A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

After some time had passed she finally closed the door, which she had left slightly ajar so that its slender wand of outside hall-light would somewhat alleviate the total darkness of the room, and put on the lights. Enough of a time-lapse had now occurred for him not to necessarily connect her entry into the building with the going-on of the lights behind these particular windows. Or so she felt. And the dark held its own nervous terrors, anyway.

She had a little radio there, not much of a thing, but at least it worked. It coughed a lot, and it spit when you turned on any nearby light-switch, but at least it banished the silence of alone-ness. In a croupy, asthmatic, but better-than-nothing way.

She thought maybe a little soft music would take the edge off her nerves, she liked Viennese waltzes in particular, but a news-break was winding up just as she turned it on.

“... meanwhile the war continues, no immediate end to it in sight.

“Back here at home, the second of three men who broke out of the penitentiary at (cra-a-ack, cra-a-ack, cra-a-ack), the so-called escape-proof jail, almost ten days ago has now been recaptured. His condition is serious from a gunshot wound suffered at the time of the break-out, during which two guards were also wounded. The third man, who is still at large, is considered especially dangerous, as he is believed to be armed. An all-out alert has been sounded...

“The weather for the metropolitan area for tonight and tomorrow promises to be fair and...”

Her eyes had started to widen even before she reached out to the knob and closed it off. Her fingers remained on the knob long after the sound had died, while without realizing it she turned her head slowly toward the window and stared at it, her eyes now following the direction her thoughts had already taken swift minutes ago.

She took her hand away from the radio at last and started to go over toward the window. And without knowing it she was holding one hand clasped around her own throat, in the immemorial gesture of feminine fear and trepidation.

It couldn’t be. There could be no connection. The one thing had nothing to do with the other. How could a runaway, a wanted man, to whom every moment counted, for whom cover-up was essential, how would he have the nerve to hang around a bus-stop night after night in full view of dozens of people, then ride the crowded bus with any number of faces pressed close to his?

And yet, who knows? A man in prison for any length of time becomes sex-starved, which is the same thing as insanity, if only temporarily. She happened to cross his path, his eyes fastened themselves on her and couldn’t let go, his thoughts fastened themselves on her and wouldn’t let go. And the rest of the sequence followed from there on in natural order. He started to follow her around. Since the sex-drive is stronger than thirst and stronger than hunger, perhaps, at least in his case, it was stronger also than his fear of being recognized, being recaptured, and being taken back to jail. A man in his condition has no sense of precaution, he loses it, it is blotted out, inevitably.

But all this was no solace. This was an explanation only but not a solution.

She had the edge of the curtain back a little now, and was looking down into the street.

He wasn’t there, he’d gone, he’d moved on. Maybe he was still watching her from someplace else where she couldn’t see him now, but there was no sign of him where he’d been before. The street was empty, and showed up in two shades of gray: a silvery-gray where the street-light washed over it in a wide ellipse that climbed partly up the walls of the nearer buildings, and a dark pewter-gray elsewhere. Then a taxi vibrated through it, making looming yellow moons that went out again after it had passed, but that was another matter.

No, he wasn’t down there any longer. It was over for tonight. She phrased a little prayer to her guardian star, her destiny, her luck, whatever it was. Someone, something: “Oh, don’t let it happen again tomorrow night. I can’t stand any more of it. I’m ready to — Please, not tomorrow night. No more... No more...”

She started to cry. She hadn’t cried since she was a little girl. Twelve, eleven maybe. Or if she had, not like this, not ever like this before. All of a week’s accumulated and compounded terror started to pour out of her, like when a sluice-gate is suddenly pulled open, in gushes that ran down her cheeks, and when her hands went up as if to stem them, in trickles that still crept through the crevices between her fingers, while her body writhed and twisted with her own sobs and suppressed, stuttering breaths, her head supine on the seat of a chair and her legs drawn out on the floor.