“It’s a name which has no memories.”
“Then call me Nikki always.”
She kissed him and went on with her story.
“My dear,” she said, “you know that we can cry only so much and then there are no tears left. Perhaps — some day again, but not yet. You must know that, even if I do not cry, I am close to you and love you. Now, please, my love, and then I will tell the rest of it.”
“He held me until his friend had finished and then he pressed me down to the floor and tried to have me himself. But he kept on his coat and I felt the revolver on his left side. I pretended passion and I got the revolver. I held it to his head and I... I shot him. I had to push him off quickly and I felt the blood on me. The friend was caught by surprise and when I pointed the gun at him, he begged for his life. I let him go.
“I realized that I had to run. I had no money, just some small change. I took the hundred dollars he had been paid by his friend. Twenty dollars more that I found in his pockets. That is what I had when I fled, one hundred and twenty dollars — and seventy-five cents of my own. In my panic, I left the gun there with my fingerprints on it. It was my most serious mistake.
“It was evening, late evening, before I was missed at school. I was then already out of New York. I took a subway to Yonkers, the train to White Plains. Then a bus to the Tarrytown ferry. In New Jersey, I found an old coat, which someone had forgotten. I put it on and rode in a bus to Binghamton. I got there at midnight.
“I bought an airplane ticket to Philadelphia. The next morning I spent all but ten dollars of my capital for a ticket to San Francisco. It was one of those old-fashioned unscheduled flights. The trip was a bad one for most of the way. Passengers were sick, frightened. No one talked to me. I was a girl in a dirty old coat, a swollen face.
“My father did not notify the police that day. Two days later, when the papers carried the story, I had dyed my hair.
“I met a girl in San Francisco. On the Fort Mason docks. She was older. It was she who took me to—” Nikki paused a moment.
“It is necessary now to tell you how I became a prostitute. You do not have to hold me tight, but I... I think I would like it if you did and I will go over it quickly this time and perhaps later, perhaps when I have learned to cry again, I will tell you all of it.”
He held her tightly, almost too tightly for she could not speak too well, so he loosened his arms slightly.
“The girl from the docks took me to the house on Pacific Street. The woman who ran it agreed to pay for the abortion if I would stay with her three months and pay it back out of the earnings — I had the abortion and the next day she brought in my first customer.
“I stayed the three months, Tom, and then I asked to go to Hawaii with four girls she was sending there. In the three months on Pacific Street I never left the house. I saw no one except the girls and — the customers. I kept my hair dyed, but I don’t think it would have been necessary. No one who read about Doris Delaney, or saw her picture in the papers would possibly think that the dark-haired whore in the five-dollar house was light blonde Doris Delaney.
“Honolulu was six thousand miles from New York, the other side of the world. No one knew, no one cared. I was the twenty-five-dollar girl in the house, sometimes even the fifty-dollar girl. Was I wrong, Tom? Could I have gone home after killing him? Could I have let my family learn? It would have broken their hearts. I know — running away also did it. But, somehow their memory of me would be cleaner. It was the lesser, to me, when I was sixteen. It was not the killing, Tom. I knew even then, that I could not be convicted of it... it was the disgrace, the details of how I had killed him and why. It would have killed my father. He never knew and when he died, I am sure it was better that he did not know. My mother.”
“I saw her yesterday morning, Nikki. She is you, Nikki, strong and so exactly like you. She has never stopped loving you. When I left, she knew that I would find you. I told her I would and she believed me.”
“I am glad, Tom.”
“She also told me something else that I will tell you later.”
“You don’t want to tell me now? It... it might help.”
He thought for a moment. “Yes, it will help. She said that she wished I had met you twenty-two years ago.”
“She knew that, Tom? She knew that we would have loved each other even then? I’m glad you told me. It is good that she knows we are right for each other...
“My dear, can I justify to myself why I became — what I became? I had killed a man — a vile creature. The circumstances were so foul. I had to find a hole, a dark hole where no one on earth could find me, where no one who knew the slightest thing about Doris Delaney would think of looking, where even if they suspected, they would not believe. I went into that deep, dark hole, Tom — and I stayed in it — until I met you. After that last night, in Honolulu, there was no one else.”
“You did not have to tell me that, Nikki.”
“Shall I talk about 1944? We both know what happened then and I want to tell you about now.”
“Yes, Nikki.”
“I came back to the mainland in ’44. I had fourteen thousand dollars and I had fought the tiger that all of us have to fight and I had defeated him. I was ready for the new, the permanent life I would lead for the rest of my life... without you. The quiet, the sheltered life — the existence that I could have as long as I lived. I met Walter and I married him. He loved me.”
“Walter will be hurt.”
“He will be hurt, Tom. But you and I cannot feel sorry for anyone else. We have had to be sorry for ourselves — too much and too long. We have lived our lives and we have no more tears. I married Walter and it was right. Walter is a good man. He asked for no more than I could give him. It was a good life, a haven, after the long, long years since 1938. We lived in our tight little circle and I seldom came out from inside that high fence. Sometimes, when Walter had to go on a trip, I would take one. I went to quiet places and I told Walter that I had visited the family I had created. The Kovacs family. Kovacs was the real name of Carrie Goddard a woman...”
Nikki clung to him a moment. Then she went on:
“I have not gone to motion picture theaters more than once or twice a year since we settled down behind our fence in Burlingame. But we have a television set and it has helped me through the long evenings when Walter was away. Walter enjoyed it when he was at home and I enjoyed it with him. But Walter was away when I saw the late show that night.
“It was a war picture made twelve years ago. Of course I knew of his name vaguely. The magazines I read sometimes had the name among other actors’ names. I had not seen a picture of him, however — and the name meant no more than any other actor’s.
“It was the old picture on the late show. The resemblance to the man I had killed in 1938 was striking. I knew it couldn’t be he, but I could not get it out of my mind.
“I found a more recent picture at a theater and studied it closely. I bought some of those motion picture magazines. I tried to reassure myself. It was not the same man. Nothing tied together — except the physical resemblance. But I had to be certain.
“From the motion picture magazines I learned what to do. I wrote a fan letter and I even enclosed a quarter for the picture. I wrote like a young girl and I used a post-office box.
“I got the picture autographed — by his fan mail secretary. I got a mimeographed letter and I sent a dollar to join the fan club. I received his fan magazine.”
“I read one the other night,” interrupted Alder.