RENDEZVOUS IN BLACK (30 page)

They renew their toast, clink glasses in mid-waltz.

"To life! To the long, long years that lie ahead!"

"To the long, long years we have waiting for us!"

And the next day life began, the world began. No more locked doors, no more passwords, no more smuggled-in trays of food. They were out of their suite the live-long day, from earliest morning to swift ocean twilight. In perfect immunity, now, they roamed about, went where all the others did. Nodded, smiled, passed the time of day. She was a poor sailor, she'd been ill, she fibbed, when anyone mentioned not having seen her about until now.

They went up to the topmost deck and watched the lush sunrise spill over the sea, like the emptying of a bottle of chili sauce. He watched, and painted it for her in words. They breakfasted in the dining saloon. They requisitioned deck chairs and lolled all morning long in the sunlight. And since all the other women wore dark glasses against the glare, you couldn't tell the difference with her.

They only returned to the stateroom at dusk, to dress for dinner. They were to sit at the captain's table, it had been arranged; no inconsiderable honor in itself. She had brought no party clothes with her, but there was a dress shop on the ship, and that afternoon he'd bought her a gala gown for the event. It had been altered to fit, had been delivered during their absence, and was now lying packaged on the bed waiting for her.

She was like a child. She picked up the carton and held it pressed to her. She wouldn't open it in front of him; he must see it on her, and not before.

"You go outside," she said. "I don't want you to see me until I'm all ready. I want to surprise you."

"I'll go up and have a Martini at the bar," he agreed. "That be all right?"

"About half an hour. Then come back to me."

He placed his lips tenderly to hers. She put her hands behind her back, still like a child, and waited to hear him go.

She heard him lock the door on the outside and draw the key out. From sheer habit, probably. There was no more need to. But it was probably just as well to be careful.

She began her preparations. She opened the box. Tissue hissed and spit at her. She took the dress out and spread it on the bed. He'd bring her flowers. Though he hadn't said a word, she knew that was one of the reasons he'd gone up. They had them on the ship. Gardenias or orchids to wear pinned on her shoulder.

She took off her outer things, changed hose and shoes, did her hair over. Then she put the dress on. It was a simple matter; the woman in the shop had rehearsed her. Just two fastenings far over to the side, and then you had to be sure the tiers fell straight. Her fingers saw to that for her. It was cut a little low above, though. Scarcely anything to hold it but two strips of lace. She'd need something to go over her shoulders and back; it got cool on the ocean after dark. And they might go out on deck afterwards when they'd grown tired of dancing, and listen to the music from there.

Too bad she didn't have a shawl or a spangled scarf. No, wait. She knew just the thing.

She felt for the closet door with her fingers. They found the slippery, ice-like surface of its mirror panel. They shifted, found its hexagonal glass knob. She opened the door, reached inside. Her fingers told their way along the hanging garments one by one, until they came to what she wanted, almost at the far end of the closet. A little silken jacket, diminutive as a page boy's.

She took down the hanger it was on, took it off the hanger, then reattached the empty hanger to the rod, careless just where she put it.

Then she pushed the mirrored door back again, but didn't keep her hand on the knob the whole way, so that it fell somewhat short. The latch tongue didn't quite connect within its socket. The door touched the frame (she heard the little clout it gave as it did so) but didn't sink entirely into it. It didn't matter.

She drew the jacket over her shoulders, shifted it, turned this way and that, just as a seeing woman would have, getting it to fall just to her satisfaction. That would do. It was warm enough, and yet not too heavy.

She sat down once more at the dressing table for the final touches. Found the little bottle of cologne, took out the stopper, touched that to the tip of each ear.

Dressing-up for the evening was so nice. Frivolity was so nice. They were going to live like other people now. No more fear, no more hiding away. They were going to dine at the captain's table, laugh and chat and have wine with their dinner. They were going to dance. They were going to stroll the deck afterwards in the starlight, and stand by the rail. Unafraid, unafraid. A footstep passing would be just a footstep passing, something to turn and nod civilly to, or to ignore, as you chose.

Unafraid, unafraid.

The hanger that she had replaced awhile ago lost its grip, slipped off, and fell to the closet floor with a trifling little clack.

She knew what it was, the sound was self-explanatory, so she didn't even turn her head. They were apt to do that. If you didn't set them quite straight, or if they swung too freely after you took your hand off them.

She was considering lipstick. Whether or not to use it. Tonight was gala. She knew she would suit him as she was, but they would be in public tonight. It was a social convention to use it, nowadays, rather than an attempt to mislead the onlooker as to the coloring of one's lips, as it had once been. On that ground, she decided to put it on. No one would have believed that she, a blind woman, could have successfully applied it without producing an overlapping smear, but she already had in the past and she knew she could.

A few careful moments and it was done.

She stood up now. All through. Nothing more to do. Nothing but wait for him.

She recalled the fall of the hanger she had heard before. She went over to the closet to pick it up from the floor and put it back in place, simply from the ageold feminine instinct for tidiness, having things back in their right places; simply from not having anything else to do for the moment.

The door stood out at right angles from the frame, as she had left it just now, when she was last there. She reached down to the floor, just inside it, and within a moment had found the recumbent hanger, restored it where it belonged.

Then she closed the door tightly, so that the latch tongue clicked into place, the knob recoiled slightly in her grasp, as it was supposed to do.

She turned and started back toward her dressing tab--.

At right angles from the frame, as she had left it.

