Margie

by Howard Fast

  “What?”

  “I mean you can’t afford to cry. Why don’t you tie them up instead of asking Hy to do such things?”

  “I can’t afford to cry? Are you all right, Margie?” Compton asked. “You’ve been through a lot today. I feel like crying but I am not going to. Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “I mean a girl can’t afford to cry, not you, and why don’t you stop being so stupid, Alan? Why don’t you tie them up before they wake up?”

  “I still think the chauffeur’s dead,” Compton said morosely. “What am I going to tie them up with? Hy, for the love of Mike, don’t stand there like that with your mouth open. Help me.”

  Golden stood there with his mouth open.

  “You can pick up the gun with a pencil,” Margie said.

  Pinstripe two groaned. Then pinstripe one groaned again. Shaking her head despairingly, Margie located a pencil, inserted it in the muzzle of the pistol, raised it carefully, and balanced it.

  “What on earth are you doing?” Compton demanded.

  “I am getting rid of the gun without fingerprints.”

  “What do you mean, you’re getting rid of the gun without fingerprints? You’re supposed to be a model, not a master criminal. Why doesn’t someone here use his head and pick up the telephone and call the police and call an ambulance—”

  Pinstripe one sat up.

  “Hy, do something!”

  Hy Golden picked up a telephone and dialed the operator. “I want the police,” he said.

  Pinstripe one staggered to his feet, stood swaying and looking wildly about him.

  “Why don’t you shoot him?” Margie asked, her voice quavering as she offered the gun to Compton.

  “I’ll get my prints on the gun.”

  “We can wipe them off.”

  “I never shot anyone.”

  “I don’t mean you actually have to shoot him. All you have to do is point the gun at him and then he’ll do what you want. It’s no good this way, because this way where I hold it by the pencil it’s always pointing at me.”

  “I said I want the police,” Hy Golden pleaded into the phone. “No, it’s not exactly an emergency. No, I don’t know the address. We’re in an office building at Park Avenue and Fifty-fourth Street. Which corner? Well, why don’t you just connect me with the police? You mean this is the police? I got the police and I got a woman’s voice. That doesn’t make any sense, does it?” Golden asked them.

  Pinstripe one took two uncertain steps. Pinstripe two, sitting up, let out a howl of pain. Alan Compton, exerting all his strength, picked up another typewriter and tried to raise it above his head.

  “For God’s sake, don’t hit him with a typewriter!” Margie yelled. “You’ll kill him!”

  Pinstripe one put up his arms protectively. Pinstripe two howled. The General groaned. Hy Golden argued passionately with the telephone:

  “I told you my name. My name is Hy Golden, and I am in charge of sales for M.P. Creations, and there are bodies all over this place. No, it’s not a disaster—not the kind of a disaster you mean.”

  Compton managed to raise the typewriter over his head, swayed, lost his balance, and sent the typewriter crashing to the floor just between the General and pinstripe two. Pinstripe one, clutching in his jacket for something, came out with another gun, aimed it vaguely, and pulled the trigger …

  Golden was saying, “No, I don’t know the address. Alan—what in hell is the address here?”

  Compton stuck his fingers in his ears as pinstripe one began to fire his gun, and for want of a weapon, Hy Golden jerked the phone loose from its wire and flung it at pinstripe one. It missed him but further confused his already confused aim, and as he tried to get his pistol into position, working at it with both hands, Golden reached him, pulled the gun out of his hands, and pushed him. It was a hearty push. Pinstripe one sprawled on his face between two desks and lay there, weeping with rage and frustration.

  “Now you got your prints all over the gun,” Compton said.

  “It’s another gun.”

  “That’s it—”

  “I’ll find another pencil,” Margie said helpfully.

  “Margie, can’t you try to use your brains!” Compton shouted.

  “Now just don’t shout at her,” Hy Golden said. “It’s not going to help things for you to shout at her like that. Suppose they all got guns. Then as soon as each one wakes up, he’ll start getting his gun out.”

