Weep for Me (12 page)

“You better go,” she whispered.

The woman on the bed had gone far away from both of us, gone off into some secret place where she fought with all her wasted strength against a force that could win with malignant, contemptuous ease.

I could not speak. I went down the stairs and out onto the sidewalk. The sunlight was not the same. I had tried to find the strength I needed, and I could not find it there. I went to my father’s house. I had not visited there in so long that we were ill at ease. His plump, pretty, dark-haired wife was a stranger. She was pregnant again. The house seemed to wear a look of battered resignation, as though the small children had been too much for it. I made myself stay a decent interval, and tried not to see the look of relief on her face when I said I couldn’t stay for dinner.

There didn’t seem to be anyplace to go any more. I had the crazy idea of going to Tom Nairn’s house and telling him the whole thing. I even walked to within two blocks of his neat little red brick house. Tom would be working in the yard, maybe standing with the hose. Go up to him and say, “Mr. Nairn, I stole over twenty thousands dollars last week.”

I walked rapidly away from there. I sat on a bench in a small dusty park. Two old men were staring fixedly at a pocket-size chess board. Children rode bikes along the paths. Two young Italian girls came swinging down the walk. Lilt and tilt of hip, jounce and bounce of breast under the sheer Sunday fabric of blouse. Ungirdled haunches flexing, round brown arms swinging. Red, red lips and dark, dark eyes, and nighttime hair. Young girls on the prowl, giggling at the boys who turned to walk behind them with cool, judicial eyes weighing them, point for point.

I felt the wanting start. When I was a kid I used to
stick kitchen matches in the dirt, to make little logcabin villages. Then you light a match and touch them off. In the sunlight, you can’t see the flames. You see the matches twisting, blackening, writhing. The wanting was like that. A destructive, twisting thing.

The bus wouldn’t go fast enough. I sat on the edge of the seat and mentally cursed every stop. I walked fast to the door, ran up two stairs at a time. My voice shook as I knocked at her door and called her name.

“Come in, Kyle,” she called. My palm slipped wetly on the knob. She faced me across the darkened room, and in the back of my mind the little matchstick cabins kept twisting, burning, blackening.

T
he second full week of operation brought an additional $37,000. Though I had learned to make the switch with the ease of practice, by the end of the week my nerves were going bad. I felt as though Nairn, Grinter, Raddmann, Tatley, even Limebright, were all aware of what I was doing, all watching me.

I had to make a new hole in my belt, and in the strap of the money belt too. I weighed myself and found I was down to one sixty-eight, eight pounds lighter than on the day when I took the first money out of the bank.

Sudden, unexpected noises began to bother me. A car backfiring. A waitress dropping a dish.

And I began to have a recurrent dream. Emily had got into a taxi or a bus, and as I reached for her she slammed the door across my wrists. The vehicle would start up and my feet would be caught somehow. It would draw away and I would be pulled like a wire being drawn. Thinner and thinner and thinner. Knowing that I was going to snap. I would be screaming at Emily and she wouldn’t hear me. Each time, I woke up in that fractional part of a second left before I snapped like a string.

I sensed that Emily was watching me carefully. Just when the shaking of my hands would become almost uncontrollable, when a tic would begin to nibble at the corner of my mouth or eye, she would be at me, digging at me like some sort of burrowing animal, dragging me, with nails and teeth and blinded eyes, up to that final spasmed crack of the wire and velvet whip that left me dulled, slack in every muscle, but blessedly unable to worry, blessedly free for at least another day from that shrillness of nerves, free for one night from the nightmare.

My vacation request was approved, the dates entered opposite my name on the bulletin-board list. The third week was worse. Thursday I switched a very small check, one of the smallest we had, and that was all. I promised
her I would do better on Friday. I promised her that I would make up for it. And on Friday I had to confess to her that I had been unable to take any, unable to bring myself to do it.

I had never seen that sort of shine to her eyes. I said, “It’s … finished. I’m through. I can’t do it again. Not another day. Let’s get out of here now. We’ve got enough.”

“What we had, plus the twenty-eight thousand this week, Kyle, makes eighty-eight thousand, eight hundred. It isn’t enough.”

