Quicker Than the Eye (7 page)

"Yes. Anyway, you heard someone calling. You had to come out-"

"I did. Many nights now. But, always, no one's here. They 
must 
be there, or why would I hear them?"

"One day there'll be someone to fit the voice."

"Oh, don't joke with me!"

"I'm not. Believe. There will be. That's what all those other women heard in other years and places, middle of summer, dead of winter, go out and risk cold, stand warm in snow banks, and listen and look for strange footprints on the midnight snow, and only an old dog trotting by, all smiles. Damn, damn."

"Oh, yes, damn, damn." And her smile showed for a moment, even as the moon came out of the clouds and went away. "Isn't it silly?"

"No. Men do the same. They take long walks when they're sixteen, seventeen. They don't stand on lawns, waiting, no. But, my God, how they 
walk! 
Miles and miles from midnight until dawn and come home exhausted and explode and die in bed."

"What a shame that those who stand and wait and those who walk all night can't-"

"Meet?"

"Yes; don't you think it's a shame?"

"They 
do, 
finally."

"Oh, no, I shall never meet anyone. I'm old and ugly and terrible and I don't know how many nights I've heard that voice making me come here and there's nothing and I just want to die."

"Oh, lovely young girl," he said gently. "Don't die. The cavalry is on its way. You will be saved."

There was such certainty in his voice that it made her glance up again, for she had been looking at her hands and her own soul in her hands.

"You 
know, 
don't you?" she asked.

"Yes."

"You truly 
know? 
You tell the 
truth?"

"Swear to God, swear by all that's living."

"Tell me more!"

"There's little more to tell."

"Tell me!"

"Everything will be all right with you. Some night soon, or some day, someone will call and they'll really be there when you come to find. The game will be over."

"Hide-and-seek, you mean? But it's gone on too long!"

"It's almost over, Marie."

"You know my name!"

He stopped, confused. He had not meant to speak it.

"How did you know, who are you?" she demanded.

"When you get back to sleep tonight, you'll know. If we say too much, you'll disappear, or I'll disappear. I'm not quite sure which of us is real or which is a ghost."

"Not me! Oh, surely not me. I can feel myself. I'm here. Why, look!" And she showed him the remainder of her tears brushed from her eyelids and held on her palms.

"Oh, that's real, all right. Well, then, dear young woman, I must be the visitor. I come to tell you it will all go right. Do you believe in special ghosts?"

"Are you 
special?"

"One of us is. Or maybe both. The ghost of young love or the ghost of the unborn."

"Is that what 
I 
am, 
you 
are?"

"Paradoxes aren't easy to explain."

"Then, depending on how you look at it, you're impossible, and so am I."

"If it makes it easier, just think I'm not really here. Do you believe in ghosts?"

"I think I do."

"It comes to me to imagine, then, that there are special ghosts in the world. Not ghosts of dead people. But ghosts of want and need, or I guess you might say desire."

"I don't understand."

"Well, have you ever lain in bed late afternoons, late nights and dreamed something so much, awake, you felt your soul jump out of your body as if something had yanked a long, pure white sheet straight out the window? You want something so much, your soul leaps out and follows, my God, fast?"

"Why . . . yes. Yes!"

"Boys do that, men do that. When I was twelve I read Burroughs' Mars novels. John Carter used to stand under the stars, hold up his arms to Mars, and ask to be taken.

And Mars grabbed his soul, yanked him like an aching tooth across space, and landed him in dead Martian seas. That's boys, that's men."

"And girls, women?"

"They 
dream, yes. And their ghosts come out of their bodies. Living ghosts. Living wants. Living needs."

"And go to stand on lawns in the middle of winter nights?"

"That's about it."

"Am I a ghost, then?"

"Yes, the ghost of 
wanting 
so much it kills but doesn't kill you, shakes and almost breaks you."

"And you?"

"I must be the answer-ghost."

"The answer-ghost. What a funny name!"

"Yes. But you've 
asked 
and I know the 
answer."

"Tell me!"

"All right, the answer is this, young girl, young woman. The time of waiting is almost over. Your time of despair will soon be through. Very soon, now, a voice will call and when you come out, both of you, your ghost of want and your body with it, there will be a man to go with the voice that calls."

