The Specialty of the House

by Stanley Ellin

  ‘It is a good play!’ Harriet shouted at him. ‘It’s the best play you ever acted in, and if you don’t know that—’

  Miles was shouting himself now. ‘Then get someone else to play it! It might be even better that way!’

  Ben held his hands out, palms up, in a pleading gesture. ‘Now, Miles, you know you’ve been identified with that part so no one else could take it over,’ he said. ‘And try to see it my way, Miles. I’ve been writing fifteen years, and this is the first real break—’

  Miles walked up to him slowly. ‘You clown,’ he said softly. ‘Don’t you have any self-respect at all?’

  When he walked out of the library he quickly slammed the door behind him to forestall any belated answer to that.

  The party had broken into several small knots of people scattered around the room, a deafening rise and fall of voices, a haze of blue smoke which lay like a transparent blanket midway between floor and ceiling. Someone, Miles observed, had overturned a drink on the piano; the puddle ran down in a glittering string along the side of the mahogany and was leaving a damp stain on the Wilton rug beneath. Tommy McGowan and his latest, an overripe blonde – Norma or Alma or something – sat on the floor shuffling through piles of phonograph records, arranging some into a dangerously high stack and carelessly tossing the others aside. The buffet looked as if a cyclone had hit it; only some empty platters and broken pieces of bread remained amidst the wreckage. From the evidence, Miles thought sardonically, the party would have to be rated a roaring success.

  But even the sense of heat and excitement in the room could not erase the chill that he seemed to have brought with him from the library. He rubbed his hands together hard, but this didn’t help any, and he felt a small pang of fright at the realization. What if there really were something wrong with him? Lily was not the kind of woman to take gracefully to the role of nursemaid to an invalid. Not that she was wrong about that, as far as he was concerned; if the shoe were on the other foot he couldn’t see himself playing any Robert Browning to her Elizabeth Barrett either. Not for Lily or anyone else in the world. In that case it was better not to even bother about a checkup. If there was something, he didn’t even want to know about it!

  ‘You are disturbed about something, I think.’

  It was Dr Maas. He was leaning casually against the wall, not an arm’s length away, his hands thrust into his pockets, his eyes fixed reflectively on Miles. Taking in everything, Miles thought angrily, like some damn scientist looking at a bug under a microscope.

  ‘No,’ Miles snapped. Then he thought better of it. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘As a matter of fact, I am.’

  ‘Ah?’

  ‘I don’t feel right. I know you told me I was fine, but I don’t feel fine.’

  ‘Physically?’

  ‘Of course, physically! What are you trying to tell me? That it’s all in my mind, or some claptrap like that?’

  ‘I am not trying to tell you anything, Mr Owen. You are telling me.’

  ‘All right. Then I want to know what makes you so sure of yourself. No examination, no X-ray, no anything, and you come up with your answer just like that. What’s the angle here? Do we somehow get around to the idea that there’s nothing wrong physically, but if I put myself in your hands for a nice long expensive psychoanalysis—’

  ‘Stop right there, Mr Owen,’ Dr Maas said coldly. ‘I will take for granted that your manners are abominable because you are clearly under some pressure. But you should rein in your imagination. I do not practice psychoanalysis, and I never said I did. I am not a healer of any sort. The people I deal with are, unfortunately, always past the point of any cure, and my interest in them, as you can see, must be wholly academic. To be taken for some kind of sharper seeking a victim—’

  ‘Look,’ Miles said abruptly, ‘I’m sorry. I’m terribly sorry. I don’t know what made me go off like that. Maybe it’s this party. I hate these damn parties; they always do things to me. Whatever it is, I’m honestly sorry for taking it out on you.’

  The doctor nodded gravely. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Of course.’ Then he nervously ran his fingers over his shining scalp. ‘There is something else I should like to say. I am afraid, however, I would risk offending you.’

  Miles laughed. ‘I think you owe it to me.’

