The Brass Bed

16

The telephone was ringing and ringing and wouldn’t quit. I got up slowly and went over to it, and my head expanded and contracted with a painful rhythm, and my tongue felt dead in my mouth. Sunlight entered the window from the east and crossed the floor in a broad swath.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hello,” Jolly said. “Is that you, Felix?”

I stood for a moment and watched dust particles moving lazily in the slanting shaft of light.

“Yes,” I said.

“I’m very glad you’re home, because I need you quite desperately, and you must come over at once.”

“Must I? Why?”

“I told you, Felix. I need you.”

“I need you too. I admit now that I need you like the devil, but I am determined nevertheless to survive without you.”

“Oh, Felix, please don’t be contrary. Something terrible has happened, and I don’t know what to do about it, and you simply must come at once.”

“What’s happened?”

“Well, it’s difficult to talk about, but Sid is here, and he seems to be dead.”

I thought about this briefly without any particular feeling because it seemed to me wholly incredible, there being a heroic dimension and dignity to dying that was surely beyond Sid’s attainment.

“Sid?” I said. “Sid dead?”

“Yes.”

“Are you certain?”

“He is quite cold and everything, Felix, and he doesn’t move, and I am certain that he is dead.”

“All right,” I said. “I’ll be right over.”

I hung up and stood there feeling the rhythmic pumping of my head. The dust particles moved in the shaft of light. The idea of Sid’s being dead still seemed fantastic, and I was not inclined to believe it. I moved through the light and the dust and began to dress and after a while was down in the Chevvie in the street. The Chevvie didn’t want to run, but I insisted, and it finally did. It was a few minutes after ten when it started, and it took me twenty minutes to get it to Jolly’s. I left it at the curb and went inside and found Jolly in the living room. She was sitting in a chair with her hands folded in her lap, and her eyes in the dusk of drawn drapes looked abnormally large and darkly luminous.

“Thank you for coming, Felix,” she said.

Her voice was small and handled the ridiculously formal little expression of gratitude as if it were extremely precarious business. I didn’t say anything in response, just staring at her, and she got up unhurriedly and put her arms around me. Her body was quiet against mine, only her breasts moving softly in the act of breathing, and I could feel her warm breath on the side of my neck. I let her hold me and submitted passively to the pain of wanting her, but I did not touch her with my hands.

“Where’s Sid?” I said at last.

“He’s in the garage,” she said.

I put my hands on her then, on her shoulders, and pushed her away.

“In the garage? What the hell’s he doing there?”

“He isn’t doing anything, Felix. Being dead, he’s just lying there and doing nothing at all.”

“Damn it, Jolly, that’s not what I mean. I mean, why did he go to the garage in the first place?”

“Well, it’s very reasonable, and I’m perfectly willing to tell you all about it, but first I think we had better go look at him and decide what we are going to do about him and all that. Don’t you think so?”

I didn’t want to go or see him or have anything at all to do with him, but it was necessary to go and see him and do something with him just the same, which was a necessity I could recognize in spite of not wanting to, and so I went. I turned and went out into the hall and back through the kitchen and out into the back yard and down across the yard to the garage, and Jolly came after me. We went into the garage through a small side door, which was standing open, and the big Caddy sat there gleaming and quiet in the interior dusk. Sid was lying on the floor behind the car with his head directly under the exhaust pipe, and the heavy, jointed garage door had been pulled down from overhead and fastened on the inside. He was lying on his side with his face turned so that he seemed to be staring along the floor under the car, and one arm was extended on the concrete as if he had been stretching it out for something that he had wanted and desperately needed and had not reached. I knelt beside him and looked at him closely, and he seemed somehow very small and shrunken and terribly isolated and immune, and I didn’t bother to touch him because he was obviously dead and had been dead for a long time. Standing, I went back along the side of the Caddy, the shining, impersonal murderer, and looked in through the glass of the front door and saw that the ignition was on and the gas gauge registering empty. Jolly was watching me from her position near the small door through which we had entered, and I could hear quite distinctly in that quiet place the measured sound of her breathing. The gas was still heavy, and my head was beginning to hurt, and I went on past her and outside.

