Social Security card. Taken out in 1937. Twenty when he had taken it out. A few soiled business cards. Imperial Valve Corporation, Detroit. Eric Norstram, Sales Representative. A cracked photograph. A small woman with a lean, vital face.
The cards were damp from the rain that had soaked us. I spread them out to dry on the bureau.
There was an extra blanket in the bottom drawer of the bureau. I made myself a hard bed on the floor and, after turning out the light, lay down fully dressed, my coat over me. Norstram’s heavy breathing filled the room. I remember thinking that it would be impossible for me to ever get to sleep, and the next moment the gray dawn outlined the window.
I couldn’t go back to sleep. I was stiff and sore. Norstram hadn’t moved. I felt his forehead. It was like flame. His lips were cracked and dry. His lungs rattled as he breathed.
After I came back from breakfast he had half regained consciousness, but he had no idea where he was. Fever had taken the place of alcohol. He mumbled endlessly about Gloria. I pulled the chair over to the bed and listened to him.
It wasn’t hard to piece the situation together. Gloria had been his wife. He drank too much. She threatened to leave him. He still didn’t straighten out. She left him.
He stopped drinking, drove over to Cleveland and got her. On the way back the car skidded into a telephone pole. Gloria was killed. He wasn’t even scratched. That was over a year ago. Two weeks later he had lost his job. He hadn’t been entirely sober since that moment.
A dozen times he relived the accident in the midst of delirium. Once he thought I was Gloria and in his efforts to protect me from the crash, he — made a wild swing and his bony wrist hit me under the ear, sweeping me off the chair. He yelled hoarsely and his eyes were wild. A girl in the next room hammered on the wall, yelling that she couldn’t sleep. I paid no attention to her.
At eleven I went back to my apartment, got more cash and a large box of sulpha left over from the time I had an ear infection. I propped him up and gave him the prescribed dosage. He gulped the water hungrily.
In the afternoon he slept. I went down the street to a drugstore and phoned Sam.
“Sam? This is the girl who talked to you yesterday.”
“Oh! What’s the report?”
“I’ve got what you — suggested. But I can’t deliver until maybe the day after tomorrow. I’ll let you know. Will it be okay?”
“It’ll be fine. When you’re ready, just let me know. The best deal will be about two in the morning. Take the item to a corner I’ll tell you when you phone again. We’ll arrange pickup. The item you got is — clean?”
“Absolutely. Nobody will ever miss it.”
“You’re a smart girl.”
“Thanks, Sam.” I hung up and back to the room.
Chapter Three
Dress Up for Death
Eric Norstram still snored. His forehead didn’t seem so hot. At dusk I went out and brought him back a bowl of soup. I turned on the lamp, set the soup on the table and shook him gently. “Eric! Eric!” I said.
“Uh? What you want?”
“Wake up, Eric.”
The light shone across his gray face. He opened blue startled eyes and looked up at me. A puzzled took crossed his face. “Who are you?” he asked weakly.
“Never mind that. Here. Sit up and drink this. If you’re too weak I’ll feed it to you.”
He squirmed into a half-sitting position. He still looked puzzled, but he reached for the spoon. I held the bowl while he spooned the soup into his mouth with a shaking hand. When it was gone he sank back with a grateful sigh.
“Cigarette?” he said weakly.
I lit one for him, handed it to him. He sucked hungrily at it. “Tastes funny,” he said.
“It should. You’ve been sick. Had a fever. You’re full of sulpha.”
“I feel hot.”
“The fever isn’t as bad as it was.”
The blue eyes fastened on me again. “Say, who are you?”
“Just a girl who care of you while you were the sickest.”
He looked around the room. “This your place?”
“It’s a room in the Barton on River Street.”
He looked at me with a funny expression. “Oh!”
“Maybe you’ve been sick for days without knowing it. Maybe you were sick as long ago as, say the fourteenth.”
“Fourteenth? Of what month?”
“This month.”
“Look, I got a vague idea this is 1948. Don’t pin me down to months.”
“Where do you live?”
He rubbed a shaking hand across the colorless stubble on his cheek. “Got me there, too. For a while I had a bed for two bits a night on Willis Street, but that seems like a long time ago. A guy let me sleep sometimes in the watchman’s cabin on a freight dock, but I don’t know whether that was before or after the flophouse. Where did you find me, sister?”
“On your face on the sidewalk.”
“That’s called the Norstram position, sister.”
“The name is Lorene Vernon.”
“Okay, Lorene. What’s the angle?”
“Does there have to be an angle?”
“Isn’t there always? I’m a bum, Lorene. I don’t kid myself about that. I haven’t got a dime. So why spend your time taking care of me?”
“Maybe I’d take care of any sick thing. A sick cat even.”
He looked at me for long seconds. “Hey, maybe you would. Maybe you would.”
“Gloria would have, wouldn’t she?”
He jumped as though I had stuck a pin in him. “What do you know about Gloria?” he asked hoarsely.
“Oh, you talked about her a lot. You’ve got the idea you killed her or something.”
“I did.”
I curled my lip as I looked at him. “If you want to be a lush, I suppose self pity is as good an excuse as any.”
I thought for a moment he was going to get angry. He sank back on the pillow. “I don’t fight with anybody,” he said softly. “Is there a drink in the house?”
“No.”
“Will you go get a bottle?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll go get one.”
“In the first place you’re pretty weak. In the second place I took your clothes out and stuffed them into a trash barrel.”
For the first time he smiled. “How nice of you!”
“Tomorrow I’ll buy you some more.”
“Thank you, Lady Bountiful.”
“Shut up!”
Lady Bountiful! Bountiful with death, my lad. Ashamed to send you off to be killed in your sad rags. She salves her conscience by buying you a new cheap suit and a new cheap shirt. Maybe she’ll spend a few minutes picking out a blue figured tie. Blue to match your eyes. A tie to die in, chump. A pretty tie to match your dead blue eyes.
I walked over to the window, stared across at the brick wall which grew more dim as the dusk became heavier. When I turned, he was on his back, staring up at the ceiling. When I spoke he wouldn’t answer. His mouth had an odd set look.
I paused at the door and said, “I’m going out to eat. The cigarettes are on the bureau. The shower I shoved you into last night only washed some of the dirt off. A scrubbing wouldn’t hurt you. I’m locking the door on the outside. I don’t know when I’ll be back.” I yanked the door shut, locked it, and stuffed the key with board attached into my big purse.
After I ate, I went back to my own apartment, put the phone back on the cradle, took a long hot bath, scrubbed the makeup off and drifted off into dreamless sleep.
In the morning, disguised again, I took a bus downtown, ordered a breakfast to go, and took it to Eric at the Barton. He was still sullen, but the shakes weren’t as bad. There was even a bit of color in his sallow cheeks under the beard.
“I’ll get you some clothes. Better give me the sizes — so they’ll fit,” I added.