"Oh, please don't tell me that if it isn't true!" Her voice trembled. Tears flashed again in her eyes. She half raised her arms again in defense.

"I wouldn't dream to hurt you. I only came to tell." The town clock struck again in the deep morning. "It's late," she said.

"Very late. Get along, now." "Is that all you're going to say?" "You don't need to know any more." The last echoes of the great clock faded.

"How strange," she murmured. "The ghost of a question, the ghost of an answer."

"What better ghosts can there be?"

"None that I ever heard of. We're twins."

"Far nearer than you think."

She took a step, looked down, and gasped with delight. "Look, oh, look. I 
can 
move!"

"Yes."

"What was it you said, boys walk all night, miles and miles?"

"Yes."

"I could go back in, but I can't sleep now. I must walk, too."

"Do that," he said gently.

"But where shall I 
go?"

"Why," he said, and he suddenly knew. He knew where to send her and was suddenly angry with himself for knowing, angry with her for asking. A burst of jealousy welled in him. He wanted to race down the street to a certain house where a certain young man lived in another year and break the window, burn the roof. And yet, oh, yet, if he 
did 
that!?

"Yes?" she said, for he had kept her waiting.

Now, he thought, you must tell her. There's no escape.

For if you don't tell her, angry fool, you yourself will never be born.

A wild laugh burst from his mouth, a laugh that accepted the entire night and time and all his crazed thinking.

"So you want to know where to go?" he said at last.

    "Oh, yes!"

He nodded his head. "Up to that corner, four blocks to the right, one block to the left."

She repeated it quickly. "And the final number?!"

"Eleven Green Park."

"Oh, thank you, thank you!" She ran a few steps, then stopped, bewildered. Her hands were helpless at her throat. Her mouth trembled. "Silly. I hate to leave."

"Why?"

"Why, because . . . I'm afraid I'll never see 
you 
again!"

"You will. Three years from now."

"Are you sure?"

"I won't look quite the same. But it'll be me. And you'll know me forever."

"Oh, I'm glad for that. Your face 
is 
familiar. I somehow know you well."

She began to walk slowly, looking over at him as he stood near the porch of the house.

"Thanks," she said. "You've saved my life."

"And my own along with it."

The shadows of a tree fell across her face, touched her cheeks, moved in her eyes.

"Oh, Lord! Girls lie in bed nights listing the names for their future children. Silly. Joe. John. Christopher. Samuel. Stephen. And right now, Will." She touched the gentle rise of her stomach, then lifted her hand out halfway to point to him in the night. "Is your name Will?"

"Yes."

Tears absolutely burst from her eyes. He wept with her.

"Oh, that's fine, fine," she said at last. "I can go now. I won't be out here on the lawn anymore. Thank God, thank 
you. 
Good night."

She went away into the shadows across the lawn and along the sidewalk down the street. At the far corner he saw her turn and wave and walk away.

"Good night," he said quietly.

I am not born yet, he thought, or she has been dead many years, which is it? which?

The moon sailed into clouds.

The motion touched him to step, walk, go up the porch stairs, wait, look out at the lawn, go inside, shut the door.

A wind shook the trees.

The moon came out again and looked upon a lawn where two sets of footprints, one going one way, one going another in the dew, slowly, slowly, as the night continued, vanished.

By the time the moon had gone down the sky there was only an empty lawn and no sign, and much dew.

The great town clock struck six in the morning. Fire showed in the east. A cock crowed.

Joshua Enderby awoke in the middle of the night because e felt someone's fingers at his throat.

In the rich darkness above him he sensed but could not see his wife's frail, skelatinous weight seated on his chest while she dabbled and clenched tremblingly again and again at his neck.

He opened his eyes wide. He realized what she was trying to do. It was so ridiculous he almost cried out with laughter!

His rickety, jaundiced, eighty-five-year-old wife was trying to strangle him!

She panted forth a rum-and-bitters smell as she perched there, toppling like a drunken moth, tinkering away as if he were a toy. She sighed irritably and her skinny fingers began to swear as she gasped, "Why 
don't 
you, oh, why 
don 't you?"