“I can’t do it again.”

“Sit down, Kyle. Sit down and listen for a moment. I’m not settling for that amount. I’d rather have nothing. If you are absolutely certain you can’t take any more, then you better get in that car and leave right now. Take the money. Maybe you can make it out of the country. I don’t know. I don’t care.”

“Don’t I mean more than that to you?”

“Don’t bleat at me like a sheep. You were my luck. Maybe my luck’s gone bad. Remember, I’m in the clear. I just don’t know that those checks that came to my desk were forgeries. So get in the car and run, Kyle. As fast as you can.”

I could not tell whether or not she was bluffing. She had grown stronger than I. She was the dominant one.

She stood up as though I had ceased to exist for her. She undressed and walked into the bathroom. She took her shower with the bathroom door open. She came out, a towel over her shoulders, and took fresh underthings out of the bureau, put them on, selected a dress. Only when she put on the white knit hat did I realize she was going out.

“Where are you going?”

“Out, Kyle.”

“I’ve tried to explain it to you, Emily. Believe me. Today I tried to do it, and I just couldn’t make my hand pick up the money and …”

“Think it over, Kyle. It’s your choice.”

She picked up her purse. I sat there and heard her
going down the stairs. I could still hear her as she reached the lobby floor. The door slammed behind her.

Oh, she had made it beautifully plain. Price—one quarter of a million. Interested in no lower offers. It was odd to be in her place without her. I picked up a bottle of the perfume she used, pulled out the cap, smelled of it. I had watched her put it on, her face almost childishly intent. A few drops between the fingers. Then quick practiced touches. Ear lobes, nipples, navel, and the fingers wiped dry up the long line of the thigh. In the bottle it smelled different. Her body warmth brought out the spiced fragrance. I wondered if Harry had taught her how to wear it.

I wandered into the bathroom and touched the towel on the shower rail, still steamy-damp from her body.

I pulled open bureau drawers, shut my hands on the slippery chill of nylon. In the closet were the burgundy slacks she had been wearing the first time it happened.

Something twisted in my brain and moments later I stood there, breathing hard. I held one leg of the tailored slacks in each hand. I had ripped them in two, from crotch to waistline.

Back in my own apartment it took me fifteen minutes to find the sleeping pills prescribed that winter I had such a bad sinus attack. They were round and yellow, with cotton stuffed in the top of the bottle. I picked out the cotton and poured all of them into the palm of my hand. Sixteen. Probably enough and more than enough. I poured all but two back into the bottle. I took them. They worked quickly.

She would not talk to me Saturday and Sunday. She would not listen to my promises.

Monday I went a little crazy. I brought her back over twenty thousand dollars. It earned her measured smile. If a large cash deposit hadn’t come through my window at the last minute, it might have been all up. Nairn would have seen how distorted my check-out was when he initialed the running record.

Later, after I had taken what my twenty thousand had earned, and she had left my side, I butted a cigarette in
the ash tray on the coffee table. Soon there was a stench of burning cloth. I prodded in the ash tray and found what was burning. A three-inch length of brown shoelace, with a metal tip. I knew I had not lost it. I knew she had no shoes that would use such a lace. I stood up in a fury, and then slowly sat down again. I knew it hadn’t been there Sunday night. I couldn’t see what purpose would be served by accusing her. There was nothing I could do to hurt her. If I tried to hurt her, she would only deny me what had come to be a necessity to me, a thing as essential as breathing. I dropped it behind the day bed.

After she had come back in her robe and we had talked for a time, I said, “Understand you were late getting back from lunch today.”

“How did you know that?”

I shrugged. “Somebody mentioned it. I forget who.”

The end of the month approached. I was worried about the crucial business with the statements. It seemed senseless to keep pushing our luck. But the $135,000 was not enough, she said. We argued interminably. She could not answer my arguments. But she had one that I could not answer. I needed her in a way that could not be sated.

So at last we prepared the dummy statement envelopes. Thirty-eight of them, adding cut newspaper to give the necessary bulk.

The statements were to be mailed on a Thursday. She had made the false statements, finished them by working late Wednesday. Wednesday night she gave them to me and I checked them over. They, of course, overstated the account balances by $135,000. There were forty-nine checks to be recovered.

