She managed to work her way around two sides of the room until she got to the boiler factory that was the trap drum. She caught his pistoning arms, held them down, restrained them long enough to make herself heard. “Cliff, take me out of here. I can’t stand it! I can’t stand any more of it, I tell you! I’m going to keel over in another minute.”
He was already doped with marihuana. She could tell by his eyes. “Where’ll we go, my place?”
She had to say yes, she could see that was the only thing that would get him out of there.
He got up, guided her before him toward the door, stumbling a little. He got it open for her, and she fled through it like something released from a slingshot. Then he came out after her. He seemed free to leave at will, without an explanation or farewell. The rest didn’t even seem to notice his defection. The closing of the door cut the frenzied turmoil in half, as with the clean sweep of a knife, and there was sudden silence, so strange at first.
The restaurant upstairs was dark and empty, save for a night light left burning far at the back, and when she had gained the sidewalk in front, the open air made her almost light-headed, it was so cool and rare and crystal clear after that fever chamber. She thought she’d never breathed anything so sweet and pure before. She leaned there against the side of the building, drinking it in, her cheek pressed to the wall like someone prostrated. He took a moment longer to come out after her, adjusting the door or something.
It must have been four by now, but it was still dark and the town was asleep all around them. For a moment there was a temptation to flee for dear life down the street, away from him, and have done with the whole thing. She could have outrun him, she knew; he was in no condition to go after her.
She stayed there, passive. She had seen a photograph in her room. She knew that was the first thing that would meet her eyes when she opened the door. Then he was beside her, and the chance was gone.
They went over in a cab. It was in one of a row of old houses done over into apartments, a single one to a floor. He took her up to the second floor and unlocked it and turned on the lights for her. It was a depressing sort of place; age-blackened flooring underneath a thin application of varnish, remote ceilings, high, coffinlike window embrasures. It wasn’t a place to come to at four in the morning. Not with anyone, much less him.
She shivered a little and stood still, close by the door, trying not to be too aware of the over-elaborate way he was securing it on the inside. She wanted to keep her thinking as clear and as relaxed as she possibly could, and that thought would only muddy it.
He’d finished locking her in. “We don’t need these,” he said.
“No, leave it on,” she said matter-of-factly, “I’m cold.”
There wasn’t very much time.
“What’re you going to do, just stand there?”
“No,” she said with absent-minded docility, “no, I’m not going to just stand here.” She moved one foot inattentively forward, almost like a skater trying out the ice.
She kept looking around. Desperately looking around. What would start it? The color. Orange. Something orange.
“Well what’re you looking for?” he said querulously. “It’s just a room. Didn’t you ever see a room before?”
She’d found it at last. A cheap rayon shade on a lamp far over at the other end of the room. She went over to it, turned it on. It cast a small glow in the shape of a halo above itself against the wall. She put her hand on it, turned to him. “I love this color.”
He didn’t pay any attention.
She kept her hand on it. “You’re not listening. I said this is my favorite color.”
This time he looked blearily over. “All right, what about it?”
“I wish I had a hat this color.”
“I’ll buy you one. T’morrow or the next day.”
“Look, like this, this is how I mean.” She picked up the small base bodily, held it riding on her shoulder with the light still on inside the shade. Then she turned toward him so that the shade seemed to be topping her head. “Look at me. Look at me good. Didn’t you ever see anyone wearing a hat this color? Doesn’t this remind you of someone you once saw?”
He blinked twice, with owl-like solemnity.
“Keep looking,” she pleaded. “Just keep looking like that. You can remember if you want to. Didn’t you ever see anyone sitting right behind you in the theater, in the same seat I was in tonight, wearing a hat this color?”
He said, quite momentously, quite incomprehensibly. “Oh... that was that five hundred smackeroos I got!” And then suddenly shading his eyes with one hand as if in perplexity, “Hey, I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about that.” Then he looked up and asked with a sort of trustful blankness, “Have I already told you?”
“Yes, sure.” That was the only answer to give. He might balk at telling her the first time, but not at repeating it, if the damage was already done. Those cigarettes probably did something to their powers of memory.
She had to grab it on the fly, she daren’t let it go by, even though she didn’t know if this was it yet, or what this was. She put the lamp down fast, moved toward him equally fast, yet somehow managing to give an impression of leisureliness. “But tell me about it over again. I like to listen to it. Go on, you can tell me. Cliff, because you know I’m your new friend, you said so yourself. What harm is there?”
He blinked again. “What are we talking about?” he said helplessly. “I forgot for a minute.”
She had to get his drug-disconnected chain of thought in motion again. It was like a feeder line that slips its cogs every once in a while and dangles helplessly. “Orange hat. Look, up here. Five hundred — five hundred smackeroos, remember? She sat in the same seat I did.”
“Oh yeah,” he said docilely. “Right behind me. I just looked at her.” He gave a maniacal laugh, stilled it again as suddenly. “I got five hundred smackeroos just for looking at her. Just for looking at her and not saying I did.”
She saw that her arms were creeping slowly up his collar, twining around his neck. She didn’t try to stop them, they seemed to be acting independently of her. Her face was close to his, turned upward looking into it. How close you can be to a thought, it occurred to her, without guessing what it is. “Tell me more about it, Cliff. Tell me more about it. I love to listen to you when you’re talking!”
His eyes died away in the fumes. “I forgot again what I was saying.”
It was off again. “You got five hundred dollars for not saying you looked at her. Remember, the lady in the orange hat? Did she give you the five hundred dollars, Cliff? Who gave you the five hundred dollars? Ah, come on, tell me.”
“A hand gave ’em to me, in the dark. A hand, and a voice, and a handkerchief. Oh yeah, and there was one other thing: a gun.”
Her fingers kept making a slow sweep to the back of his head, and then returning each time. “Yes, but whose hand?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t know then, and I never found out since. Sometimes I ain’t even sure it really happened. I think it musta been the weed made it seem like it happened. Then again, sometimes I know it did.”
“Tell it to me anyway.”
“Here’s what happened. I came home late one night, after the show, and when I come in the hall downstairs, where there’s usually a light, it was dark. Like the bulb went out. Just as I feel my way over to the stairs, a hand reaches out and stops me. Kind of heavy and cold, laying on me hard.