“Just a minute, Harry,” he said seriously. “That guy you had a fight with the other night was in here earlier and I think he’s looking for you. I ran him the hell out, but you’d better be on the lookout for him. His face looks pretty bad. There’s about thirty stitches in his face and the way it’s sewed up makes him look like he’s smiling. Only he ain’t smiling.”
“I feel sorry for the guy, Mike. I don’t know what got into me the other night.”
“Well, I thought I’d better mention it.”
“Thanks, Mike.” I rejoined Helen in the booth. She had finished her sandwich and mine too.
“You didn’t want it, did you?” she asked me.
I shook my head. We ordered whiskey with water chasers and stayed where we were, in the last booth against the wall, drinking until ten o’clock. I was in a mighty depressed mood and I unconsciously transmitted it to Helen. I should never have let her talk me into painting her portrait. I should never have tried any type of painting again. There was no use trying to kid myself that I could paint. Of course, the portrait was all right, but any artist with any academic background at all could have done as well. And my temerity in posing Helen as Olympia was the crowning height to my folly. Who in the hell did I think I was, anyway? What was I trying to prove? Liquor never helped me when I was in a depressed state of mind; it only made me feel worse. Helen broke the long, dead silence between us.
“This isn’t much of a celebration, is it?”
“No. I guess not.”
“Do you want to go home, Harry?”
“What do you want to do?”
“If I sit here much longer looking at you, I’ll start crying.” “Let’s go home, then.”
I signed the tab that Tommy the waiter brought and we left. It was a dark, forbidding block to the roominghouse at night. Except for Big Mike’s bar and grill on the corner, the light from Mr. Watson’s delicatessen across the street was the only bright spot on the way home. We walked slowly, Helen holding onto my arm. Half-way up the street I stopped, fished two cigarettes out of my almost empty package and turned into the wind to light them. Helen accepted the lighted cigarette, I handed her and inhaled deeply. We didn’t know what to do with ourselves.
“What’s ever to become of us, Harry?” Helen sighed.
“I don’t know.”
“Nothing seems to have much purpose, does it?”
“No, it doesn’t.”
A man I hadn’t noticed in the darkness of the street, detached himself from the shadows of the Spotless Cleaner’s storefront and walked toward us. His hat was pulled well down over his eyes and he was wearing a dark-brown topcoat. The faint light from the street lamp on the corner barely revealed a long red scar on his face and neat row of stitches. Like Mike had told me, the left corner of his mouth was pulled up unnaturally, and it made the man look like he was smiling.
With a quick movement he jerked a shiny, nickel-plated pistol out of his topcoat pocket and covered us with it. His hand was shaking violently and the muzzle of the pistol jerked up and down rapidly, as though it was keeping time to wild music.
“I’ve been waiting for you!” His voice was thick and muffled. His jaws were probably wired together and he was forced to talk through his teeth. I dropped my cigarette to the pavement and put my left arm protectingly around Helen’s waist. She stared at the man with a dazed, fixed expression.
“I’m going to kill you,” he said through his clenched teeth. “Both of you!”
“I don’t blame you,” I answered calmly. I felt no fear or anxiety at all, just a morbid feeling of detachment. Helen’s body trembled beneath my arm, but it couldn’t have been from fear, because the trembling stopped abruptly, and she took another deep drag on her cigarette.
“You may shoot me first, if you prefer,” she said quietly.
“God damn the both of you!” the man said through his closed mouth. “Get down on your knees! Beg me! Beg for your lives!”
I shook my head. “No. We don’t do that for anybody. Our lives aren’t that important.”
He stepped forward and jammed the muzzle into my stomach with a hard, vicious thrust.
“Pray, you son-of-a-bitch! Pray!”
I should have been frightened, but I wasn’t. I knew that I should have been afraid and I even wondered why I wasn’t.
“Go ahead,” I told him. “Pull the trigger. I’m ready.”
