“Tell me about it again, Kyle. As though you’ve never told me before. Explain the whole thing, Kyle.”
I knew what she wanted then. She wanted the same sort of excitement she had felt the first time.
I began to tell her, my voice flat and monotonous. I saw it working on her. She bent over me and flicked her tongue against my moving lips. When I stopped she told me to keep talking. When I raised my arms, she pushed them back down.
She was over me with tantalizing, fisted languor, with hot blind eyes, with raw mouth and furnace breath. And her body gleamed white when the robe parted, and her thigh was long, reaching ivory as she knelt over me, and my voice went on and on, talking flatly of money and checking accounts and altered statements until it was too late, and then we talked with other voices, and the velvet whip cracked, and deep in my mind something cried out that the list, the forgeries, the theft were real, would happen. Nothing could stop it. The same way nothing could stop paroxysm until she fell on my chest like a dark bird torn suddenly out of a storm sky and hurled against the cliff and rocks, wounded unto death.
Friday she replaced the checks from which I had prepared the forgeries. Saturday morning, early, I took a train to Syracuse. I bought a hunting license in the name of Walter C. Marshall. When you buy a hunting license they don’t demand identification. A small job press on North Salina Street turned out personal letterheads in an hour. I used, as a letterhead address, the furnished room in the university district that I had rented for a month as soon as I got to town. I rented it for the two of us, told the landlady that I was a salesman and I needed a base of operations in that end of my territory, that maybe on my next trip I’d bring my wife. With the hunting license and rent receipt and letterhead paper as identification, I took a driving test, telling them that I’d never been licensed in New York and my Idaho license had expired.
In the afternoon I went to a used-car lot on Broad Street and looked around. We wanted to make good time, and still be inconspicuous. That meant a big heavy car, but not a brand-new one, or even last year’s. I decided on a dark green Chrysler New Yorker, vintage ’48. Pedal wear wasn’t extreme. I drove it around the block and the front end felt tight. When I raced the motor, there was no telltale cloud of gray-blue smoke from the exhaust. It was neither too cheap nor too expensive. I gave them fifty dollars to hold it, and said I’d be around with the rest of the cash as soon as I got back from a sales trip. That would probably be next Saturday morning.
I had something to eat in the Syracuse station while waiting for the train, and at quarter to eight I was unlocking the downstairs door of my apartment house.
After I freshened up a bit, I went up to the third floor and tapped at Emily’s door.
“Who is it?” she asked, through the door.
“Kyle.” She opened the door. I stepped in and said, “Who did you think it was?”
I had never seen her look so tense and upset. “I might as well tell you. You’ll probably find out anyway. Remember my telling you about a mistake I made?”
“When your husband got an annulment? Yes.”
“The man who … helped me make the mistake was still in the hospital when I left Chicago. Harry caught us, you see. He had the man taken care of. Not killed. Just badly beaten. He worked for Harry. His name is Ralph Beckler. I was out shopping this afternoon. A few minutes after I got back, I heard the buzzer. I released the door switch. I opened the door and there he was, grinning at me. He traced me here. He’s going to be trouble, Kyle. I had a hard time getting rid of him.”
I stared at her, then grabbed her wrist and yanked her over to the lamp. The corner of her mouth was swollen.
“I bet you had a rough time,” I said.
“What are you trying to imply, Kyle?”
“That there was one way to get rid of him, and you took it.”
She smiled at me, with a dark light dancing in her eyes. “You’re wrong, Kyle.”
“I don’t think I’m wrong.”
“You better believe you’re wrong. Don’t you think so?”
My hand came up before I realized what I was doing. In the last split second I opened my fist, tried to pull the blow. She tottered, loose-kneed, the red marks of my fingers appearing at once on her cheek.
“Tell me,” I said.
Her eyes came back to focus. “Go to hell,” she said.
For a long time. I wasn’t sane. The wild spinning world slowly steadied on its axis. She lay beside me, staring at me. She whispered, “Get crazy mad often, Kyle.”
