Dread Journey

by Dorothy B. Hughes

  She withdrew imperceptibly from the tower of him. She looked into her drink. Her fingers dipped into the dregs and lifted out the wet cherry. She was studiedly rude as she pushed the glass at him. “Yes, give me another.” She put the cherry in her mouth and sucked it.

  Hank gulped. Drink it quick; it didn’t taste so foul if you drank it quick. It was bringing the fog. It was dulling the spikes of memory. Fleetingly he remembered his fears before he tasted the first. He gave a loud laugh, loud and harsh. From the table Spender looked quickly at him out of puzzled eyes. Kitten drew her silken legs away, distaste narrowing her nose.

  He laughed to recall how he’d thought Spender was offering him poison. Spender was giving him the best cure, the only cure, with his filthy concoction. It was strong drink and that was what he needed. That was what the doctor ordered. Take it strong and you didn’t need so many, you could blur out quicker. Tasty little cocktail. A rare recipe. Must ask Spender what was in it. One third whisky, one third brandy, one third raw alcohol?

  “Some drink,” Hank laughed. “A rare old drink.” He was drunk and it was good. He couldn’t remember why he wanted to be drunk and that was good.

  Spender said, “Let me give you another.” The big man, the big important man was coming over to give drunken bum Cavanaugh another glass of his rare recipe. He was carrying Kitten’s brimming glass; it looked pretty with the cherry plopped in it.

  Hank pronounced a solemn edict. “Cherries take up room.”

  Kitten screamed.

  He flailed his way out of the fog. Viv Spender was going to kill Kitten. Before his eyes, before his cowardly closed eyes. But she wasn’t dead. She was livid with rage. Her mouth was the mouth of a guttersnipe. “You clumsy oaf!”

  Spender said, “I’m sorry.”

  The Chief had swayed. The Chief had rounded a curve, had clattered unevenly over a hump in the roadbed. Kitten’s drink was upside down in her black satin lap. The cherry was brightly embossed on the wide grotesque of the stain.

  “I’m awfully sorry,” Spender said.

  Kitten kicked him out of the way. She put the cherry in her mouth and she stood up, letting the cocktail glass splinter to the floor. What she said was out of the gutter. Rage carried her from the room; rage made her walk unsteadily or she too had had too many drinks.

  Spender was on his knee gathering the broken glass. He said, “Damn clumsy of me.”

  Hank smiled blissfully. He didn’t have to worry about Kitten now. She wouldn’t come back here in a hurry. He could close his eyes and fog out.

  —5—

  Mike pushed open the door without knocking. Viv was by the window, drink in hand, conversation in his mouth. On the couch was Hank Cavanaugh, his eyes closed, his mouth smiling. He was drunk.

  Mike said, “Where’s Kitten?” It didn’t sound like her voice. It grated from her throat.

  Viv said, “She went to change her dress.” He grinned, a little sheepish his grin. “I spilled a cocktail on her.”

  Mike’s knees wobbled. She put her hand on the chair back. “She didn’t come for me. I was afraid—” She sucked the words in, made others to replace them. “I was afraid she’d forgotten the appointment with you.”

  “Not at all,” Viv smiled. “She and Cavanaugh arrived together a bit after five. After the mishap, she rushed away quite upset. Meantime Cavanaugh and I have had quite a talk.”

  Hank Cavanaugh opened his eyes. “You talked. I didn’t listen.” He didn’t look drunk now that his eyes were open. They weren’t glazed. They were sardonic. He turned them on Viv. “It’s taking Kitten a long time to change her dress.”

  Viv sighed. “I’ve known Kitten to spend an hour putting on her hat. God knows when she’ll be back.”

  Hank pulled up his knees, set his heels on the floor. “She’s not coming back,” he said.

  Mike’s hands went cold. Viv was looking at Hank, looking at him in silence. Again her voice wasn’t her own. “Why not?”

  “She was too mad. He spoiled her best dress.”

  Viv’s mouth opened and he laughed long. “She’ll be back. With a bill. For a dress three times as expensive.” He looked regretful. “It won’t help my expense account.”

  Hank was on his feet. “If she comes back, tell her I’m in Augustin’s. If she comes there, I’ll tell her you want to buy her an olive branch with a new dress on it. An expensive one.”

