by Lee Hays
The kids skipped merrily by, one or two tentatively eying Santa and the girl who was obviously not Mrs. Claus.
Phyl said, after pulling her mouth away from his, “You’re going to blow your image, Santa.”
In a husky voice he said, “Say you’re not going away skiing. Go ahead, say it.”
“You’re not going away skiing.”
“Oh, come on, Phyl. What’s going on, anyway. You promised me.” He pulled his beard down and kissed her again, even more urgently than before.
“I’ve got a place in the hills not far from here. Ski slopes, a fireplace. Warm, toasty. You’ll love it.” Nibbling on her earlobe he added, “I love you.”
Phyl reached up and pulled down the elastic of his false beard, stretching it away from his chin. “I love you, too, but it will have to wait.” She kissed him tenderly but he responded even more passionately than before. She pulled quickly away, letting the beard go with a snap against his nose.
“Ouch!” he said, and released her. She ducked away and went to the door to help Barbara while he rubbed his nose. A last child went by and looked up at him curiously. He growled at the child who stopped and continued to stare at him.
“Beat it, kid!”
The boy’s face began to pucker and then he started to cry.
“Oh, Christ!” Patrick said and he turned and went quickly out of the room to change back into his own clothes.
Down the hall from where he had been rehearsing, Peter Smythe stood in a phone booth trying to support the receiver on his shoulder as he finished dialing while tying his tie. He stopped, listened, fidgeted and tapped his foot as the mechanism rang several times. There was no answer. He looked at his watch, put the receiver back angrily, stepped into the hall, heard the coin drop, went back for it and, still preoccupied, went down the corridor.
Another student passed him and called out, “Good luck, Peter.”
Bringing his attention back in focus he answered, “Oh, uh, thanks, Allan.” Then he crossed back to the practice studio still fussing with his necktie.
When she got home she was flustered and shaking from her confrontation with Peter so Jess decided to take a bath to calm herself. She ran the water in the tub of the bathroom that she shared with the other girls and, in her slip, brought her towel, washcloth and robe into the bathroom, closing and latching the door. The large mirror was steaming up but she could see to pin her long hair up and out of the way. After she had finished doing that she looked down curiously at her body.
Quickly she grabbed the towel and wiped the steam from the mirror then stripped off her slip, bra and panties and stared curiously at her stomach, running her hands over it several times. She shook her head sharply, confirming a definite ‘no’ as the telephone started to ring.
Grabbing her robe she pulled it on and hurried down the hall to the stairs, taking them two at a time as the phone continued to ring.
“Hello. Hello!”
There was silence which she broke by saying again, “Hello,” and then, “Oh, hell, not again!”
Suddenly there was a woman’s voice, raspy and vile.
“Billy!” it said sharply.
“Billy? I’m sorry there’s no Billy here. You must have the wrong number.”
She was about to hang up when the voice said again, “Billy? I know you’re there, nasty Billy. You answer me this minute.”
“Look, you’ve got the wrong number.”
“Don’t lie to me. I know what you did, nasty Billy!”
Puzzled, still not realizing that it was the caller, Jess said, “Look, I’m telling you, you have the wrong number.”
Quickly the voice changed from that of a woman to something that was almost sub-human, uttering the most sickening and disgusting epithet that Jess had ever heard. She slammed down the phone involuntarily, a shudder running up her back. She stood there for a moment not sure what to do when she was startled almost out of her wits by a loud banging sound.
After she had jumped she realized that the sound came from the front hall and she looked out to see through the elaborate, frosted glass window of the front door a figure distorted out of recognition. The door banged again and Jess went to it.
She struggled to open it for the catch continually stuck and when she finally was able to get it free she pulled it back to see Mrs. MacHenry standing there, her arms loaded with two brown paper bags.
“Oh, here, Mrs. Mac. Let me help you.” She took one of the bags and started toward the kitchen with Mrs. Mac following her.