He hesitated and this hesitation, I believe, is what cost him his nerve. He backed slowly away from us, the pistol dancing in his hand, as though it had an independent movement of its own.
“You don’t think I’ll shoot you, do you?” It was the kind of a question for which there is no answer. We didn’t reply.
“All right, bastard,” he said softly, “start walking.”
We started walking slowly up the sidewalk and he dodged to one side and fell in behind us. He jammed the pistol into the small of my back. I felt its pressure for ten or more steps and then it was withdrawn. Helen held my left arm with a tight grip, but neither one of us looked back as we marched up the hill. At any moment I expected a slug to tear through my body. We didn’t look behind us until we reached the steps of the rooming house, and then I turned and looked over my shoulder while Helen kept her eyes straight to the front. There was no one in sight.
We entered the house, walked quietly down the dimly lighted hallway, and went into our room. I closed the door, turned on the light, and Helen sat down on the edge of the bed. Conscious of Helen’s eyes on me, I walked across to the painting, and examined it for a long time.
“Did you feel sorry for him, Harry? I did.”
“Yes, I did,” I replied sincerely. “The poor bastard.”
“I don’t believe I’d have really cared if he’d killed us both . . .” Helen’s voice was reflective, sombre.
“Cared?” I forced a tight smile. “It would have been a favor.”
SIX
Suicide Pact
THERE was something bothering me when I got out of bed the next morning. I had a queasy, uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach and it took me a few minutes to figure out what caused it. It was early in the morning, much too early to be getting out of bed. The sun was just coming up and the light filtering through the window was gray and cold. The sky was matted with low clouds, but an occasional bright spear broke through to stab at the messy backyards and the littered alley extending up the hill. I turned away from the window and the dismal view that looked worse by sunlight than it did by night.
I filled the coffee pot with water and put it on the burner. I took the coffee can down from the shelf above the sink and opened it. The coffee can was empty. I turned the fire out under the pot. No coffee this morning. I searched through my pockets before I put my trousers on and didn’t find a dime. I didn’t expect to, but I looked anyway. Not only had I spent the two and a half dollars in change, I had signed a chit besides for the drinks we had at Mike’s. I opened Helen’s purse and searched it thoroughly. There wasn’t any money, but the purse contained a fresh, unopened package of cigarettes. After I finished dressing I sat in the straight chair by the window, smoking until Helen awoke.
Helen awoke after three cigarettes, sat up in bed and stretched her arms widely. She never yawned or appeared drowsy when she awoke in the mornings, but always appeared to be alert and fresh, as though she didn’t need the sleep at all.
“Good morning, darling,” she said. “How about lighting me one of those?”
I lit a fresh cigarette from the end of mine, put it between her lips, and sat down on the edge of the bed.
“No kiss?” she said petulantly, taking the cigarette out of her mouth. I kissed her and then returned to my chair by the window.
“We’re out of coffee,” I said glumly.
“That isn’t such a great calamity, is it?”
“We’re out of money too. Remember?”
“We’ve got credit, haven’t we? Let’s go down to Big Mike’s for coffee. He might put
a shot of bourbon in it if we ask him real nice.”
“You really feel good, don’t you?” I said bitterly.
Helen got out of bed and padded barefoot over to my chair. She put her arms around my neck, sat in my lap and kissed me on the neck.
“Look out,” I said. “You’ll burn me with your cigarette.”
“No, I won’t. And I don’t feel a bit good. I feel rotten.”
