She lifted her hand and pointed a finger at the old man and said, “That’s him.”
I looked into her green eyes and she looked back and it was like there was a flame between us that the raindrops couldn’t put out.
I said, “Okay, babe,” and pulled my gun and shot him between the eyes.
He fell flat on his face. His bony fingers scrabbled a moment among the scattered pencils. The cop thought it was a back-fire and kept his back turned. I nudged the old man over with my toe to make sure he was dead. I knelt beside him. His rheumy old eyes were glazing. His lips parted. He muttered, “That bitch,” and then he died.
I got up and turned around. She was gone. I was alone with the night and the wind and the rain... and with a dead man.
Sleep No More
by Mann Rubin
He was afraid to sleep... for death stalked his dreams.
When Richard Mott opened his eyes the morning after, he found the drab, cheerless face of Emma hovering over him, pin-curls and all. Every year, he thought, his wife looked more and more like the M-G-M lion.
“Good morning,” he mumbled, turning his head away.
“Who is Linda Rhodes?” she roared.
The words hit him like a bucket of ice-water. He sat bolt upright, tingling.
“Who?”
“You heard me, you cheat. Only save your lies. I already know. She’s the new secretary that started in your office two months ago, isn’t she?”
“What about her?” asked Richard, his mouth dry, a sinking, nauseous feeling rumbling across his stomach.
“I’ve got news for you. Her name’s mud in this town. Before I’m finished she’ll wish she never laid eyes on you.”
Richard cringed inwardly at the threat. He thought of Linda — sweet, luscious Linda with hair like spun gold and the softest, warmest lips. The ache in his stomach tightened into a fist.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He reached for his robe, telling himself he’d have to keep calm and play it casual. But it wasn’t going to be easy.
“Don’t you?” cried Emma sarcastically. “And I suppose you never heard of Cabin Number Twenty-two at the Seaview Motel in Santa Monica, where you made love to her for three hours last night while I thought you were at a Kiwanis meeting?”
“How did...?”
“Fortunately, dear husband, you still have one habit I find most revealing and rewarding, even after fourteen years of marriage.”
“I talked in my sleep again.”
“Raved is more like it. Thanks to you and your dreams I had a blow-by-blow description of your charming little rendezvous. You supplied everything from the name of her French perfume to the number of times she called you her Tutti-Frutti Lover-Man’. Want any more?”
“That won’t be necessary,” said Richard weakly. “If you’ll excuse me I’ll go shave.”
“Well, hurry it up. Because when you drive to work this morning I’m going along. And I’m staying right with you until everyone in your office knows what a cheap, home-wrecking hussy they have working for them.” Emma’s voice droned on like a broken air-raid siren.
Grimly, Richard studied her, silently comparing the chewed-up expression of her harsh-featured face to the scented, fragile memory of Linda Rhodes. It was like weighing an iron frying pan against the moon. Something had to be done quickly.
All during his shave the dull, knotted feeling he’d experienced when Emma had first mentioned Linda’s name stayed with him. Damn his sleep-talking! What a fool he’d been to forget this malady, this albatros that had hung around his neck ever since he could remember. Even as a child, whenever he experienced some unusual, stimulating event such as having a birthday, seeing a circus or engaging in a fight with another kid, he was sure to relive it in his sleep the following night.
Always the pattern was the same. Detail for detail, no matter if it were an act of pain or pleasure, he would broadcast to the world every sensation and thought that had swept through his mind during the actual episode. He was cursed with total recall. On the following morning he could usually count on a member of his family — or a college roommate in later years — to describe verbatim the experience that haunted his dreams.
Marriage had not changed this idiosyncrasy. At first Emma thought it cute to recite to him over breakfast one of his nocturnal adventures, describing with relish some current business problem he had kept from her or a golf-score he was ashamed to acknowledge.
But as his life with her became more routine, more colorless he had stopped conversing in his sleep and she no longer teased him with the dreary exposures of his dreams.
Until Linda, and his most disastrous babblings so far.
He dried his face with a towel, then almost automatically applied shaving lotion, the kind which Linda had romantically assured him made him smell like a swashbuckling sea-captain instead of a stock broker. He smiled in anticipation of the many sweet voyages that lay ahead for both of them.
“Where are you?” screeched Emma from downstairs.
Richard ignored her, his mind refusing to give up its cargo of cozy Linda images. They had been so careful in their meetings, so wary of prying eyes that even after two months no one in his office had any suspicion that they were having an affair.
At first Linda had been frightened, cold, indifferent, but his wooing had been so ardently unswerving that finally, last night, had come the triumph he had hoped for. She had consented to spend the night with him. For Richard, it was the purest, most perfect victory of his life. So perfect that he had been betrayed into reassembling each priceless moment in his dreams.
Thus, in recalling the heights of his ecstasy, he had unwittingly jeopardized all of their plans for the future. Worse, Linda’s whole reputation stood on the brink of humiliation.
“I’m warning you,” threatened Emma from below. “If you’re not down here in five minutes, I’m going to your office by myself.”
He increased the speed of his dressing, knowing full well that unless he stopped Emma before she put a foot out the door everything worthwhile and fresh in his life would be trampled into dust within an hour. Nothing mattered but Linda and himself. Their beautiful, new love had to be preserved at all costs.
Descending the stairs a minute later, he got his answer. The phone began to ring in the living room and he heard Emma hurrying to answer it, all set to play the poor, martyred wife before her bridge-playing, gossipy friends. Richard held his breath.
“Hello. Who? No, he’s not here. He left about twenty minutes ago... How should I know if he’s at his office or not... What’s that? He owes you the money. Why don’t you ask him yourself!” She slammed the receiver down, angry at being cheated out of her gossip and self-pity, and waddled back to the kitchen.
When Richard came in, she was bent over the stove waiting for the coffee to percolate. She was dressed in street clothes, ready for departure.
“Who was that on the phone?” he asked, striving to sound casual.
“The Acme Finance Company,” she barked without turning. “Seems you’re two weeks behind in a loan payment. I was wondering where you got the money for that gold bracelet you gave her last night.”
“Did I mention that too?”
“You talked a blue streak. I have enough on Miss Linda Rhodes to disgrace her from here to China. And that’s just what I intend to do.”
Richard didn’t budge from his position near the pot-rack. He tried to keep his voice steady. “Where did you tell the Acme people I was?”