It was a grotesque word, and it made no sense to her. Bump, gump, jump. It was a lover’s code and the encastled maiden could not interpret it. And she looked down at the street below, at the beetle gleam of a car roof that went by forty feet below her, and she knew what the strange word meant and knew, at last, how perfectly logical it was. It had the perfection of a chord of music, of a line from a great poem.
When the sun came up, she began to clean the apartment. She scrubbed and washed and waxed and dusted with frenzied effort, and it was early afternoon before she was at last satisfied that she had brought it back to the gleaming brightness of over a month ago. She took a long hot tub, and scrubbed herself pink, and washed her hair and set it. She put on careful make-up and her prettiest dress and a few discreet touches of the perfume she had gotten one time from a class at Christmas. This, too, was a trip, and demanded careful preparation.
When her hair was completely dry and it was five o’clock in the heat of a late afternoon in that month of July, she opened the window wider and carefully dusted the sill again so as not to soil her dress. She put one thin leg over the sill and sat there for a moment, her eyes closed. She wanted to go out with her eyes closed during the fall to the stone floor of the city. She opened her eyes and looked down.
She was a woman in her early thirties, and her bones were good, but she was too thin, and she had always seen herself clearly. In this moment she saw herself clearly. She saw all of the deadly charade, and it was like awakening from a nightmare. It was a moment of clarity, as though cold water were dashed in the face of someone in hysteria. She felt faint, and she scrambled awkwardly back into the room, knowing in panic that this time of clarity might not last long enough for her to do what could save her, knowing that it was only a tiny time of freedom from the ritual of fear and atonement.
Moyer was in, and she said panting, dissonant words to him, and he at last understood who it was and remembered her and said he would be over at once. She went to the window and banged it down. She bit the inside of her lip until blood came. She was walking slowly toward the window again when he knocked on the door. She stood very still. He knocked again. She turned toward the door. She opened it and saw his face as she tipped forward wildly and awkwardly into an echo chamber of darkness.
Awakening was long and slow. The senses reached out and interpreted. The thin, sour spice of hospital air. A soft bell that called a doctor’s code. Chrome and canvas of the screens around the bed. Oblique light of the bedside lamp. Her own thin hand and a call button pinned to the sheet near it. She turned her enormously heavy head and saw Moyer sitting beside the bed with wise, heavy, expressionless face, sitting with endless, silent patience.
“How do you feel?” he asked softly.
“I’m very tired.”
“They said I could wait. They said it was malnutrition and acute anxiety. Glucose for the malnutrition and a sedative for the anxiety. That’s all, so don’t worry, and the screens are here so we can talk. Do you feel like it? If you’re too tired, just say so, and it can be another time, but I thought I would like to know. This is on my own time. Not official. I was going to stop in and see how you were getting along, because I knew that business about the girl hit you hard, but I never did stop in. I told myself you’d gone on your vacation.”
“I’m not too tired.”
“I found a couple of notes there. You better tell me about it.”
She told him about it. How it started, and about the car, and about the last note, not sparing herself in his eyes. He listened very gravely.
“So you got to where you thought it was your fault.”
“Yes.”
“But you know it wasn’t.”
“I know. I think my mind was...”
“Don’t say that!” he said, his voice changing from the dead level tone of the other things he had said. “You starve yourself, and it does funny things to the way you think. And a woman like you... I mean alone and thinking too much and killing that girl, you don’t want to start talking about your mind.”
“But I was going to...”
“And you didn’t. That is the thing to remember. That you didn’t. My Lord. I know about fear, and I know about being alone. I wondered about you, and I should have stopped in. I’ll pick him up.”
She frowned, not quite understanding. “Him?”
“Isn’t it obvious? She didn’t have anybody else. Just that one she was living with. He fights with her, and she charges out into traffic and gets killed, so he killed her. I mean that was the answer, but he didn’t want to face that. Maybe he loved her. Maybe sometimes the things that look cheap are not cheap at all. He couldn’t face blaming himself, so it had to be you, and so he made himself believe you were at fault, and the police had let you go and it was up to him to take it into his own hands. Play God and keep after you, because nobody could get away with killing his girl. He was at the inquest. Maybe he followed you back to your place. He could watch you when you had to leave your apartment, and he could tell how it was wearing you down and tell by your voice when you answered the phone. Don’t talk to me about your mind. It’s his mind we should talk about. I’ll pick him up. You should sleep now. Can you?”
“Oh, yes!”
“The intern says three days will be enough. I’ll take you back to your place. My sister will stay with you there a couple of days. As long as you want her. She’s a practical nurse.”
“Why are you... doing all this?”
He stood up and frowned down at her. “Have a good sleep, Miss Renken.”
When they released her, she leaned heavily on his arm on the way out to his car. His strength felt safe and good to her. His sister was in the car. Her name was Ruth, and she had quiet eyes like his, and they drove back to the apartment. They ate together there in the apartment, and Ellen Renken learned the shy use of his first name, David, and heard the strange, good sound of Ellen on his lips.
While they were having coffee, David handed her the picture. She looked at the young face incredulously, at the weak, slightly vicious mouth. “This is... the one?”
“That’s the one, Ellen.”
“But I imagined he would be... very different.” She felt strange. The picture had done what the reassurance of David’s presence could not do. The apartment no longer looked alien and fearful to her, and she suddenly no longer dreaded the time when she would be alone in the apartment. This young boy was no one to fear.
Ruth said, “I better get these dishes done.”
“I’ll help.”
“Tomorrow maybe I’ll let you start to help, Ellen.”
David Moyer said he had to report for duty. Ellen Renken went to the door with him. Ruth was rattling dishes briskly and humming to herself in the kitchen. David Moyer stood by the open door. Ellen looked at him, and she did not feel strained and shrill and awkward with this man. She felt no need to call upon a false arrogance with this man. He took her wrist, and he was the awkward one. She sensed the shyness in him, and the uncertainty. She moved into his arms with a quick grace that was new to her, lifting her mouth to his. She felt as if her blood moved warmer and faster, breaking a thousand brittle little dams, swirling away the crisp bits of those dams. His arms were warm and steady and safe. He looked at her for a moment, and she sensed that he had no words, not yet. He left. She went in and closed the door and leaned against it a moment. Her body felt alive, and she felt for the first time in her life that at this moment she must look beautiful, because he had told her in a wordless way that she was, and she felt that way at this moment.