  “That’s why I want you to flatten them,” Compton replied. “That’s exactly why.” He was frantically working another telephone, attempting to get a dial tone. “Anyway, now that you got your prints all over the gun, you might as well use it.”

  “Are you out of your mind?”

  “You know I got no dial tone—none whatsoever. My word, Hy, I never met anyone like you. You don’t use your brains—all you do is use muscle. Either you’re throwing people at people or you’re throwing telephones at people.”

  Pinstripe two put back his head and howled. He pounded his fists against the filing cabinets, and then he staggered to his feet and roared at Golden, “You I keel twice, son of a bitch!”

  The General groaned again and sat up, rubbing his eyes.

  “Twice! You die like dirty dog!”

  “Gun ’em down,” the General moaned.

  Margie found another phone. “And a dial tone!” she told Compton triumphantly.

  “Do something!” Compton shouted, his voice breaking to a high-pitched squeak. “Use that gun—Hy, the gun in your hand!”

  Golden regarded the gun distastefully, then put it down on the desk.

  “Idiot!” Compton dived for the gun, struck it with his outstretched hand, and sent it spinning across the room.

  Pinstripe two found the butt of his own gun, but it was stuck in the lining of his jacket. Hy Golden grabbed him and lifted him above his head.

  “Is that all you can think of, you idiot?” Compton screamed.

  “Son of a beetch—put me down!” pinstripe two howled.

  “Of course I know where I am,” Margie was explaining to the police. “I came here from Sardi’s. No, the bodies are not at Sardi’s; they are right here, only we are on the same block—”

  “That’s damn unsporting,” the General declared thickly, sprawling on his belly to reach Hy Golden’s legs.

  “What should I do with him?” Golden pleaded.

  “Throw him!”

  “You can’t just throw people!”

  “Son of a beetch, I get out gun, I blow out brains!”

  Racing after the gun, Compton kicked it under the heavy Xerography machine. He struggled vainly to move the huge machine. The General meanwhile had reached Golden’s leg and, for want of any better method of attack, sunk his teeth into it.

  “Ow!” yelled Golden. “He’s biting my leg. Alan, he’s biting my leg!”

  Compton turned, assessed the situation, found a large bottle of ink as the only handy weapon, knocked the head off it as he had seen fight-beguiled sailors do in the films, and poured the ink onto the General’s head. The General bit convulsively, and Golden leaped away, spinning pinstripe two, who had just gotten his gun out. Twice the gun went off, wildly each time, and then Golden lost his grip, and pinstripe two ripped out of his grasp and skidded across the floor to end up motionless at the other side of the room. Compton found the rubber roller from the smashed typewriter and began to beat the General across the head. The General crawled under a desk for protection, and Compton whacked away at his large backside.

  The General let out a stream of four-letter words in response, mixing them with the Dravinian equivalent, and at this point Gerald Macbain returned to painful consciousness. He listened to the General, his eyes blinking. Behind him, sprawled face down on the floor, pinstripe one slapped the floor with his palms in protest, indignation, and frustration. Up against him, apparently dead or deeply unconscious, lay the chauffeur, and in the background Margie Beck argued unavailingly with the pol
ice.

  “Well, please—don’t talk to me like that. I am not confused, officer. You are confused. Of course I know where I am. I’m there, aren’t I? Then it only makes sense for me to know where I am—I mean, I have to know where I am. If you were here, you would know where I am. I know you are not here. If you were, I wouldn’t be asking so desperately for the police. I mean these people are just murderers. They may lie and use all kinds of political nonsense and excuses—no, I am not in danger of my life at this moment, because at this moment they are practically unconscious; which is not due to you or to any of the police of this city but simply because my friend, Hy Golden—and believe me, he’s the kind of a friend a girl should have when she’s in trouble—well, he’s just too kindhearted to strike anyone or to use a gun. What? Yes, they all had guns, but they don’t now. And I am trying to tell you where we are. We are at Park Avenue and Fifty-fourth Street. I can’t tell you what corner, because I am not sure what corner; but I will put my friend on—no, not Hy Golden. He’s another friend—”

  She said to Compton, “Alan, please tell them where we are. I don’t want Hy to stop watching these international criminals.”

