RENDEZVOUS IN BLACK (3 page)

And on that note of dedication, the darkness came down over him.

Twelve struck from the steeple of the church just off the square. The crowd had gone long ago, the square was empty. Empty but for him. There was nothing in the roadway now. Just a few leaves of newspapers, stained and darkened, like the kind butchers use to wrap fresh meat in.

She was a few minutes late tonight, but she'd come. You know how girls are; maybe a last-minute run in her stocking, or something that had to be done to her hair. You had to give them a few minutes overtime, on any date. Any minute now, he'd see her running from the opposite side of the square toward him, the side she always came down on, and waving to him as she crossed, the way she always did. They didn't have enough lights on tonight, maybe something had gone wrong with the transmission, it was pretty dim for eight o'clock. But light or dark, any minute now. . . .

That steeple clock was a liar; it was completely out of kilter; it should be fixed. Four strokes too many. He looked at his watch. That had gone back on him too; that was haywire too. Running ahead, killing her, lacerating him. He tore it off his wrist savagely, swung up his heel, and stunned the watch against it with a vicious impact. Then he put the hands back to where they belonged, just a minute or two before eight.

Then he held it to his ear and listened. It was silent, it was still. She was safe now. She was still coming to meet him, somewhere just around the last corner out of sight. And no harm could happen to her now, no harm such as had befallen that other poor unknown girl before; he'd taken care of that. As long as it wasn't quite eight, she was still on her way. She'd stay alive all night now. She'd stay alive forever.

It would always be eight o'clock now, on his watch, in his heart, in his brain.

A good samaritan had accosted him. "Where do you live, Mac? I'll take you home. You don't want to stand here like this any more."

Johnny Marr looked around and it was daylight. The early-morning sun was peering into the square.

"I guess I'm too early," he faltered. "It's not until tonight. Funny how I--how I got all mixed up."

He let the other fellow take him by the arm, lead him away from there. He was talking softly, in an indistinct mumble. He was even smiling a little.

". . . the last day of May, the thirty-first of the month . . ."

"Yeah," said the good samaritan, who thought maybe he'd had a glass of beer too many, "that was yesterday."

"Once a year," Johnny Man murmured softly, "once a year it will come around again--for somebody else."

The man beside him didn't hear him or if he did, didn't know what he meant.

". . . into each of their lives, some day, sooner or later, will come a girl. A girl always has to come into the life of each man. They won't die, their girls will. When you die, you don't feel anything more. They'll live, they'll feel what it's like . . ."

"What's the matter with you, Mac?" the man assisting him along asked with gruff kindliness. "Whadderya keep looking up like that for? Did you lose something up there?"

He only said one thing more, Johnny Marr.

"Everybody else still has his girl," he grimaced protestingly. "Why haven't I got mine?"

Every night now, all alone, a motionless figure stands waiting in the niche by the drugstore window where the lotions and the toilet waters are. A figure with patient, ever-seeking, haunted, lonely eyes. Waiting through the hours for eight o'clock, an eight o'clock that never comes. A lifelong stand-up, a stand-up for all eternity. Waiting in the mellowness of June, the sizzling violence of a July electrical storm, the star clearness of August and September nights--waiting in the leafstrewn wind of October, coat-collar upended about his throat, shifting and scuffing patiently in the bite of November.

Watching, waiting, for someone who never comes. Looking now and then at a watch that doesn't run, taking his consolation from that--a watch that's always short of eight. The eight of eternal hopefulness. The eight of a love turned macabre and cancerous.

Until the lights go out in the window behind him. Until the drugstore man locks up and goes by. Until the eight that never moves has become the midnight, the one, of reality.

Then the pathetic drugstore cowboy shuffles away, loses himself in the darkness. "Tomorrow night she'll come. Tomorrow night at eight. Maybe she stayed away on purpose; you know how girls are, trying to tease me, keep me on my toes." The wan footfalls die away, the figure loses itself in the gloom.

No one knows where he comes from. No one knows where he goes. No one cares, much. It's just another life, and the world's so full of lives. He doesn't live where he used to live; they wouldn't have him there any more. They touch their heads and nod to show what they mean. He doesn't work where he used to work; they wouldn't have him there any more, either.

But you can always find him, down by the drugstore, down by the square. On a date that never comes true.

Lots of people get so they know him by sight, even the ones that didn't know him before. But the ones that did, they pass him by with the rest. What can they do for him? "Don't look. There's poor Johnny Marr waiting for his dead girl again."

A few of them try to be kind to him in odd, haphazard ways. Human beings are funny. One of the young fellows he used to know goes by one night, silently puts a package of cigarettes into his hand, goes on without a word. To keep him from being quite so lonely while he waits.

One particularly raw night the drugstore man suddenly comes out to the door, thrusts a mug of steaming coffee into his hands. Again without a word. Takes the mug in again when he's emptied it. Just that once-- never before then, never again.

Human beings are funny. They are so cruel, they are so kind; they are so calloused, they are so tender.

He becomes a landmark, a fixture, a cigar-store Indian. Only, a cigar-store Indian with warm blood coursing through it beneath its stoic rigidity.

Another night, a well-meaning middle-aged lady, who didn't know, hadn't heard the story, who had just come out of the movie-house a few doors down, stepped over and accosted him.

"Pardon me, young man, but can you tell me what time it is? I'm afraid I stayed in there longer than I intended to."

He looks at his watch solemnly. "Three to eight."