Why don't I 
what? 
he wondered idly, lying there. He swallowed and this faint action of his Adam's apple dislodged her feeble clutch. Why don't I 
die; 
is 
that 
it? he cried silently. He lay another few moments, wondering if she'd gain strength enough to do him in. She didn't.

Should he snap on the light to confront her? Wouldn't she look a silly ass, a skinny chicken aloft sidesaddle on her hated husband's amazed body, and him laughing?

Joshua Enderby groaned and yawned. "Missy?"

Her hands froze on his collarbone.

"Will you-" He turned, pretending half sleep. "Will you-please' '-he yawned-' 'move to 
your 
side - of the bed? Eh? Good girl."

Missy moved off in the dark. He heard ice tinkle. She was having another shot of rum.

At noon the next day, enjoying the weather and waiting for luncheon guests to arrive, old Joshua and Missy traded drinks in the garden pavilion. He handed her Dubonnet; she gave him sherry.

There was a moment of silence as both eyed the stuff and hesitated to sip. He handled his glass in such a way that his large white diamond ring sparked and glittered on his palsied hand. Its light made him flinch and at last he gathered his phlegm.

"Missy," he said. "You haven't long to live, you know." Missy was hidden behind jonquils in a crystal bowl and now peered out at her mummified husband. Both perceived that the other's hands shook. She wore a cobalt dress, heavily iced with luncheon jewels, little glittery planets under each ear, a scarlet design for a mouth. The ancient whore of Babylon, he thought dryly.

"How odd, my dear, how very odd," Missy said with a polite scrape of her voice. “Why, only last night-"

"You were 
thinking 
of me?"

"We must talk."

"Yes, we must." He leaned like a wax mannequin in his chair. "No rush. But if I do you in, or if you do me in (it matters not which), let's protect each other, yes? Oh, don't look at me in amaze, my dear. I was perfectly aware of your little gallup last night on my ribs, fumbling with my esophagus, feeling the tumblers click, or whatever."

"Dear me." Blood rose in Missy's powdery cheeks. "Were you awake all during? I'm mortified. I think I shall have to go lie down."

"Nonsense." Joshua stopped her. "If I die, you should be shielded so no one'll accuse you. Same with me, if 
you 
die. Why go to all the trouble of trying to-eliminate-each other if it just means a gallows-drop or a french fry."

"Logical enough," she agreed.

"I suggest a-a series of mash notes to each other. Umm, lavish displays of sentiment before friends, gifts, 
et cetera. 
I'll run up bills for flowers, diamond bracelets. You purchase fine leather wallets and gold-ferruled canes for 
me."

"You have a head for things, I must say," she admitted.

"It will help allay suspicion if we appear madly, anciently in love."

"You know," she said tiredly, "it doesn't matter, Joshua, which of us dies first, except that I'm 
very 
old and would like to do 
one 
thing right in my life. I've always been such a dilettante. I've never liked you. Loved you, yes, but that's ten million years back. You never were a friend. If it weren't for the children-"

"Motives are bilge," he said. "We are two querulous old pots with nothing to do but kick off, and make a circus of 
that. 
But how much better the dying game if we write a few rules, act it neatly, with no one the wiser. How long has this assassination plot of yours been active?"

She beamed. "Remember the opera last week? You slipped from the curb? That car almost nailed you?"

"Good Lord." He laughed. "I thought someone shoved 
both 
of us!" He leaned forward, chuckling. "Okay. When you fell in the bath last month? 
I 
greased the tub!"

Unthinkingly, she gasped, drank part of her Dubonnet, then froze.

Reading her mind, he stared at his own drink.

"This isn't poisoned, by any chance?" He sniffed his glass. "Don't be silly," she replied, touching her Dubonnet with a lizard's doubtful tongue. "They'd find the residue in what's left of your stomach. Just be sure you double-check your shower tonight. I have kited the temperature, which might bring on a seizure."

"You 
didn't!" 
he scoffed.

"I've 
thought 
about it," she confessed.

The front-door chimes rang, but not with their usual joy, sounding more funereal. Nonsense! Joshua thought. Bosh! thought Missy, then brightened:

"We have forgotten our luncheon guest! That's the Gowrys! He's a bore, but be nice! Fix your collar."