  Gerald Macbain had twisted his head around and was staring at Margie. Then he looked from Margie to Compton to Golden, who loomed up over him like a bizarre and unreasonable giant out of an unreasonable nightmare, to the General, who had squeezed most of his fat body under the desk and was cursing darkly, to the chauffeur, apparently dead, to pinstripe one, full-length on his belly and pounding his palms against the floor, to pinstripe two, quietly asleep on the other side of the room—and then back to Compton, who was talking to the police now:

  “No, this is not Hy Golden. My name is Compton. Of course I know where we are. When you face downtown, it’s on the right—no, uptown on the left—no, I am sure it’s on the right. Wait a minute—”

  Macbain began to weep.

  “It’s on the right, isn’t it, Hy? I mean when you face downtown.”

  “The right—oh yes. Yes.” It was obvious that Hy Golden’s thoughts were elsewhere. He was staring at Margie, who said to Macbain, “It’s no use crying, because you get no sympathy from me. Anyway, I should think a grown man like you would be ashamed to cry.”

  “Yes, on the right,” Compton said. “Yes, my friend agrees with me. What do you mean, uptown or downtown? If you’re facing downtown—oh, I see. What corner?” He turned to Golden again. “Hy, the uptown or the downtown corner?”

  “Uptown or downtown? What do you think Margie? I wouldn’t be too angry at him. I mean, I often feel like crying, so I know just how he feels—”

  “For God’s sake,” Compton shouted, “he’s a bum. A crumb. A crook—practically a murderer! So stop being sorry for him. That’s all. Just stop being sorry for him and answer my question. I got the police here, and all they want to know is whether we got enough brains to tell them where we are. Are we on the uptown or downtown corner?”

  Margie was facing the window. Outside, the darkness of late fall had come, and through the windows Margie could see the whole miraculous carpet of light, uptown and lining the edge of Central Park and stretching onward into the misty distance. She pointed to it.

  “That is uptown, isn’t it, Hy?”

  Macbain bent his head and wept into his hands.

  Hy Golden followed her gaze. “Yes—yes, I guess it is.” Then, as he stared, the lights far to the north went out. One moment there was a misty glitter, then it was dark, as if a lowlying Milky Way had been turned off.

  “Do you know what that looks like?” Golden said thoughtfully.

  To the left another block of lights went out.

  “You’d think someone was turning the lights off,” Margie said.

  “That,” Hy Golden said, “is a massive power failure, Margie—block after block of lights. It’s like tenpins falling down. I was reading an article about it—”

  “When it reaches here?” Compton asked.

  “That’s right. When it reaches here—zingo. No more lights.”

  “How long?”

  “A minute. Maybe less.”

  “You mean we’ll be alone with them—in the dark?” Margie asked.

  “That’s right—good heavens!” Golden grabbed her hand and fled to the doors, Compton after him, Margie half dragged, half running. They burst through the double doors and into the corridor, and Golden flung his outstretched arm upon one of the elevator buttons.

  “Don’t leave me here!” Macbain wailed from behind them.

  The elevator stopped. The doors opened, and the three of them plunged inside. The doors closed, and the elevator started down.

  “Thank God for that,” Compton exclaimed. “Hy, forgive me for all those cruel things I said. Why didn’t we think of getting out of there before?”

  “Civic duty.” Hy Golden nodded somberly.

  “Yeah—I guess so. Anyway, we’re out. Can you imagine spending an hour in the dark with those apes?”

  “Never.”

  Margie was watching the row of floor indicators that measured their flight to freedom. Floor after floor ticked off, fifteen, fourteen, thirteen, twelve—twelve did not quite go off. It flickered. Then eleven flickered. Then both flickered, and then both went off and the lights of the elevator went off with them, and there between the eleventh and the twelfth floor the elevator hung in Stygian blackness.