“The next time I might kill you. I don’t care about that Beckler. I own you now. I didn’t before. Tell me what happened.”
“Nothing happened. He hit me, finally, and I started to yell. He left.”
“Why did you hint that it wasn’t that way?”
“I wanted to see what you’d do.”
“You found out.”
She left me. I was on my second cigarette when she came back. She wore a silver-gray corduroy robe. She lay down beside me. “Tell me about today.”
I told her everything. She didn’t speak for a long time.
“What about that girl? Will she make trouble?”
“That’s over. It ended last Saturday. I have to go and see her mother tomorrow. She’s sick. Dying.”
“If it’s over with the girl, why bother?”
“I’d feel better if I did.”
“I told you I went shopping. I bought everything we need. We don’t have to go out at all tomorrow. We can be here, together, all day.”
“That rule we made. We aren’t keeping to it very well, are we?”
“Monday we actually start. We’ll keep the rule from Monday on. From Monday on you’ll be a monk, Kyle.”
“But not on week ends.”
“Or if we should slip during the week.”
“You sound as if you hoped we would.”
“I don’t want us to. But you don’t know how it is with me. You couldn’t know how it is. You couldn’t know how it … hits me.”
“Can you tell me? I’d like to know … how you feel … before we …”
“There aren’t any words. One minute I’m ice. All the way through. Brittle and tinkly. And then something starts it. A lot of different things start it. Sometimes when I’m alone, too. And that’s a special kind of hell. My fingers begin to feel all pins and needles. And the soles of my feet, too. And then a warm black feeling rolls up my arms and up my legs. It makes me feel all warm and black and swollen. Breasts and hips. And I fight it and it rolls into my brain and things go black and red behind my eyes. I’m all swollen and knotted at the same time. Then something has to happen. If nothing happens it doubles me over and I bite my hands and my throat gets so tight I can’t even scream.” She turned away from me. “I shouldn’t have told you that. You’ll think of it and you’ll hate me because its like some kind of animal.”
“I won’t hate you. I don’t hate you. I don’t love you, either. I don’t even like you, Emily. I don’t know what I feel toward you. Coming back on the train, knowing I was coming to you, I wanted to get out and push. Going away from you on the train, I wanted to drag my feet.”
“I can’t help being like I am.”
“It’s what men sense about you. It shows, somehow.”
“Does it frighten you a little?”
“In a way. Yes. Because it doesn’t have to be me. It could be anybody.”
“Then always stay close to me.” She rolled against me suddenly, opened her mouth, raked her teeth quickly down my upper arm. It made a red track. Slowly droplets of blood began to stand up in the red track. “Stay close to me tomorrow,” she whispered.
“I will,” I said, my throat thick.
“You won’t go out tomorrow, will you?”
“No.”
“She’s just the mother of a girl you used to know. That’s all.”
“Yes, that’s all, Emily.”
“Monday night, we’ll have the first money. You’ll bri
ng it home to me. You’ll walk in and hold it out and put it in my hands, Kyle. You’ll bring it home to me because that is what I want you to do.” Her voice was dreamy and far away. She turned sharply. “Monday night you’ll put that money in my hands, Kyle!”
“Sure.”
“They’ll never catch us, Kyle.”
“Never. What does Beckler look like?”
“I don’t know. Sort of big and tough. I can’t describe people. He’s young. When he grins one eyebrow goes up. Just one. Not both of them.”
“Has he got money?”
“Not enough for him. He’ll get more. He always does.”
“What did he do for your husband?”
“Harry used to send him to New Orleans every once in a while. And sometimes to Miami. I don’t know why. Let’s not talk about him.”
“I forgot to tell you. We’ve got to write a few letters to Walter C. Marshall at Eighteen-ten Warren Street, Syracuse. Grab a sheet of Limebright’s letterhead and type up a note that will give Marshall a credit rating.”
“Go home now, Kyle. I want to sleep.”
“Isn’t that a little abrupt?”
