“Y-yes . . . Oh, my God! . . . Yes . . .”

  “I have to hide. For the night. Can you let me stay here?”

  “Here?”

  “Yes. For one night.”

  It could not be his living room around them. It could not be his house. He could not have heard what he had heard.

  “But you . . .” He gulped. “That is . . . how . . . I mean, why did you . . .”

  “I read your letter. And I thought that no one would look for me here. And I thought you would want to help me.”

  “I . . .” He choked. “I . . .” The words, coming back, were burning his throat that had lost all habit of sound. “Miss Gonda, you’ll excuse me, please, you know it’s enough to make a fellow . . . I mean, if I don’t seem to make . . . I mean, if you need help, you can stay here the rest of your life, and if anyone tries to . . . There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you . . . if you need me . . . me . . . Miss Gonda!”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Come this way,” he whispered. “Keep quiet. . . this way.”

  He led her up the stairs, and she followed like a shadow, and he could not hear her steps behind his heavy, shuffling ones.

  He closed the door of his room and pulled the blinds over the windows. He stood staring at the pale face, the long mouth, the eyes in the shadows of long lashes, the eyes that saw too much, the eyes that were like a sound, like many sounds, saying something he wanted to understand, always one sound short, the last one, the one that would let him know the meaning of what they were saying.

  “You . . .” he stuttered. “You . . . You’re Kay Gonda.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  She threw her bag down on his bed. She took off her hat and threw it on his dresser. She pulled off her gloves, and he looked, bewildered, at the long transparent fingers, at hands that looked like a vision of human hands.

  “You mean . . . you mean they’re really after you?”

  “The police,” she said. She added calmly: “For murder, you know.”

  “Listen, they can’t get you. Not you. That don’t make sense. If there’s anything I can . . .”

  He stopped, his hand at his mouth. Down the corridor, steps were approaching, heavy, hurried steps with mules flapping against bare heels.

  “George!” Mrs. Perkins’ voice called from behind the door.

  “Yes, d-dovey?”

  “Who was that who rang the bell?”

  “No . . . no one, dovey. Someone had the wrong address.”

  They stood still, listening to the mules flapping away, down the corridor.

  “That was my wife,” he whispered. “We . . . we better keep quiet. She’s all right. Only she . . . she wouldn’t understand.”

  “It will be dangerous for you,” she said, “if they find me here.”

  “I don’t care . . . I don’t care about that.”

  She smiled at him, the slow smile he had seen so many times at the bottomless distance of a screen. But now the face was there before him, and he could see a light shadow of red on the pale lips.

  “Well,” he blinked, spreading his hands helplessly, “well, you just make yourself at home. You can sleep right here. I’ll . . . I’ll go down to the living room and . . .”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t want to sleep. Stay here. You and I, we have so much to talk about.”

  “Oh, yes. Sure . . . that is . . . about what, Miss Gonda?”

  She sat down on the bed, without noticing it, as if she’d lived there all her life.

  He sat on the edge of a chair, gathering his old bathrobe tightly, wishing dimly, painfully, that he had bought the new robe he had seen on sale at the Day Company.

  Her wide, pale, wondering eyes were looking at him, as if she were waiting. He blinked and cleared his throat.

  “Pretty cold night, this is,” he muttered.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s California for you . . . the Golden West,” he added. “Sunshine all day, but cold as the . . . but very cold at night.”

  “Sometimes.”

  He felt as if she had seized something somewhere very deep inside of him, seized it and twisted it in her strange, bluish fingers, and was pulling it, so that it hurt him, a pain he remembered having known very long ago, and now he knew he could feel it again, and it made him choke.

  “Yes,” he said, “it sure is cold at night.”

  She said: “Give me a cigarette.”

  He leaped to his feet, fumbled in his coat pocket, produced a package, held it out to her, the package trembling. He struck three matches before he could light one. She leaned back, a red dot trembling at the end of the cigarette.

  “I . . . I smoke this kind,” he muttered. “Easier on your throat, they are.”

  He had waited forty years for this. Forty years—to see a slender black figure sitting on the patchwork quilt of his bed. He had not believed it, but he had been waiting for it. He knew he had been waiting. What was it he wanted to say to her?

  He said:

  “Now, Joe Tucker—that’s a friend of mine—Joe Tucker, he smokes cigars. But I never took to them, never did.”

  “You have many friends?” she asked.

  “Yes, sure. Sure I have. Can’t complain.”

  “You like them?”

  “Sure. I like them fine.”

  “And they like you? They respect you and bow to you on the street?”

  “Why . . . why, I guess so . . .”

