The Cry of the Owl

by Patricia Highsmith

  “Sorry I sounded gloomy tonight,” he said.

  She looked up at him with sharp and serious eyes. “You’re not gloomy. Maybe I am.”

  She hadn’t moved, her hands had not stirred from where they rested on the arms of the chair. And it was just as well, Robert thought, because he regretted kissing her, even though his kiss on her cheek might as well have been from her brother. But her eyes did not leave him. He threw his cigarette in the fire and started clearing the table. Then he filled the sink to wash their few dishes, and Jenny with a gesture and a smile shooed him aside and put an apron on and did them herself, very neatly, not wetting the cuffs of her suit. Robert dried them as she put them on the rack. He felt content, unworried about anything. Greg seemed unimportant and a bit silly. He was as important as Jenny made him, and Jenny simply wanted him out of her life and that was that. They both, in fact, were free, he and Jenny. He looked at her soft hair that hung beside her face, some of it slipped over the pin behind her ear, and he wanted to kiss her cheek again. She was wiping out the sink. Then she straightened and untied the apron, dropped it on the counter, and opened her arms to him. Their lips touched, pressed, and the tip of her tongue against his was like a warm electric shock. He held her tight—her strange, warm body, taller than Nickie and more slender, her perfume different. The first girl he had held in his arms since Nickie. Then he broke away and walked into the living room. He felt her eyes on him from the kitchen. He stood looking into the fireplace for a minute, then made a lunge toward the phonograph and put a record on, the first record he picked up.

  He did not want her to stay the night, but she was taking it for granted that she would, he knew, and it was impossible to say “Jenny, in view of what we were talking about tonight …” And what was worse, he might have slept with her, might have asked her to come up to his bedroom without any to-do about it tonight. It would all have been so easy, so natural, so expected by everyone. And possibly unfair. If it happened tonight, he might never want it to happen again. If it happened tonight, she might be disappointed—what fantasies went on in her head, what unrealizable ideals?—or she might expect it to happen “every night and every night,” the phrase she had used on Sunday in regard to seeing him in the evenings. Robert did not want to begin. Tomorrow she would not be here, and that would be the beginning of the tapering off of something that should never have begun.

  He stood looking at her in bed on the red couch, his hands clenched in the pockets of his robe, as he had stood on the first night she had spent here. She had gotten into bed after her shower with the routine air of a docile child, but now her eyes looked up at him questioningly, alert.

  “Good night, Jenny.”

  She smiled slowly, as if she were amused by him. “No kiss on the forehead? No kiss on the cheek?”

  He laughed and swung around in search of a cigarette. “No.” He found the cigarette, lit it, and started up the steps to the bedroom, paused and turned to say a last “Good night,” but before he had spoken, she called his name.

  “I want—” she began, and there was a long pause. Her arms were behind her head, her eyes closed, and she stirred as if she were in pain. Then she opened her eyes and said, “I’m so ha-appy, Robert. What can I do for you?”

  “Can’t think of anything. Thanks.”

  “Nothing? Not even knit a sweater for you?”

  He shook his head. “Well, there is one thing. If you’ve got a doctor here and you can get some sleeping pills for me—I prefer Seconals.”

  “Oh, sure I can. E-easily.”

  “I’ve been too lazy to look up a doctor. Thanks, Jenny. Good night, now.”

  “Good night.”

  He climbed the stairs, got into bed, and turned his light off at once. Jenny’s light stayed on for another half hour. Robert had taken two of the mild sedatives he had bought in a drugstore without prescription, but they might as well have been placebos. It was one of the nights he needed something strong.

