She opened her eyes and closed them again quickly because the light was so blinding, but in that instant she saw that she was in a small white room like a cubicle in a hospital and the enormous woman bending over her was dressed all in white like a nurse.
The woman said in a harsh, tired voice, “She’s coming to. Give her some more of that whiskey.”
“If she’s drunk already, what you want to give her more of the same for, Bella?”
“Shut up and do as I say. Nothing brings a drunk around faster than the smell of another drink. Hand me the bottle, Mollie.”
“O.K.”
“Now hold her head up while I pour. Ha-ha-ha, sounds like a society tea, eh? Madame Bella poured.”
Miss Clarvoe tried to protest. She did not want the whiskey; it burned like acid. She jerked her head to one side and began to scream, but a hand closed over her mouth.
“You don’t want to do that, dear,” the woman called Bella said quite softly. “Maybe you’re seeing things, eh? Maybe little animals running around, eh? Just take a nip or two of this and they’ll go away.”
“No, no! I don’t want—”
“What’s the matter, dear? You tell Bella. Everybody tells Bella their troubles. Maybe you got a monkey on your back, eh, dear?”
Miss Clarvoe shook her head. She didn’t know what the woman was talking about. There was no monkey on her back, no little animals running around.
“Tell Bella, dear.”
“I can’t tell, I don’t know,” Miss Clarvoe said, her voice muffled against the fleshy palm of the woman’s hand. “Let me go.”
“Certainly, dear, just so long as you don’t scream. I can’t have you disturbing my other customers. A man comes in after a hard day at the office, he wants a nice quiet massage, he don’t want to hear a lady screaming.—it upsets him.”
Customers. Massage. It wasn’t a hospital, then, and the woman in white wasn’t a nurse.
“No more carryings-on, eh, dear? Promise Bella.”
“Yes. I promise.”
Miss Clarvoe opened her eyes. She was lying on a couch, and at the foot of the couch a very pretty blonde girl with acne was standing with a bottle of whiskey in her hand. The other woman, Bella, was enormously fat; her flesh quivered at the slightest movement and her chins hung in folds against her swarthy neck. Only her eyes looked human. They were dark, despairing eyes that had experienced too much and interpreted too little.
The mere exertion of talking made her pant, and when she removed her hand from Miss Clarvoe’s mouth, she pressed it against her own heart as if to reassure herself that it was still beating.
“That’s good material in her coat,” the blonde girl said. “Imported from Scotland, it says—see, right there on the label?”
“You can get back on the job now, Mollie.”
“I don’t have any more appointments for tonight.”
“Then go home.”
“What if she starts kicking up a fuss again?”
“I can handle her,” the fat woman said. “Bella can handle her. Bella knows what the trouble is. Bella understands.”
“So that’s it,” the blonde girl said with a contemptuous little smile. “Well, you can have it. I like the normal ones.”
“Shut up, dear.”
“I wonder what’s so special about material imported from Scotland.”
“Blow, dear, and close the door after you.”
The blonde girl left and closed the door behind her.
Miss Clarvoe pressed her fingertips against her eyes. She couldn’t understand what the two women had been talking about, none of it made sense to her. She felt nauseated and dizzy and her head ached just behind the left ear as if someone had struck her there.
“My head,” she said. “My head hurts.”
“Her head hurts yet. Listen to that. Naturally your head hurts, dear. You’ve been hitting the bottle.”
“No. I never drink—never.”
“You were reeking of the stuff when I found you out cold on my doorstep. I was saying goodbye to one of our regular customers who came in for his treatment, and when I opened the door there you were, lying against it. Stiff, dear. But stiff.”
“That’s impossible. I don’t drink.”
“Just rinse your mouth out now and then, eh?” The fat woman was laughing, every inch of her was laughing, mouth, chins, belly, breasts. When she had finished she wiped the moisture from her face and neck with a handkerchief. “That’s my trouble, I’m too jolly. I laugh too much. It makes me sweat. Oh, how I sweat, dear, it’s just not human the way poor Bella sweats. How about another nip of whiskey, dear?”
“No. No!” Miss Clarvoe tried to get up, lost her balance and rolled over on to the floor. “I must—I must get home—they’re waiting for me.”
The fat woman put her hands under Miss Clarvoe’s armpits and helped her to her feet. “Who’s waiting for you, dear?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“Well, if you don’t know, there’s no hurry, is there? Lie down for a bit. Bella will make you feel better.”
“No, no.” The fat woman’s breath was hot against the back of her neck and smelled overpoweringly of aniseed. “I must—they’re waiting.” Someone was waiting for her, she knew that, but she couldn’t remember who it was. The faces in her memory were blurred and indistinct, people were shadows, places were all alike. She leaned against the wall and said faintly, “May I—have some water?”
“Certainly, dear.”
The woman brought her some water in a paper cup and watched her while she drank.
“Feeling better now, dear?”
“Yes.”
“Your coat’s dirty. Give it to me and I’ll brush it off for you.”
“No. No.” She clutched the coat tightly around her body.
“Ah, you’re one of the shy ones. Bella knows. Bella’s been in this business for a long, long time. You don’t have to be shy with Bella. Lots of ladies come in here. All they want’s a little affection. Nothing wrong about that, is there? By the way, who recommended me, dear?”
“I don’t understand.”
“How did you get my name?”
“I didn’t. I don’t know your name.”
The fat woman stood very still. Her eyes, tucked away under folds of flesh, were dead and purple like grapes. “How come you picked my place?”
“I didn’t. I didn’t pick any—”
“We mustn’t tell fibs, dear. Bella hates fibs, they stir her to anger. Who gave you my name?”
“No one.”
“You just came here by a lucky accident, eh? Is that right, dear?”
“I don’t remember,” Miss Clarvoe whispered. “I can’t remember . . . Evelyn . . .”
“Is that who you are, dear? Evelyn?”
“No. No! I was—I was with Evelyn. She brought me here. She said—” Miss Clarvoe paused, holding her hands against her trembling mouth.
“What did she say, dear?”
“She said I belonged here.”
The fat woman nodded and smiled and rubbed her chins. “She’s a discerning girl, that Evelyn, oh my, yes.”
“I don’t understand what she meant.”
“Don’t you, dear. Well, lie down and rest a bit and Bella will show you.”
“Show me what?”
“How to be happy, dear. How to be so happy. Men are pigs. They know nothing, they care nothing. Bella is different. Bella knows. Let me take your coat, dear. What sweet ankles you have. I used to have a well-turned ankle myself in the old days. Now I eat. I eat and eat because nobody loves me. Nobody loves Bella, she is fat as an elephant, yes, but she knows tricks. Give me your pretty little coat, dear.”
Miss Clarvoe stood stiff with terror.
“I revolt you, eh, dear? No matter. They all say that at first, then later on they change their tunes. Bella makes them so happy. Bella will make you so happy you will want to come back and back and back.”
“Stay away from me!”
“Don’t be shy, dear. Bella knows her business, Bella will be gentle.”
“You monstrous old slut,” Miss Clarvoe said and lunged towards the door.
But the fat woman was there ahead of her. She stood with her back pressed against the door, her arms crossed on her enormous breasts.
“Bella hates to be called names, dear. It stirs her to anger.”
“If you don’t let me out of here, I’ll scream, I’ll scream until the police come.”
Bella was quiet a moment, then she said bitterly, “I believe you would; you’re a nasty piece if I ever saw one. Well, that’s gratitude for you—I take you in, I look after you, you lap up my good whiskey, I say pretty things to you, none of them true, of course, your ankles are lousy, they’re like pipe-stems—”
“Open that door.”
Bella did not open the door, but she moved away from it, still talking, half to herself: “All the things I do for people and what do I get in return? Dirty names and looks. Bella is human, maybe she is as fat as an elephant, but she is human, she likes a little gratitude now and then. It’s a wicked world, there’s no gratitude in it. Get out of here, you nasty girl, get out. Bella is stirred to anger. Get out, get out.”
But the nasty girl had already left, and she was talking to an empty room. She sat down heavily on the couch, one hand pressed against her heart. It was still beating, fluttering like a captive bird under smothering folds of flesh.
“People are no damned good,” Bella said.
Helen Clarvoe couldn’t run, her legs felt weak, as if the muscles had atrophied from long disuse, and the pain in her head had become worse. When she tried to think, her thoughts melted and fused and only one stood out clearly and distinctly from the others: I must get away. I must escape. I must run.
It was not important where she ran to. She had no plan, she didn’t even know where she was until she reached the corner and saw the street signs: South Flower Street and Ashworth Avenue. She repeated the names to herself, hoping they would form a pattern in her mind, but neither of the names meant anything to her, and the neighnorhood was strange. She knew she had never seen it before just as she knew that she didn’t drink. Yet she’d come here, had walked or ridden or been carried, and when she arrived she was drunk. Stiff, Bella had said, but stiff. Naturally your head hurts, dear, you’ve been hitting the bottle.”
“I never drink,” Miss Clarvoe said. “I never touch liquor. Father said it coarsened a woman.”
An old man waiting at the corner for the traffic light to change, looked at her over the top of his bifocals with interest and pleasure. He often talked to himself. It was nice to know other people did it, too.
Miss Clarvoe saw him look and she turned away and color flooded her cheeks, as if he had caught a glimpse of her, naked.
“Heh, heh, heh,” the old man said and shuffled across the street, his shoulders shaking with mirth. Even the young ones talked to themselves these days. It was the age of the atom. Madmen have taken over. “Heh, heh, heh.”
Miss Clarvoe touched her face. It was burning with humiliation. The old man had seen her talking to herself, perhaps he’d seen more than that. Perhaps he’d been walking by when she came out of Bella’s place and he knew all about what kind of place it was. She must get away from the old man.
Miss Clarvoe turned and began running in the opposite direction, her coat billowing behind her, her thin legs moving stiffly like pipe-stems.
At the next corner she stopped, gasping for breath, and held on to a lamp-post for support. The sign on the post read Figueroa Street. I am not lost, she thought. I know Figueroa Street, I will wait here on the corner until an empty taxicab comes along. But something in her mind, some sixth sense, warned her not to stand still, and she started out again. Not running. The running had attracted too much attention. She must be casual, ordinary. No one must find out that somewhere, along these streets, or other streets, she had lost the day. It was night. The day had gone, passed her by, passed without touching her.
She walked on, her head bent, as if she were searching the sidewalk and the gutters for her lost day. People passed, the cars roared by, the night was filled with noise and light and movement, but Miss Clarvoe did not raise her head. I must pretend, she thought. I must pretend not to know I’m being followed.
If she was clever enough, if she could control her panic, she might be able to find out who it was. Bella? The old man who’d caught her talking to herself? One of Bella’s friends? None of them had anything to gain by following her, not even money. She had lost her purse, along with the day.
A bus was unloading at the next intersection and she quickened her pace and mingled with the crowd that was getting off the bus. Secure for a moment, she looked back, peering through the moving jungle of faces. Only one face stood out among the others, pale, composed, half smiling. Evelyn Merrick. She was standing in the shadowed doorway of a small T.V. repair shop, leaning idly against the plate glass window as if she had just paused for a rest during an evening stroll. But Miss Clarvoe knew it was not an evening stroll, it was a chase, and she was the beast in view.
She turned and began to run across the street, blind and deaf and numb with panic. She did not even feel the impact of the car that struck her.
When she returned to consciousness she was lying against the curb and people were standing over her, all talking at once.
“Saw her with my own eyes, out she dashed—”
“Red light—”
“Drunk, for sure. You can smell it a mile away.”
“Honest to God, I didn’t see her!”
“Let’s get out of here. I don’t want to be called as a witness.”
“Come on, Joe, come on. I just can’t stand the sight of blood.”
Blood, Miss Clarvoe thought. I’m bleeding, then. It’s all come true, what she said to me the first night. She saw it in her crystal ball, I was to be in an accident, bleeding, mutilated.
“What’s a little blood, you watch prize-fights all the time, don’t you?”
“Must of been drunk—”
“With my own eyes—”
“Somebody call an ambulance.”
“The lady in the green hat went to phone her husband; he’s a doctor.”
A young man wearing a cab-driver’s uniform took off his coat and tried to put it under Miss Clarvoe’s head. She thrust it away and sat up painfully. “I’m all right. Leave me alone.”
The words were muffled and indistinct, but the young man heard them. “You’re supposed to lie there until the doctor comes.”
“I don’t need a doctor.”