“Use my key and lock me in, Kyle. Then wake me up early in the morning. Very early. When it’s just turning gray.”
When I woke up Monday morning I felt as though I had taken a sideways step out of the world. I was apart from the world. I told myself that this was a day to be afraid in. This was the day when I would take a step that could not be retraced, retracted. Yet Sunday had seemed to put me in a place where I could not feel fear. It had been an incredible day. From gray dawn to the end of dusk she had been endlessly demanding, ceaselessly inventive. She had so filled my mind with her own image that the bank, the theft we were planning, seemed just a minor thing, an irritation.
I walked to work alone. We had agreed never to be seen together, if possible, either in the bank or outside. I felt as though anybody could look into my eyes and see what sort of day yesterday had been.
As I was setting up, Tom Nairn came into my cage. “Want to talk to you, Kyle.”
All the fear I had been unable to feel suddenly bunched in my throat.
“Yes, Mr. Nairn.”
“Mr. Tatley spoke to me Friday. They were checking personnel records. You and Miss Rudolph from Limebright’s department seem to have the same address. He asked me about that.”
There was a strong temptation to tell him that what I did outside the bank was my own business. But that wasn’t true, of course. The banks keep a paternal eye on the private lives of their employees. They frown on tellers who get tight, get tangled up with women, play the horses, or lose driver’s licenses.
“Mr. Nairn, Sam told me Miss Rudolph was looking for a cheap apartment. I suggested my place to her, and she liked it. I didn’t realize that it might look … Gosh, Mr. Nairn, I hardly know her. Just to speak to.”
He nodded and smiled. “That’s what I told Mr. Tatley. I told him you were engaged to a fine girl and would probably be married in a month or so. How is Jo Anne, by the way?”
I gave him a doleful look. “We’ve had a bad break. Her mother has cancer. Bedridden. Jo Anne has to take care of the house and nurse her mother. So we’ve had to put it off.”
“Sorry to hear it, Kyle. She’s a fine girl.”
He went away. Just before we opened the doors, Tatley came in. I saw Tom bend over his desk and whisper to him. Tatley looked toward me. Tom must have said something funny. They both laughed.
Mondays are always busy. Commercial accounts. Large deposits from the stores. I had told Emily that Mondays were going to be our best days. By eleven o’clock I had taken in a bale of cash. I put my little sign up and went out back to the men’s room. I shut myself in a stall. I leafed through the checks and selected three. Two I could put through right away. The total would be forty-eight hundred. The third one was for three thousand, and I could save that until afternoon. I put the checks in my handkerchief and shoved it in my pocket.
You learn to move quickly behind the bronze bars. Each time I had a few seconds, I counted and banded bills, initialing the brown bands. Twenty fifties make a slim stack that totals a thousand. Beside the bin I accumulated a little pile. Four sheafs of fifties, only one of them a new sheaf in serial sequence. Eight hundred in twenties.
I knew that I had to make the switch, and make it fast, but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It was a step that went against all my training, all my instincts. I took the handkerchief out of my pocket, and felt the crispness of the checks inside it. It would not do to look the least bit furtive. I had a terrible temptation to look quickly over my shoulder. I thought that Nairn would be standing there, his eyes boring holes in my back.
I felt sick and dizzy. I looked out across the floor and through the window and saw the girls standing on the windy corner. All of them were Emily. On Sunday she had said, “You can’t back out now, Kyle. Remember that. Back out and there will never be another day like this for us.”
I put the handkerchief aside and took care of three customers, working like an automaton. When I moved the handkerchief over toward the end of the bin, the two checks remained on the side of my counter, to the right of the grille. I turned them over and initialed them, put them in the proper drawer space, wrote neatly on my running record two “cash paids,” one for twenty-five hundred, one for twenty-three hundred.
When I picked up the handkerchief again, my fingers closed around it and around the stack of bills. I shoved the whole works into my side pocket. Another customer stepped up, and a line quickly formed behind her.