"Why no. You must be mistaken!" she protests volubly. "It can't be. It was that when I went into the show, and I've been in there all of two and a half hours. Is it too much trouble for you to give me a civil ans--"

Suddenly she shuts up. Her jaw hangs slack. Something about the look he gives her strikes terror into her heart. She backs away, a step by a step, until she has increased the distance between them sufficiently. Then she turns suddenly and waddles away as fast as she can carry herself, looking back repeatedly to make sure he hasn't started after her.

She has just seen imminent death peer forth at her from a living face.

She is one of the wise ones, one of the forewarned ones; she ran away in time.

And then one night they changed the cop down there by the square. The old one got too old, or was shifted, or went away. The new one was officious, overconscientious, as new cops are so often apt to be.

He made his tour of the square, and Johnny was there. He made his return tour, and Johnny was still there. He came back again the third time, on his last tour of duty, and he stopped and went over to him.

"Now, what is it?" he said. "You're getting on my nerves. You've been here three solid hours. You don't dress up the square. I don't care what Simmons put up with, but I'm in charge now." And he nudged him in the hip with his stick to get him to move his leg.

"I'm waiting for my girl," Johnny said.

"You're girl's dead," the cop said brutally. "They told me about that. She's buried. She's lying in the ground, in the cemetery up on the hillside, this very minute. I even went up there and seen the plot and the marker with my own eyes. I can even tell you what the headstone says on it--"

Johnny Marr suddenly flung up his hands and covered both ears, with desperate intensity.

"She's never coming here again," the cop said. "Get that through your head. Don't do that when I'm talking to you, understand? Now move on, and don't let me find you here again."

Johnny Marr swayed a little, like someone coming out of a trance. The cop's stick nudged him, and he moved one foot. The cop's stick nudged him again, and he moved the other foot. The cop's stick kept it up until finally he was moving his feet of his own accord. Then the cop stood there and watched him, until he was out of sight.

And from that night on, suddenly he wasn't standing there in that same place any more. No one saw him any more.

A few of them wondered about him, where he'd gone, what had become of him. Then they forgot to wonder about him. Then they forgot about him.

One or two people claimed they'd seen him standing, the next day, with a packed grip beside him, waiting on the station platform for the train to take him away. But nobody knew if that was true or not.

Maybe the cop should have let him stand there, should have let him alone. He hadn't been hurting anybody, until then.

Tri-State Airlines were well satisfied with the services of the employee down on their rolls as Joseph Murray. He'd been with them about three months. His job was filing clerk. That gave him access to flight schedules, lists of reservations, and all the multitudinous archives accumulated by such a large organization. He seemed to take a great interest in his work. He was constantly at the files, burrowing through them, looking up former bookings, scanning old-time passenger lists. He even stayed after hours, did it on his own time. He went back, back, back--years back in the records. Then suddenly he lost interest.

He would even have been in line for a small raise. It was the policy of the company, at the end of the first six months. Only, all at once he wasn't there any more to get it. He didn't resign, he didn't even give notice of quitting. He just walked out the door and never walked back in again. One day, in the morning, he was working there. But that same day, in the afternoon, he wasn't. They waited for him to come back. He didn't. They checked. He'd left the address he'd given. Nobody knew where he had gone.

They couldn't understand, but they couldn't stop and worry about it either. They took on somebody else in his place, they had to. But his successor wasn't nearly as diligent or conscientious about his work as he had been. He only went near the files when he had to.

Liberty Airways Inc. were well satisfied with the services of the employee down on their pay roll as Jerome Michaels. He, too, was constantly at the files, winnowing through them, noting dates, frowning over hours of departure and hours of arrival, plotting courses of flight on the reference maps. Then suddenly he just stopped being around. One day he was there, the next he wasn't.

Continental Transport had the same experience. So did Great Eastern. So did Mercury. It happened once to each of them. To each of their ground staffs.

And then the smaller companies started running into this oddity. One by one, all down the line. Down to small concerns, with about six planes to their name, operating non-scheduled flights. That is, flights without any definite timetable--flights to order, so to speak, chartered by private individuals or small private groups just for the one occasion itself. However, they too kept records and accounts, they were required to by law, for the sake of the licenses permitting them to operate, for tax purposes, and so on.

Such as the little shoestring organization calling itself, with a grandiloquence that fooled no one but that sounded good, Comet Trips. It had a very small headquarters of not more than two subdivided rooms, an office staff of exactly two, some very patchy planes that passed inspection by the skin of their teeth, and two very worried and harassed partners to run it. But it had files of a sort.

One day one of the two employees, Jess Miller by name, made a funny sound at those files. The other, the girl who worked in the dusty, decrepit office with him, looked around, said, "What's the matter, Jess? You sick or something?"

He didn't answer. He never said a word.

He just ripped one of the yellowed file cards bodily out of its fastening.

"Hey, don't, the bosses'll have a fit!" she exclaimed.

The file drawer stayed open, the office door stayed open, he wasn't in there with her any more.

He never even took his hat with him. It stayed there on the rack. It stayed there for days until they finally threw it out. He had six-twenty-five coming to him too, for a half week's work. And believe it or not, it was a boon to Comet Trips, just then, not to have to pay it.

She told one of the bosses what he'd done, and the boss took a look, tried to find out for himself just which card it was that had been torn out. He couldn't. The whole file was so out-of-date, so jumbled up, he couldn't even tell.

However, in addition to getting a lot of dust all over his cuffs, he did get one good idea out of it. He extracted and dumped out the whole file then and there, into a trash basket.

"That should have been done years ago," he said. "I didn't even know it was still in there. Glad he reminded me."

The card said in faded typing: