“You don’t sound very grateful.”
“All right, so I’m an ingrate. Look, you did your good deed for the day. Now why don’t you just toddle back to your scoutmaster? The lady isn’t in distress any more.”
“Wait a minute! I saved your life. If I were a Chinese, that would make me responsible for you.”
“But you’re not a Chinese.” Ruby pointed out.
“Maybe not. But I’d still like to know one thing. I think I’m entitled to know it. Just what were you doing in the middle of the lake in your undies at nightfall anyway?”
“Taking a swim. What else?”
“Maybe trying to pull a Brodie. Maybe trying to kill yourself. That’s it, isn’t it?”
“Suppose it is. I don’t see that it’s any of your business.”
Suicide is everybody’s business,” Al said earnestly. “Nobody can just stand by idly and watch another person kill himself.”
“You’re quite a humanist. But I’m not up to arguing the point right now. You saved me. I thanked you. What more do you want?”
“Lots. You owe me something.”
“Oh. Like that.” Ruby misunderstood. “All right, Lochinvar. What the hell do I care? Come and get it.” She stretched out on the pier and spread her legs lewdly. “Come on. Let’s get it over with.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Al was actually blushing. “I mean you owe me your life. I mean you owe it to me not to try it again. Will you promise me you won’t?”
“Oh, sure. I promise.”
“You don’t sound very convincing.”
“Sorry. I mean it. I won’t try it again.” Ruby knew she was lying, but she just wanted him to stop bugging her now.
“Well, all right.” He was still doubtful, but he didn’t know what else to say.
“Can I get dressed and go now?”
“Sure. If you feel well enough.”
“I feel fine. Just fine.” Ruby pulled on her clothes quickly. “Good-bye and thanks again,” she told him. She hurried off in the direction of the elevated station.
He watched her go until she was out of sight. Then he turned and started for the end of the pier where he’d tied up his rowboat. That’s when he saw it. Her pocketbook. In her hurry, she’d run off and left it. He picked it up and started after her. But it was too late. She was already out of sight. He grinned, tossed it into the rowboat, climbed in after it, cast off, and started to row back across the lake.
Ruby didn’t miss her pocketbook until she reached the turnstile of the elevated station. She found some small change in the pocket of her dress and it was enough for her fare. She decided against traipsing back for the handbag. She was simply too damn tired.
She fell asleep almost the moment she sat down on the train. It was a troubled sleep full of nightmarish visions of Bill. He kept changing into the young man in the pawn shop, into the man reaching his hand down to her from the subway platform, into Al Wainwright. First, as Bill, he was cramming pills down her throat. Then he was holding her hand with the gun in it and helping her squeeze the trigger. And then he was pushing her off the subway platform under the wheels of a speeding train. Finally, he was squeezing her breasts and pushing her head under water.
Ruby woke with a start just as the train was pulling out of an underground station. The sign flashing past on the platform told her that the next stop was hers. When the train stopped again, she got off and mounted the stairs to the street. A few moments later she was back in her room at the Marlowe Hotel.
But nothing had changed. If anything, Ruby felt even more hopeless and forlorn than when the day had started. The emptiness of her lonely room seemed only to echo the emptiness of her life, of her soul. Without Bill there was nothing. That’s how it had been this morning. That’s how it was now. Without Bill she had no one. No one.
So Ruby once again decided to go through with killing herself. She tied together three of her nightgowns to form something approximating a long rope. She climbed up on a chair and tied the “rope” to the ceiling chandelier. Then she looped it around her neck in such a way as to take up all the slack. She knotted it securely and took a deep breath. She meant it to be her last. As she exhaled it, she kicked the chair out from under her.
CRASH!
The chandelier had torn loose from its mooring and crashed to the floor with a tinkle of shattering glass and metal. Ruby had fallen with it. She was sprawled awkwardly, and had acquired several aches.
“Damn!” Tears of frustration sprang to her eyes. “Damn! Damn! Damn!”
She got back up on the chair and investigated the hole in the ceiling. Where the plaster had torn loose she could see the beam to which the chandelier had been fastened. The beam was intact. Ruby tied her “rope” of nightgowns to the beam and poised to kick the chair out from under her again.
The telephone rang.
By reflex, Rudy started to climb down from the chair to answer it. Forgetting about the noose around her neck, she almost hung herself right then and there.
“Damn!” She unwound the slack of the “rope” and climbed down from the chair. However, the noose was still around her neck, the other end still attached to the beam, as she answered the phone. “Hello!” she snapped.
“Hello. This is Al Wainwright. Remember me?”
“How could I forget? My hero."
“Still sarcastic, hey? Well, I guess that’s the price I have to pay for going around fishing girls out of lakes.”
“I didn’t know you made a habit of it.”
“I don’t. You’re my first catch. I think I’ll have you mounted and hang you on my bedroom wall.”
Despite herself, Ruby giggled. Oddly, this made her angry with herself. It was ridiculous for a girl on the verge of suicide to giggle. The anger came out in her curt tone of voice. “What do you want?” she asked.
“Oh, like that, hey? All right. I found your pocketbook. I thought you might like it back.”
“Oh. That explains how you found my name and number.”
“That it does.”
“What else did you find rummaging through my private things?”
“Not much,” he told her cheerfully. “Not much at all. Except, oh yeah, who’s Bill?”
“None of your business,” Ruby snapped.
“Okay. Only he sure does write lousy love letters. And his syntax is way off, too.”
“Never mind his syntax. It doesn’t concern you.”
“Okay. Okay. I just want to return your pocketbook.”
“Fine. I’m at the Hotel Marlowe. You can leave it at the desk.”
“Leave it at the desk! Now, wait just a minute, lady! I’ve had about enough of you! I pull you out of the briny and all you’ve done is insult me ever since. Okay. I took it. But I’m not your goddamn messenger boy! I’m not leaving anything at any desk. You want it back, you’ll just have to put up with seeing me in person!”
“Oh, all right. I’m sorry. I really have been bitchy, haven’t I? You can bring it up to my room if you want.”
She gave him the room number.
“Twenty minutes,” he told her and hung up.
Twenty minutes! Ruby looked around. The room was a mess. She was a mess. Twenty minutes. She’d have to work fast. She started for the closet to get a broom to sweep up the debris of the fallen chandelier.
She moved too abruptly. Again she forgot about the noose around her neck. It caught her up short and she took a hard pratfall.
“Damn!” She tore the noose off her neck. Then she raced around putting things in order. Suddenly, life didn’t seem so bleak to Ruby any more. An attractive young man was showing some interest in her. She forgot all about Bill, all about committing suicide in getting ready to receive him. She didn’t allow the thought to take form, but the truth was that she was feeling that it was good to be alive.
It was a hot night, and Ruby was just throwing the windows wide open when Al knocked at the door. She had to stop herself from running to answer the knock. “Hello.” She found herself smiling at him standing in the doorway.