“I took a course in first aid and it says that in the book. Keep the patient warm and—”
“I’m not hurt.” She dragged herself to her feet and began wiping the moisture off her face with a handkerchief, not knowing which was blood and which was sweat from all the running she’d done.
The crowd began to disperse—the show was over, no one was killed, too bad, better luck next time.
Only the young man in the cabbie’s uniform lingered on, looking fretful. “It wasn’t my fault. Everyone could see it wasn’t my fault. You dashed right out in front of my cab, didn’t give me a chance to stop, craziest thing I ever saw in my life.”
Miss Clarvoe looked back at the doorway of the shop where she’d seen Evelyn Merrick just before the accident. The girl had left. Or else she had stepped farther back into the shadows to wait. That was the game she played best, waiting in shadows, walking in the night, watching for the unwary.
The cabbie was still talking, aggrieved and belligerent. “Everyone could see I did the best I could. I stopped, didn’t I? I tried to minister first aid, didn’t I?”
“Oh stop it, stop it! There’s no time for argument. No time, I tell you.”
He stepped back looking surprised. “I don’t get—”
“Listen to me. What’s your name?”
“Harry. Harry Reis.”
“Listen Harry, I must get away from here. I’m being followed. She was—I saw her in that doorway over there a few minutes ago. She intends to kill me.”
“You don’t say.” A faint derisive smile stretched his mouth. He didn’t even glance back at the doorway she was pointing at. “Maybe you escaped from somewheres, huh?”
“Escaped?”
“Sure. Escaped. Climbed over the wires.”
She shook her head in mystification. He seemed to be talking in riddles like the fat woman, Bella. Monkeys on the back, little animals running around, wires to climb over. They were all English words but Miss Clarvoe couldn’t understand them. She thought, perhaps I am the foreigner, perhaps I have been out of touch too long; the language has changed, and the people. The world has been taken over by the Bellas, and the Evelyn Merricks, and little men like Harry with sly, insinuating smiles. I must get back to my own room and lock the door against the ugliness.
“I must—”
“Sure,” Harry said. “Sure. Anything for a lady.”
He led the way to his cab. Miss Clarvoe dropped the bloody handkerchief on the curb and followed him. She wasn’t aware yet of any pain, only of a terrible stiffness that seemed to cover her entire body like a plaster cast.
She got into the back seat of the cab and pulled her coat close around her. She remembered the blonde girl in Bella’s place asking what was so special about fabric imported from Scotland. Miss Clarvoe didn’t know, and it seemed important for her to figure it out. There were sheep, plenty of sheep, all over the world, but perhaps the Scottish sheep had finer wool. Wool. Sheep. Blackshear. She had forgotten about Mr. Blackshear. He was miles and years away, she couldn’t even recall his face except that it looked a little like her father’s.
The inside of the cab was dark and warm and the radio was turned on to a panel discussion on politics. All of the people on the panel had very definite ideas, firmly spoken, all of them knew exactly where the day had gone and what to expect from the night.
Harry got in and turned the radio off. “Where to?”
“The Monica Hotel.”
“You live there?”
“Yes.”
“You been living there long?”
“Yes.”
“All the time steady?”
“Yes.”
She could tell he didn’t believe her. What did he believe? What were the wires she was supposed to have climbed over? She had never seen Harry before, never, she was sure of that. Yet he acted as though he knew secrets about her, ugly secrets.
“I will pay you,” she said. “I have money in my hotel suite.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’ll send the boy down with it.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She knew from his tone that he didn’t expect any money, that he was humoring her as he would any drunk or liar or madman who happened to be his passenger. The customer is always right.
The headlights of the car following shone into the rear-view mirror and Miss Clarvoe saw Harry’s face for a minute quite clearly. It was young and pleasant and very, very honest. A nice, open face. No one would suspect what kind of mind lay behind it. The fat woman wore her malice and her miseries for all the world to see; Harry’s were hidden underneath the youthful blandness of his face like worms at the core of an apple that looks sound from the outside.
Yet even Harry, even apple-cheeked, wormy-brained Harry knew where his day had gone. She had lost hers, dropped it somewhere like a handkerchief and picked it up again, soiled, from the dirty floor of a slut.
“Harry.”
“Yes, ma”am.” His tone was still sardonically polite.
