I carried my bag into the bathroom and changed rapidly into my red pajamas, my maroon slippers, and my black bathrobe. I did not remove my watch.
When I returned I found frowning Edwin seated on the edge of his bed, leaning back on his purple elbows. As soon as I closed the door he stood up and said in a low brisk voice: “Okay, listen. You guard the door. If you hear anything, clear your throat twice, like this.” He cleared his throat twice, like that. I nodded solemnly and took up my position at the door. As I stood with my ear pressed against the wood, listening to sounds of movement in the living room below, Edwin walked briskly to the closet and climbed onto the squeaking chair. Almost immediately he climbed down. He tiptoed toward the bed in his soft moccasins, bearing in his arms a light brown shoebox with a dark brown cover, and as I straightened up he whisper-cried: “Stay there!” Placing the shoebox on the bed he quickly lifted out five silver pistols, a leather holster, and a.25-caliber Colt automatic. Quickly he began to replace the pistols. “The clip!” I whispered. “The what?” he whispered. Aloud I said: “The other thing,” slapping a guilty hand over my mouth. Edwin glared at me and then took out the clip, staring at it for a moment with a puzzled expression. Rising, and giving me another dirty look, he carried the clip and pistol to his chest of drawers, where he suddenly squatted and began slowly pulling out the crowded bottom drawer, looking up nervously each time it squeaked. He placed the gun and clip beneath a large green rubber frog-foot, which he covered with a pair of cowboy pajamas and a folding chessboard. Then he closed the drawer, reloaded the shoebox, replaced it on the closet shelf, folded the chair, and closed the closet door; and turning to me at last he said quietly: “Okay.” The time was 11:09.
A rather awkward silence followed. I sat under the Gulf of Mexico, scratching my legs, cracking my knuckles, and picking at the spread, while Edwin sat motionless in the center of his bed, his pale face colorless above his purple bathrobe, as if the blood of his cheeks had flowed into his robe. From time to time he sniffled flamboyantly. At 11:14 he suggested that we play another round of pick-up-sticks; I emphatically refused. At 11:16 he offered to give me a lead of 800; I rudely ignored him. Time passed, during which I wondered why no one suggested that we turn out the light and lie down. I was on the verge of suggesting that remedy, and indeed my lips were parted, when Edwin, annihilating a yawn, suddenly whispered: “The letter!” Springing from the bed, he began searching wildly among his shelves, muttering in his mother’s tone: “Oh where is that stupid pencil.” I had no idea what he was up to, and for a moment I had the odd sensation that he was mocking me in some elusive Edwinian way.
He found the stupid pencil on top of the chest of drawers. He found a piece of stupid paper under his stupid bed. Sitting crosslegged in the center of his bed, and placing the piece of paper on a large flat book, he began to write furiously. A few moments later he said: “How’s this?” and read softly: “To whom it may concern. I, Edwin Mullhouse, heretowith commit suicide. Yours truly, Edwin.” He looked up expectantly. I said: “Heretowith?” “Actually,” said Edwin, “I don’t like this stupid note.” He crossed it out violently and began writing again, while I cracked the knuckles of all ten fingers twice. “Listen,” he said, “how’s this. To whom it may concern. I, the undersigned, heretowith condemn myself to death by suicide at 1:06 A.M. on August 1, 1954. Goodbye, cruel world. Yours sincerely, Edwin A. Mullhouse, author of Cartoons.”
“You mean herewith, Edwin. Or hereby.”
“Wait a minute. I’ve got it. I’ve got it. To whom it may concern. I, the undersigned, heretowith blah blah blah author of Cartoons. Now listen to this, listen to this. P.S. Goodbye, life. I aspire to the condition of fiction.”
It was, I confess, the needed touch. I did my level best to persuade him that “heretowith” should be changed, and I am sorry to say that my advice was contemptuously ignored. Edwin, as I have had occasion to remark, had an unpleasant trace of vanity in him that was, no doubt, the natural green stain on the bright copper of his creative genius. As a result his final message to the world is marred by the embarrassing presence of a nonexistent word. It is really a shame. Edwin quickly copied the note onto a clean sheet of paper, and we were discussing where to put it — I was for placing it modestly on the rug beside his bed (where it finally fell), he was for fastening it to his body in some ill-defined fashion — when the sound of footsteps was audible on the stairs, and leaping up, and wildly motioning for me to crawl into my bed, Edwin dashed to the door, turned out the light, and dashed back to bed, where he lay breathing heavily in blackness.
The footsteps stopped before the line of light under the door. In a low voice Dr. Mullhouse said: “Shhh, they’re sleeping,” and his footsteps creaked away down the hall. Immediately Edwin began to snore loudly, inhaling with vulgar snorting sounds and exhaling with a whistle. At the second exhalation he exploded into giggles. In my tense agitated impressionable condition, I too exploded into giggles. The door opened, and Mrs. Mullhouse whispered angrily: “Hey you two, what did I” and suddenly she too exploded into giggles. And stepping into the room, and closing the door behind her, she began to tiptoe toward giggling Edwin, who trying in vain to suppress his mirth, burst into irregular wild ripples of giggles as slowly, slowly she stalked through darkness, until suddenly she whispered “Gotcha!” and Edwin burst into screams of wild laughter as the door opened and Dr. Mullhouse hissed: “Shhh!”
The departure of Mrs. Mullhouse was followed by some fifteen minutes of creaking footsteps, opening and closing doors, and hissing tapwater. At 11:47 by my greenly luminous watch the line of light under the door went out and a last door closed.
The room was dark but not pitch black. Beyond the closed black blinds of the double window I could see the dark hump of Edwin’s raised knees; and the dark head over the pale pillow was faintly visible beneath the vertical strips of polished black night at the edges of glass between the blinds. “Edwin,” I whispered. “Shhh,” he whispered, “they’re not asleep.” Minute after green minute I lay in black silence, listening to Edwin’s regular breathing; by 11:54 I wondered whether he had fallen asleep. Another minute, like a little life, completed its circle. And all at once, just like that, he began to chat quietly about one thing and another, saying “Remember the time?” and “Remember the day?” I, too, sweetly reminisced. It was as if we were five years old again, dear comrades rejoicing in our youthful adventures, fettered in friendship by the binding dark. Indeed I have often reflected upon the intimate quality of darkness, so different from the estranging day; and perhaps the reason is this, that with the fading of objects we lose our faith in the solidity of objects, so that a great dripping and melting takes place, stone flows into stone as mind into mind, our bodies themselves melt and drip away, and in the all-dissolving and annihilating dark, the daylit multiverse becomes a cozy universe at last. Some such sensation, short of thought, flowed in me as we softly spoke; oceans of green time flowed; and it was with a rude jolt that I heard Edwin suddenly ask: “What time is it?” It was 12:29 by my glowing dial, and Edwin whispered: “They’re asleep now.”