10
Afraid to go back inside again, and yet afraid to go away and leave the place, he stood leaning there against the outside of the closed door, in a state of erect collapse. A hand desperately pressing against the doorframe on each side of him, as though to ward off intrusion, discovery, just by being there.
He was like that when the top of Lansing’s head slowly came up above floor level, over by the stairwell. He greeted it with an infantile whimper of delight. The way a lost child greets someone who has come to retrieve him. He’d never been so glad to see anything before, as the top of that other man’s head. No sight of Marjorie, in all the years he’d loved her, had ever been as precious, been as dear. The instinct to live is greater than the instinct to love.
And then Lansing’s shoulders, and then Lansing’s back. Marshall was panting with eagerness, the way a puppy does when its owner has returned within its confused, limited ken.
A cartoonist would have drawn, for his eye sockets, brief circumflex accent marks, they were so creased, so elevated, in delight. They could have stood for crying, they could have stood for laughing; they stood for rapture.
Lansing made the turn of the banister and then saw him.
“Press,” he said in surprise, but no more than casual, conversational surprise, as when any two meet unexpectedly, anywhere at any time. And went on over toward him, hand extended. Reached down and found Marshall’s, and clasped it in one-sided greeting. “Press,” he said again.
Marshall’s lips opened and closed, twice, over idiot silence.
“What is it, can’t you get in? Does Marjorie know you’re out here?”
All Marshall could do at that was give his head a mute, shuddering shake and let it dangle over remorsefully, chin to chest.
Lansing edged him a little out of the way, to gain clearance.
Then suddenly he’d done a horrible thing. A simple thing. A thing that was both at once: simply horrible.
He knocked on the door. Knocked on the door of the dead.
Marshall’s features shriveled, as though a needle had gone into him somewhere.
He put his hands up and found his ears with them, to keep the sound out. Lansing had already repeated it just then.
“Don’t,” Marshall pleaded, in a broken whisper. “She can’t hear you.” He spiraled around and pressed his brow against the wall, arms hanging down now at loose ends beside him.
Lansing shot him a look, his hands went for the knob. The door crunched and he’d gone in.
Marshall rolled back again, the other way around, face outward to the stairs, and stayed that way. All loose in the joints, and yet remaining upright.
His mouth was shaped into a curious wizened scowl; the grimace just preceding tears, but the tears never came.
He couldn’t look in. He couldn’t seem to turn his head and look in, to see what Lansing was doing in there, although the opening was just at his shoulder.
Finally Lansing was beside him again. Had come out to the threshold again. Marshall didn’t look to see what his face was like. He only knew that it was there, somewhere a little rearward of his own.
“Who did it?”
Marshall’s lower lip bubbled. The wizened grimace continued. The tears never came.
“You?”
The lip kept flickering. Like a loosened lip borne down by the weight of the words on it. But no words came.
No words were needed.
A hot, windy little gust, as from an unheard sob, fanned past Marshall’s deadened cheek. From a sob that hadn’t been his.
“I don’t know what to do,” somebody whispered forlornly, close by. “I don’t know what to do.” And it must have been Lansing, for it hadn’t been he.
Then, blurredly, a figure moved out past him, turned to go toward the stairs. His eyes followed it inanely for a second or two, as though not understanding what it was, or why it moved, or where to.
Then, as if at least the first of these had been recalled to him if not the others, he spoke to it.
“Lance,” he said, benumbed. “Where you going?”
“Downstairs, to the street,” Lansing said. “See if I can find someone. A policeman.”
“Don’t,” Marshall cried out sharply. That at least had penetrated, that word. “Let me get out of here first, at least.”
He made a sudden bolt, came up against Lansing’s arms, flounderingly. Lansing’s arms were suddenly a rigid, inflexible bar across the passage, from wall to stair rail. He recoiled from them.
“There’s no way out, this way.”
“The street! The street’s down there!”
“There’s no way out, this way.”
Marshall took a faltering, rearward step.
Suddenly he turned and plunged the other way, toward the ascending arm at the other end.
He wasn’t quick enough. Fear is quick, but there must be some things that are quicker. Again Lansing was before him, breast to breast, again his arms were locked like steel from side to side.
“Nor this way either.”
“The roof! The roofs up there! I can go over it—”
“Nor this way either.”
“But what other way is there? W-what are you doing to me?”
“There’s only one way out, for you.” His eyes flicked to the door, beyond which no one lived now. “In there.”
Marshall turned and saw it, and then he turned again, and tried to cling to Lansing’s coat revers.
“Lance, let me get out, let me get out! In Christ’s name, let me get out!”
“I am. I’m trying to. But you won’t.”
“But that’s just a room, in there. All closed up. It has no—”
“That’s the only way out, for you. The only way there is.”
“I don’t know what you want me to—”
Then suddenly he understood. And all his fears of years and years came to a head on his face and burst like a great white pustule, and he was nothing but a mass of rotten, tainted fright.
“I don’t know how... I don’t know how to go about it...”
“She didn’t either. You showed her.”
“I was your friend...” He had instinct enough to use the past tense, at least. “Don’t you remember, I was your friend—”
“You looked like a man. How was I to know? You would have fooled anyone. You even fooled her.” He was past the point of even raising his voice, Lansing.
“I can’t — cold like this. Oh, give me an hour more. An hour to... to get used to the idea. Until tonight, at least. Tonight, only until tonight.”
“It’s night already. You’ve made it night for all of us. For her. For you.” And almost inaudibly he added, “And for me.”
“I don’t know how,” Marshall moaned. He shrank away from him, sidling his back along the wall.
“It’s easy. So easy.” Lansing moved toward him. His hands went out. Marshall shrank still farther, but their reach overtook him. But Lansing didn’t strike, or throttle, or offer to assail him with them. Instead, like a friend trying to help someone with the details of his appearance, he did something with the knot of Marshall’s necktie. Slid it downward, until suddenly it had disintegrated, there was no knot any more. Then drew the tie out from under its ensconcing collar, until it had fallen, in a woolen puddle, into the hollow of his own hand, held below to catch it. And then he pressed it, coiled like that, into Marshall’s hand. And taking the boneless fingers, closed them over it, so that they had to hold it, had to keep it, whether they wanted to or not.
Then he gave him a parting salute, gave him for gesture what was his due; said farewell to him in the way that he esteemed him. He wiped his own hand slowly down his side, as if to cleanse it of the soilure of the touch it had just been forced to meet.