“I once had a first-aid course. There are seven known pressure points. In the back of the neck — ”
“Quiet. It’s too late for first aid. We’ll have to — ”
“Ask him where it hurts!”
“Stupid, he’s out cold. Does anyone have a knife? The thing to do is cut it off at the roots.”
“I’m awake,” Peter yelled, “don’t cut anything.” But when he opened his eyes, the lids coming apart like petals, he saw nothing, only shades of blackness like patches one on top of another drawn tight. He blinked his eyes to no purpose, meteors circling his head; a red one with a striped tail had gotten inside and was trying — chopping at his brain — to get out.
He bumped into Lois, who was next to him, curled up in a kind of fetal position — her behind on his side of the bed. She’s asleep, he thought, it’s the middle of the night.
But then she wasn’t sleeping. “Are you all right, Peter?” she said, in a voice tremulous with concern.
“I can’t see,” he said, but he saw Lois, who was in a white flannel nightgown, her hair done up in braids; he saw her perfectly. With absolute, incredibly absolute clarity.
“Oh, my poor Peter.” She touched his eyes with generous fingers.
“I can see now,” he said. “Where’s Herbie and Gloria?”
“They left a long time ago, baby. I think you have a temperature. Your head is terribly warm.” Her mouth’s cool touch burned.
“I’m all right,” he boasted.
“I think I ought to call a doctor, Peter. I think so. Your head’s burning up.”
“I’m fine,” he insisted. “You see … what it is, there’s this flame in my head that goes on and off. When you touched me just now it went on.”
She laughed. “You’re out of your mind,” she said as though it were a grace. She kissed his forehead again, tasted his fever, lingered.
“If you don’t watch out,” he said, “you’re going to burn the house down.”
“Do you know,” she said, turned away from him, “sometimes, like now, I love you so much it frightens me.”
He closed his eyes and let it pass over him like a cool breeze, like a dream. “Would you repeat that, please?”
She touched his forehead with her hand, an official gesture of care. “You’re much cooler now, Peter,” she said. “You really are. I think your fever is completely gone.”
It was. It was gone. And, of all things, he missed it.
Lois had turned over onto her side, was trying to sleep.
“Who invited Herbie and Gloria, anyway?” he said, and waited and waited for no answer.
He reached his foot under the covers so that it touched her. She shivered in her sleep, moved away from him. “What are we going to do?” she muttered.
In the morning, in a dull bright glow, Peter’s fever was back, flickering in his eyes like a snake’s tongue.
With a kind of terrible tenderness, as if he were on the edge of death or breaking, Lois served him breakfast in bed — an enormous breakfast of juice, bagels and cream cheese, bacon and eggs, toast and jam, and coffee, which he wolfed down ravenously, still hungry when he finished.
“What day is today?” he said; he had the feeling he had been in bed convalescing for weeks, months.
“Yesterday was Wednesday,” she said, “today is Thursday, and tomorrow …” She smiled queerly, shrugged, looked at the wall behind his head.
“What’s tomorrow?” he said, realizing with a shock what it was in the moment of asking.
Having assembled the dirty dishes on a tray, Lois carted them into the kitchen, dropping a cup, the handle snapping off like dry wood.
She returned from the kitchen, unaccountably cheerful, smiling, carrying a cup of black coffee, her breakfast, a half-smoked cigarette floating face down in the saucer.
She sat on the edge of the bed, facing away from him. “What do you think?” she said in an abstracted, childlike voice.
“I’m sorry about yesterday,” he said.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she said. He shrugged.
Lois started to get dressed; Peter dozing, daydreaming. “Maybe I won’t go to school today,” she announced. “Will you stay home if I stay home?”
“Okay,” he said, not sure that the conversation wasn’t a part of his dream, and his answer made merely to the ghosts of his mind’s will.
“It will be nice,” she mused. “Like it was before we were married.”
Something bothered him. “Why do you say like before we were married’?”
“I don’t know. We didn’t have to be in love then.”
“Yeah?”
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” He was suddenly, the fever leaving him, terribly depressed, his head throbbing somewhere.
She sat down on the edge of the bed, still in her slip, studied him as if he were under glass, as if he were glass. “Do you think you’d feel better if you went to work?”
“No,” he said. “I wouldn’t.” He couldn’t explain.
“It was better before we were married,” she said, her face mournful, her mouth twisted as if she just remembered having eaten something distasteful.
He was too depressed to talk — something, some hand of pressure hugging his throat.
“Why was it better before?” she said. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t know either.” She got up, concerned with the necessity of getting dressed. “Even if you stay home, I think I better go to school. I’ve been missing too many classes as it is, Peter. And then I may have to miss a few days …” She looked at him, waited for him to say something, but he stared at the wall, pretended not to know that she was looking at him. They both knew he was pretending.
“I think it was better before,” she said, “because it seemed impermanent then, doomed to end sooner or later.” She finished dressing in a nervous hurry, glancing around as if something was out of place or missing. He remained in bed, lonely, convalescing.
“Have you seen my wallet anywhere?” she asked him, her coat on, ready to leave.
He was innocent this time (that is, he hadn’t seen it), though also suspicious of himself, a known liar and voyeur. He didn’t answer.
“I know you’re not sleeping, Peter, so you can stop pretending. Have you seen my wallet? I want to know. Did you take it?”
No, he muttered, the word soundless, trapped in his throat, burning.
“I’m going to be late,” she said, frantic, tearing about the apartment from kitchen to bathroom as though her frenzy could shame the wallet into making an appearance; in desperation — a protest against the duplicity of things — she poured the contents of two handbags onto the floor. “I’m late,” she kept saying. “I’m late. And my blue bag is also missing.”
Her last words at the door: “I hope you feel better.” The irony like poison gas.
As soon as she was gone, he was out of bed and dressed, weak on his feet but willing — willing for what, he didn’t know. Before he left for work, Peter pulled out the bottom drawer of the dresser and was rewarded for his curiosity: Lois’s blue bag was there, her wallet inside the bag. How could she not have known? he wondered. It was something else to worry about.
His mistake was to report the robbery. He had had only two fares in an hour — one a ten-cent tip — when he was called to a police station in Flushing to make an identification.
The man they were holding, he was told by a knife-faced detective who bore a curious resemblance to Dick Tracy, had been picked up the night before in the vicinity of the robbery for — in the detective’s words — making improper advances to a sailor. (What were proper advances? Peter wanted to ask, didn’t.) “We found on his person,” the detective went on grimly, “fifty-four dollars and sixty-eight cents, of which more than ten dollars was in change. Which made us, as you can understand, suspicious. But then, to the best of our knowledge, no robbery had been committed last night which could be pinned to our man.” The detective paused, stabbed Peter with a look.