  “Not too expensive,” Viv said good-naturedly. “You won’t have another drink?”

  Hank’s smile was ironic. “No more of those. They’re poison.”

  Again her eyes leaped to Viv’s silence, to the painted quality of his good nature. His voice was easy. “We’ll talk over that contract in New York?”

  “Sure,” Hank said and the irony was bitter. “With a rare recipe.”

  He went out leaving silence. She didn’t know how to break it. Now that he was gone, Viv had stopped pretending. His knuckles were hard. A train shuddered past the dark windows hurtling westward. The dissonance shook her but it broke the spell of silence. Viv said calmly, “Offensive bastard. Is he worth going after?”

  She nodded. “Tops in his field.”

  “Drunkard. Don’t know if I want him.”

  Nothing had happened. Viv was unchanged. Kitten had taken Hank Cavanaugh for protection; she hadn’t needed Mike. Mike’s relief edged her voice. “I’d like a drink myself, Viv.”

  “Sure.” He opened a traveling case. “You don’t want that stuff.” He nodded to the cocktail shaker. “I mixed it for Kitten.” He took out a fresh pinch bottle, began removing the foil.

  She watched his moving hands while doubt again thorned her. She had to know. Her tongue was dry. “I’d like to sample it.” Could he hear the ragged beat of her heart? “Your specials are usually pretty good stuff.”

  There was no hesitation. “Sample it at your own risk. If Cavanaugh left any to be sampled.” He coiled away the foil neatly. “That’s another reason I’m not sure I want him under contract. A man who could keep on drinking that sort of concoction can’t have any taste.”

  She didn’t need to drink now. There was no more doubt. All was well, somehow Viv had been saved from his nightmare. She poured a bit into a glass, swallowed it. Her mouth twisted wryly.

  Viv was amused. “Now will you deny it’s poison?”

  —6—

  When he opened the door the scene was frozen exactly where he had left it. Gratia by the window, her quiet face reflected in the shining black of the pane; her head resting against the seat back. Her eyes were wide on him as they had been when he left the room, as they had been all afternoon. Sometime during the afternoon they’d lost regret. As if she’d come to a realization of what motivated his acts, as if understanding were again between them.

  Les was beside her, motionless as before. Pallid, weary, clinging to her peace. Drawing it into himself because his need was great.

  Set apart, solitary, was Sidney Pringle, his head bent, his eyes on the floor. Waiting to be told when he could speak.

  Les opened his eyes when Hank entered. Hank saw then, Les hadn’t been as listless this afternoon as he feigned. His eyes were sharp. His voice was as sharp. “Where’s Kitten?”

  Mike had asked the same question with the same hidden fright.

  Hank closed the door. He’d been drunk; he wasn’t now. He felt good, just right. He said, “Changing her dress. Spender dumped a cocktail on her.”

  Les eyed him, accepted truth. “Oh, no.” Mirth began to quiver his nose. “Oh, no!”

  “It was an accident,” Hank said. Their eyes met again and they laughed together. They needed a laugh. The long watch was over. It had ended in a joke. Les asked, “Did you get a job?” Hank laughed some more. “Do you think I want his jobs?”

  Sidney Pringle raised his eyes to Hank. They were matted with hatred. His voice quavered. “Your suit needs pressing. Worse than mine does. You don’t have to worry about how you look because you’re important. You didn’t care whether yo
u saw Vivien Spender or not. You can turn down his money. You don’t have to sell neckties.”

  Hank raised an oblique eyebrow. Les closed his eyes. Outside the window a train shuddered by.

  Sidney Pringle said, “I’m Sidney Pringle. I wrote Asses’ Milk. It’s about a little man who tried to get out of the tenements, about me! I wrote it at nights on a kitchen table. After selling neckties all day in a bargain basement. It took me out of the basement. It took me to Hollywood.”

  He couldn’t stop talking. It didn’t matter whether they wanted to hear or not, he would tell it. He’d touched bottom of despair. Because Hank Cavanaugh had turned Vivien Spender down.

  “It wasn’t my fault I couldn’t write there. The industry is too big, too capitalistic to recognize art.” Hysteria reddened his voice. “They think writing is something to be turned out like cheap neckties, so many words an hour, so many pages a day. They wouldn’t let me create. It wasn’t my fault I failed.”

