“Will you go with me to Reno tonight and marry me?”
She closed her eyes and lowered her face slightly. Then she shook her head. “No, Jerry.”
“Will you go away with me without marrying me?”
“Please, Jerry—” She stopped, but then made an effort and went on. “I’ve already told you I lied to you. About our going away together. Maybe I wasn’t consciously lying at the time, I don’t know. I might even have thought I could do it. But that isn’t the point.
“Listen, Jerry,” she went on, “I asked you to do something criminal, for money. As long as you were cynical enough to do it for money, only half the responsibility was mine. Do you understand? But then you said you’d changed your mind. You wouldn’t do it. But you were in love with me, you said. So I said, that’s fine, Jerry. If you won’t commit a crime for money, commit a crime because you’re in love with me—”
Her hands were twisted tightly together and shaking, and she stopped for an instant and clenched her teeth to stop the tremor of her chin. It was as if her whole face had already shattered, and she was merely holding it together with an effort of will.
“—After all, old men commit sexual offenses against children somewhere every day, don’t they? So let’s be efficient. Let’s don’t waste a nice handy thing like your being in love with me, when it could be put to some practical use, like luring you into becoming involved in a capital crime and ruining your life—”
I reached over and caught her arms. “Will you stop it? The whole thing was my fault. If I’d had the guts of an angleworm I could have made you give it up.”
She shook her head. “There’s no way you could have stopped me, Jerry. You don’t stop a blind obsession like that. The only thing I could see was that I’d lost everything after it was already too late to start over again, so the thing to do, obviously, was to destroy everybody else too. Including you.”
“I’m not destroyed, if you mean Chapman. After what he did to you, he doesn’t bother me.”
“He will,” she said. “Unless you get the fact firmly fixed in your mind that you didn’t do it. I did.”
“Cut it out,” I told her. “We both did it. But do you think it will continue to hold up? Remember, if they ever put a real expert on those forgeries they’re going to look very fishy.”
“There’s no reason they ever should. However, I’d like to point out something; you’re in the clear, even if they find out it was an impersonation. They can’t prove you ever met me before it happened. You were using the name of Hamilton, remember. And when I came down from New York, I called you as Mrs. Forbes, but I used another name on the plane tickets. Also, en route from the airport to the apartment, I switched taxis in Miami.”
I nodded. “When can I bring the money over to you?”
“Tomorrow,” she said apathetically. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It wasn’t the money at all, was it?”
“No.” Then she added. “Or maybe I tried to think it was, partly.”
I lit a cigarette and walked across the room to look out at Stockton Street through the slats of the blind. I came back and stopped in front of her. “Is it just the voice?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No. That thing when you called just now was only because I was off guard, and didn’t know you were anywhere near. The principal reason I don’t want to go with you is that I’ve done you enough harm already. Why add to it?”
Did the other men who’ve been in love with you have this same trouble getting a message through?” I asked. “Did any of them ever manage to convince you that you might be the thing he needed, or wanted, or cared about?”
Her hands were beginning to twist and shake again. “Jerry, please don’t.”
“No,” I said. I crushed out the cigarette. “If I hadn’t given up too easily the other time, I might have won. So this time I’m going to try just once more. And after that I’ll shut up for good.” I squatted beside the bed, balancing myself on my toes with my forearms across her lap. “I know you don’t love me,” I said. “Maybe you’ve been hacked down so thoroughly it’ll be years before you can care anything about anybody. But I’ll settle for less. I’ll try to say this without slopping over or getting too sticky about it. I just want you. I want to be with you. I want to try to help you. Maybe together we can still work this out some way; at least we could try. We’ll go anywhere you say, on any terms you want, if you’ll just give me a chance. After a while I think you’d associate the voice with me instead of with him. I don’t think they ever made anybody else like you, and probably they never will again. I’m crazy about you, and I always will be. But that’s enough of that. I think you’ve quit trying to deny that I’m in love with you. It’s just a question of whether you’ll go with me. will you, Marian?”
I looked up at her. She’d turned her face away, and the chin was locked again and she was crying without making any sound at all. She looked at me at last, and shook her head.
I stood up. She started to come with me to the door, but stopped with one hand resting on the back of the chair. By this time she could trust herself to speak, and she said, “Good night, Jerry,” and held out her hand.
“Good night, Marian.” I looked back from the open doorway, and, as always, she reminded me of something very slender and beautifully made and expensive—and utterly wasted—like a Stradivarius in a world in which the last musician was dead. I closed the door and went on down the hall.
She killed herself that night. She must have taken the capsules shortly after I left, as nearly as I could tell from the medical reports in the news. There was nothing about it in the morning papers, of course, and I still didn’t know it until noon when I walked into the El Prado bar on Union Square with a Call-Bulletin under my arm.
I spread it open and took a sip of the Martini.SUICIDE CONFESSES—Mrs. Marian Forsyth, 34—
It caught me without defense at all and kept swamping me and I couldn’t get it under control. I pretended to choke on the Martini and got the handkerchief out and honked and sputtered and snorted while I was heading for the men’s room to spare the dowagers behind the snowy tablecloths and half-acre menus the sight of a grown man crying in the El Prado in broad daylight. Fortunately, there was no one in the John. I was all right by that time, and could wash my face and go back outside. I folded the Call and drained the Martini and walked all the way back up Nob Hill to the Mark. I sat down on the bed to read it, but it was a long time before I even opened the paper. She was dead; what else mattered? The headline said something about a confession, and it occurred to me that if she had left one they’d be here for me before very long. I really ought to do something about it.
Why hadn’t I left her alone? She had that absurd feeling of responsibility for my being mixed up in the thing, and apparently my presence reminded her of it. Maybe if I’d stayed away from her she might have been able to handle the other thing.
And I could have stopped her that night if I’d said no and stuck with it. I rubbed a hand across my face. It was nice to think about it now. And I had a hunch now wasn’t the only time I was going to think about it.
I read the story. She’d died of an overdose of sleeping pills. The medical examiner believed she had been dead since before midnight, and that she must have taken them very early in the evening.
I thought of her alone in her agony. She had no one. She had a bleak, miserable, impersonal hotel room and her own courage and that almost unshakable poise, and that was it. She hadn’t asked for any help, or cried out. She’d merely held out her hand, and said, “Good night, Jerry,” and waited for me to leave so she could take them.