Cornell Woolrich
The Black Path of Fear
1
Somehow we’d gotten into Zulueta Street. Maybe the driver figured we’d wind up there eventually anyhow. Everyone seems to. We dawdled up to Sloppy Joe’s, all open to the street, and looking better before you go in than it does inside.
The horse seemed to stop of its own accord. I guess it had been here so many times before it knew the place. The coachman turned his head around and looked at us inquiringly.
“What’s this?” I said.
“Esloppy’s,” he said, “Big atracción.”
I felt like saying, “What are you, their steerer or something?” I didn’t bother.
I turned and looked at her. “You want to?”
She didn’t want to go in at first. “Do you think it’s safe for us to show ourselves around like this, Scott?”
“Sure it’s safe. This is Havana, not the States any more. He hasn’t got that long a reach.”
She smiled at me. One of those smiles of hers that — oh, brother, you feel like the soft end of the sealing wax going onto an envelope flap. “Hasn’t he?” she said. “We should have gone to a hotel and locked ourselves in.”
I thought to myself: You bet we should, and thrown the key away. But not on his account.
I said: “But he sent you a radiogram wishing you luck.”
“That’s why I’m worried,” she said. “He didn’t say which kind of luck.”
“I’m with you,” I said.
She smiled again. I felt like used-up chewing gum, only not so sturdy. “And I’m with you,” she said. “And we can only die once.”
I handed her down. She stood there for a minute and she lighted the whole street up, like a torch. I was surprised there weren’t reflections on the dim walls around us. She was all in white, to fit the climate and the night; satin, I think it was, and I think, too, it must have been sprayed on and then allowed to dry, to be that even all over. She had on everything he’d ever given her, and there were rippling flashes at her ears and throat and wrists and fingers every time she moved.
I wondered why she’d put it all on and brought it ashore with her like this, especially after the way she’d told me she felt about it only the other night. “They talk to me sometimes at night, Scotty. I lie awake in the dark and I can hear them. Piece by piece, from the dresser top, in funny squeaky little voices, each one in turn. ‘Remember when you got me? Remember that?’ And ‘Remember what I cost you? Surely you remember that?’ Until I can’t stand it any more. Until I stop up my ears and think I’ll go mad.”
I’d asked her about it in the launch coming ashore just now. “I know we’re going to do the town, but don’t you think you’re a little heavy-hung with the rock candy?”
She said, “I didn’t think it would be a good idea to leave it around the stateroom while we’re standing in the harbor.”
“Why didn’t you turn it over to the purser?”
She started to unfasten the catch of one of the pieces at her wrist. “I’ll drop it in if you say so. All of it. Right now. Every last piece.” She wasn’t kidding, either. I had to pull her hand back from over the gunwale of the launch.
I don’t think she knew herself why she’d put it on. Some sort of defiance, maybe, was at the bottom of it. His jewelry to please another man’s eyes.
I paid the coachman and we went in. It was jammed to the sidewalk line, nearly, and the musicians were pounding away up on a screwy little balcony it had tacked up on the wall over everyone’s heads. You couldn’t see the bar; you could see only an open ditch up front past all their heads that showed where it was.
I went in first and dug a tunnel through for her and then drew her in after me with a hand at her wrist. We got through to the second layer of customers, then the density held us off for a while. It was like being in a football scrimmage. Then we got a break; I managed to get a grip on the edge of the bar with one hand when someone backed out, and I pulled the two of us into the empty hole there that had only taken one before, and there we were, crushed up tight against one another and not minding at all. I said, “Two dikes.”
I didn’t even have to hitch my head to kiss her, just change my mouth around a little. Which I did.
I said, “Are you all right?”
She smiled that smile again. She said, “Your arm around me, your shoulder just behind me — oh, let it come, Scotty, let it come.”
“Don’t keep saying that,” I answered, low. I’m funny that way; when I was a kid I used to think that when you said a thing over too many times you brought it on. I guess a little of that is still left over in me.
Her looks were creating a continual swirling ripple round us, sucking all sorts of vendors and steerers through the crowd. They kept buzzing around like bottle flies, all trying to sell something at once, from imported Paris perfume — imported by way of Brooklyn — to a good address with no questions asked and the sort of post cards that you don’t send home. We didn’t even hear them; we were in a world of our own.
She downed half her drink without taking a breath and smiled that smile again at me. “Let’s hope it has time to go to my head.”
Someone touched my shoulder, which was as good as touching hers too. Everything you had in that crowd belonged to three or four others as well. We both turned our heads.
A Cuban had struggled through with an old-fashioned tripod. “The señor and lady would like a peek-ture for to show their friends back in Estates?”
“Christ,” I said to her deprecatingly.
She picked the idea up. It seemed to appeal to her. Same principle as the diamonds, most likely. “I know someone would love to get one. Why not? Go ahead. Take us like this, photographer. Look, like this.” She wound her arm around my neck and closed it like a nutcracker. She pressed her cheek to mine, pasted our two faces together like that. We stayed like that. “Like this,” she said bitterly. “With love!”
“Sh-h,” I said gently. I hadn’t realized she hated him so until now. I should have, but I hadn’t. It made me feel good. It made me feel lucky. It made me feel humble.
I don’t know how he got them back, but he got them back a little. I guess they didn’t want to get singed. He got a little floor space cleared, about the size of a silver dollar, and poked the three legs of the tripod down into that. Then he covered his head, and those of two other fellows as well, with a black cloth. The other two fellows worked theirs clear again, but he left his underneath. Then he held up his hand straight overhead with a little trowel thing in it. One of the side lines of the place is these flashlight photos they keep banging off all the time all around the bar.
We held it. The flashlight powder fizzed blue and lit up the whole place. I could feel her give a little jolt against me. I gave a little jolt myself, for that matter.
The regular yellow kind of light came right back again. The smell drifted past and then went away.
I hadn’t known she weighed that much. I said, “He’s taken us now.”
She just clung on.
“Ah, come on,” I remonstrated gently. “Everybody’s looking at us.” I could hear them laughing around us. They thought we were lit, I guess, the way she was draped there.
She said faintly, close to my ear: “Don’t rush me, Scotty. Give me time.” And tried to find my lips with hers.
I joined them up with hers, quick. I said, “What is it? Why’re you so limp?”
“I knew we wouldn’t make it,” she whispered. “What do we care? Part of a night’s better than none at all.”
I must have opened my grip a little without knowing it. Suddenly she cascaded down the front of me like rippling water and lay in a tumbled heap at my feet. For a second there were just strangers’ faces left behind up there, where she had been, staring back at me. Then I dropped down by her to see what was the matter; we were together again. I hadn’t gotten it yet. I hadn’t caught up. All there were were motionless legs around us, like a knobby picket fence walling us in together. Up in the gallery the five-piece band was giving “Siboney” a loud going-over just then. That’s the tune they play everywhere down there, “Siboney.” That’s the tune that had been following us through the night. It makes a good dirge. It breaks your heart for you.