Now, he thought. Now’s the time, while this subtitle is on up there.
He stretched out his hand a little, gave his fingers a crisp snap so she would notice it.
She turned her head. “What’s the matter?”
“I left my wallet on the dresser, back home.”
“It’ll be all right. We locked the door after us.”
“I won’t be able to enjoy the show. I’m going back for it a minute.” He was already standing up.
“All the way there and back?” she protested.
“It’s only a couple of blocks each way. I can make it in five minutes.” He was already out in the aisle now, beyond reach of her deterring hand, had it occurred to her to use it, which it probably would not have. “Here, watch my seat for me. I’ll leave my coat and hat on it.”
“Will they let you in again?”
“I’ll tell them at the door.” He was already starting up the aisle, head turned backward to talk to her over his shoulder. Ordinary conversation, unless it became inordinately vociferous, was in itself no disturbance to others at a picture show; it was indulged in without hindrance at all times. “Watch the picture; I’ll be back before you miss me.”
She had no longer any way of stopping him, other than accompanying him out herself, and the admission had cost them forty cents, twenty apiece.
The screen brightened to silver, and the face of a young woman now occupied it, clown-white, eyes imbedded in glutinous black masses of mascara, treacly, Ubangi-thick lips fluttering in rapid, pantomimic speech. The swing door fluxed behind him and obliterated her.
He explained his situation to the ticket taker. The ticket taker remembered him well, because (a) he had asked him if there were two seats on the aisle available, when they went in just now; (b) he had asked him what time it was; (c) he had somehow managed to drop his tickets to the floor, in seeking to hand them over, and both of them, he and the ticker taker, had bent over together to retrieve them; and (d) he had complimented the ticket taker, who was actually on the elderly side, on his agility in bending, using the flattering expression “a young man like you,” which had pleased the ticket taker to the point of brimming cordiality.
The ticket taker, still cordial, agreed to pass him through on simple sight alone, on his return.
The theatre canopy, with its spinning threads of alternately broken and resumed current, rippling liquidly against the night behind him, he broke into a quick jog that was only less than a headlong run.
He came back in sight of their place. He slowed, then stopped, just short of it. He looked around. There was no one in sight.
So I beat you back here, did I? he gloated grimly.
He keyed the door, let himself in, closed it after him.
Darkness, but he knew his way around by heart. He made sure all of the shades were down, first, on all of the windows. Down to the very bottom, to seal up any telltale gap, no matter how slender. They were blue; they didn’t give out light, they kept it in. Then very sparingly he lit just two lights, one at the back of the hall, so that he could see him, take his measure, when he opened the door; the other a lamp in the front room. He moved this from where it habitually was, set it down by a certain chair, now dedicated, so that that particular chair received most of the benefit of it, the periphery of the room remained less clear, if still not actually shadowy.
Then he went to the back, and without lighting any further lights, took from one of the kitchen hideaways by sense of touch alone a pocket battery-light which he owned. He used this instead to see his way around, poking it now into drawers, now into cupboards, in search of something.
It had apparently not yet taken definite form in his mind, for he picked up two totally dissimilar objects, half tentatively, then set them down again. One was a knife used for carving roasts, the other a flatiron of Marjorie’s.
He found something finally, on the shelf of the broom closet, which in the act of finding became what he had sought. An ordinary household claw hammer. None too bulky, in fact with quite a slender shaft, but with a head weighted sufficiently at least to stun someone, render them senseless, so that they could be transported elsewhere for the more mortal assault.
He tried to slip its handle rearward up his coat sleeve, hold its head reversed in his cupped hand. That was too awkward, attracted attention to his hand by the stiff unusable way he was compelled to hold it.
He laid the hammer down flat finally, so that its shaft made a bridge between two height-differentials, crashed his foot down on it full force. The shaft fractured at about two-thirds length. There was enough left below the head for a good solid hand-grip, and that was all he wanted. He now put this part into his side jacket pocket, and that took it quite easily.
He discarded the pocket light, returned to the front room, sat down in the selected chair, and measured it for head-height. His own head extended well up over the back of it, and therefore so would anyone else s who was of average height.
On the wall opposite him, however, there was a long, slender, ornamental mirror panel. This revealed the sector behind the chair. He took that down, stood it off in a corner, face inward to the wall. The wall was now blank opposite the chair.
He moved the chair out a little, not much, so that there was a little more space behind it to move about in. To take a stance in, and swing your arm up and over in.
He looked dubiously down at the rug. Even if you upset a glass of water on it, it retained the stain (as he knew by experience), much less — something thicker. He got the evening newspaper he had brought home with him the first time, three hours ago, separated it into its component leaves, and made a mat of these all over the floor, forward of the chair, so that anyone falling face-forward would rest upon them. As spilled ink does upon a blotter.
He felt in his pockets now. He had a packet of cigarettes in them, a yellow lead pencil, not much else. The cigarettes would do. He went behind the chair and placed them upon a small three-legged tabouret or stand they had there, hugging the wall. He left them standing there.
Then he went outside, close up to the front door, and flattened himself against the sideward wall, right up against the door seam, and fell motionless and waited, hands crushed behind his body in a leashed attitude.
He waited for minutes that were hours; that fell as sluggishly, one by one, as drops of molten lead from a smelter, seeming never to part from it, stretching themselves out into elongated strings before they at last severed themselves and tumbled.
He took no count of them. Fear — and this was fear that had him, purely and simply — usually gives a mercurial restlessness, an instability. Yet paradoxically it can give a stoical patience too. He would have stayed there all night like that if he’d had to, feeling no ache, no stiffness, no constraint.
A car drew up and stopped. It just stood there for some moments, and no one got out. Why should it just stand like that? Come from nowhere, and then just stand like that, engine gone, before his own door and no other?
This is he. Here he is now. He made that reflex gesture that is always made, that the wielder-to-be of any weapon never failed to make yet. He knew the hammer head was there safe in his pocket, but one hand came out from behind him to touch it anyway, then slid back where it had been.
A door slab ground open, not a wall door but the curved, metal-sheathed door of a car, with its more resonant, crunchy sound. Then it was slapped closed again. Shoe leather scuffed across pavement, came right up to the door, silenced.