A Kiss Before Dying

by Ira Levin

  He was president of his senior class in high school and was graduated with the third highest average and honours in mathematics and science. In the school year-book he was named the best dancer, the most popular, and the most likely to succeed. His parents gave a party for him which was attended by many young people from the better part of town.

  Two weeks later he was drafted.

  For the first few days of Basic Training, he coasted along on the glory he had left behind. But then reality rubbed off the insulation, and he found the impersonal authority of the army to be a thousand times more degrading than his early school-days had been. And here, if he went up to the sergeant and spat on his shoes, he’d probably spend the rest of his life in the glass-house. He cursed the blind system which had dropped him into the infantry, where he was surrounded by coarse, comic-book-reading idiots. After a while he read comic-books too, but only because it was impossible to concentrate on the copy of Anna Karenina he had brought with him. He made friends with some of the men, buying them beers in the canteen, and inventing obscene and fantastically funny biographies of all the officers. He was contemptuous of everything that had to be learned and everything that had to be done.

  When he was shipped out of San Francisco, he vomited all the way across the Pacific, and he knew it was only partly from the lift and drop of the ship. He was sure he was going to be killed.

  On an island still partially occupied by the Japanese, he became separated from the other members of his company and stood terrified in the midst of a silent jungle, desperately shifting this way and that, not knowing in which direction safety lay. A rifle slapped, sent a bullet keening past his ear. Jagged bird screams split the air. He dropped to his stomach and rolled under a bush, sick with the certainty that this was the moment of his death.

  The bird sounds fluttered down into silence. He saw a gleam in a tree up ahead, and knew that that was where the sniper waited. He found himself inching forward under the bushes, dragging his rifle with one hand. His body was clammy cold and alive with sweat; his legs were trembling so badly that he was sure the Jap would hear the leaves rustling under them. The rifle weighed a ton.

  Finally he was only twenty feet from the tree, and looking up, he could discern the figure crouched in it. He lifted his rifle; he aimed, and fired. The bird chorus shrieked. The tree remained motionless. Then suddenly a rifle dropped from it, and he saw the sniper slide clumsily down a vine and drop to the ground with his hands high in the air; a little yellow man grotesquely festooned with leaves and branches, his lips emitting a terrified sing-song chatter.

  Keeping the rifle trained on the Jap, he stood up. The Jap was as scared as he was; the yellow face twitched wildly and the knees shivered; more scared, in fact, for the front of the Jap’s pants was dark with a spreading stain.

  He watched the wretched figure with contempt. His own legs steadied. His sweating stopped. The rifle was weightless, like an extension of his arms, immobile, aimed at the trembling caricature of a man that confronted him. The Jap’s chatter had slowed to a tone of entreaty. The yellow-brown fingers made little begging motions in the air.

  Quite slowly, he squeezed the trigger. He did not move with the recoil. Insensate to the kick of the butt in his shoulder, he watched attentively as a black-red hole blossomed and swelled in the chest of the Jap. The little man slid clawing to the jungle floor. Bird screams were like a handful of coloured cards thrown into the air.

  After looking at the slain enemy for a minute or so, he turned and walked away. His step was as easy and certain as when he had crossed the stage of the auditorium after accepting his diploma.

  He received an honourable discharge in January of 1947, and left the army with the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart, and the record of a shell fragment traced in a vein of thin scar tissue over his dextral ribs. Returning home, he found that his father had been killed in an automobile accident while he was overseas.

  He was offered several jobs in Menasset, but rejected them as being of too little promise. His father’s insurance money was sufficient to support his mother and she was taking in sewing again besides, so after two months of drawing admiration from the townspeople and twenty dollars a week from the federal government, he decided to go to New York. His mother argued, but he was over twenty-one, if only by a few months, so he had his way. Some of the neighbours expressed surprise that he did not intend to go to college, especially when the government would pay for it. He felt, however, that college would only be an unnecessary stopover on the road to the success he was certain awaited him.