  The doctor hesitated, and then gestured toward the library. ‘As it happens, Mr Owen, I heard much of what went on in there. I am not an eavesdropper, but the discussion got a little – well, heated, shall we say? – and it was impossible not to overhear it from outside the door here.’

  ‘Yes?’ Miles said warily.

  ‘The clue to your condition, Mr Owen, lies in that discussion. To put it bluntly, you are running away. You find what you call routine unbearable, and so you are fleeing from it.’

  Miles forced himself to smile. ‘What do you mean, what I call routine? Is there another word for it in your language?’

  ‘I think there is. I think I would call it responsibility. And since your life, Mr Owen – both your professional and your private life – is very much an open book to the world, I will draw on it and say that most of this life has also been spent fleeing from responsibility of one sort or another. Does it strike you as strange, Mr Owen, that no matter how far and fast you run you always find yourself facing the same problem over and over again?’

  Miles clenched and unclenched his fist. ‘After all,’ he said, ‘it’s my problem.’

  ‘That is where you’re wrong, Mr Owen. When you suddenly leave your role in a play, it affects everyone concerned with that play, and, in turn, everyone concerned with those people. In your relations with women you may move on, but they do not stay motionless either. They move on, too, dangerous to themselves and perhaps to others. Forgive me if I seem sententious, Mr Owen, but you cannot cast pebbles in the water without sending ripples to the far shore.

  ‘That is why when you say routine, it is because you are thinking only of yourself caught in a situation. And when I say responsibility, I am thinking of everything else concerned with it.’

  ‘And what’s the prescription, Doctor?’ Miles demanded. ‘To stay sunk in a private little hell because if you try to get away you might step on somebody’s toes in the process?’

  ‘Get away?’ the doctor said in surprise. ‘Do you really think you can get away?’

  ‘You’ve got a lot to learn, Doctor. Watch me and see.’

  ‘I am watching you, Mr Owen, and I do see. In a wholly academic way, as I said. It is both fascinating and bewildering to see a man trying to flee, as he calls it, his private little hell, while all the time he is carrying it with him.’

  Miles’s hand was half raised, and then it dropped limp at his side. ‘In other words, Doctor,’ he said mockingly, ‘you’re replacing good old-fashioned sulphur-and-brimstone with something even bigger and better.’

  The doctor shrugged. ‘Of course, you don’t believe that.’

  ‘No,’ Miles said. ‘I don’t.’

  ‘I have a confession to make, Mr Owen.’ The doctor smiled, and suddenly he was the plump and mischievous boy again. ‘I knew you wouldn’t. In fact, that is why I felt free to discuss the matter with you.’

  ‘In an academic way, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Miles laughed. ‘You’re quite a man, Doctor. I think I’d like to see more of you.’

  ‘I am sure you will, Mr Owen. But right now I believe that someone is trying to attract your notice. There, by the door.’

  Miles followed the doctor’s gesturing finger, and his heart stopped. All he could do was pray that no one else had noticed, as he swiftly crossed the room and blocked off the woman who was entering it from the hallway that led to the front door. He thrust her back against the door, and catching hold of her shoulders he shook her once, sharply and angrily.

  ‘Are you crazy?’ he demanded. ‘Don’t you have any more sense than to show up here like this?’

  She twisted her shoulders away from hi
s grasp, and carefully brushed at the collar of her coat with her fingertips. The coat had cost Miles a month’s pay.

  ‘Aren’t you sweet, Miles? Do you invite all your guests in this way?’

  Even in the dimness of the hallway she was startling to look at. The sulky lips against the gardenia pallor of the face, the high cheekbones, the slanted eyes darting fire at him. He quailed.

  ‘All right, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. But, my God, Lily, there are two dozen of the biggest mouths on Broadway in that room. If you want the whole world to know about this, why don’t you just tip off Winchell?’

  She knew when she had him beaten. ‘I don’t like that, darling. I don’t like that at all. I mean, to make it sound as obscene and disgusting as all that. It really isn’t supposed to be like that, is it?’

  ‘You know damn well it isn’t like that, Lily. But use your head, will you? There is such a thing as discretion.’