“Brought you girls some groceries. Just staples mostly. Lord, prices are high. Thanks for letting me in. We’ve got to get someone over here to fix that door. Mr. Reynolds promised to do it.” Under her breath she muttered “I must have called that son of a bitch a dozen times about it.”
In the kitchen they set the bags down on the counter and began to unpack them. Mrs. Mac unloaded a few things before she noticed that she was still wearing her coat so she started back to the hall to hang it up when Jess called to her, “Oh, Mrs. Mac? There was another of those calls just now. You know . . .”
From the hall, Mrs. Mac’s voice floated back. “Oh, was there, dear?”
“It was crazy. Some woman then a man wailing and saying terrible things.”
Mrs. Mac, having finished hanging up her coat, tiptoed into the living room and removed the hidden sherry bottle from behind the books on the shelf as she shouted back, “It’s probably just one of your boyfriends, trying to tease you.” After swallowing the sherry and replacing the bottle she slipped out of the room again calling out to Jess. “Clare Harrison’s father was here today.”
“Oh. I’m sorry I didn’t get to say goodbye to her.”
In the dining room Mrs. MacHenry opened a cabinet door and peered in. She couldn’t see what she wanted so she reached her hand in, fishing as she carried on the loud dialogue with Jess. “Well, you still might. Clare didn’t meet him where she was supposed to.” Under her breath she said, “Goddam it, I know I put it there. Where the hell is it?”
When Mrs. Mac told her that Clare had not shown up to meet her father Jess stopped putting the groceries away and thought for a moment before she yelled to Mrs. Mac, “Well, do you know where she is?”
“I thought she probably went over to the fraternity house. You know, for the party.”
Resuming with the groceries, Jess said, “Oh, yeah? Maybe she did. I wasn’t there. Did you send him over there?”
Finding what she was looking for, Mrs. Mac muttered, “Oh, there you are.” To Jess she called out, “Yes. He drove me to the store. I pointed it out. But she still has to come back for her things. That’s why I said you might get to say goodbye.” She took out the sherry bottle and took a quick drink, saying to it, “I knew you were in there.” She replaced the bottle and headed for the kitchen. At the doorway she said to Jess whose back was turned, “Have you seen Claude?” She cleared her throat from the bite of the sherry and added, “That cat, that damned cat is missing again. I haven’t seen him for twenty-four hours. God only knows what he’s doing, but I can guess. I should have had him fixed.”
She didn’t notice Jess wince for she had turned away and was starting through the house calling out sweetly, “Here, kitty. Here, Claude. Claude, kitty, here baby, where are you?”
CHAPTER SIX
The local police station was festooned with Christmas decorations which somehow added not a drop of cheer to its rather austere interior. They made it look even more forlorn and cheerless. Mr. Harrison was trying not to think of the decorations, though, as he attempted to explain to the sergeant on duty about his missing daughter. Phyllis and Barbara were with him but, he noted bitterly, Barbara was less than any help and should have been, in his opinion, arrested and confined to the drunk tank that he had been told all small-town police stations had in readiness for the inevitable Saturday night.
“What are you going to do about this?” he was saying, trying to keep his voice from becoming high-pitch
ed, yet wanting to be heard over the two girls, especially Barbara, who was becoming, along with everything else, obstreperous. If she were my daughter, he told himself . . . Well, some other time.
“We called there,” Phyllis was saying in answer to a question. “All I know for certain is that she is not at the sorority house and never showed up at the fraternity house.”
“Nobody’s seen her since last night,” Barbara said, leering as she spoke.
“Please,” Mr. Harrison said, “just a minute, girls. Now, what’s the procedure?”
Ignoring him Barbara said, “Yeah, what’s the procedure, General.”
Irritated and getting nothing accomplished the sergeant shouted, “Quiet!” When they all suddenly stopped talking he lowered his voice and added, “Could you just give it to me one at a time?”
Rudely Barbara said, “Well, what the hell good would it do? What we want to know is what you’re going to do about it?”
