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

I go over to the window and open up a crevice between two of the tightly flattened slats in one of the blinds, and a little parallelogram of a New York street scene, Murray Hill section, six-o’clock-evening hour, springs into view. Up in the sky the upper-echelon light tiers of the Pan Am Building are undulating and rippling in the humidity and carbon monoxide (“Air pollution index: normal, twelve percent; emergency level, fifty percent”).

Down below, on the sidewalk, the glowing green blob of a street light, swollen to pumpkin size by foreshortened perspective, thrusts upward toward my window. And along the little slot that the parted slats make, lights keep passing along, like strung-up, shining, red and white beads. All going just one way, right to left, because 37th Street is westbound, and all going by twos, always by twos, headlights and tails, heads and tails, in a welter of slowed-down traffic and a paroxysm of vituperative horns. And directly under me I hear a taxi driver and would-be fares having an argument, the voices clearly audible, the participants unseen.

“But it’s only to Fifty-ninth Street—”

“I don’t ca-a-are, lady. Look, I already tolje. I’m not goin’ up that way. Can’tje get it into your head?”

“Don’t let’s argue with him. Get inside. He can’t put you out.”

“No, but I can refuse to move. Lady, if your husband gets in here, he’s gonna sit still in one place, ’cause I ain’t budgin’.”

New York. The world’s most dramatic city. Like a permanent short circuit, sputtering and sparking up into the night sky all night long. No place like it for living. And probably no place like it for dying.

I take away the little tire jack my fingers have made, and the slats snap together again.

The first sign that the meal I phoned down for is approaching is the minor-key creak from a sharply swerved castor as the room-service waiter rounds a turn outside my door. I’m posted behind a high-backed wing chair, with my wrists crossed over the top of it and my hands dangling like loose claws, staring a little tensely at the door. Then there’s the waiter’s characteristically deferential knock. But I say “Who is it?” anyway, before I go over to open it.

He’s an elderly man. He’s been up here twice before, and by now I know the way he sounds.

“Room service,” comes through in that high-pitched voice his old age has given him.

I release the double lock, then I turn the knob and open the door.

He wheels the little white-clothed dinner cart forward into the room, and as the hall perspective clears behind him I get a blurred glimpse of a figure in motion, just passing from view, then gone, too quickly to be brought into focus.

I stand there a moment, holding the door to a narrow slit, watching the hall. But it’s empty now.

There’s an innocuous explanation for everything. Everything is a coin that has two sides to it, and one side is innocuous but the other can be ominous. The hall makes a right-angle turn opposite my door, and to get to the elevators, those whose rooms are back of this turn have to pass the little setback that leads to my door.

On the other hand, if someone wanted to pinpoint me, to verify which room I was in, by sighting my face as I opened the door for the waiter, he would do just that: stand there an instant, then quickly step aside out of my line of vision. The optical snapshot I’d had was not of a figure in continuous motion going past my point of view, but of a figure that had first been static and then had flitted from sight.

And if it’s that, now they know which room I’m in. Which room on which floor in which hotel.

“Did you notice anyone out there in the hall just now when you came along?” I ask. I try to sound casual, which only makes me not sound casual.

He answers with a question of his own. “Was there somebody out in the hall, sir?”

“That’s what I asked you, did you see anyone?”

He explains that years of experience in trundling these food-laden carts across the halls have taught him never to look up, never to take his eyes off them, because an unexpected bump on the floor under the carpet might splash ice water out of the glass and wet the tablecloth or spill consommé into its saucer.

It sounds plausible enough. And whether it is or not, I know it’s all I’m going to get.

I sign the check for the meal, add the tip, and tell him to put it on the bill. Then just as he turns to leave I remember something I want to do.

“Just a second; that reminds me.” I shoot one of my cuffs forward and twist something out of it. Then the other one. And I hold out my hand to him with the two star-sapphire cuff links he admired so much last night. (Innocently, I’m sure, with no venal intent.)

He says I’m not serious, I must be joking. He says he can’t take anything like that. He says all the things he’s expected to say, and I override them. Then, when he can’t come up with anything else, he comes up with, half-hopefully (hopeful for a yes answer): “You tired of them?”

“No,” I say quite simply, “no — they’re tired of me.”