  His first job in New York was in a publishing house, where the personnel manager assured him there was a fine future for the right man. Two weeks, however, was all he could take of the shipping room.

  His next job was with a department store, where he was a sales clerk in the menswear department. The only reason he remained there an entire month was that he was able to buy his clothes on a twenty per cent discount.

  By the end of August, when he had been in New York five months and had had six jobs, he was again prey to the awful insecurity of being one among many rather than one alone; unadmired and with no tangible sign of success. He sat in his furnished room and devoted some time to serious self-analysis. If he had not found what he wanted in these six jobs, he decided, it was unlikely that he would find it in the next six. He took out his fountain pen and made what he considered to be a completely objective list of his qualities, abilities, and talents.

  In September he enrolled in a dramatic school under the GI Bill. The instructors expressed great hopes for him at first; he was handsome, intelligent, and had a fine speaking voice, although the New England accent would have to be eliminated. He had great hopes too, at first. Then he discovered how much work and study were involved in becoming an actor. The exercises the instructors gave – ‘Look at this photograph and act out the emotions it brings to mind’ – struck him as ridiculous, although the other students seemed to take them seriously. The only study to which he applied himself was diction; he had been dismayed to hear the word ‘accent’ used in relation to himself, having always thought of it as something someone else had.

  In December, on his twenty-second birthday, he met a fairly attractive widow. She was in her forties and she had a good deal of money. They met on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fifty-fifth Street – quite romantically, they later agreed. Stepping back on to the kerb to avoid a bus, she tripped and fell into his arms. She was embarrassed and terribly shaken. He made some humorous comments on the ability and thoughtfulness of Fifth Avenue bus drivers, and then they went down the street to a dignified bar where they had two Martinis each, for which he paid the check. In the weeks that followed they attended small East Side art movies and dined in restaurants where there were three or four people to be tipped at the end of the meal. He paid many more checks, although not again with his own money.

  Their attachment lasted for several months, during which time he weaned himself away from the dramatic school – no painful process – and devoted his afternoons to squiring her on shopping tours, some of which were for him. At first he was somewhat embarrassed at being seen with her because of the obvious discrepancy in their ages, but he soon found himself getting over that. He was, however, dissatisfied with the relationship on two accounts: firstly, while her face was fairly attractive, her body, unfortunately, was not; secondly, and of greater importance, he learned from the elevator operator in her apartment house that he was only one of a series of young men, each of whom had been replaced with equinoctial regularity at the end of six months. It seemed, he reflected humourlessly, that this was another position with no future. At the end of five months, when she began to exhibit less curiosity about how he spent the nights he was not with her, he anticipated her move and told her that he had to return home because his mother was deathly ill.

  He did return home, after reluctantly excising the custom tailor’s labels from his suits and pawning a Patek Philippe wristwatch. H
e spent the early part of June lounging around the house, silently lamenting the fact that the widow had not been younger, prettier, and open to a more permanent sort of alliance.

  That was when he began to make his plans. He decided he would go to college after all. He took a summer job in a local dry goods store because, while the GI Bill would cover his tuition, his living expenses would be quite high; he was going to attend a good school.

  He finally chose Stoddard University in Blue River, Iowa, which was supposed to be something of a country club for the children of the mid-western wealthy. There was no difficulty in his gaining admission. He had such a fine high school record.

  In his first year he met a lovely girl, a senior, the daughter of the vice-president of an internationally organized farm equipment concern. They took walks together, cut classes together, and slept together. In May she told him that she was engaged to a boy back home and she hoped he hadn’t taken it too seriously.

  In his sophomore year he met Dorothy Kingship.

  THREE

  He got the pills, two greyish-white capsules, from Hermy Godsen. They cost him five dollars.