“What day is this?”
“Thursday.”
Thursday. Douglas died this morning. Mr. Blackshear came to the hotel to tell me about it. I promised to go home and keep Mother company. Mr. Blackshear offered to drive me, but I refused. I didn’t want him to touch me again. I was afraid. I went and waited in front of the hotel for a cab. People kept passing, strangers, hundreds of strangers. I felt very nervous and upset. The people terrified me and I didn’t want to go home and face Mother and hear her carry on about poor dead Douglas the way she did about Father. I knew what a dreadful show she would put on, she always does, but none of it’s real.
Cabs kept passing, some of them empty, hut I couldn’t force myself to hail one. Then someone spoke my name and I turned and saw Evelyn Merrick. She was standing right beside me, smiling, very sure of herself. The strangers, the traffic, didn’t bother her, she’d always liked crowds and people, the more the merrier. I held my head up high, pretending I was just as poised and confident as she was. But it didn’t work. I could never fool Evelyn. She said, “Scared, aren’t you?” and she took my arm. I didn’t mind. I usually hate people to touch me, but somehow this was different. The contact made me feel more secure. “Come on, let’s have a drink some place,” she said.
Come on, let’s have a drink, let’s lose a day, let’s drop a handkerchief.
“You say something, ma’am?”
“No.”
“Like I told you, if you want to change your mind and go back—”
“Go back where?”
“Back where you came from.”
“I don’t know what you’re insinuating,” she said as calmly as possible. “I am going back where I came from. I live at the Monica Hotel. I have a permanent suite there and have had for almost a year. Is that clear to you?”
“Yes, ma’am.” His tone added: Clear as mud. Harry had been around, he knew a thing or two, sometimes even three, and he was pretty certain that the woman had been playing around with narcotics, probably yellow-jackets. She was obviously a lady and ladies didn’t go in so much for heroin. Nembutal was more genteel both to use and to procure. You didn’t have to hang around a street corner or the back booth of a cafe waiting for your contact. You could get yellow-jackets just sitting in a nice, upholstered chair in some fancy doctor’s office, telling how you were nervous and worn-out and couldn’t sleep.
Sleep wasn’t always what they got, though. Sometimes the stuff went into reverse, and they did crazy things like taking off all their clothes in the middle of Pershing Park or racing up Sunset Boulevard at eighty miles an hour and fighting with the police when they were arrested. Ladies could sometimes behave worse than women.
He glanced back at Miss Clarvoe. She was crouched in the right-hand corner of the cab, her arms pressed tautly across her chest, her lips moving slightly as if in prayer:
She took my arm, I remember that, she took my arm like an old friend and said, Godiona gavotch. It was our secret password in school when we were in trouble and needed help. Godiona gavotch, I repeated, and suddenly it was as if the years had never passed, and we were friends back in school, giggling after the lights were out and plotting against the French Mistress and sharing the treats from home. “Come and have a drink,” she said. It was always like that—Evelyn was the one who initiated things, who formed the ideas and made the suggestions. I was the one who tagged along. I worshipped her. I wanted to be exactly like her, I would have followed her anywhere, like a sheep, the goat, the victim. I was marked, even then, and the marks have not faded with the years but have grown more distinct. Even Harry knows. He looks at me with contempt and his voice drips with it.
Apple-cheeked Harry, I see your worms.
“You want to go in the front or the back, ma’am?” Harry said.
“I am not in the habit of using a service entrance.”
“I just thought, being you were messed up a little—”
“It doesn’t matter.” It did matter; she wanted nothing more than to go in the back entrance and sneak up to her room unnoticed, but it was impossible. Her keys had been in the purse she’d lost. “About the fare, I’ll send a bellboy down with the money. How much is it?”
“Three dollars even.” He stopped the cab at the marquee of the hotel, but he made no move to get out and open the door for her. He didn’t expect a tip, he didn’t even expect the fare, and for once it didn’t matter much to him. She was a creepy dame; he wanted to see the end of her.
Miss Clarvoe opened the door for herself and stepped out on to the sidewalk and pulled her collar up high to hide the wound under her ear. The torn stockings, the rip in her coat, she couldn’t hide, she could only move as rapidly as possible through the lobby, trying to outrun the stares of the curious.