  11

  Robert spent Tuesday evening working on his drawings of the cylinder-shaped part—as yet nameless—that he was trying to get into producible form for Langley Aeronautics. The plant had the mold for a similar piece, one of the standard transmission parts that went into every helicopter. Since molds were expensive, Mr. Jaffe and Mr. Gerard, Robert’s boss and the company president, respectively, wanted him to design this piece so that it could be produced by the mold they already had, even though the functions of the two cylindrical parts were entirely different. Robert’s idea, if it could be put to use, would eliminate two parts and combine three parts into one, thus eventually saving the expense of two molds, but Gerard had not seemed much impressed by this fact. They were not going to lay out the money for a new mold to try it out. Or perhaps they were testing his ingenuity, just seeing if he could do it. Their attitude was a bit irksome. But the task had the challenge of a game or a puzzle that he felt could be solved, if he kept at it. Again and again Robert compared his drawings with those of the transmission mold, coming again to the same impasse at the anterior end. And what did it all matter? Did he really care about improving L.A.’s helicopters? Or about getting himself a raise in pay for it? No. It was just something that had occurred to him while looking at a certain section of a helicopter the other day. You have no ambition, Nickie’s voice said in his ears. She was no doubt right. He had simply fallen into industrial designing in the last year of college. He had studied engineering, and his specialty might have been any number of things besides industrial engineering. He hadn’t been passionately drawn to anything. Robert supposed that was a fault, a deficiency. Perhaps someday he would be passionately drawn to something he might have to study years more to master. It had happened to other men that they found their lifework only at thirty or so, or at least their particular specialization.

  He lifted his head when the telephone rang, blinked his eyes, looked at his watch. Ten-thirty-five. Jenny calling to say good night, he thought. He had not talked to her all evening.

  “Hello?” he said.

  “Elusive with that telephone number, aren’t you, darling?” said Nickie’s voice.

  “Mm-m. How’d you get it?”

  “Oh, I got it from Greg. And he said he got it by telling the operator he had an urgent message about your sick mother.” Nickie laughed. “What’s the use trying to hide your number if you can’t? Who do you think you are, a V.I.P. or something?”

  “Nickie, I’m working. What’re you calling about?”

  “I’m calling to give you a word of advice,” she said, dragging out the last word in a hiss. “Mr. Wyncoop is annoyed with you, and who could blame him? Stealing his girl friend, his fiancée. I hear she’s young enough to be your daughter, anyway.”

  “Oh, Nickie, knock it off.”

  “I’m telling you this for your own good,” she said righteously now and in a tone of anger. “Mr. Wyncoop is a man who means business. The best thing for you to do is drop the girl—before it’s too late. I understand you’ve been sleeping with her. Good God!” Nickie said with disgust.

  “Listen, Nickie, we’re divorced now, remember? What I do is my own business and nothing—”

  “I’m giving you some advice. I suggest you drop the girl before it’s too late.”

  “And what do you mean by too late?”

  She laughed. “I mean, when you find out, it’ll probably be too late. Get it? I mean, watch your health down there.”

  Now Robert laughed. “Interesting.”

  “Oh, you ass. You moron.”

  “Good night, Nickie.” He waited an instant, she was silent, and he hung up.

  He went back to his writing table and sat down, but the image of his drawing didn’t focus. Damned if he’d let it bother him, he thought. If it weren’t Jenny, it’d be some other girl, any other girl he happened to be interested in. Nickie would find out somehow, she’d find the time and the energy to hang herself on the telephone and heckle him about it. He flung his pencil down and st
ood up.

  And still he thought about it even after he had gone to bed. Of course Nickie had got his number from Greg, and it had been unnecessary to ask where she’d got it. The only surprising thing was that she hadn’t got it weeks ago on her own, the way she had his number at the Camelot Apartments. A pity a new marriage couldn’t keep her a little busier, a little more content. She had married Ralph about a month ago. Robert had seen the announcement in the New York Times one Sunday. They had been married in Ralph’s family church somewhere in upstate New York, Robert remembered, and he had thought it rather unusual that a man like Ralph Jurgen, in the advertising business, should make such a sentimental choice of a place to be married in. But then he didn’t really know Ralph. When they had run into each other at the apartment two or three times, or when Robert had had to take a telephone message from Ralph for Nickie, they had been cordial to each other, nothing more, nothing else.

  The telephone rang again, and Robert got out of bed and answered it, frowning.

  “Hello, Robert,” said Jenny. “I was wondering if you’d like to meet my friends the Tessers on Wednesday. I’d like to ask them for dinner. They’re very easy to get along with. Would you?” It came out softly and steadily, as if she had rehearsed it.