  CHAPTER 11

  In which Margie realizes that greater love hath no man.

  IT WAS MORE than darkness; the black was tangible, heavy, molasses-like. To Margie it felt wet and sodden and permanent—with a quality of finality. The light had gone. Conceivably there would never be light again.

  “New York is a funny place,” Alan Compton said.

  “I wouldn’t want to see a nice girl like Margie in an elevator with the wrong kind of person,” Hy Golden observed.

  “Oh?”

  “Well, I can tell you,” said Margie, “that I have been in a lot of elevators with the wrong kind of person.”

  “I guess it wasn’t so dark,” Hy Golden said.

  “I guess not.”

  “Alan?”

  “I’m still here,” Compton replied sourly.

  “You know, we didn’t even ask Margie what happened to her.”

  “How about what happened to us?”

  “Well, that’s understandable. You see, most of the country today is linked up in what they call a power grid, that is, one electric generating company is linked to another, so when they need power, each one draws from the next—”

  “And what happened?”

  “Well, there you are,” said Hy Golden.

  “What do you mean, there you are?”

  “I told you.”

  “Just what in the hell did you tell me?”

  “Well, you don’t need to get nasty about it,” Golden said. “You got to admit that I saw the blackout coming and that I got us into this elevator in time.”

  “Oh yes,” Compton agreed. “You got us into this lousy elevator in time. Otherwise we could have walked down the stairs. Otherwise we could have just walked out of this place. But you had to think quickly—and here we are.”

  “Well,” Margie exclaimed, “of all the ungrateful things I ever heard!”

  “Ungrateful!”

  “Look,” said Hy Golden, “here we are, the three of us in this elevator—well, like castaways on a desert island, so we got to have some harmony in our relations with one another.”

  “Why?” Compton demanded.

  “Well, doesn’t it make sense?”

  “Why?”

  “Because there’s no telling how long we’ll be in here together.”

  “How long can we be in here together?”

  “I haven’t given any thought to it, but there’s no telling how long—”

  “Oh, wait a minute,” Compton said. “Let’s try to use our heads. Here we are in an elevator shaft on Park Avenue in the middle of New York City. Nobody’s going t
o let us starve to death here.”

  “That’s very nice,” Margie said, “and I’m happy for once to find Alan looking at the brighter side of things.”

  “I am not looking at the brighter side of things.”

  “You certainly are. You just said we won’t starve to death.”

  “What has that got to do with the brighter side of things?”

  “Isn’t it better than starving to death?” Margie asked weakly. Alan Compton confused her.

  “Sure, if all you think about is starving to death. But what about murder? What about prison and the electric chair? What about all that mayhem up there on the twenty-second floor? It’s all odds that the chauffeur is dead—and what about that guy in the pinstripe suit you threw across the room?” he demanded of Hy Golden.

  “I didn’t throw him across the room. I just let go of him. I couldn’t go on holding him.”

  “Of course,” Margie joined in. “That’s only natural. In fact, it’s the most natural thing in the world. Hy was holding him up in the air, and he was shooting with that gun of his. Did you expect Hy to keep holding him up there forever?”

  She reached out and touched an arm, and she knew it was Hy Golden’s arm because it was about twice as far around as any normal arm. She squeezed the arm reassuringly, or rather that small part of the arm that her hand could cover.

  “He could have put him down,” Compton said crossly.

  “Well, I did put him down,” Golden said. “He was spinning and it was the spin that carried him across the room.”

  “Ha!”

  “Why can’t you be fair to Hy?” Margie asked.

  “Ha! Fair! What do you think will happen when they get us up on the witness stand? We’ll all be turning on each other. That’s the way it always happens. Why don’t you look at it from my point of view? Here Woman’s Wear Daily keeps saying that I am the most promising young designer in the United States, and all of a sudden where is my career? Woosh. Down the drain. That’s where it is and I’m on trial for murder.”

  “Well, he was trying to murder me,” Margie said. “It seems to me that if someone is trying to murder you, you have a right to stop them.”