He clenched his hands. All this was insanity, he told himself, a paranoid’s nightmare.
But…
His throat ached. He went to the bathroom, drank a large glass of water, set it down on the stained bowl. Then he lay down again on the rumpled bed. Fatigue smarted behind his eyelids, was like a fever in his flesh.
Presently he fell asleep.
When he awoke it was dusk. The room was all soft shadows. The window shade seemed faintly phosphorescent. His face felt fresh, as if it had just been sponged.
Instantly his thoughts began to race again, but the cooling refreshment of sleep had given them an entirely new perspective.
He had teetered on the edge of insanity, he told himself.
He had fallen victim to a terrible delusion.
He must root it out of his mind as quickly as possible.
He must talk to someone, someone who was close to him and sensible, and convince himself that it was a delusion.
Marcia—
She was real. She represented the businesslike normal side of things.
She’d be home now.
Of course he’d insulted her pretty badly the last time he’d been with her, leaving her that way at the Pendletons’.
Still, she was fair. She’d listen. She’d understand. She’d relieve his haunting anxiety.
He got up and rapidly put on his shoes and coat. He tried not to let his thoughts or emotions wander. His purpose was to get to Marcia before he lost the feeling of confidence with which he had awakened—the saving conviction that all his hideous delusions had been nightmarish fancies.
He met no one on the stairs except his slinking counterpart in the mirror. The entrance hall below was also empty, and dark. Then he pulled open the door and stepped out into what he assured himself was not a city of automatons.
A man was passing by at the foot of the steps, a little old man in a brown coat and hat, with deep-set eyes that scowled ahead and lips that worked as if he were muttering to himself.
Carr had the impulse to call out to him, to engage him in conversation, to assure himself at once of the falsity of his delusion.
But strangers sometimes ignored you when you spoke. Especially crazy-looking ones.
No, it must be someone closer, someone who couldn’t ignore him.
Marcia—
He walked rapidly. The sky was almost dark and a few stars could be seen. Soft glows from apartment windows made grotesque shadows. At intervals, streetlights glared. Narrow passageways between buildings were vertical black slits, except where side windows spilled illumination over brick walls a few feet away. Little shrubs crouched back against basement walls.
It was quiet. There were few figures on the streets. He tried unsuccessfully to avoid looking at the eyes of those he passed.
But people were that way in the city, he reminded himself. They’d pass you a foot away and not by the faintest flicker of their gaze betray an awareness of your existence.
This was Chicago, he told himself. Over three million inhabitants. A bustling metropolis.
Only tonight it was very quiet.
He had only one more street to cross before he came to Marcia’s apartment—that corner just ahead where there was a small cluster of lighted signs. On this side, a restaurant and a cleaner’s, the latter closed, both in an apartment hotel. On the other side, across the street, to his right, a cocktail bar decorated by scalloped banks of small electric lights.
He wasn’t fifty feet from the corner—in fact he had almost entered the pool of light under the last street lamp—when he saw Marcia. She was wearing a dark dress with a white flower pattern. She was carrying a square black handbag. She turned north toward her apartment.
Carr stood still. There was the person he most wanted to see, but now that he’d fond her, he hesitated. Just as with the little old man passing the apartment steps, something held him back from making the move, from speaking the word that would relieve him.
He watched Marcia cross the street, walk into the pool of light on the other side, walk out of it.
He still hesitated. He felt a growing agitation. He looked around indecisively.
His glance took in a figure standing across the street, its slim, college boy form and cropped hair silhouetted by the bright glow of the scalloped lights, its face in shadow.
There was something familiar about the man. Carr automatically stared him, trying to recall where he’d seen him before.
The man glanced behind him as if to reassure himself that Carr wasn’t looking at someone else. Then he turned back. There was a tiny flash of white from the lower part of his shadowed face, as if he had shown his teeth in a smile. He waved to Carr jauntily.
As he did so, Carr realized that he did want to be with Marcia, walking at her side, in his proper place, accounted for, not alone in this dreadfully empty city.
For only a bit of hooked metal came out of the upraised cuff across the street.
Everything stood out sharply as an engraving to Carr. He knew without counting that there were sixteen bulbs in each of the scallops, that inside the bar were walls stenciled with nymphs and satyrs, three nymphs and two satyrs to each panel, that the wide sidewalk in front of the bar was divided crosswise into blocks of three.
The handless man started toward him, entreating him to wait with another jaunty wave.
Carr pretended not to see. He turned north. Marcia was a small silhouette a quarter of a block away. He started after her at as brisk a pace as might still seem natural.
“Hold on a moment, would you?” The handless man called after him. The voice was rather high, but cool and pleasant, with an Eastern accent.
He knew he must not answer. Once give them proof that he was alive—
He pretended not to hear. He gained the opposite curb, thankful that an approaching car had allowed him to lope for a few steps.
“Stop a minute, please,” the handless man called. “There’s something I want to tell you.”
Carr’s gaze clung to Marcia’s flowered dress. Thank God, she was walking slowly. He went through a little pantomime of recognizing her, to justify a further increase in his pace.
“Please stop,” the handless man called. “I’m sure I know you.”
It was a dark stretch. The apartment Carr was passing boasted a hedge. Parked cars, gleamingly washed but filled with gloom, made another wall.
The footsteps behind him were gaining. Marcia was still some distance off. Carr fought to keep from running.
“You’re not very polite,” the handless man called. “After all, I’m a cripple, though it doesn’t slow me down.”
The footsteps were very close now. Although Marcia was hardly twenty feet away, it seemed to Carr that there might as well be a trench deep as the world between him and her.
The footsteps were just behind him. A toecap flicked the lower edge of his field of vision. A voice said in his ear, “Do stop now,” and he felt his shoulder brushed by something like a talon.
Carr darted forward a few steps, slide his arm around Marcia’s and said in as gay a voice as he could manage, “Hello, dear!”
Marcia did not turn her heard. Not by the slightest break in her stride did she betray that she was aware of his existence. Even her arm, under his hand, was like a stick of wood.
The other footsteps dropped back a little.
“Please don’t cut me,” Carr whispered urgently. “I know how you feel about the way I behaved last night, but I can explain.”
She turned, pulling away from him. He realized they had reached her apartment hotel.
The footsteps behind him speeded up.
Carr followed her up the walk. “I must come in with you.”