She followed me and said, “You see? As I told you, he is dead.”

“Why didn’t you call a doctor?” I said.

“Doctor? Why on earth should I call a doctor, Felix? It is impossible for a doctor to help anyone who is dead.”

“Nevertheless, calling a doctor would have been appropriate under the circumstances. It’s what almost anyone would have done to start with.”

“Well, it didn’t seem appropriate to me, and the truth is, I didn’t even consider it after discovering that he was dead.”

“That’s because you think clearly, I guess. You don’t seem to lose the facility even under the greatest stress, and I really envy you. Now perhaps you will tell me why he came into the garage.”

“Surely that is obvious, Felix. He was putting the car away for me, of course. He lives only a short distance from here, and he said he would put the car away and walk on. I told him that it was unnecessary to put the car in the garage at all, because we often left it outside and it didn’t matter, but he was quite stubborn about it and insisted on doing it, so I said all right and went on upstairs to bed, and that’s all I know about it.”

“He was dead drunk.”

“What?”

“Sid was. When you left Prince Sam’s Hallelujah House last night. He was dead to the world in the front seat.”

“That’s true. He was quite drunk, as you say. However, on the way home the cool air revived him, and he sat up and talked quite sensibly. When we got here, he got out in the drive and walked with me to the door, and it was then he said he would put the car in the garage, and I said it was unnecessary, but he insisted.”

“And you went right upstairs to bed.”

“As I told you, yes.”

“Didn’t you hear anything?”

“Hear anything? I simply cannot understand what you are trying to get at, Felix. What on earth would I have heard?”

“The car must have run quite a while before it ran out of gas and died. A lot longer than it took Sid to die.”

“Don’t be foolish, Felix. An idling Cadillac makes practically no noise at all. Besides, as you see, the garage door was closed quite tightly. In addition to this, which is quite enough in itself, I had drunk quite a lot and probably would not have heard any noise even if there had been any.”

“I see that the door is closed. It was one of the first things I noticed.”

“Of course. It would be quite difficult not to notice a closed door.”

“True enough. The police will notice it also.”

“The police? What do you mean?”

“Well, stop and think about it with your usual clarity. Have you ever put the Caddy in the garage yourself?”

“Yes, I have often put it in the garage.”

“What was the first thing you did after getting the car inside?”

She was silent then, except for the soft and aspirate sound of her breathing, and all the scant light in the dim garage seemed to gather and glow in her luminous eyes.

“Oh,” she said after a moment. “I see what you mean. The first thing I always did, naturally, was turn off the engine.”

“Yes. Naturally. But Sid didn’t. He got out of the car, leaving the engine running, and closed the door. You must admit it seems peculiar, and the police will think so too.”

“Is it necessary to call the police?”

“What?”

“Aren’t you listening to me at all, Felix? I asked if it is necessary to call the police.”

“That’s what I thought you asked, but I couldn’t believe it. There’s Sid, Jolly. Look at him. He’s dead. He’s dead in your garage of carbon monoxide gas. The police like to know about things like that. As a matter of fact, they insist on it.”

“I still think it might not be necessary to call them.”

“Do you? What, in that case, do you propose to do with the body?”

“That would be a problem, of course. I thought that we might be able to take it somewhere else. We could take it to his own apartment or somewhere like that.”

“Oh, sure. Very simply. It’s done every day by all kinds of people, and if someone just happened to see us with the body it wouldn’t mean a thing.”

“Please don’t be sarcastic, Felix. It is difficult for me to love you when you get sarcastic. It would be essential to take Sid home at a time when we would not be likely to be seen, of course, and I am of the opinion that it is entirely possible to do it successfully.”