  His chin was shaking like jelly. “Art isn’t creation to Vivien Spender, to any of those great tomcat producers. Art is a body in a bed. It isn’t a man's life blood drying in a pen while he sells neckties in a bargain basement.” His knuckles rubbed tears into his eyes.

  “She didn’t have to tell Vivien Spender about me. I didn’t ask her to. She brought it up herself. And she lied to me. She said she couldn’t ask favors. Not for me. She didn’t look over her shoulder at me the way she did at you. She didn’t call me ‘Darling’ and make the word a promise that quivers in a man’s stomach. She didn’t even speak to me at the table last night. I wasn’t good enough for her. I wasn’t important.” His voice trembled to frenzy. “I was a failure. If I’d been important she would have twisted her body at me. She would have called me darling. She would have taken me with her to see Viv Spender. She—”

  Les interrupted. His voice was soft but the line of his mouth was vicious. “Shut up.”

  Hank threatened, “Don’t talk about her as if she weren’t coming back.”

  Sidney Pringle didn’t know; he had no idea of what the rest of them had been through this day. He didn’t know about anything but himself. He began to cry. Gratia turned her eyes away from the obscenity.

  Hank said, his voice rising, “If you’d go where I’ve been and see what I’ve seen, you’d stop feeling sorry for yourself.” He didn’t care how blameless Pringle was; the man had roiled the waters again.

  Pringle wept, “I’m not sorry for myself. I just don’t want to sell neckties.”

  Les chanted tonelessly, “You don’t want to sell neckties. Kitten doesn’t want to sing in cheap bars. I don’t want to cadge meals and sleep in subways. We’d rather die first.” He began to laugh and then he began to cough, he couldn’t stop coughing. When he took his handkerchief away from his mouth, there was a spat of blood on it. He covered it with furtive quickness. Hank alone saw.

  He was violent. “She’s all right. I know she’s all right. I was there all the time. She’s just changing her dress. It takes her a long time to change her dress.” He swung around to the opening door.

  Mike was motionless on the threshold. He was afraid for her to speak; everyone was afraid to hear her speak. Except Pringle. Pringle sniffled.

  She began, “Gratia, Viv wants you to have dinner with him.”

  Les said, “No.” His arm moved out to block Gratia’s way. He wasn’t languid now; he was tightly knotted as a wire. This was what he’d been expecting. It was for this he’d husbanded his strength, to keep Gratia safe, to keep her away from Vivien Spender.

  Hank repeated, “No.” He stuck out his jaw as if it were Spender who stood there, not a paid emissary. “You’re too late, Gratia’s having dinner with us.” He was filled with a savage triumph. Without putting it to words he understood now the motivation of Les’s personal, unmotivated feud with Spender. The man had too much too easily, his accretion of power was a denial of the inherent rights of all other men. To best him even in this small way was a renewing of manhood.

  Mike didn’t protest the decision. She was passive as a stranger. She said, “I’ll tell him.” And she went away.

  Gratia was unsure. “Perhaps I should—”

  “Darling!” Les’s fingers closed over her wrist. “You promised us.”

  “Let’s have a drink,” Hank offered. He knew there’d been too much drinking; with it came the ugly hypertension. But he didn’t know what else to say.

  “I don’t want a drink.” Gratia was pleasant but definite. “I’m hungry.”

  “Stick with us until Kitten comes back and we’ll eat right away,” Hank suggested. It was hard to speak the words, so hard the palms of his hands were wet. He wiped them on his trousers.

  Sidney Pringle piped with wounded dignity, “I ought to go. You want me to go.”

  “Why does everyone want to go?” Hank roared it out. “What you need is another drink, Sid. Then you can tell me all over again about how you come to write Asses’ Milk. Damn good book, you know.”

  Pringle tried to smile. “If I take another drink I’ll be drunk.”

  “You’re drunk already.” Hank was playing a part because he couldn’t bear the waiting; he was hanging on to the miserable Pringle because he alone was solid in this nebula of fear; he alone, outside of it, was normal.

  Gratia spoke again with that same pleasant definiteness. “I’ll go tell Kitten to hurry.”

  “No!”

