CHAPTER NINE
Adam Randolph roamed the streets of the city, aimlessly walking and flirting with the danger that lurked wherever he went. But he had the look of a madman; and potential robbers and muggers knew well enough to stay away. He moved steadily downtown without even realizing it, and it was almost dawn by the time the depressed scientist reached 42nd Street. The litter-scattered sidewalks of Seventh Avenue were comparatively empty; only a few of the night inhabitants of the city were to be seen. Dr. Randolph fit right in with the others, and he was not surprised when a derelict saluted him, "Hey, brother!"
And a little further on, a prostitute nodded and smiled at him. He looked at her, astounded. "God, I called Helen a prostitute!" he said. When in reality it is I who am the prostitute!
Stunned by this uncomfortable illumination, Dr. Randolph rushed up to the startled hooker and embraced her warmly.
"You're beautiful!" he told her. "Oh, God, you're so beautiful!"
"Yeah?" the woman said suspiciously.
"Yes!" Adam affirmed. "Where do you live? How can I get in touch with you?"
"You got something special going?" Hannah thought that he was either a true crazy or a cop. One way or the other, man, she was going to be ultra careful.
"Something very, very special!" Adam said.
"Well, you call this number, and they'll get in touch with me. It's Harry's Bar over there!" she pointed across the street.
"Fine, fine. You won't regret it!" Adam cried as he ran on. The subway was nearby and he ran down into it. He had to get home fast. He had a lot of work to do!
It was two in the morning, and Helen had not yet come home. Adam had all in readiness for her return, but still she hadn't come back. He even took a taxi uptown to the apartment that he used as a lab to see if she was still there, but there was no trace of her.
In desperation, he called the police, but they were singularly unsympathetic.
"Ya had a fight with your wife, buddy? You know how many calls we get like this a day? She ain't come hack a week from now, you call us again!"
Adam was in a state of utter despair by the next evening. He began to think about his wife's life when he wasn't at home. For the first time he was trying to figure out just what she did all day long. Who were her friends? Had she ever mentioned anyone! He couldn't remember a single name. Oh, God! Why hadn't he listened to one of those interminable conversations of hers? Then a glimmer of a memory came back to the suffering professor. Stan! He'd heard her mention Stan, her analyst, but who was he, and what was his last name? Hurriedly, Adam began to rummage through his wife's dresser drawers, but he found nothing. Then he looked in the night table where the bedroom telephone was. There he found a small address book, and after rifling nervously through it, he found: Dr. Stanley Bederbeck, 60 West 96th Street. 977-0002.
Adam dialed the number quickly, only to find he had mis-dialed and was obliged to try it again. The telephone rang and rang, and finally a secretary answered.
"Get me the doctor! Quick! I'm Helen Randolph's husband. Hurry, I must talk to him!"
The secretary tried to make some sense out of the harassed man's words and finally, giving up, connected him through to Stan.
"My wife… I mean Helen! I've done something awful. I'm afraid she'll do something silly! Please, you've got to help me! We've got to find her!" Adam blurted out.
Stan's voice was as soothing and as stern at the same time as he could possibly make it. A little the way it had been when he'd talked to Helen on the phone a few hours before.
"Dr. Randolph! Your wife is right here. I won't say that she's fine or even all right, but she's here."
"Oh, God! Thank God!" Randolph burst into tears of relief.
Stan put the call onto the speaker attachment which transmitted the conversation into the room. Helen looked up from the sofa on which she'd been lying as her husband's broken voice expanded into the room. Why, she'd never heard him like that, and it was profoundly shocking to hear him crying.
"I've been so wrong, so very wrong!" Adam blubbered. "Tell her she's got to come home so I can make it up to her!"
"Well, that's up to Helen. Do you think that she feels like coming home after what she experienced last night?"
"Everything has changed, everything is different. What a fool I've been!"
"That's what they all say," thought Stan. "That's not for me to say, Dr. Randolph, but as your wife's doctor, I feel it necessary to tell you that you have a very disturbed woman here. Helen needs the proper care and special consideration under the rather extreme circumstances in which she finds herself. I won't hide from you the fact that it is only pure luck that I was able to persuade Helen to come here and see me rather than doing herself in."
"Doing herself in?" Randolph's voice was strident. Was this man going to prevent his seeing his wife ever again? "What do you mean. Is she all right? You said she's there. Let me talk to her. She's my wife!"
"Now there's where you're going wrong, Mr. Randolph. I'd be doing both you and my patient a disservice if I didn't try to explain to you that the person you refer to as quote, my wife, unquote, is much, much more than that. She is a person in her own right and deserves to be treated as such! Once you begin to see her in this light, I feel that a great many of the problems which you two have accumulated through the years can begin to clear up."
Sobering, Adam tried to assimilate this information. "Yes," he said, trying to resume his natural tone of voice, his responsible citizen voice, "Yes, I've realized that. That's just it! I see that that's where I've gone wrong! Even in the experiments, that's where I have gone wrong. I've made prostitutes of them all! That's what I've done!" Adam's voice broke. "Tell her she's got to come back to me! She's just got to!"
Stan looked at Helen. The pale and disheveled wife was standing up. She wavered a bit and then steadied herself.
"Tell him, I'll be home in a little while!" she said, half-smiling, half-weeping.
Nervously, Adam paced up and down the apartment until at last he heard the familiar sound of the elevator stopping at the landing outside. He rushed to the door and opened it wide. There coming down the hall was a woman who resembled Helen. It was Helen, but she seemed so weak, so drained of life that she was almost unrecognizable. Adam felt something twist hard in his heart. This is what I've done to her!
Defensively, Helen started to speak. "I've come back!" she said, but hidden within the words was the meaning, "despite what you've done, despite what I've done, despite all the hurt and pain I feel!"
Adam gathered her into his arms and rushed her inside. He took her straight away to the bathroom where unprotesting, she allowed him to undress her while he ran a tub. Once the water was filled almost to the brim, he helped her to get in it and then washed her soothingly, carefully.
"Oh, my poor, poor darling!" he muttered. The hot water did its healing work on the soft, bruised flesh and restored something of Helen's vibrant skin tone. Bit by bit, the exhausted woman began to relax. Letting her head rest on the rubber pillow that was attached to the back of the tub by suction cups, she closed her eyes and sighed. She was almost asleep by the time Adam lifted her bodily from the tub and dried her carefully with a big towel. Then he took her into the bedroom and put her to bed. He himself had changed the sheets and had been embarrassed to discover that he didn't even know where they were kept. He'd had to search all over to find them. Then when Helen was snug in the bed, already sleeping like a baby, her fists tight around her pillow, Adam got in beside her.
They didn't wake until the following morning around 10:00A.M. The phone was ringing and Adam answered it groggily. "Mmm. Yes, yes! Oh, God, yes. Get a sub for me, I've got the flu!"