He woke up bathed in sweat. Jill was sitting on the edge of the bed beside him, holding his shoulder and asking if everything was all right. She was dressed and her face was fresh and alive. The overhead light was on. He turned toward the window. It was dark outside, still. He shook his head to clear the dream away. She asked what was the matter.
“A dream,” he said.
“A bad one?”
“An odd one. Very surrealistic.”
“Dave—”
“It’s nothing.” He shook his head again and swung his legs over the side of the bed. She was smoking a cigarette. He took it from her and dragged on it. He asked her how long she had been up.
“Just a few minutes.”
“What time is it?”
“Four-thirty.”
“The middle of the night,” he said. He got dressed and went down the hall to the bathroom to wash up. He had a bad taste in his mouth and he needed a shave, but he hadn’t bought a razor or a toothbrush. He washed his mouth with soap and gargled with tap water. He came back to the room, put on a tie and knotted it carefully. “I look like hell,” he told her.
“You need a shave. That’s all.”
Outside, the streets were dark and empty. The corner drugstore was closed. Even the bars were closed. He bought a safety razor and a small pack of blades at an all-night drugstore on Forty-second Street. Down the block, Hector’s cafeteria was open, one of four lighted spots on Times Square. The block itself was dark, movie marquees unlighted, almost every place closed. They got coffee and rolls at Hector’s and he went upstairs to the men’s room and shaved, lathering up with bar soap. He nicked himself, but not badly. When he was done he put the razor and the blades in a wastebasket and went back downstairs. His coffee had cooled off but he drank it anyway.
He said, “I was just thinking.”
“About what?”
“Going back to Binghamton. It’s going to feel funny, don’t you think? Moving into the apartment, getting back to work.”
“You mean after all of this?”
“Yes,” he said. He got up and took their coffee cups back to the counter and had them filled again. He came back to the table and stirred his coffee methodically with a spoon. “Right back to another world,” he said quietly. “Searching titles and filing deeds and drawing wills.”
“That’s not all you do.”
“Well, no, but our kind of law is pretty quiet and orderly. You don’t get up in the middle of the night. Or carry a gun.”
She didn’t say anything.
He sipped coffee and put the cup back on the saucer. “You’ll be a housewife,” he said.
“With a weekly bridge game, I suppose.”
“Probably.”
“Is it bad?”
“What — your bridge game? It’s pretty bad.”
She didn’t smile. “That’s not what I mean. Going back, and what our life will be like there.”
“No, it’s not bad. Why?”
“The way you were talking.”
“I didn’t mean it to sound that way,” he said. “Just that it’s very different from, well, this. What day is it?”
“I think Thursday.”
“I’m supposed to pick up the Scranton papers. At that newsstand. I don’t think I’ll bother. Are you sure it isn’t Friday?”
“No, it’s Thursday.”
“It seems longer. We haven’t been married a week — can you believe that?”
“It does seem longer.”
“I killed a man yesterday.” He hadn’t meant to say it. It had come out all by itself. Nice day today. Maybe it’ll rain. I killed a man yesterday. Want more coffee?
“Don’t think about it.”
“I think I was dreaming about it. No one knows about it. You and I know, and Lublin knows, but no one else knows about it. Back home, nobody would dream it. If they heard about it they wouldn’t believe it.”
“So?”
“I was just thinking,” he said.
They had to go back to the Moorehead. The gun was there, tucked between the mattress and the bed-spring. The extra shells were in their room at the Royalton and he thought that a maid might stumble across them while she was cleaning the room. And the people at the Royalton might get suspicious if they didn’t occupy the room at all. He decided to call the hotel later in the day.
They locked the room door and went through the pocket atlas to try to figure out the best way to get out to Lorring Avenue. Two subways came close. There was an IND train that ran out Pitkin Avenue, but he couldn’t make out from the maps how you picked up the train in the first place. It seemed to originate somewhere in Brooklyn. One line of the IRT Seventh Avenue ran as far as Livonia Avenue and Ashford Street, which would put them about a dozen short blocks from Lorring. And he could figure out how to get that train. They could take a cab, of course, but he wasn’t sure he could find a driver who would want to go all the way out there, or who would know the route.
Downstairs, he left the key at the desk and paid another five-fifty for the next night. They might return to the hotel and they might not, but this way the room would be there for them if they needed it in a hurry. The five-fifty was insurance.
They got on the subway at Thirty-fourth Street a few minutes before seven. The train was fairly empty at the start. It thinned out even more at the Wall Street stop, and when they crossed over into Brooklyn there were only five other passengers in their car. He got up to check the map on the wall of the car near the door. The train had a full twenty stops to make in Brooklyn. A few people got on while the train followed Flatbush Avenue; most of them left at the Eastern Parkway stop. The.38 was in Dave’s pants pocket now. When he sat down his jacket came open, and he didn’t want the gun butt to show. The pocket that held the gun bulged unnaturally and he kept fighting the impulse to pat it. No one seemed to notice the bulge.
The ride lasted forever. Once the train came up out of the earth and ran elevated for four stops before disappearing into the ground once more. Then it came up and stayed up. At a quarter after eight they hit the last stop, the end of the line. They were by then the only passengers in their car. They got off the train and walked to the staircase at the end of the subway platform. The sun was out but there was a strong breeze blowing that chilled the air. They went down the stairs and passed through a turnstile.
He found a street sign. They were at the comer of New Lots and Livonia. He dug out the pocket atlas and thumbed to the map of that area, trying to figure out which direction to take next. He knew what route they had to take but he couldn’t tell which way they were facing or how to start off. He looked back at the subway platform, trying to orient himself, and Jill nudged him. He looked up and saw a uniformed policeman heading across the intersection toward them. The only thing he could think of was the gun. The cop knew about it, the cop was coming to pick him up. He was almost ready to start running when he realized he was acting crazy. The cop came closer and asked if they were lost, if he could help.
Dave laughed now, unable to help it. The cop looked at him curiously. He broke off the laughter and said yes, they were lost, and asked how to get to Lorring Avenue. The cop gave him directions — two blocks over Ashford to Linden Boulevard, then a dozen or so blocks to the left on Linden and he couldn’t miss it. They thanked the cop and left.
The neighborhood was a marginal slum, less densely populated than a Manhattan slum would be, but run-down and dirty, with a similar air of chronic depression. Most of the houses were only two or three stories tall. They were set close together with no driveways and no lawns. Stores were beginning to open, kids walked to school in bunches. About a third of the kids were Negroes.