  They said the word together, Les and Hank, said it so quickly. They were afraid for their eyes to meet.

  Gratia said firmly, “I want to wash up before dinner.” She glanced at the bracelet of Les’s hand on her wrist. Slowly he unloosed it.

  She stood up. They couldn’t stop her; they couldn’t go with her. She was capable of walking a few steps to her drawing room, of washing her own hands and face. She couldn’t help but sense their unspoken reluctance for her to go; it swirled in thick clouds about them stifling their words.

  Les could speak if he hadn’t forgotten how. He could drop those polished pebbles from his smiling mouth, he could delay her a little longer. Hank couldn’t speak. Not without giving birth to the monstrous obsession which lay like a stone in his stomach and his brain.

  It was Les who answered her, answered gravely, “Yes. We very much want her to hurry.”

  She accepted his words. She smiled her lovely smile. They watched her cross the little room. She opened the door and took a deep breath, a clean breath. “I won’t be a minute,” she smiled.

  He couldn’t let her walk in on it. He called, “Wait!”

  She remained where she was, puzzled, obeying only because his word was a command. He wasn’t that kind of a coward. He had to be the one to go.

  He felt Les behind him in the doorway. Hank’s hands were rough as he pushed Gratia aside, pushed her to Les Augustin. He said nothing, there was nothing now to say. There was nothing to do but face the specter of a lost fight. He walked forward steadily. He didn’t compromise with his prescience. Without knocking, he opened the door and went in.

  SIX

  JAMES COBBETT WATCHED WITH them all afternoon. Not because he was interested in them; because he was heavy, because he’d been unable to shake off the weight of depression which had settled on him when the Chief left L.A. yesterday noon.

  His passengers had been quiet enough during the long afternoon. Surfeited with the squirrel-tread movement of the train, they’d closed themselves behind their doors. Too lethargic even for bell ringing. He understood the hopelessness of travelers this second day out. Familiarity with ceaseless motion reduced the high speed of the Chief to a tortoise crawl. The unchanging horizon line of Arizona and New Mexico had the unending and fearful sameness of crossing eternity. Engendering something that bordered on atavistic fear. Moving, always moving; yet the movement was to no avail. The scene pasted on the windows was ever the same, wasteland and sky.

  The bridal couple clung together behind their door. The journey to them was fleet as a falling star and a
s beautiful. If they had recognized the resemblance to eternity, they would not fear. They needed eternity to hold their happiness. The old couple drowsed together, content with each other out of long habit. They had weathered endless finite eternities; so many they no longer recognized one until it was past.

  The others huddled together in their incongruity. All but Vivien Spender. He sat alone behind his door. James Cobbett learned one thing about Vivien Spender as he sat alone outside Spender’s door. One thing that money and power and importance did for a man. It made him lone.

  He learned another thing about Spender after a little. Even the great were not immune from the arid depression of the long afternoon. Spender came out of his room, left the car seeking human relations. Cobbett, not caring, learned who it was Spender sought. With the fact, he added to his knowledge of the lone, restless man. He could not go simply to Gratia Shawn as a poor man would go. He had to send his secretary.

  When Spender returned to the car, a dark motif was added to the pattern of knowledge. The great could be unreasonable in the throes of anger. The look Spender darted at him was bleak with hatred.

  After that the car was quiet. At four James Cobbett went to eat. Dinner didn’t alleviate the heavy hanging over his head. He left the companionship of his own as quickly as he could, returned to his tired vigil. It might be that Rufe’s good-natured taunt was a glimmer of truth. He had the ha’nts.

  There was activity after five. Kitten Agnew at Spender’s door. The man with the mouth worn in sardonic grooves, Cavanaugh, following her. Quarrelsome words; silence. The bride and bridegroom, clean and happy, hand in hand, moving forward doubtless to the club car for a before-dinner cocktail.

  When Kitten came out of Spender’s, Cobbett dropped his eyes quickly. Her mouth was an ugly blur, her pupils glazed. She came alone and she walked unsteadily to her own door, pushed inside. Something cold touched the root of his spine. He had looked upon something unclean. If he had been Rufe, he would have performed a superstitious ritual. James Cobbett was educated; he had no talisman to exorcise evil. He sat there in the silence and wondered.