But she hadn't. Her fingers had pushed it back, then let it go. She had heard it graze the frame, stop there. Night came on in her heart. One by one, all the lights went out. It got cold, and a wind from nowhere knifed at her. Her step didn't falter; outwardly there was nothing to show that, within her, the whole world was going down into blackness. Her hand found the back of the dressing-table bench, and she sank down upon it, rather too heavily, that was all.

In here with her. There was somebody in here with her. It , he , was in here with her at this very moment. He hadn't come in, he had been in already, from the very first. First in the closet, now out in the very room itself.

But where? Over which way? Not a sound. Not a stir to show.

Her lips flickered tremulously. "Allen," they murmured without voice.

The door? The outside door, in the next room? Perhaps if she could get near enough to it, be near enough to it, Allen would suddenly unlock it, come in again in time to--.

She was putting on cologne again. Too much cologne. A thin trickle of it ran down the side of her neck, from just under her ear.

Not a sound. Not a stir. She bowed her head, held it that way, very intently. Listening with every fibre of her being. Every fibre of her trained faculties, that could hear things others could never hope to.

Uncanny cleverness, not even to draw breath. Or draw it so subt'y that it left no trace upon the sound waves reaching her. Yet somewhere within this room, this square of space, another heart was going. Another, beside hers.

Where was he standing? Where?

If he wouldn't move, if he wouldn't come to her, then she must go looking for him, she must find him. There is a certain form of suspense so terrible, so pitched above ordinary range, that it cannot be borne passively. This was of that kind. If its source would not reveal itself to her, then she must find it.

She went looking for it.

As the filing is drawn toward the magnet. As the bird is supposedly drawn to the snake.

She rose, went toward the wall first. When she had reached that, she began to follow it, with her left side, her heart, nearest to it. Tracing it with her hands, hand over hand; making circular wheel-like patterns upon it.

Tears were in her sightless eyes, and spilling slowly, one by one, down her cheeks. Her lips kept fluctuating. Saying low, over and over, the same one word. "Allen. Allen. Allen." She could not scream. Something had happened to her. She knew she would not be able to even at the end, if there was to be an end. Fright, like a searing flash of flame, had short-circuited her vocal cords, burned them out.

She had a strange feeling, and it might have been true she was already dying, slowly, even before a hand had been laid to her. Was already in the earlier stages of expiration; the process was already under way.

A chest of drawers broke the continuity of the wall, the one with Allen's things in it, and she went out and around it, and then back in to the wall again. Swimming, swimming with her hands; a dying swimmer who knows she will never make the shore.

Beyond, just ahead, there was coming the door to the bath, and though she had not thought of this before, it occurred to her now that if she could get in there quickly enough and pull the door to--.

Air fanned past her face, and the door crunched shut. It must have just missed the tips of her oncoming fingers, in its arc. Hope had a miscarriage, and left a residue of pain gnawing at her vitals. A key wrangled, was taken out of it. When her hand had found the knob, it was still slightly warm against her skin. Warm from some other hand.

Her tongue flickered, moistened her searing lips. "Allen," they breathed quietly.

She extended her arms full length before her now, trying to discover him. He must be within a foot or two of her, to have closed that bath door that way.

But he must be retreating as she came on. Her twitching fingers kept finding only empty space.

Danse macabre, with the partners keeping an even distance, never joining. Saraband of death.

On she went, step by step, along the wall. She boxed the corner of it, and started out along the new side.

Halfway along it the bed broke its straightness of progression, jutting out head to wall.

She came to that, and arms out before her like a sleepwalker, turned to follow and to round it.

And it was then, midway along the length of the bed going from head toward foot, that two other hands, reaching across from its opposite side, joined themselves to her own at last; claimed them, as it were; clasped and partly enfolded them, and began to draw her with them, almost gently yet with remorseless insistence, causing her to veer in her direction so that now the bed lay directly before her, and the pull came across it from its far side.

It was like a grisly game of London Bridge is Falling Down, with the bed between them.

Yet somehow she wasn't even frightened any more, didn't recoil nor cringe nor stiffen. All that was behind her already, far behind her, back in life. To know fear, you have to be still fully alive. It was as if she knew that this must be, and no struggle could evade or alter it.

Listlessly, her lids dropped shut over her eyes. She knew that Allen wouldn't come in time. That was her last thought, as the darkness changed only to another darkness.

When the needle had stilled his hoarse cries at last, and just before sleep came to release him for awhile, he caught at the sleeve of the ship's doctor, and pulling and dragging at it as if he were trying to tear it off him, whispered hopelessly, "But they told me--Cameron, the police--they promised me it was only the thirty-first we had to watch out for, he only did it then. And the thirty-first ended last midnight--I stopped watching her, got careless-- Why did they fool me? What went wrong?"

"I don't know what you mean," said the bearded ship's doctor as gently as he could. "I know it was the thirty-first all day yesterday, from midnight to midnight. But today it was also the thirty-first, all day long, from last midnight to this coming one. The date repeated itself. You see, as we sail westward toward the International Date Line we gain a day. We hit it exactly on the thirty-first. So the thirty-first lasted for forty-eight full hours. Didn't anyone tell you that? Didn't you know?"

Cameron expected rage, a volcanic upheaval, bellowings, thunders and lightnings, a smashing of the office furniture. Instead he got--invisibility. He simply couldn't be seen. It was as though something had happened to the chief's eyes.

It took him twenty minutes to summon up enough courage to approach the office door. This included standing across the Street from the building before crossing over, loitering out on the front steps before going in, monkeying around with the water cooler in the hall and drinking water that he didn't really want before approaching the dread door.