She bit me sharply on the ear, dropped her slip over her head and departed for the bathroom next door. I left my chair to examine my painting in the cold light of early morning. I twisted the easel around so the picture would face the window. A good amateur or Sunday painter would be proud of that portrait, I decided. Why wasn’t I the one artist in a thousand who could earn his living by painting? Of course, I could always go back to teaching. Few men in the painting world knew as much as I did about color. The coarse thought of teaching made me shudder with revulsion. If you can’t do it yourself you tell someone else how to do it. You stand behind them in the role of peer and mentor and watch them get better and better. You watch them overshadow you until you are nothing except a shadow within a shadow and then lost altogether in the unequal merger. Perhaps that was my main trouble? I could bring out talent where there wasn’t any talent. Where there wasn’t any ability I could bring out the semblance of ability. A fine quality for a man born to teach, but a heartbreaking quality for a man born to be an artist. No, I would never teach again. There were too many art students who thought they were artists who should have been mechanics. But a teacher was never allowed to be honest and tell them to quit. The art schools would have very few students if the teachers were allowed to be honest. But then, didn’t the same thing hold true for all schools?
I threw myself across the bed and covered my ears with my hands. I didn’t want to think about it any more. I didn’t want to think about anything. Helen returned from the bathroom and curled up beside me on the bed.
“What’s the matter, darling?” she asked solicitously. “Have you got a headache?”
“No. I was just thinking what a rotten, stinking world this is we live in. This isn’t our kind of world, Helen. And we don,’t have the answer to it either. We aren’t going to beat it by drinking and yet, the only way we can possibly face it is by drinking!”
“You’re worried because we don’t have any money, aren’t you?”
“Not particularly.”
“I could wire my mother for money if you want me to.”
“Do you think she’d send it?”
“She’d probably bring it! She doesn’t know where I am and I don’t want her to know. But we’re going to have to get money someplace.”
“Why?”
“You need a cup of coffee and I need a drink. That’s why.”
“I don’t give a damn about the coffee. Why do you have to have a drink? You don’t really need it.”
“Sure I do. I’m an alcoholic. Alcoholics drink.”
“Suppose you were dead? You’d never need another drink. You wouldn’t need anything. Everything would be blah. It doesn’t make you happy to drink, and when I drink it only makes me unhappier than I am already. All it does in the long run is bring us oblivion.”
“I need you when I come out of that oblivion, Harry.” Her voice was solemn and barely under control.
“I need you too, Helen.” This was as true a statement as I had ever made. Without Helen I was worse than nothing, a dark, faceless shadow, alone in the darkness. I had to take her with me.
“I haven’t thought about suicide in a long time, Helen,” I said. “Not once since we’ve been together. I used to think about it all of the time, but I never had the nerve. Together, maybe we could do it. I know I couldn’t do it alone.”
“I used to think about suicide too.” Helen accepted my mood and took it for her own. “Down in San Sienna. It was such a tight, hateful little town. My bedroom overlooked the ocean, and I’d sit there all day, with the door locked, curled up on the window-seat, hiding my empty bottles in my dirty clothes hamper. Sitting there like that, looking at the golden sunshine glistening on the water, watching the breakers as they crashed on the beach . . . It made me depressed as hell. It was all so purposeless!”
“Did you ever attempt it?”
“Suicide?”
“That’s what we’re considering. Suicide.”
“Yes, I tried it once.” She smiled wryly. “On my wedding night, Harry. I was still a virgin, believe it or not. Oh, I wasn’t ignorant; I knew what was expected of me and I thought I was ready for it. But I wasn’t. Not for what happened, anyway. It was a virtual onslaught! My husband was a real estate man, and I’d never seen him in anything except a suit—all dressed up you know, with a clean, respectable look.
“But all of a sudden—I was in bed first, wearing my new nightgown, and shivering with apprehension—he flew out of the bathroom without a stitch on and rushed across the room. He was actually gibbering and drooling at the mouth. He tore the covers off me. He ripped my new, nice nightgown to shreds . . .” Helen’s voice broke as she relived this experience and she talked with difficulty. “I fought him. I tore at his face with my nails; I bit him, hit at him, but it didn’t make any difference. I’m positive now, that that’s what he wanted me to do, you see. He overpowered me easily and completely. Then, in a second, it was all over. I was raped. He walked casually into the bathroom, doctored his scratches with iodine, put his pajamas on and climbed into bed as though nothing had happened.”
Helen smiled grimly, crushed her cigarette in the ashtray.
