Next thing I knew, Jerry Dingman’s face came out of a yellow fog. We were in the alley under the insect-repellent light. All the insects in the world were buzzing in my ears. Through them the old man was saying:
“Take a sup of water, Mr. Wycherly. You’ll feel better.”
He squashed a paper cup against my mouth. His other hand was behind my head. I swallowed some water and spilled some. The buzzing began to fade. The yellow fog shrank to an aureole around the old man’s head. The Good Sacramentan.
“What happened to you, Mr. Wycherly?”
“Accident.”
“Traffic accident or people accident?”
“People.”
“You want me to call the police?”
“No. I’m all right.” I sat up.
“You’re not as all right as you think. You got a nasty wound on the temple. I’ll take you up to your room and you lie down. Then you better let me get you a doctor, you’ll be needing stitches. I know one that makes night calls, and he don’t charge too much.”
Dr. Broch arrived in a few minutes, as if he sat up all night waiting for emergencies. His breath smelled of Sen-Sen, and the hands with which he opened his worn black bag trembled constantly. Behind horn-rimmed glasses his face had a washed and formless, almost marinated look. I was beginning to wonder if the Sacramento River ran alcohol instead of water.
The doctor spoke with a slight Middle European accent. “Mr. Wycherly, eh? There is or was a Mrs. Wycherly staying in this hotel. A relative, perhaps?”
“My wife. We’ve been divorced. You know my wife?”
“I can’t say I know her, no. The manager Mr. Fillmore called me in to treat her one day last week. He was worried about her condition.”
“What was the matter with her?”
He shrugged, turning up his hands over the open black bag. “It is not possible for me to say. She would not let me enter her room to examine her. Perhaps it was a physical illness, perhaps an illness of the psyche. Melancholia, perhaps.”
“Melancholia is a form of depression, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I believe she was depressed. She hadn’t got up out of bed for several days. She wouldn’t let the cleaning woman come into the room. That is why the manager was concerned. But I was unable to help her. All she let me see of her was the body under the bedclothes.” His hand described shaky sinuosities in the air.
“How do you know she wasn’t hurt, or physically sick?”
“She was eating well, very well indeed. Mr. Fillmore said she was eating a great deal – enough for two. She kept ordering food from the restaurant in the daytime and also at night – meats and pies and cakes and ice cream and beverages.”
“Was she drinking hard?”
“Some, I believe. But alcoholics don’t eat like that, you know.” He smiled dimly, as if he had private sources of information. “Perhaps her problem is an eating problem. I suggest this to you so you can get her help, perhaps.”
“Perhaps,” I said. “Or there may have been someone with her in the room.”
His eyebrows went up. “I had not thought of the possibility. It would explain her refusal to let me in, to let anyone in, wouldn’t it?”
I left the question hanging. In spite of their alcoholic tremor, his hands worked on me quickly and efficiently, cleaning and stitching up the cut in my head. It took six stitches. When he had put away his sewing materials, he told me that I was indubitably concussed, and ought to go to bed for several days. I said I would, gave him the twelve dollars he asked for, and suggested that he make no police report. He didn’t argue.
I went to bed for several hours, at least. Raw morning light at the window woke me out of raw black nightmare. I called the desk and after some negotiations got Jerry Dingman on the line.
“I’m just going off duty, Mr. Wycherly.”
“Stay on a few minutes for me. Is the restaurant open next door?”
“I think so.”
“Bring me three eggs, ham, hotcakes, a quart of black coffee, and a clothesbrush.”
He said he would. I took a long hot bath. Jerry knocked while I was drying myself. I fastened a towel around my waist and let him in. He sat on the bed and brushed my clothes while I ate.
Over the rim of the coffee cup, the harsh light at the window seemed to be softening down. The pulsing nightmare had dwindled to an all but forgotten blues with Phoebe’s name running through it. I couldn’t remember what I had dreamed about her.
“Feeling better?” Jerry said when I’d finished eating.
“I feel fine.” This was an exaggeration.
“Enjoy your breakfast?”
“Very much.” I put a dollar on the tray for him. Then I added another dollar. “Those days when Mrs. Wycherly wouldn’t get out of bed and had all the food sent up – who brought it up besides you?”
“Sam Todd, he’s one of the day men. Sam was amazed by all the eats she guzzled. So was I, for that matter. For a while there she was ordering up a big steak every night around midnight. Sometimes two.”
“Did she eat them herself?”
“She always licked the platter clean,” he said. “With double orders of French fries and everything.”
“Was there anybody in the room to help her eat them?”
“I never saw nobody, I told you that. I figured she just had a hearty appetite, or maybe she was feeding a cold, like.”
“Could there have been someone in the room?”
“A man, you mean?”
“Or another woman.”
He considered this. “Could be. When she was holed up like that, she never let me in. She made me set the tray outside the door, and then she’d take it in after I went away. I never even saw her for four-five days at a time. She telephoned her order down to the desk.”
I picked up my jacket from the bed and brought out Phoebe’s picture once again. “You never saw this – my daughter in the room?”
He took the colored photo to the window, and shook his head over it. “No siree, I never saw her anyplace around the hotel. I’d remember a pretty girl like her, too. I guess Mrs. Wycherly was pretty like her at one time. Before she started to eat so much?” He glanced up quickly. “No offense intended.”
“None taken.”
“Did you get to see her last night?”
“We won’t go into it, Jerry.”
“I was just wondering who clobbered you.”
“So was I. Are the cleaning women on yet?”
“They ought to be by now.”
He went away, looking slightly betrayed by my failure to confide in him. I dressed and went downstairs to the third floor. A linen cart stood in the hallway outside the open door of 323. Inside the room a vacuum cleaner whined.
The brown-armed woman operating it jumped when I spoke to her back, and turned with one hand in her asphalt-colored hair.
“Yessir?”
“My wife has been in this room for the last couple of weeks. Are you the one who cleans here every day?”
“Every day when they let me in.” She switched off the vacuum cleaner, looking at me somberly as if I was about to accuse her of a crime. “Is something missing?”
“Nothing like that. Jerry the bellhop says she wouldn’t let anyone into the room for four or five days last week.”
She inclined her head. “I remember. I was worried about her.”
“Why?”
“I think she had a spell on her,” the woman said with conviction. “My sister Consuela had a spell when we were living in Salinas. She put the bed against the bedroom door. She wouldn’t talk or show her face. I had to sleep in the kitchen for a week. Then I found a curandero and brought him to Consuela. He lifted the spell, and she was my sister again.”
I tried to keep the impatience out of my voice: “Was there anybody living in this room with her?”
“Nobody living.” She crossed herself unobtrusively.