Reaction: positive. Positive as to guilt. What else but guilt could make anyone cringe so, cower and quail into a lumpy bunched-up mass the way he just had? And, Quinn reminded himself, there might even have been more glaring symptoms he had missed seeing. If that bedded right hand, for instance, had half started out of the pocket that encased it, gun-laden, and then checked itself again, that was a give-away known only to the wall that faced it. Quinn had muffed it. And by the time he looked to see, he was too late, it was motionless again.
He drifted back once more to where he’d been, idly kicking aside a scallop or two of glass on the way.
But now awareness was ablaze between them, and a delicate duel of seeming non-awareness that fastened on every slightest move got under way. The hat brim was down. Far down. But the sheathed sick-bright eyes under it, Quinn knew, were not looking at the counter-top they seemed to be directed at. Any more than his own, sighted forward toward the mirror, were merely concerned with the impersonal surface of the glass. It was as though each had unseen antennae, sensitively attuned to the other.
He senses something now, Quinn told himself. Not because of anything I’ve done; it’s my very motionlessness, my non-awareness of him, that has tipped him off. I’m standing too still, for too long; I’m looking too straight ahead. He’s on. I’ve got him afraid of me.
An invisible charged current was boiling from one to the other of them, and back again, recharged, and back once more, again recharged. Give and take of tension.
Lower and lower went the hat brim, defensively. Not a move otherwise. And blanker and blanker became Quinn’s stare into the mirror, never diverging, never sidling over into forbidden surface offside. Until each of them could scarcely breathe.
And all around them the others drank and chatted, grinned and sometimes spat, all unaware. The two of them were like a still-life picture of two men at a bar, set down in the middle of a restless, murmuring real-life barroom scene, they were so different from the others. With their distance between them, of three or four paces. They were like inanimate markers, leaning against the bar.
There was no warning. Suddenly the glass showed blank beside Quinn. It was almost like a Faustian disappearance, only minus the puff of smoke. So much so that Quinn turned his head entirely the wrong way, to where the other had been standing first, and then continued it on around behind himself in a complete baffled half-circle, his body following, until at last he was facing toward the door, having reached it the long way around.
The other was just scuttling through it. Was a blur wiped off the glass as with a wet sponge, he floundered out so fast.
Quinn hadn’t expected flight to be so overt, so unabashed. He’d expected, if anything, sidling dissimulation, gingerly-treading departure. This was open flight, before any hue and cry had even been raised. This was the whole scroll of guilt-hieroglyphs flung back in his face. I’m guilty; I know it, so what need to wait for you to discover it? I fly from my own knowledge.
He gave a choked cry of excitement and buckled after him, his mid-section lunging out ahead of the rest of him for a moment, before his arms and legs could take up their part.
He heard a muffled shout from the barman and he pulled something out of his pocket. Some sort of a coin, he didn’t care what it was, and flung it up over his shoulder in a spiral. He was outside before it had even had time to hit the floor.
He was already in crazed flight down the street, the other one. Maddened was the only fit description for it. No one runs that fast unless he’s touched with an insanity of fear. And yet he ran keeping that gun-bearing arm hugged close to him, still berthed in his pocket. It threw his balance off a little, gave the straight line of his running a slight sideward tilt.
He floundered around a corner and was gone. Quinn skittered around it after him and he was there again, distance between unchanged. He crossed over to the darker side of the street, the shadows had him, and he was gone again. Quinn crossed over after him, fusing into his very footprints before they’d had time to cool, and he was there again.
So they played hide and seek through the darkness, and the game had no laughter or mercy in it. He’ll shoot, thought Quinn. I’d better look out, he’ll shoot. But he kept on. Not through bravery; just through heat of the chase melting down all other fears.
He rounded another corner, the form ahead. Quinn rounded it after him, jerked him back into sight again. This time the distance between was less, was beginning to pull tighter. To run you need not only legs, you need the freedom of both arms, to buffet you through the air.
He was beginning to lose his head, the pursued. Around another corner, and gone. But then when Quinn rounded it, still gone this time. Yet when Quinn had already lost him, he gave himself back to Quinn again, out of his own fear. He flurried out of a doorway, that would have kept his secret for him if he’d only let it, as though mistrusting it at the penultimate moment, and the chase was on again. In reverse direction now, after Quinn had already overshot it. Fear rots the faculties.
And meantime, no one to stop them, no one to interfere. Why doesn’t he cry for help then, if he’s innocent, Quinn gloated? Why doesn’t he?
He fled on before him in desperate, staggering silence, mute to the last.
It was nearly over now; Quinn was young, Quinn had purpose, he could have kept running straight through the night, straight through the city. The figure ahead stayed in sight full-time now, the corners couldn’t save him, the doorways couldn’t save him any more; they didn’t come quick enough.
The pounding of his footfalls grew diffuse as they slowed, they burned themselves out to a standstill, and he leaned there, crushed for air. Sort of at bay against a wall. In a minute Quinn was up to him, then circled out a little, still afraid of that eloquently restrained arm, and came in on him from the outside instead of straight forward. Thus, too, whichever way he jumped, Quinn could jump with him.
He didn’t jump, he couldn’t.
His voice was a husky whisper, sand shaken through a sieve, for lack of wind. “What is it? What do you—? Don’t come any nearer.”
Quinn’s was sibilant with breathlessness too but gritty with purpose that nothing could have deflected, not six cartridges fired in a row. “I’m coming nearer. I’m coming right up to you.”
He closed in and their faces were almost touching, breathing hot at one another. Both afraid, but one more afraid than the other. And the lesser fear was Quinn’s. It was just a fear of being shot unexpectedly. But the other man was almost undone with his. He was palpitating with it. Like some sort of stuff pouring sluggishly down the side of the building he was backed against. Tar or thick paint. His mouth was open and some kind of wet stuff came out of the corner of it, in a funny long thread. Then broke off short, as though a scissors had snipped it.
The left hand moved before Quinn could check it. The left, not the right. If it had been a gun, it would have been too late. But it wasn’t.
“Here. Is this what you want? Take it and let me alone.”
He kept pressing it on him.
“Take it. Take it. I won’t holler. I won’t—”
The wallet fell, and Quinn scuffed it offside with his foot.
“Why’d you run?”
“What’re you following me for? What are you trying to do to me? I can’t stand it. Ain’t I scared enough? I’m scared of the dark and scared of the lights, I’m scared of sounds and scared of stillness. I’m scared of the very air around me. Let me alone—” He screamed it out at him. Or past his shoulder, into the unheeding night.
“Pull yourself together, mister. What’re you so scared of? Is it because you’ve killed someone? Is that it? Answer me. You’ve killed someone, haven’t you?”