“It was his first and last chance at me,” she continued. “I never gave him another. Lying there beside him in the darkness I vowed that he’d never touch me again. After he was asleep I got out of bed and took the bottle of aspirins out of my overnight bag and went into the bathroom. There were twenty-six tablets. I counted them, because I didn’t know for sure whether that was enough or not. But I decided it was and I took them three at a time until they were gone, washing each bunch down with a glass of water. Then I climbed back into bed—”
“That wasn’t nearly enough,” I said, interested in her story.
“No, it wasn’t. But I fell asleep though, and I probably wouldn’t have otherwise. They must have had some kind of psychological effect. But I awoke the next morning the same as ever, except for a loud ringing in my ears. The ringing lasted, all day.”
“What about your husband? Did he know you attempted suicide?”
“I didn’t give him that satisfaction. We were staying at a beach motel in Santa Barbara, and after breakfast he went out to the country club to play golf. I begged off—told him I wanted to do some shopping—and as soon as he drove away I packed my bag and caught a bus for San Sienna and Mother. Mother was glad to have me back.”
“And you never went back to him?”
“Never. I told Mother what happened. It was foolish of me, maybe, but she was determined to find out so I told her about it. Later on, when he begged me to come back to him, I was going to, but she wouldn’t let me. He didn’t know any better, the poor guy, and he told me so, after he found out the reason I left him. But it was too late then. I was safe in Mother’s arms.”
She finished her story bitterly, and her features assumed the tragic look I knew so well, the look that entered her face whenever she mentioned her mother. I kissed her tenderly on the mouth, got out of bed, and paced the floor restlessly.
“I’m glad you told me about this, Helen. That’s when you started to drink, isn’t it?”
“Yes, that’s when I started to drink. It was as good an excuse as any other.”
We were silent then, deep in our own thoughts. Helen lay on her back with her eyes closed while I paced the floor. I understood Helen a little better now. Thanks to me, and I don’t know how many others, she didn’t feel the same way about sex now, but she was so fixed in her drinking habits she could never change them. Not without some fierce drive from within, and she wasn’t
made that way. Before she could ever stop drinking she would have to have some purpose to her life, and I couldn’t furnish it. Not when I didn’t even have a purpose for my own life. If we continued on, in the direction we were traveling, the only thing that could possibly happen would be a gradual lowering of standards, and they were low enough already. If something happened to me, she would end up on the streets of San Francisco. The very thought of this sent a cold chill down my back. And I couldn’t take care of her properly. It was too much of an effort to take care of myself . . .
“It takes a lot of nerve to commit suicide, Harry,” Helen said suddenly, sitting up in bed, and swinging her feet to the floor.
“If we did it together I think we could do it,” I said confidently. “Right now, we’re on the bottom rung of the ladder. We’re dead broke. I haven’t got a job, and there’s no one we can turn to for help. No whiskey, no religion, nothing.”
“Do you think we’d be together afterwards?”
“Are you talking about the hereafter?”
“That’s what I mean. I wouldn’t care whether I went to Heaven or Hell as long as I was with you.”
“I don’t know anything about those things, Helen. But here’s the way I look at it. If we went together, we’d be together. I’m positive of that.”
The thought of death was very attractive to me. I could tell by the fixed expression in Helen’s eyes that she was in the same mood I was in. She got the cigarettes from the table and sat down again on the edge of the bed. After she lit the cigarettes, I took mine and sat down beside her.
“How would we go about it, Harry?” Helen was in earnest, but her voice quavered at her voiced thought.
“There are lots of ways.”
“But how, though? I can’t stand being hurt. If it was all over with like that—” she snapped her fingers— “and I didn’t feel anything, I think I could do it.”
“We could cut our wrists with a razor blade.”
“Oh, no!” She shuddered. “That would hurt terribly!”
“No it wouldn’t,” I assured her. “Just for one second, maybe, and then it would all be over.”
Pick-Up Page 5