“Nothing, until you shut up,” he answered in kind, pointing at her.
“For a public servant, your attitude stinks. I think you should—”
Eyeing her sternly he said, “Shut up!”
When his words finally had the desired effect of getting her to be still he turned to Mr. Harrison. “Now, sir, uh, Mr. Harrison? If you’re convinced your daughter’s missing, you can fill out one of these forms.” He reached into a drawer and pulled out a file folder containing a sheaf of papers. Leafing through it he found the one he wanted and put it on the counter. Then he said, “I don’t know if it’ll be any consolation but ninety percent of the time girls are missing from college, or have been reported missing, they’ve been off somewhere at a cabin or something like that with their boyfriends.” His voice trailed off when Mr. Harrison shot him a withering glance.
“Thanks, but that’s not much consolation.”
Pugnaciously Barbara leaned over the desk. “Yeah. Just what are you insinuating, buster? Huh? Just what are you insinuating?”
Exasperated, he tried to control his temper. “Look, why don’t you just go to the counter over there and help him fill out the form?”
“No! I want to know what you mean by that. Just what do you think we are? What kind of person do you take me for?” He just looked up at her from beneath his heavy eyelids and she backed off, turning to Phyl and saying, “Well, I think he should take it back! He’s not talking to me like that.”
“I wasn’t talking to you, young lady. But if it will calm things down, or calm you down, I take it back. All right? I’m sure you girls aren’t like that, aren’t like the other girls on campus. Okay?”
“Yes, we are, as a matter of fact. Worse. But it’s none of your goddamn business.”
Phyllis took Barbara by the arm and tried to lead her away from the sergeant’s desk. “Come on, Barb. You’re not helping things here at all.”
“I wish I had a drink!”
“Shh!”
Barbara pulled away from Phyl’s restraining arm and stood by the counter, sulking. Phyllis shrugged, then went to the counter where Clare’s father was filling out the form, leaning over quietly and asking him if there was anything she could do to help.
In the meantime the Sergeant was writing in a small book. He looked up from his desk and cleared his throat.
Stonily, Barbara ignored him until he repeated it, then she looked over at him coldly.
“Excuse me. Could you tell me the number of the sorority house, the telephone number? Please!”
Her attitude seemed to change at once. She smiled at him and said, “Yeah, sure. It’s FEllatio 2-0880.”
He started to write, then stopped and asked, “What?”
With an air of impatience she repeated the number, adding, “It’s a new exchange. FEllatio. F . . . E . . .”
The sergeant shook his head. “Yeah, it’s a new one to me. How do you spell it?”
Turning her back to him and carefully examining her fingernails in feigned boredom she said, “Capital F-E-small double ll-a-t-i-o.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
At the same time, not far from the station, in the hall where Jess had told him about the baby, Peter Smythe struck the first chord of the sonata he had chosen to play as his audition piece. Three elderly gentlemen sat in three stiff straight-backed chairs opposite the grand piano where Peter sat. The three older men in the room had expressionless faces while Peter’s reflected his passion, and his anxiety. He was playing beautifully, he knew that.
Feeling pleased with himself he was suddenly aware that he had struck a wrong note. Continuing to play he looked down at the keys, perplexed and uneasy. Continuing to play he glanced over at them hesitantly. They might as well have been statues.
Once more his hands stumbled, this time badly. Beads of sweat began to form on his forehead and he attempted to turn his concentration completely on the music, shutting out the profiles of the three old men, shutting out the conversation with Jess, hearing nothing but the music.
There, he thought, got it right. His eyes flashed up as his fingers flew correctly over the difficult passage. Unbelieving, he heard a false note, saw the eyes of one of the judges flicker and his head nod depreciatingly at the blunder.
Finally, eons later, the torment was over and the piece ended. Peter sat silently looking straight ahead as the three men rose and marched past him not unlike three toy soldiers marching stiffly across a parade ground. They stopped behind him for a moment and one of them, he couldn’t tell which for he didn’t bother to look up, said formally, “Thank you very much, Mr. Smythe.” Then, one by one, they walked away, through the door and down the hall.