  Robert squeezed his eyes shut. “Jenny, I’m not sure I can make it on Wednesday. I haven’t got this cylinder thing worked out yet. I’d better spend this week at home.”

  “Friday, then? Friday’s an even better night for them, I know, because—”

  “O.K. Friday.”

  “About seven? I can tell you’re in the middle of work, so I won’t keep you. Good night, Robert.”

  He met the Tessers on Friday. Dick Tesser was a tall, slender fellow in his early thirties, with black hair and a black, bushy mustache. He was a contractor. His wife, Naomi, was small and blond, very talkative and cheerful. They seemed to take a parental interest in Jenny’s welfare. And Robert sensed that they liked and “approved” of him in regard to Jenny, which must have been due to what Jenny had told them about him, as Robert was rather quiet that evening. Robert and Dick had asked polite questions about each other’s work, and the rest of the conversation had been about the Tessers’ frost-ruptured water pipes and about their three children.

  “We’ve had a few calls from Greg since we saw you last,” Dick Tesser said to Jenny when they were all in the living room with their coffee.

  “Oh?” Jenny said.

  “Dick, do we have to go into that?” asked Naomi.

  “Yes, I think it’s a very appropriate time, in view of the fact we’ve met Mr. Forester tonight. Mr. Forester is the way Greg always refers to you,” Dick added to Robert solemnly. Dick had had quite a bit to drink.

  “Greg’s got a chip on his shoulder,” Naomi said with a shrug, and threw a smile at Robert. “Rather understandable.”

  “I’m sorry he’s annoying you people,” Jenny said.

  “Wants us to exert our influence,” Dick went on. “He seems to think you’re a little puppet with strings attached. Strings that we’re holding. He’s called us three or four times, hasn’t he, honey?”

  “Yes, but let’s not make more out of it than it’s worth, Dick.” She narrowed her eyes at her husband, a signal to shut up, but Dick missed it.

  “I don’t like a man,” Dick resumed, “who tries to oust his competition by slamming at their character. And what’s so great about Greg’s character, I’d like to know? A very ordinary young man with an ordinary job. And he’s jealous, granted. Jealous maybe because Mr. Forester has a better job.”

  Naomi laughed. “Oh, I doubt if it’s because of the job!”

  Robert stared at the floor and wished they would get off the subject. Jenny looked as uncomfortable as he.

  “It’s my fault for ever—for ever making any promises to Greg,” Jenny said. “I should have known better.”

  “Whoever knows better, darling?” Naomi said. “We all make mistakes.”

  “Greg should pick up a nice girl, maybe behind some drugstore counter—”

  “Oh, come on, Dick,” Naomi interrupted. “I can remember when Jenny liked him and you thought he was pretty O.K., too, so don’t start knocking him all over the place now.”

  “All right, all right, but you know what he said to me and I didn’t like it, that’s all.” Dick looked at his wife with a tipsy sternness.

  “What did he say?” Jenny asked.

  “Dick, do we have to?” his wife said.

  “He told a story about a prowler around your house,” Dick said to Jenny. “Said you’d been hearing funny noises outside the house and in, and then when you met Mr. Forester, they stopped. Greg’s conclusion: Mr. Forester was the prowler.” Dick scowled, waiting for the effect of his words.

  The effect was a three-second silence before Jenny said, “That’s just not true.”

  “We didn’t think it was true, darling,” said Naomi.

  Dick was looking at Robert. “He backed it up with a lot of stuff about talking to Mr. Forester’s former wife in New York,” Dick said, addressing Jenny now, “who said Mr. Forester was ready for a booby hatch.”

  Jenny’s cup chattered in its saucer and she nearly dropped it. She stood up. “It’s just not true, Dick, and why do you repeat it?”

  Dick looked at her in surprise. “All right, Jenny. Sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I only said this because—because—”

  “Haven’t you said enough now?” asked Naomi.

  But Robert saw that she was surprised at Jenny’s reaction, too. He heard Jenny draw her breath in as if she were about to cry.

