthur?”

“Yes, Sara?”

“No, nothing,” she says.

I have put the blasting machine in a cardboard box and wrapped it with pink paper and blue ribbon so that it looks like a gift package. There is nothing more to do. Except blow the bridge and run.

“Arthur?”

“Yes.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“Arthur?”

“Yes?”

“Arthur, please forgive me, I think I’m pregnant.”

I sit up in bed and reach across her for the lamp on the night table.

“No,” she says, “leave it off. Please.”

“What makes you think so, Sara?”

“What do you think makes me think so?”

“I mean, have you…?”

“I missed my period,” she says quietly. “I’m six days late.”

“Six days.”

“Yes.”

“That’s nothing at all, Sara. Some women…”

“I’ve never been late before. Not by six minutes. ”

“I don’t see how you can decide on the basis of being only six days late…”

“Oh, please, Arthur!”

“I’m sorry, Sara, but I honestly think you’re reacting a bit hysterically.”

We are silent. I can hear my watch ticking. The room is black and fathomless.

“When were you supposed to get your period?” I ask.

“The twenty-seventh.”

“Are you sure of the date?”

“Yes, I circled it on the calendar. I always circle it.”

“The twenty-seventh was when?”

“Sunday.” ‘

“And today is?”

“Saturday. Don’t you know? You’re going to blow up a bridge, and you don’t even know…”

“It isn’t Saturday yet”

“It is.”

“It’s Friday.”

“It’s past midnight, that makes it Saturday.”

“Actually, you’re only five days late, if you want to get right down to it.”

“Arthur, would you mind telling me what the hell difference it makes? Five days or six days, would you mind telling me?”

“When do you figure you got pregnant, Sara?”

“The first time we made love.”

“Which was when?”

“Some total recall,” she says.

“Sara, I’m trying to figure this out, and I’d appreciate.

“It was a week ago Wednesday night, the twenty-third.”

“Sara,” I say, calmly and patiently, “it is physiologically impossible for a woman to conceive four days before she is expecting her period.”

“Fine.”

“I’m telling you.”

“Fine. Then I have nothing to worry about.”

“Nothing at all.”

“Except that I stopped taking the pill when I got back from Arizona last summer, and we made love last Wednesday night and I was supposed to get my period Sunday, and I didn’t, and I know very well I’m pregnant.”

“You’re not pregnant. Anyway, it’s not such a big deal, even if you are. You can get a legal abortion anywhere in the United States today. It’s not like it was years ago, when you had to run to Denmark or Puerto Rico.”

“Go to sleep, Arthur.”

“Anyway, you can’t possibly be pregnant.”

“I shouldn’t have told you. I don’t know why I told you. Don’t worry about it, Arthur.”

“I am worrying about it.”

“If I can’t possibly be pregnant, why are you worrying?”

“Because I don’t want you to be pregnant.”

“And I don’t want you to die,” she says, and suddenly she is weeping. I take her in my arms and hold her close and her tears spill onto my chest, and I think Oh, you are a wonderful fellow, Samuel Eisler, a charmer indeed. You came out here and found yourself a little girl who never told, or wept, or got drunk, and you taught her how to do all those things and maybe got her pregnant besides; you’re a fine upstanding gentleman, Samuel Eisler, you’re a prick.

I now know who I came here to kill.

I begin trembling.

Weeping, trembling, we cling to each other in the night.

There is at least a foot of new snow on the ground outside.

The bell tower is tolling nine o’clock. I turn from the window, go into the bathroom, and begin lathering my face. Sara stands in the doorway, watching.

“Are you going to shave your mustache?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“I wish you wouldn’t. I like it.”

“Have to,” I tell her.

It is more difficult than I imagined it would be. I began growing the mustache the day we learned that Adam had been killed, more than six months ago. It is thick and full, and I do not have a scissors with me. It resists me almost willfully, clogging the razor, refusing to be shorn. I cut myself repeatedly. My hand is shaking, I curse often. Sara watches silently from the doorway. At last, I bend over the sink and rinse my face and look at myself in the mirror. I see Sara’s eyes studying me. I turn to her.

“You look very young,” she says.

“As young as Roger Harris?”

“Roger who? ” she asks, and smiles.

“Do you like it?”

“I’ll grow used to it,” she says. “In time.”

I dress swiftly. Sara continues watching me, seemingly intent on my every move, absorbed by simple routine acts like tucking my shirt into my trousers or fastening my belt. I am knotting my tie, eyes on the mirror, Sara standing just behind my shoulder, watching, when she says, “You were up very early this morning.”

“Yes.”

“What were you doing?”

“Writing a letter.”

“To your wife?”

“No. My partner.”

“Why?”

“Last minute instructions. In case anything happens to me.”

“Nothing will happen to you.”

“I hope not.”

“You’ll blow the bridge, and I’ll drive you to the airport, and you’ll go home to New York.”

I turn away from the mirror, go to the closet, and take my jacket from its hanger. “I’m going down to put on the chains,” I tell her. “I think we may need them.”