  ‘There’s also such a thing as working a word to death, darling. And I don’t mind telling you that in the last two months you’ve filled me up to here with that one.’

  Miles said angrily, ‘I’ve been trying to make it clear that we’d work this thing out in the right way at the right time. I’ve already told old Abel I was leaving the show. I was going to talk to Hannah, too, but this party has fouled everything up. Tomorrow, when I can be alone with her—’

  ‘Ah, but tomorrow may be a long time away, darling. Much longer than you realize.’

  ‘What exactly does that mean?’

  She fumbled through her purse and drew an envelope from it. She waved the envelope back and forth under his nose with a fine air of triumph.

  ‘It means this, Miles. Two pretty little reservations, outward bound, for tomorrow’s sailing. You see, you don’t have nearly as much time as you thought, do you, darling?’

  ‘Tomorrow! The agent said he couldn’t possibly have anything for us within a month!’

  ‘He didn’t count on cancellations. This one came through just two hours ago, which is exactly how long it took me to get here. And if it wasn’t for that awful fog on the road I would have been here that much sooner. I have the car outside, Miles. You can pack whatever is handy, and get the rest of what you need on the boat. When I go back I expect you to be with me, Miles, because whether you are or not I’ll be sailing tomorrow. You can’t really blame me for that, can you, darling? After all, none of us are getting any younger.’

  He tried to straighten out the aching confusion of his thoughts. He wanted to escape Hannah’s web, and now it seemed, somehow or other, there was another waiting to be dropped around him. Running, the doctor had said. Always running and never getting anywhere. There was a great weight of weariness in his arms, his legs, his whole body. Running did that to you.

  ‘Well,’ Lily said, ‘make up your mind, darling.’

  He rubbed his hand over his forehead. ‘Where’s the car?’

  ‘Right across the road.’

  ‘All right,’ Miles said, ‘you wait in it. Just stay there, and don’t blow the horn for me, or anything like that. I’ll be down in ten minutes. Fifteen minutes at the most. Most of my stuff is in town, anyhow. We’ll pick it up on the way to the boat.’

  He opened the door and gently pushed her toward it.

  ‘You’ll have to feel your way to the car, Miles. I’ve never seen anything like what’s outside.’

  ‘I’ll find it,’ he said. ‘You just wait there.’

  He closed the door, then leaned against it fighting the sickness that kept rising in his throat. The loud voices in the next room, the shrieks of idiot laughter that now and then cut through it, the roar of music from the phonograph tuned at its greatest volume – everything seemed conspiring against him, not allowing him to be alone, not allowing him to think things out.

  He went up the stairs almost drunkenly, and into the bedroom. He pulled out his valise, and then at random started cramming it full. Shirts, socks, the contents of the jewel case on his dresser. He thrust down hard with all his weight, making room for more.

  ‘What are you doing, Miles?’

  He didn’t look up. He knew exactly what the expression on her face would be, and he didn’t want to meet it then. It would have been too much.

  ‘I’m leaving, Hannah.’

  ‘With that woman?’ Her voice was a vague, uncomprehending whisper.

  He had to look at her then. Her eyes stared at him, enormous against the whiteness of her skin. Her hand fumbled with the ornament at her breast. It was the silver mask of comedy he had picked up for her on Fifth Avenue a week before their marriage.

  She said wonderingly, ‘I saw you with her in the hallway. I wasn’t prying or anything like that, Miles, but when I asked the doctor where you were—’

  ‘Stop it!’ Miles shouted. ‘What do you have to apologize for!’

  ‘But she’s the one, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, she’s the one.’

  ‘And you want to go away with her?’

  His hands were on the lid of the valise. He rested his weight on them, head down, eyes closed.

  ‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘That’s what it comes to.’

  ‘No!’ she cried with a sudden fervor. ‘You don’t really want to. You know she’s not good for you. You know there’s nobody in the whole world as good for you as I am!’

  He pressed the lid of the valise down. The lock caught with a tiny click.