Peter stared at the keyboard as their footsteps echoed and then faded away. He bit his lip until there was a single drop of blood which he absent-mindedly licked away with his tongue. Thoughtfully he poked a key on the piano and listened to the sound echo through the empty room. He started to play again but once more he made a mistake. He stopped, composed himself, took a deep breath and started again. He was playing the passage where he had failed in front of the three judges.
This time there was no mistake. Tears flowed down his cheeks as he finished it perfectly. Then he stopped and looked up but the men were far away. He laughed bitterly, looked disdainfully at the piano, got up slowly and walked toward the door. Passing a music stand in the middle of the room he stopped, thought for a moment, then picked it up and walked back to the piano. He took the top off the heavy metal base, put it down and lifted the lid of the grand piano. Then he picked up the base of the music stand, held it aloft for ten seconds or longer and with a malicious look on his face which was still contorted from the tears, he slammed the base as hard as he could into the strings of the piano. Viciously and methodically he slammed it down again and again as the sound boomed through the room.
Strings were snapping, chips of wood flying and the sound overwhelming. All at once he stopped, set the base down and coolly examined his handiwork.
He turned coolly and walked across the room and walked out, carefully closing the door behind him.
Despite the chill in the hockey rink, all of the players were sweating profusely. The lights were bright and the young men were moving swiftly up and down the rink, passing the puck back and forth, crossing the blue line and firing shots at the goalie who was sweating most of all despite the fact that he had to move far less than the other skaters. The heavy padding weighed him down and the plastic mask made it almost impossible for air to reach any part of him. Besides, there was activity in goal-tending, a great deal of it as he dived and kicked and flashed out a hand or stick to deter the puck from its course toward the net behind him.
Jess came into the rink and looked down, saw the goalie and, although he was masked, was sure it was the man she was looking for. She moved through the empty seats and down behind the plastic that was behind the goal net. Twice she called out but there was too much noise and his concentration was too great for her to be able to attra
ct his attention that way. Finally, uncharacteristically, she put two fingers to her lips and whistled shrilly. All at once all of the action stopped and the goalie turned to her.
“Can I see you a minute?” she called to Chris Hayden.
Through the mask he answered what she thought was the word, “sure,” then he signalled to the bench and another player, dressed similarly, skated over to the net while Chris, still wearing his mask, came around behind it and pointed to a spot just beyond the plastic.
Jess walked over quickly, but he was on skates and made it much faster so that he was waiting, still masked, when she arrived.
Through a wire screen she asked, “Have you seen Clare today?”
“No. She went home.”
“No, she didn’t. No one knows where she is. How about last night?”
“No. Not after I brought her home.” He pushed the mask back. “What do you mean no one knows where she is?”
Shouting over the renewed sound of the practice she said, “I thought maybe she was with you, or at least you might have heard from her.”
“No. Like I said, not since last night. Early. What do you think?”
“I don’t know what to think. I just was hoping—”
“Look, maybe it sounds a bit alarmist, but do you think we ought to go to the police, Jess?”
“Her father is already a bit alarmist. He went to them this afternoon. Unfortunately the local constabulary didn’t take it all too seriously.”
“They what? Why not?”
“I think they figured she was shacked up somewhere. It seems, according to the sergeant on duty which I got second hand from Phyl when she called, that that is where young maidens from the college usually are when they turn up missing. Off in the woods somewhere with a romantic hero. As you fit the bill, well, no doubt they’re wrong in this case.” She signed wearily. “Christ, I’m worried, Chris.”
“So am I. Oh, I doubt if anything has happened to her, but I suppose the fuzz said that to Clare’s father, about being shacked up?”
“More or less. It’s only hearsay evidence from Phyl, but she’s pretty reliable. Says that Barb gave the man in blue a tongue lashing which sounds pretty typical, and Clare’s father didn’t exactly like the implication.”