"It's damned tight. Too much starch. One more plot to strangle me?"

"I wish I 
had 
thought of that. Double time, now!"

And they marched, arm in arm, with idiot laughter, off to meet the half-forgotten Gowrys.

Cocktails were served. The old relics sat side by side, hands laced like school chums, laughing with weak heartiness at Gowry's dire jokes. They leaned forward to show him their porcelain smiles, saying, "Oh, that's a 
good 
one!" loudly, and, softly, 
sotto voce; 
to each other: "Thought of anything 
new?" 
"Electric razor in your bath?" "Not bad, not bad!"

"And then 
Pat 
said to Mike!" cried Mr. Gowry.

From the corner of his mouth Joshua whispered to Missy, "You know, I dislike you with something approaching the colossal proportions of first love. You have taught me mayhem. How?"

"When the teacher is ready, the pupil will arrive," whispered Missy.

Laughter rose in tumbling, whirling waves. The room was giddy, airy, light. "So Pat says to Mike, do it 
yourself!" 
boomed Gowry.

"Oh, 
ho!" 
everyone exploded.

"Now, dear." Missy waved at her ancient husband. "Tell one of 
your 
jokes. Oh, but 
first," 
she remembered cleverly, "trot down-cellar, darling, and fetch the brandy."

Gowry sprang forward with wild courtesy. 
"I 
know where it is!"

"Oh, Mr. Gowry, 
don't!"

Missy gestured frantically.

Mr. Gowry ran from the room.

"Oh, dear, dear me," cried Missy.

A moment later, Gowry uttered a loud shriek from the basement, followed by a thunderous crash.

Missy hippety-hopped out, only to reappear moments later, her hand clutched to her throat. "Heavens to Betsy," she wailed. "Come look. I 
do 
believe Mr. Gowry has pitched himself straight down the cellar stairs!"

The next morning Joshua Enderby shuffled into the house lugging a large green velvet board some five feet by three, on which pistols were clasped in display.

"Here I am!" he shouted.

Missy appeared with a rum Collins in one bracelet-jangly hand, her cane thumping in the other. "What's 
that?" 
she demanded.

"First, how's old Gowry?"

"Broken leg. Wished it had been his vocal cords."

"Shame about that top cellar step gone loose, eh?" The old man hooked the green velvet board to the wall. "Good thing Gowry lurched for the brandy, not I."

"Shame." The wife drank thirstily. "Explain."

"I'm in the antique-gun-collecting business." He waved at the weapons in their neat leather nests.

"I don't see-"

"With a collection of guns to clean-bang!" He beamed. "Man shoots wife while oiling matchlock garter pistol. Didn't know it was loaded, says weeping spouse."

"Touche'," she said.

An hour later, while oiling a revolver, he almost blew his brains out.

His wife came thumping in and froze. "Hell. You're still alive."

"Loaded, by God!" He lifted the weapon in a trembling hand. 
"None were 
loaded! Unless-"

"Unless-?"

He seized three more weapons. 
"All 
loaded! You!"

"Me," she said. "While you ate lunch. I suppose I'll have to give you tea now. Come along."

He stared at the bullet hole in the wall. "Tea, hell," he said. "Where's the 
gin?!"

It was 
her 
turn for a shopping spree. "There are ants in the house." She rattled her full shopping bag and set out ant-paste pots in all the rooms, sprinkled ant powders on windowsills, in his golf bag, and over his gun collection. From other sacks she drew rat poisons, mouse-killers, and bug-exterminators. "A bad summer for roaches." She distributed these liberally among the foods.

"That's a double-edged sword," he observed. "You'll fall on it!"

"Bilge. The victim mustn't 
choose 
his demise."

"Yes, but no violence. I wish a serene face for the coroner."

"Vanity. Dear Josh, your face will twist like a corkscrew with one heaping teaspoon of Black Leaf Forty in your midnight cocoa!"

"I," he shot back, "know a recipe that will break you out in a thousand lumps before expiring"

She quieted. "Why, Josh, I wouldn't 
dream 
of using Black Leaf Forty."