  ‘Hannah, it would have been better for you not to have come up just now. I would have written to you, explained it somehow—’

  ‘Explained it? When it would be too late? When you’d know what a mistake you made? Miles, listen to me. Listen to me, Miles. I’m talking to you out of all my love. It would be a terrible mistake.’

  ‘I’ll have to be the judge of that, Hannah.’

  He stood up, and she came toward him, her fingers digging into his arms frantically. ‘Look at me, Miles,’ she whispered. ‘Can’t you see how I feel? Can’t you understand that I’d rather have the both of us dead than to have you go away like this and leave the whole world empty for me?’

  It was horrible. It was the web constricting around him so hard that it was taking all his strength to pull himself free. But he did, with a brutal effort, and saw her fall back against the dresser. Then she suddenly wheeled toward it, and when she faced him again he saw the pistol leveled at him. It shone a cold, deadly blue in her hand, and then he realized her hand was trembling so violently that the gun must be frightening her as much as it did him. The whole grotesquerie of the scene struck him full force, melting away the fear, filling him with a sense of outrage.

  ‘Put that thing down,’ he said.

  ‘No.’ He could hardly hear her. ‘Not unless you tell me that you’re not going.’

  He took a step toward her, and she shrank farther back against the dresser, but the gun remained leveled at him. She was like a child afraid someone was going to trick her out of a toy. He stopped short, and then shrugged with exaggerated indifference.

  ‘You’re making a fool of yourself, Hannah. People are paid for acting like this on the stage. They’re not supposed to make private shows of themselves.’

  Her head moved from side to side in a slow, aimless motion. ‘You still don’t believe me, do you, Miles?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t.’

  He turned his back on her, half expecting to hear the sudden explosion, feel the impact between his shoulder blades, but there was nothing. He picked up the valise and walked to the door. ‘Good-by, Hannah,’ he said. He didn’t turn his head to look at her.

  The weakness in his knees made each step a trial. He stopped at the foot of the staircase to shift the valise from one hand to the other, and saw Dr Maas standing there, hat in hand, a topcoat thrown over his arm.

  ‘Ah?’ said the doctor inquiringly. ‘So you, too, are leaving the party, Mr Owen?’

  ‘Party?’ Miles said, and then laughed short and sharp. ‘Leaving the nightmare, if you don�
��t mind, Doctor. I hate to tell this to a guest, but I think you’ll understand me when I say that this past hour has been a nightmare that gets thicker and thicker. That’s what I’m leaving, Doctor, and you can’t blame me for being happy about it.’

  ‘No, no,’ said the doctor. ‘I quite understand.’

  ‘The car is waiting for me outside. If I can give you a lift anywhere—?’

  ‘Not at all,’ the doctor said. ‘I really do not have far to go.’ They went to the doorway together and stepped outside. The fog moved in on them, cold and wet, and Miles turned up his jacket collar against it.

  ‘Rotten weather,’ he said.

  ‘Terrible,’ the doctor agreed. He glanced at his watch, and then lumbered down the steps to the walk like a walrus disappearing into a snowhank. ‘I’ll be seeing you, Mr Owen,’ he called.

  Miles watched him go, then lifted the valise and went down the steps himself, burying his nose in his collar against the smothering dampness all around him. He was at the bottom step when he heard the sibilance of the door opening behind him, the faraway whisper of danger in his bones.

  He turned, and, as he knew it would be, there was Hannah standing at the open door, still holding the gun. But the gun was gripped tightly in both hands now, and the menace of it was real and overwhelming.

  ‘I tried to make you understand, Miles,’ she said, like a child saying the words. ‘I tried to make you understand.’

  He flung his arms out despairingly.

  ‘No!’ he cried wildly. ‘No!’

  And then there was the roar of the explosion in his ears, the gout of flame leaping out toward him, the crushing impact against his chest, and the whole world dissolving. In it, only one thing stood sharp and definable: the figure of the doctor bending over him, the face strangely Satanic in its cruel indifference.