Mr. Horner, the elderly desk clerk, was busy registering some new guests, but when he saw Miss Clarvoe he dropped everything and came over to her, his eyes bulging and his mouth working with excitement.
“Why, Miss Clarvoe. Why, Miss Clarvoe, for goodness sake—”
“I lost my keys. May I have a duplicate set, please?”
“Everybody’s been looking for you, Miss Clarvoe. Just everybody. Why, they—”
“They need look no further.”
“But what happened to you?”
She answered without hesitation. “It was such a nice day, I decided to take a little trip into the country.” Had it been a nice day? She didn’t know. She couldn’t remember the weather of the day any more than she could its contents. “The country,” she added, “is very beautiful this time of year. The lupin is in bloom, you know. Very lovely.” The lies rolled glibly off her tongue. She couldn’t stop them. Any words were better than none, any memory, however false, was better than a blank. “Unfortunately, I tripped over a boulder and tore my coat and my stockings.” As she talked the scene came into sharper focus. Details appeared, the shape and color of the boulder she’d fallen over, the hills blue with lupin and dotted with the wild orange of poppies, and beyond the hills the grey-green dwarfs of mountains with their parched and stunted trees.
“You should,” Mr. Horner said with reproach, “have let someone know. Everyone’s been in a tizzy. The police were here, with a Mr. Blackshear.”
“Police.”
“I had to let them into your suite. They insisted. There was nothing I could do.” He leaned across the desk and added in a confidential whisper, “They thought you might have been kidnapped by a maniac.”
Color splashed across Miss Clarvoe’s face and disappeared, leaving her skin ashen. Kidnapped by a maniac? No, it wasn’t like that at all. I went with an old friend to have a drink. I was frightened and confused by all the strangers and the traffic, and she rescued me. She put her hand on my arm and I felt secure. By myself I was nothing, but with Evelyn there beside me I could see people looking at us with interest and curiosity, yes even admiration. “Come and have a drink,” she said.
I could have stood there forever, being looked at, being admired, it is a wonderful feeling. But Evelyn likes excitement, she wanted to be on the move. She kept saying, Come on, come on, come on, as if she had some very intriguing plan in mind and wanted me to share it. I said, “I promised to go home and stay with Mother because Douglas is dead.” She called each of them an ugly name, Mother and Douglas, and when I looked shocked she laughed at me for being a prude. I’d never wanted to be a prude, I’ve simply never known how to be anything else. “I’ve got a friend,” Evelyn said. “He’s a lot of fun, a real joker. Let’s go over and have some laughs.” Douglas was dead, my own brother, I shouldn’t have felt like laughing, and yet I did. I asked her who the friend was who was such a joker and I remember what she answered. It’s odd how the name has stuck in my mind when I’ve forgotten so many other things. Jack Terola. “He is an artist with the camera,” Evelyn said. “He’s going to take pictures of me that will be shown all over the country. He’s going to make me immortal.” I felt the knife of envy twisting in my heart. I wanted to be immortal, too.
“I had to co-operate with the police,” Mr. Horner said. “I didn’t have any choice. It was a question of handing over the keys to your suite or having them taken from me.”
“I dislike the idea of anyone prying into my personal affairs.”
“Everyone acted in your best interests, Miss Clarvoe.”
“Indeed.”
“After all, anything might have happened.”
“What happened,” she said coldly, “is that I went into the country with a friend of mine.”
“Ah, yes. To see the lupin in bloom.”
“That’s correct.”
Mr. Horner turned away, his lip curling slightly. It was November. The lupin wouldn’t be in bloom for another three or four months.
He returned with the duplicate set of keys and laid them on the desk. “There are some messages for you, Miss Clarvoe. You are to call Mr. Blackshear immediately; he is at your mother’s house.”
“Thank you.”
“Oh yes, and someone asked me to put this note in your box. A young lady.”
The note was written in an ostentatious backhand on hotel stationery which had been folded twice:
I am waiting in the lobby. I must see you at once. Evelyn Merrick.
She wanted to run, but her legs ached with weariness, they would not carry her further. She’d already run too far, too fast, down too many strange and terrifying streets. She knew now that escape was impossible. Tomorrow, or the day after, or next week, behind some corner of time Evelyn Merrick would be waiting for her.