Deadline at Dawn

He didn’t answer. She was leaning across the table now, to press her point more strongly home. “Don’t you see it has to be now or never? Don’t you see what this place is doing to us? Don’t you see what we’ll be like a year from now, even six months from now? It’ll be too late then, there won’t be anything to save any more. Just two other people, with our same names, that aren’t us any more—”

His eyes flicked aside to the packets of money on the table, then back to her again. “It’s already too late for me now. Just a few hours too late, just a half night too late, but that’s as good as a lifetime.” He said again what he’d said before. “I wish I’d met you last night, instead of tonight. Why couldn’t I have met you before, instead of after? It’s no good, now. They’d only be waiting to grab me when I got off the bus at the other end. They’d know by then who I was, where I was from; they’d look for me there when they couldn’t find me here. I’d only drag you into it, if I went with you. The people back there, the very ones I would want least of all to find out about it, they’d see it happen right under their eyes—” He shook his head. “You go. You’ve still got your chance, even if I haven’t got mine. Go by yourself, go right tonight. You’re right about it, it’s bad here. Go right now, before you weaken again. I’ll go with you down to the bus if you want me to, I’ll see you off, to make sure you get away—”

“I can’t; haven’t I been telling you that? I can’t make it by myself. The city’s too strong for me. I’d only get off at the first Jersey stop and come back again. I can’t make it without you, just like you probably can’t any more without someone like me. It’ll take our combined strength. You’re my last straw, and I’m yours; we’ve met, and we know that now. Don’t let’s throw this chance away. It’s like dying when you’re still alive—” Her face was puckered in desperate appeal, her eyes holding his by their intensity.

“They’ll only be there waiting for me, I know what I’m saying. They’ll collar me before my foot’s even off the steps—”

“Not if nothing’s missing, if nothing’s been taken. What would there be to arrest you for then?”

“But something has. It’s right here in front of us.”

“I know, but there’s still time to undo it, that’s what my proposition is. Not to go with that, not to take that with you. What would there be to run away from then? We’d be bringing the badness of the city back home with us.”

“You mean you think I could—?” A scared look was peering from his face, as if he was longing to hope but scared to let himself.

“You said he’s there alone in the house. You said he went out all dressed up and won’t be back until late. You said you didn’t think he’d find out until he gets up in the morning—” She was speaking without pause for breath. “Have you still got the key, the key to get in with?”

His hands went to his pockets, darting from one to the other quickly now, as quickly as she had spoken. The tempo of hope was accelerating. “I don’t remember throwing— Unless I left it in the door—” He rose from his chair to gain better clearance for his movements. Suddenly a terse breath gushed from him, signalling the finding of the key before it had itself appeared to view. “I’ve got it.” Then he brought it out. “Here. Here it is, here.”

They marvelled over the fact of its presence for a brief moment.

“It’s funny I should hang onto it like this, isn’t it? It’s like a... a— Some sort of a—”

“Yeah, it is.” She knew what he meant, though not the word they both needed.

He repocketed it. She jumped to her feet in him. “Now if you can get back there before he comes home— Just in and out, long enough to put it back where you got it, that’s all you need to do. Nobody’s going to come after you just for chopping a hole in the wall, as long as nothing’s been taken out—”

She was hastily gathering up the scattered packets, evening them together into one cube to give to him. The same thought struck them both at once, and they stopped to look at one another in dismay. “How much have you blown already? How much have you taken out?”

He pasted the flat of his hand to his forehead for a moment. “I don’t know. Wait a minute, see if I can— Five dollars for that meal I didn’t eat. And I must have bought about fifteen dollars’ worth of those tickets up at your place— Twenty, altogether. Twenty bucks. It can’t be more than that.”

“Wait a minute, I’ve got it here,” she said crisply. “I’ll put it back in for you.”

She jumped up, ran over to the cot, dismantled it by pulling up the bedding at the side. Then she tilted the mattress along its edge, thrust her hand into some unsuspected slit lurking along its underside, extracted a small quantity of paper money bedded there in tortured shape, like some sort of a flower pressed flat within an album.

“Oh, no,” he started to protest. “I don’t want — I can’t let you do that. It’s my worry, why should you make good the difference?”