We worked out a code. She had to work on Limebright for his permission to take a batch of statements out and mail them on her lunch hour. And she had to finish the correct statements in time for them to be checked before her lunch hour.

At eleven o’clock I phoned her for the balance on a
mythical account named Mead. “Just a moment, please,” she said in that slow, calm voice. It told me nothing. The phone was sticky in my hand.

“That balance is one hundred and fifteen dollars, sir.”

“Thank you,” I said. My voice was a croak. It meant she had worked it, that she would be leaving by the side door at one-fifteen with the thirty-eight statements. I had the substitute statements in my room, the dummy envelopes in a brown paper bag. At ten after one I went out and got the brown paper bag. Grinter got his lunch break at the same time.

“You’re looking kind of beat, Kyle,” he said.

“I feel fine.”

“Losing a little weight, aren’t you? Want to watch that stuff. Ever hear about the bridegroom who put up the window shade?” He laughed greasily.

“I think I’ll walk over and eat this in the park,” I said. I killed time at the downstairs drinking fountain until I saw her slim ankles on the stairs, and then, slowly, the rest of her. Her face was calm. Too calm. I reached the door with her and gave her the dummy envelope. I slipped the statements into the paper bag, making the exchange with my body.

She walked down the street toward the post office. She would mail them in the trash receptacle inside the post office. I turned toward the apartment, walking as fast as I could.

The tea kettle was on the stove. I turned on the gas. As soon as steam was coming out the spout with sufficient force, I began to steam open the statements. It seemed to take a long time, longer than we had planned.

I arranged them in alphabetical order, the same as the fallacious statements. I went through each envelope and took out the correct statements. Then, using my list, I went through each envelope and took out the forged checks. Two checks remained on my list. Joint account of a Mr. and Mrs. Martin Mallory. That was the same account that had given us a scare the week before. Mrs. Mallory had come in and asked Grinter for her balance figure. Fortunately, Emily had just returned to her desk
from lunch. If she had been two minutes later, Miss Rollins would have phoned down a figure that would have given Mrs. Mallory a considerable shock.

My hands started to tremble. I looked stupidly into the empty paper bag. I counted the statements. Thirty-seven. The Mallory statement was missing. I put the false statements in the envelopes, resealed all of them. Just as I finished, I heard Emily coming up the stairs. I had never heard her move so fast. The door was locked. I ran to it, opened it. She came in fast, took the thirty-seven doctored statements out of my hands.

“How about Mallory?” I snapped.

“I know. I didn’t have a chance to tell you. It was an accident. It got mailed. Miss Rollins saw it. She took it along with hers while I was in the women’s room.”

I sat down hard. “What are we going to do?”

“You’re going to be out there tomorrow morning when the mail arrives. I checked the time they get delivery. Ten in the morning. Just Mrs. Mallory will be there. Tell her there’s a mistake or something. Tell her we caught it after the statement was mailed. Tell her the bank didn’t want to worry her, and you’ve brought the correct statement. And get the checks before she gets a look at them. They’ll be the bottom two. Snap out of it, Kyle.”

“It won’t work,” I said.

“You’ve got to
make
it work! Now get busy and destroy those checks and the statements. Fast. Time is getting short.”

She went down the stairs with the doctored statements, ready for mailing.

Officially I was sick on Friday. I arrived at the Mallory house at nine-thirty. Mrs. Mallory, a gaunt, green-eyed redhead turning gray, said, “Yes?”

“Sorry to trouble you this way, Mrs. Mallory. My name is Cameron. I’m from the bank.”

“Oh, come in! I knew I’d seen you somewhere. But when you see a face sort of … out of context … Don’t tell me there’s trouble on our account again.”

“No, nothing like that. We found that we’d put the wrong statement in the envelope addressed to you, Mrs.
Mallory. Here is your statement. The wrong one should arrive in this morning’s mail. If I could just pick it up …”

“Why, of course you can! Come out and have some coffee with me, Mr. Cameron. This is an hour I relax. Once the children are off to school and Martin has left for the office.”