He bowed. "I wouldn't dream of using the thousand-lump recipe."

"Shake," she said.

Their assassins game continued. He bought huge rattraps to hide in the halls. "You run barefoot so: 
small 
wounds, 
large 
infections!"

She in turn stuck the sofas full of antimacassar pins. Wherever he laid a hand it drew blood. "Ow! Damn!" He sucked his fingers. "Are these Amazon Indian blowgun darts?"

"No. Just plain old rusty lockjaw needles."

"Oh," he said.

Though he was aging fast, Joshua Enderby dearly loved to drive. You could see him motoring with feeble wildness up and down the hills of Beverly, mouth gaped, eyes blinking palely.

One afternoon he phoned from Malibu. "Missy? My God, I almost dove from a cliff. My right front wheel flew off on a straightaway!"

"I planned it for a 
curve!"

"Sorry."

"Got the idea from Action News. Loosen car's wheel lugs:

tomato 
surprise."

"Never mind about careless old me," he said. "What's new with you?"

"Rug slipped on the hall stairs. Maid fell on her prat."

"Poor Lila."

"I send her everywhere ahead now. She bucketed down like a laundry bag. Lucky she's all fat."

"We'll kill that one between us if we're not careful."

"Do you 
think? 
Oh, I 
do 
like Lila 
so."

"Lay Lila off for a spell. Hire someone new. If we catch 
them 
in our crossfire, won't be so sad. Hate to think of Lila smashed under a chandelier or-"

"Chandelier!" Missy shrieked. "You been fiddling with my grandma's Fountainbleu Palace crystal hangings? Listen here, mister. You're not to 
touch 
that chandelier!"

"Promise," he muttered.

"Good grief! Those lovely crystals! If they fell and missed me, I'd hop on one leg to cane you to death, then wake you up and cane you 
again!"

Slam 
went the phone.

Joshua Enderby stepped in from the balcony at supper that night. He'd been smoking. He looked at the table. "Where's your strawberry crumpet?"

"I wasn't hungry. I gave it to the new maid."

"Idiot!"

She glared. "Don't tell me you poisoned that crumpet, you old S.O.B.?"

There was a crash from the kitchen.

Joshua went to look and returned. "She's not new any-more," he said.

They stashed the new maid in an attic trunk. No one telephoned to ask for her.

"Disappointing," observed Missy on the seventh day. "I felt certain there'd be a tall, cold man with a notebook and another with a camera and flashbulbs flashing. Poor girl was lonelier than we 
guessed."

Cocktail parties streamed wildly through the house. It was Missy's idea. "So we can pick each other off in a forest of obstacles; moving targets!"

Mr. Gowry, gamely returning to the house, limping after his tumble of some weeks before, joked, laughed, and didn't quite blow his ear off with one of the dueling pistols. Everyone roared but the party broke up early. Gowry vowed never to return.

Then there was a Miss Kummer, who, staying overnight, borrowed Joshua's electric razor and was almost but not quite electrocuted. She left the house rubbing her right underarm. Joshua promptly grew a beard.

Soon after, a Mr. Schlagel vanished. So did a Mr. Smith. The last seen of these unfortunates was at a Saturday night soiree at the Enderbys' mansion.

"Hide-and-seek?" Friends slapped Joshua's back jovially.

"How 
do 
you do it? Kill 'em with toadstools, plant 'em like mushrooms?"

"Grand joke, yes!" chortled Joshua. "No, no, ha, not toadstools, but one got locked in our stand-up fridge. Overnight Eskimo Pie. The other tripped on a croquet hoop. Defenestrated through a greenhouse window."

"Eskimo Pie, defenestrated!" hooted the party people. "Dear Joshua, you 
are 
a card!"

"I speak only the 
truth," 
Joshua protested.

"What won't you think of next?"

"One wonders what 
did 
happen to old Schlagel and that rascal Smith."

* * *

"What 
did 
happen to Schlagel and Smith?" Missy inquired some days later.

"Let me explain. The Eskimo Pie was my dessert. But the croquet hoop? No! Did 
you 
spot it in the wrong place, hoping I'd pop by and lunge through the greenhouse panes?"