“Are you, really? And what happens when they do a post-mortem? How does a man die of carbon monoxide gas in his own apartment?”

“Can they tell about things like that? Actually? Just exactly what anyone died of and everything?”

“In most cases, they can tell. They wouldn’t have any trouble at all in this one.”

“That complicates it, as I can see. However, I can’t see that we need to let it deter us. After all, the idea is merely to move Sid somewhere else in order to avoid the inconvenience of having the police all over the place. If it creates a problem as to how Sid died, that is beside the point. Moreover, I consider it possible that they might decide that he had merely died of something or other and not bother to do a post-mortem at all.”

“Are you serious?”

“Certainly I’m serious. It seems to me, Felix, that you are trying to act like some kind of detective, and I can’t understand why you are making things difficult for me.”

She sounded, as she said it, deserted and miserable and all alone with her monstrous trouble. I wanted to go to her and put my arms around her and tell her that it was all right, that everything was perfectly all right, but that would have been a long way from true, and I couldn’t say it, and there was obviously no use in talking with her any longer about anything at all. I turned and walked away from her and back to the house.

In the hall outside the living room, I picked up the telephone and stood holding it without separating it from its cradle. Jolly came after me into the hall.

“So you are going to call them, then,” she said.

“Yes.”

“I thought you would surely help me.”

“I want to help you if I can, and I will, but it would be no help to try to deceive the police. We would only be found out, and then we would both be in very serious trouble.”

“I am still convinced that it would probably work.”

“It would not. There is not the slightest chance of its working. Besides, I can’t understand why you are so concerned about calling the police. It was an accident. Sid was drunk, and he passed out behind the car in the garage. That’s the way it happened, isn’t it?”

For several seconds she did not breathe, her small breasts rising and holding and falling with a long sigh after the seconds had passed.

“Yes, of course. That is the only way it could possibly have happened. Call the police, then, if you must. Call them at once.”

She turned abruptly and went into the living room, and I called the police and told them the situation and where to come. Then I went into the living room myself and found Jolly sitting in the same chair she had been sitting in when I arrived. She did not look at me and said nothing.

“It will be all right,” I said.

She shook her head and folded her hands and sat looking down at them.

“No. It will not be all right. It will be terrible. They will ask me questions, and persecute me, and treat me as if I were a criminal or something, and I am not at all sure that I can bear it.”

“Why should they do that?”

“Please don’t be evasive, Felix. You know very well that it will look extremely peculiar so soon after Kirby. The sheriff who was here that morning was very sly and disturbing, and it was perfectly plain that he did not believe that it happened with Kirby the way I told it, and now, under the circumstances, it is not likely that the police will believe that it happened with Sid the way it appears.”

“If it was an accident, it will be all right. It will not matter about Kirby or anything else.”

“Is that so? Are you sure that it’s so?”

She looked up from her hands slowly, sat looking at me with eyes in which the light had gathered, and then she stood up and put her arms around my neck and pressed closely against me, and her flesh was cold, and she was trembling.

“The truth is, Felix, I am very frightened.”

“You must not be frightened. It would be a bad mistake to let them know that you are frightened.”

“You will simply have to stay with me, Felix. You must always stay with me now, and there must never be anything more about surviving without me and such foolishness as that.”

“Is that your decision?”

“Yes, it is. And I would like you to put your arms around me now.”

“All right, if you wish it.”

“That’s good. I like very much to have your arms around me, and I am feeling better already. Would you care to kiss me also?”

I kissed her, and her lips were cold and remained cold under mine, but the trembling of her body ceased slowly. Afterward she sat down in the chair and folded her hands again in her lap.

“Do you think it will take them long?” she asked.

“No. Not long.”

“I hope they will come quickly now that it’s settled.”

“Would you like a drink?”

“No, thank you. I don’t believe I care for anything at all.”

I sat in another chair, and we waited together for them to come.