"It's exactly like the one last month at the Grand Park Hotel. The same person did both of them."
There was silence for a second or two. Then:
"Could you give me your name and-"
She hung up, smiling.
She recalled, as precisely as she could, her actions of the previous night after she had waved goodbye to Ernest Mittle outside her apartment house door. She concentrated on the areas of risk.
When she had exited again, the doorman had hardly given her a glance. He would not remember the black-seamed hose, the high-heeled shoes. The cabdriver would never remember the woman he had driven to 72nd Street and Central Park West. And even if he did, what had that to do with a midnight murder at the Hotel Pierce?
No one in the ladies' room of the Filmore had seen her don wig and apply makeup. She had left from the hotel exit; the bartender could not have noted the transformation. The driver of the taxi that had taken her to a corner three blocks from the Pierce had hardly looked at her. They had exchanged no conversation.
The cocktail lounge, El Khatar, had been thronged, and there had been women more flamboyantly dressed than she. There had been another couple in the crowded elevator who had gotten off on the 30th floor. But they had turned away in the opposite direction, talking and laughing. Zoe Kohler didn't think she and Fred had been noticed.
Within the room, she had been careful about what she touched. After he was gone (she did not use the word "dead"; he was just gone), she was surprised to see that she was blood-splattered only from the elbows down.
She had stared at the blood a long time. Her hands and forearms dripping the bright, viscid fluid. She sniffed it. It had an odor. Not hers, but it did smell.
Then she had gone into the bathroom to wash the crimson stains away. Rinsing and rinsing with water as hot as she could endure. And then letting the hot water run steadily to cleanse the sink and drain while she dried her arms and hands. She went back to the bedroom to dress, not glancing at what lay on the bed.
Then, returning to the bathroom, she had turned off the water and used the damp towel to wipe the faucet handles, the inside doorknob and later, the white plastic card Fred had tossed atop the bureau near the outside door.
Before she left, she had removed her wig and makeup, scrubbing her face with the towel. Wig and towel went into her shoulder bag. She took a final look around and decided there was nothing she should have done that she had not.
The descending elevator was crowded and no one had looked at her: a pale-faced, mousy-haired woman wearing a loose-fitting trenchcoat buttoned up to the chin. Of course no one looked at her; she was Zoe Kohler again, the invisible woman.
She had walked over to Fifth Avenue and taken a cab downtown to 38th Street and Fifth. She walked from that corner to her apartment house. She felt no fear alone on the street. Her life could have ended at that moment and it would have been worthwhile. That was how she felt.
Locked and chained inside her own apartment, she had showered (the third time that day). She replaced all her secret things in their secret places. She pushed the damp towel deep into the plastic bag in her garbage can, to be thrown into the incinerator in the morning.
She hadn't been aware of her menstrual cramps for hours and hours. But now she began to feel the familiar pains, gripping with increasing intensity. She inserted a tampon and swallowed a Midol, two Anacin, a vitamin B-complex capsule, a vitamin C tablet, and ate half a container of blueberry yogurt.
Just before she got into bed, she shook a Pulvule 304 from her jar of prescription Tuinal and gulped it down.
She slept like a baby.
During the month that followed, Zoe Kohler had the sense of her ordered life whirling apart. She was conscious of an accelerated passage of time. Days flashed, and even weeks seemed condensed, so that Fridays succeeded Mondays, and it was an effort to recall what had happened between.
Increasingly, the past intruded on the present. She found herself thinking more and more of her marriage, her husband, mother, father, her girlhood. She spent one evening trying to remember the names of friends who had attended her 13th birthday party, and writing them down.
The party had been a disaster. Partly because several invited guests had not shown up, nor bothered to phone apologies. And partly because her periods had started on that day. She had begun to bleed, and was terrified. She thought it would never stop, and saw herself as an emptied sack of wrinkled white skin.
Ernest Mittle phoned her at home a week after their meeting. She hadn't expected him to call, as he had promised-men never did-and it took her a moment to bring him to mind.
"I hope I'm not disturbing you," he said.
"Oh no," she said. "No."
"How are you, Zoe?"
"Very well, thank you. And you?"
"Just fine," he said in his light, boyish voice. "I was hoping that if you didn't have any plans for tomorrow night, we might have 1 dinner and see a movie, or something."
"I'm sorry," she said quickly. "I do have plans."
He said he was disappointed and would try again. They chatted | awkwardly for a few minutes and then hung up. She stared at the dead, black phone.
"Don't be too eager, Zoe," her mother had instructed firmly. "Don't let men get the idea that you're anxious or easy."
She didn't know if it was her mother's teaching or her own lack of inclination, but she wasn't certain she wanted to see Ernest Mittle again. If she did, it would just be something to do.
He did call again, and this time she accepted his invitation. It was for Saturday night, which she took as a good omen. New York men dated second or third choices during the week. Saturday night was for favorites: an occasion.
Ernest Mittle insisted on meeting her in the lobby of her apartment house. From there, they took a cab to a French restaurant on East 60th Street where he had made a reservation. The dining room was warm, cheerfully decorated, crowded.
Relaxing there, smoking a cigarette, sipping her white wine, listening to the chatter of other diners, Zoe Kohler felt for a moment that she was visible and belonged in the world.
After dinner, they walked over to 60th Street and Third Avenue. But there was a long line before the theater showing the movie he wanted to see. He looked at her, dismayed.
"I don't want to wait," he said. "Do you?"
"Not really," she said. And then, without considering it, she added: "Why don't we go back to my apartment and watch TV, or just talk?"
Something happened to his face: a quick twist. But then he was the eager spaniel again, anxious to please, his smile hopeful. He seemed constantly prepared to apologize.
"That sounds just fine," he said.
"I'm afraid I have nothing to drink," she said.
"We'll stop and pick up a couple of bottles of white wine," he said. "All right?"
"One will be plenty," she assured him.
They had exhausted remembrances of their youth in Minnesota and Wisconsin. They had no more recollections to exchange. Now, tentatively, almost fearfully, their conversation became more personal. They explored a new relationship, feinting, pulling back, trying each other, ready to escape. Both stiff with shyness and embarrassment.
In her apartment, she served the white wine with ice cubes. He sat in an armchair, his short legs thrust out. He was wearing a vested tweed suit, a tattersall shirt with a knitted tie. He seemed laden and bowed with the weight of his clothing, made smaller and frail. He had tiny feet.
She sat curled into a corner of the living room couch, her shoes off, legs pulled up under her gray flannel jumper. She felt remarkably at ease. No tension. He did not frighten her. If she had said, "Go," he would have gone, she was certain.
"Why haven't you married?" she asked him suddenly, thinking he might be gay.
"Who'd have me?" he said, showing his small white teeth. "Besides, Zoe, there isn't the pressure to marry anymore. There are all kinds of different lifestyles. More and more single-person households every year."