The next time I went into the men’s room, I shut myself in the cubicle, dropped my trousers, unbuttoned the bottom two buttons of my shirt, and unstrapped the money belt, khaki canvas, purchased at a PX. I zipped the money in, strapped it back on.
When it came time for lunch I took a bite of sandwich. I chewed and chewed, but I could not seem to moisten it. It turned to caked dryness in my mouth. I spit it out, dropped the lunch into a wastebasket. A little after two o’clock the check for $3,000 went into the works, and thirty hundred-dollar bills went into my pocket. It was much easier than the first time. I found myself able to glance casually around, wink at Paul Raddmann seconds after I had shoved the money, folded into the handkerchief, into my pocket.
I totaled up without a hitch, without an error.
At six o’clock Emily stood beside me, her eyes like black flame, her breath coming fast and shallow, as I unzipped the belt and piled the money on the plate-glass top of the coffee table. She counted it three times.
“Seven thousand, eight hundred dollars,” she said, her tone solemn.
“They say we could live for one very good year on that in Argentina.”
“Seven thousand, eight hundred dollars.”
“Get the records, Emily. We’ve got to enter this. Did you bring checks?”
“Ten checks.”
I whistled softly. “We’ve got a few hours work.”
She looked up at me, the money in her hands. She tilted her head a bit to one side. “Kyle, I was almost certain you wouldn’t do it.”
“I did it.”
“You are a criminal now. Do you feel sorry?”
“I can’t help feeling a little nervous.”
“I said sorry, not nervous.” She moved closer, lifted her mouth hard against mine, set her small even teeth in my lower lip, right on the threshhold of pain.
“Sorry?” she said. Her voice was distorted by what she was doing. I had my arms around her. She held the money to her breast. I could feel the bulk of it, in her clasped hands, against my chest.
“No,” I said. “Not sorry.”
She released my lip. Her eyes were shut. “Tell me what you are. Say it.”
“I am a criminal.”
“Now tell me why you did it. Tell me, Kyle.”
“Because you wanted me to.”
“No, Kyle. Because it’s the only way you could have me.”
Chapter Nine
She had a place all set for it. She had cut a piece of cardboard to fit inside an oval hatbox. She spread the money in the bottom of the hatbox, slid the cardboard down to cover it, put a hat in it, fastened the lid on, and put it on the closet shelf.
“There!” she said.
We ate there. We worked on the checks and the records until after ten. The strain of the day had taken much out of us. I did not touch her. I went slowly down the stairs and went to bed.
Tuesday the checks from Monday arrived at her desk without incident. Tuesday was a slim day, Wednesday not much better. Thursday I switched checks for $5,600. Each night she insisted on counting not just the day’s take, but the total. I sat on the couch and watched her. She sat on the floor counting them into neat piles: $20,500.
She played with the money as a child plays with a fascinating toy. It gave her a hard, brilliant excitement. I went to her, where she was surrounded by her stacks of money, and she responded like flame. And afterward she crouched nude and collected the scattered bills and counted them once more, packed them away before leaving the room. I knew that I would never forget that scene. Lamplight slanting on the lithe marble body. The rustle and slap of the bills. Head bent, strand of black hair reaching down toward the quick fingers. The perfect groove down her back, convex at the shoulders, concave at the small of her back where the waist was slimmest. It was the way I had seen her, crouched at the file cabinet, just three weeks before.
Friday night we packed the total of $23,800 into one of her small suitcases. We took a train to Syracuse, and we did not sit in the same coach. I had the money for the car with me, withdrawn from the joint savings account. When I met her outside the Syracuse station, near the cabs, I saw that she had changed her make-up and hairdo as before. This time she had reddened her white cheeks with rouge. We got in a cab and went to Warren Street. I introduced her to the landlady as my wife, Mrs. Marshall. When we had closed ourselves in the furnished room, she looked slowly around at the shiny depressing maple, faded chintz, rose-flowered rug, and said, so very softly. “I’ll never live like this. Never, never, never.”
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