  At eight o’clock he met Dorothy at their regular meeting place, a tree-shrouded bench in the centre of the wide stretch of lawn between the Fine Arts and Pharmacy buildings. When he left the white concrete path and cut across the darkness of the lawn he saw that Dorothy was already there, sitting stiffly with her fingers locked in her lap, a dark coat cloaking her shoulders against the April coolness. A street lamp off to the side cast leaf shadows on her face.

  He sat down beside her and kissed her cheek. She greeted him softly. From the rectangle of lighted windows in the Fine Arts Building drifted the conflicting themes of a dozen pianos. After a moment he said, ‘I got them.’

  A couple crossed the lawn towards them and, seeing the bench occupied, turned back to the white path. The girl’s voice said, ‘My God, they’re all taken.’

  He took the envelope from his pocket and put it into Dorothy’s hand. Her fingers felt the capsules through the paper. ‘You’re to take both of them together,’ he said. ‘You’re liable to get a little fever, and you’ll probably feel nauseous.’

  She put the envelope in her coat pocket. ‘What’s in them?’ she asked.

  ‘Quinine, some other things. I’m not sure.’ He paused. ‘They can’t hurt you.’

  He looked at her face and saw that she was staring off at something beyond the Fine Arts Building. He turned and followed her gaze to a winking red light miles away. It marked the local radio station’s transmitting tower, which stood atop Blue River’s tallest structure, the Municipal Building – where the Marriage Licence Bureau was. He wondered if she were staring at the light because of that, or only because it was a winking red light in a sky of darkness. He touched her hands and found them cold. ‘Don’t worry, Dorrie. Everything will be all right.’

  They sat in silence for a few minutes, and then she said, ‘I’d like to go to a movie tonight. There’s a Joan Fontaine picture at the Uptown.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but I’ve got a ton of Spanish homework.’

  ‘Let’s go over to the Student Union. I’ll help you with it.’

  ‘What are you trying to do, corrupt me?’

  He walked her back across the campus. Opposite the low modern shape of the Girls’ Dormitory, they kissed goodnight. ‘See you in class tomorrow,’ he said. She nodded, and kissed him again. She was trembling. ‘Look, baby, there’s nothing to worry about. If they don’t work we get married. Haven’t you heard? – love conquers all.’ She was waiting for him to say more. ‘And I love you very much,’ he said, and kissed her. When their lips parted, hers were pressed into an unsteady smile.

  ‘Goodnight, baby,’ he said.

  He returned to his room, but he couldn’t do his Spanish. He sat with his elbows planted on the bridge table, his head in his hands, thinking about the pills. Oh God, they must work! They will work!

  But Hermy Godsen had said: ‘I can’t give you no written guarantee. If this girlfriend of yours is two months gone already—’

  He tried not to think about it. He got up and went to the bureau and opened the bottom drawer. From under the neatly folded pyjamas he took two pamphlets whose supple covers gleamed with a copper finish.

  On first meeting Dorothy and discovering, through one of the student-secretaries in the Registrar’s office, that she was not merely one of the ‘Kingship Copper’ Kingships but actually a daughter of the corporation’s president, he had written a businesslike letter to the organization’s New York office. In it he represented himself as contemplating an investment in Kingship Copper (which was not entirely an untruth), and requested descriptive brochures of its holdings.

  Two weeks later, when he was reading Rebecca and pretending to love it because it was Dorothy’s favourite book, and when she was doggedly knitting him bulky argyle socks because a previous boyfriend had liked them and so the knitting of them had become the badge of her devotion, the pamphlets arrived. He opened their envelope with ceremonial care. They proved wonderful – Technical Information on Kingship Copper and Copper Alloys and Kingship Copper, Pioneer in Peace and War they were called, and they were crammed with photographs: mines and furnaces, concentrators and converters, reversing mills, rolling mills, rod mills, and tube mills. He read them a hundred times and knew every caption by heart. He returned to them at odd moments, a musing smile on his lips, like a woman with a love letter.