  “Because,” Dick went on, “I think you and your friend Robert ought to know about it, Jenny. It’s a nasty story to be circulating in a community as small as this, as small and as nosy, I might add. And secondly because—I would like to say that one look at Mr. Forester and I can see he’s not the kind of man to be a prowler. Or to be going into an insane asylum.”

  “I think your secondly might just as well have been kept to yourself,” his wife said. “The obvious doesn’t need to be said, does it, darling?”

  Dick Tesser looked at his wife, bared his teeth in an exasperated smile, said, “All right,” and sat back.

  “This is the third girl Greg’s lost, Robert,” Naomi said, “so it’s easy to see why he’s sore. I knew one of the other girls in Philadelphia. She said she never gave Greg any real encouragement, but he was livid when she married someone else.”

  Robert glanced at her, then looked down at his coffee cup. “Sorry there’s so much disturbance,” he murmured. He felt Naomi’s eyes on him, Dick’s eyes, too, for a long moment. What did they expect him to do? Smile? Make a flippant comment? He wondered if Jenny, in her openness and enthusiasm, had told the Tessers that he and she were engaged, or the next thing to it?

  Finally Jenny said, “Wouldn’t anybody like some more coffee?”

  “I think my husband could use another cup,” said Naomi.

  The Tessers stayed only twenty minutes longer, but things went more smoothly. The Tessers told some amusing stories about a Pennsylvania Dutch farmer down the road from them who existed entirely on the barter system. Robert had the feeling they left early so that he and Jenny could have some time alone.

  “I got the Seconals for you,” Jenny said. “They’re upstairs. I’ll get them.”

  Robert walked about the living room, smoking a cigarette. On the shelf below Jenny’s phonograph, he noticed some rolled-up white knitting with needles sticking out from it. There was a cable stitch in it. It was the sweater Jenny had asked if she could make for him. Robert smiled a little, touched by it, by the work that would go into it in the hours when he was not with her.

  “Here they are. Ninety-milligram pills. Is that too strong?”

  Robert smiled. “Well—it’s the strongest, I think. I can cut them in half.” He took the glass bottle of red capsules from her. “I’m very glad to have them. Thanks a lot, Jenny. What do I owe you?”

&nbs
p; “Oh, nothing at all.”

  He had expected that. He took his wallet from his pocket. “But I insist. Here’s a five. Is that about it?”

  “Oh, not five. I won’t take it.”

  He came toward her with the bill, made as if to drop it into the hand that was not extended, and her hand came out, held his for a minute, then he drew his hand away. Shyly, she put the bill down on the coffee table.

  “What did you think of the Tessers?”

  “I think they’re very nice.”

  “They always start bickering a little when Dick gets high. They liked you. They both told me so—when you were out of hearing.”

  He said nothing.

  “Can we have them to your place sometime?”

  “I suppose so. Why not?”

  “Aren’t you going to sit down?”

  “I think I should be taking off, Jenny. That was a great dinner.” She was pleased by his trite compliment.

  “It’s a new way of cooking veal fillets I just read about.”

  He got his coat from the kitchen closet.

  “When’ll I see you?” she asked. “Tomorrow night?”

  She said it as if it were already a sacrifice for her not to be with him all day tomorrow, which was Saturday. “I’m invited to the Nielsons’,” he answered, and watched her face slowly fall. He knew she was thinking, why hadn’t he asked them if he could bring her?

  “I’d like to meet them sometime,” she said.

  “Oh, you will. I’ll have them to my place. Well—I’ll call you tomorrow, Jenny.” Somehow he was holding her right hand. He gave it a quick shake and fairly ducked out the door.

  The following week, Robert invited the Nielsons to his house for dinner, and Jenny cooked a leg of lamb for them. The evening went well, the Nielsons liked Jenny, and were plainly glad he had “a girl,” and it was plain she was going to be included in any future invitations he got from the Nielsons. Robert showed no more attentiveness to Jenny than he had with the Tessers, no more than he showed now when he and Jenny were alone, but Jenny’s doting looks at him outweighed his behavior, Robert was sure. The Nielsons would assume he was just as in love with her. Later, talking with Jack Nielson at the plant, Robert made it clear that there was no romance between him and Jenny, and said he had seen her only a few times.