The sun was slanting down between the slats on the Venetian blinds, shining into the silence and the warmth and comfort of a room I could not immediately recall.
I lay there with my eyes half open, not thinking, not wondering, not doing anything, just glad to be lying there. There was the sunlight and the silence and the softness of the bed and faint hint of perfume.
And that perfume, I thought to myself, was the kind that Joy wore.
“Joy!” I said suddenly, sitting up in bed, for now it all came back—the night and the rain and everything that had happened.
The door to the adjoining room stood open, but there was no sign of anyone.
“Joy!” I cried, tumbling out of bed.
The floor was cold when I put my feet on it, and there was a bit of chilliness in the breeze that blew through the barely open window.
I went to the door of the adjoining room and looked in. The bed had been slept in and had not been made, except that someone had pulled up the blanket. There was no sign of Joy. And then I saw the note on the door, stuck there with a pin.
I jerked it off and read:
Dear Parker: I took the car and went to the office. A story for the Sunday paper that I have to check. I’ll be back this afternoon. And where is that vaunted manhood? You never even made a pass at me. Joy.
I went back and sat down on the edge of the bed, still holding the note. My trousers and shirt and jacket were draped across a chair and my shoes, with the socks stuffed inside of them, sat underneath it. Over in one corner was the rifle that I had picked up from Stirling’s lab. It had been, I remembered, in the car. Joy must have gotten it out of there and brought it in and left it before she set out for the office.
I’ll be back this afternoon, she’d written. And her bed was still unmade. As if she had accepted that this was the way we’d live from now on. As if there were, in fact, no other way of life. As if she already had adjusted to the changes that had come.
And Man, himself, perhaps would adjust as easily as at first, happy to find any solution out of the bitter harassment and the shattering of his hope. But after that first temporary adjustment would come the anger and the bitterness and the realization of his loss and hopelessness.
Joy had gone back to the office to check on a Sunday story. The man next door had kept on working at his insurance job even at a time when his personal world had been falling apart about him. And, of course, one had to do these things, for one had to eat, one had to live somehow, one had to have the money. But it was, I thought, perhaps a great deal more than that. It was one way, perhaps the only way that was left, to hang on to reality, to tell one’s self that only a part of life had changed, that some of the old and ordered routine of one’s life had not been disturbed.
And I, I asked myself—what was I to do?
I could go back to the office and sit down at my desk and try to turn out a few more columns against my coming trip. It was funny when I thought about the trip, for I’d forgotten all about it. It was almost as if it were something new, something I’d never known about before, or, if I had known of it, something from so long ago that it was natural I should have forgotten it.
I could go back to the office, but what would be the purpose? To write columns that would be never read in a paper that in a few more days might be no longer printed?
It all was so damned futile. It was some thing you didn’t want to think about. And maybe that was why no one would listen, for if people didn’t know about it, they need not think of it.
I dropped Joy’s note and it fluttered to the floor. I reached out to the chair and got my shirt. And even then I didn’t know what I was going to do, but before I did anything I had to get my clothes on.
I went outside and stood on the stoop and it was a fine, sunshiny day, more like a summer than an autumn day. The rain had disappeared and the court was dry again, with only a tiny puddle here and there to show it had ever rained.
I looked at my watch and it was almost noon.
The insurance man’s car stood before the second unit down, but there was no sign of him or his family. It was Saturday and probably his day off and the family must be sleeping late. They had it coming to them, I told myself—a little decent rest with a roof above their heads.
Up the street I saw a restaurant sign and realized that I was hungry. And there probably was a phone there and I should call Joy.
It was just a little quick and greasy, but the place was crowded. I wriggled my waythrough and grabbed a stool up against the counter when a man finished and moved out.
The waitress came and I gave my order then got up and made my way through the crowd again to the phone booth in one corner. I managed to squeeze in and get the door closed behind me. I fed in my coin and dialed. When the operator answered, I asked for Joy.
“Get that story checked?” I asked her.
“Sleepyhead,” she chided. “When did you get up?”
“Just a while ago. What is going on?”
“Gavin’s in a tizzy. There’s a story and he can’t get his mitts on it.”
“Something about—”
“I don’t know,” said Joy, apparently knowing what I was about to ask. “MaybeThere’s a money shortage in the banks. We know—”
“A money shortage! Dow told me yesterday they were knee-deep in money.”
“I guess that was true,” she said. “But not any more. A lot of it is gone. They had it at noon yesterday, but when they closed up last night great chunks of it had simply disappeared.”
“No one will talk,’ I guessed. “That’s exactly it. The ones Gavin and Dow can get hold of stay absolutely mum. They don’t know a thing. A lot of them—the big, important ones—they can’t reach at all. You know how bankers are on Saturday. You can’t get hold of them.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Out playing golf or fishing.”
“Parker, do you think Atwood could somehow be involved?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I wouldn’t be surprised. I’ll do some checking.”
“What can you do?” she asked a little sharply.
“I could go out to the Belmont place. Atwood said—”
“I don’t like it,” she told me bluntly. “You were out there once before.”
“I’ll keep out of trouble. I can handle Atwood.”
“You haven’t got a car.”
“I can take a cab.”
“You haven’t money for a cab.”
“The cabby’ll take me out,” I said. “And he’ll bring me back. On the way back, he can stop at the office and I’ll pick up his fare.”
“You think of everything,” she said.
“Well, almost everything.”
I wondered, as I hung up, if I thought of anything.
The first thing that I noticed was that the window had been closed. When I had fled the place the night before I had left it open, but not without the ridiculous feeling that, despite everything, I should go back and shut it.
But the window now was closed and there were draperies at the windows and I tried to recall, but with no success, whether there had been draperies there before.
The house stood old and gaunt in the pale sunlight, and from the east I could hear the distant sound of water lapping on the shore. I stood and looked at the house and there was nothing, I kept telling myself, for me to be afraid of. It was just an old and ordinary house, its gaunt bones softened by the sunlight.
“You want,” the driver asked, “that I should wait for you?”
“I won’t be long,” I told him.
“Look, Mac, it’s up to you. I don’t care. The meter keeps on running.”
I went up the walk. Underneath my feet, the dried and fallen leaves crunched on the paving brick.
First I’d try the door, I decided. I’d do it civilized and decent. And if no one answered when I rang the bell, then I’d go through the window as I had before. The cabdriver, more than likely, would wonderwhat I might be up to. But it was none of his damn business. All he had to do was wait and take me back.