  Tonight they were no good. ‘Open-cut mine in Landers, Michigan. From this single mine, a year’s output …’

  What angered him most was that in a sense the responsibility for the entire situation rested with Dorothy. He had wanted to take her to his room only once – a down-payment guaranteeing the fulfilment of a contract. It was Dorothy, with her gently closed eyes and her passive, orphan hunger, who had wished for further visits. He struck the table. It really was her fault! Damn her!

  He dragged his mind back to the pamphlets, but it was no use; after a minute he pushed them away and rested his head in his hands again. If the pills didn’t work – leave school? Ditch her? It would be futile; she knew his Menasset address. Even if she should be reluctant to seek him out, her father would hasten to do so. Of course there could be no legal action (or could there?), but Kingship could still cause him plenty of trouble. He imagined the wealthy as a closely knit, mutually protective clan, and he could hear Leo Kingship: ‘Watch out for this young man. He’s no good. I feel it my duty as a parent to warn you—’ And what would be left for him then? Some shipping room?

  Or if he married her. Then she would have the baby and they’d never get a cent out of Kingship. Again the shipping room, only this time saddled with a wife and child. Oh God!

  The pills had to work. That was all there was to it. If they failed, he didn’t know what he’d do.

  The book of matches was white, with Dorothy Kingship stamped on it in copper leaf. Every Christmas Kingship Copper gave personalized matches to its executives, customers, and friends. It took her four strokes to light the match, and when she held it to her cigarette the flame trembled as though in a breeze. She sat back, trying to relax, but she couldn’t tear her eyes from the open bathroom door, the white envelope waiting on the edge of the sink, the glass of water …

  She closed her eyes. If only she could speak to Ellen about it. A letter had come that morning – ‘The weather has been beautiful … president of the refreshment committee for the Junior Prom … have you read Marquand’s new novel?’ – another of the meaningless mechanical notes that had been drifting between them since Christmas and the argument. If only she could get Ellen’s advice, talk to her the way they used to talk …

  Dorothy had been five and Ellen six when Leo Kingship divorced his wife. A third sister, Marion, was ten. When the three girls lost their mother, first through the divorce and then through her death a year later, Marion felt the loss most deeply of all. Recalling clearly the accusations and d
enunciations which had preceded the divorce, she recounted them in bitter detail to her sisters as they grew up. She exaggerated Kingship’s cruelty to some degree. As the years passed she grew apart, solitary, and withdrawn.

  Dorothy and Ellen, however, turned to each other for the affection which they received neither from their father, who met their coldness with coldness, nor from the series of odourless and precise governesses to whom he transferred the custody the courts had granted him. The two sisters went to the same schools and camps, joined the same clubs and attended the same dances (taking care to return home at the hour designated by their father). Where Ellen led, Dorothy followed.

  But when Ellen entered Caldwell College, in Caldwell, Wisconsin, and Dorothy made plans to follow her there the next year, Ellen said no; Dorothy should grow up and become self-reliant. Their father agreed, self-reliance being a trait he valued in himself and in others. A measure of compromise was allowed, and Dorothy was sent to Stoddard, slightly more than a hundred miles from Caldwell, with the understanding that the sisters would visit one another on weekends. A few visits were made, the length of time between them increasing progressively, until Dorothy austerely announced that her first year of college had made her completely self-reliant, and the visits stopped altogether. Finally, this past Christmas, there had been an argument. It had started on nothing – ‘If you want to borrow my blouse you might at least have asked me!’ – and had swollen because Dorothy had been in a depressed mood all during her vacation. When the girls returned to school, the letters between them faded to brief, infrequent notes …

  There was still the telephone. Dorothy found herself staring at it. She could get Ellen on the line in an instant … But no; why should she be the one to give in first and chance a rebuff? She squashed her cigarette in an ashtray. Besides, now that she had calmed down, what was there to hesitate about? She would take the pills; if they worked, all well and good. If not; marriage. She thought about how wonderful that would be, even if her father did have a fit. She didn’t want any of his money, anyway.