  “How old are you, George Perkins?”

  “I’ll be forty-five this coming June.”

  “It will be hard—won’t it?—to lose your job and to find yourself in the street? In a dark, lonely street where you’ll see your friends passing by and looking past you, as if you did not exist? Where you will want to scream out and tell them of the great things you know, but no one will hear and no one will answer?”

  “Why . . . when . . . when would that happen?”

  “When they find me here,” she said calmly.

  “Listen,” he said. “Don’t you worry about that. They won’t find you here. Not that I’m afraid for myself.”

  “They hate me, George Perkins. And they hate all those who take my side.”

  “Why should they hate you?”

  “I’m a murderess, George Perkins.”

  “Well, if you ask me, I don’t believe it. I don’t even want to ask you if you’ve done it. I just don’t believe it.”

  “If you mean Granton Sayers . . . no, I don’t want to speak about Granton Sayers. Forget that. But I am still a murderess. In so many ways. You see, I came here and, perhaps, I’ll destroy your life—everything that has been your life for forty-five years.”

  “That’s not much, Miss Gonda,” he whispered.

  “Do you always go to see my pictures?”

  “Always.”

  “Are you happy when you come out of the theater?”

  “Yes. Sure. . . . No. I guess I’m not. That’s funny, I never thought of it that way. I . . . Miss Gonda,” he said suddenly, “you won’t laugh at me if I tell you something?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Miss Gonda, I . . . I cry when I come home after every picture of yours. I just lock myself in the bathroom and I cry, every time. I don’t know why. I know it’s silly for a grown man like me . . . I’ve never told that to a soul, Miss Gonda.”

  “I know that.”

  “You . . . did?”

  “I told you I’m a murderess. I kill so many things. I kill the things men live for. But they come to see me, because I make them see that they want those things killed. That they want to live for something greater. Or they think they do. And it’s their whole pride—that they think and say they do.”

  “I—I’m afraid I don’t quite get you, Miss Gonda.”

  “You’ll understand someday.”

  “Look,” he asked, “did you really do it?”

  “What?”

  “Did you kill Granton Sayers?”

  She looked at him and did not answer.

  “I . . . I was only wondering why you could have done it,” he muttered.

  “Because I couldn’t stand it any longer. There are times when one can’t stand it any longer.”

  “Yes,” he said. “There are.” And then his voice was steady and natural and sure of itself. “Look,” he said, “I won’t let the cops get you. Not if they had to tear the house down. Not if they came with gas bombs and such.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “I don’t know . . . Only that . . .”

  “Your letter, it said . . .”

  “Oh,” he faltered, “you know, I never thought you’d read the silly thing.”

  “It was not silly.”

  “Well, you must forgive me, Miss Gonda, but you know how it is with movie fans, and I bet you have plenty of them—fans, I mean, and letters.”

  “I like to think that I mean something to people.”

  “You must forgive me if I said anything fresh, you know, or personal.”

  “You said you were not happy.”

  “I . . . I didn’t mean to complain, Miss Gonda, or . . . It was only . . . How can I explain? . . . I guess I’ve missed something along the way. I don’t know what it is, but I know I’ve missed it, only I don’t know why.”

  “Maybe it’s because you wanted to miss it.”

  “No.” His voice was firm. “No.” He rose and stood looking straight at her. “You see, I’m not unhappy at all. In fact, I’m a very happy man—as happiness goes. Only there’s something in me that knows of a life I’ve never lived, the kind of a life no one has ever lived, but should.”

  “You know it? Why don’t you live it?”

  “Who does? Who can? Who even gets a chance at the . . . the very best possible to him? We all bargain. We take the second best. That’s all there is to be had. But the . . . the God in us, it knows the other . . . the very best . . . which never comes.”

  “And . . . if it came?”

  “We’d grab it—because there is a God in us.”

  “And . . . you really want that? That God in you?”

  “Look,” he said fiercely, “I know this: let them come, the cops, let them come now and try to get you. Let them tear the house down. I built it—took me fifteen years to pay for it. Let them tear it down, brick by brick. Let them come, whoever it is that’s after you . . .”

  The door was flung open.

  Mrs. Perkins stood on the threshold, her fist clutching her faded blue corduroy robe in a tight huddle in the middle of her stomach. A long nightgown of grayish-pink cotton hung to the tips of her pink mules with faded velvet bows. Her hair was combed tightly back to a thin knot, and a hairpin was sliding down her neck. She was trembling.

  “George!” she gasped. “George!”

  “Dovey, keep quiet. . . . Come in . . . Close the door!”

  “I . . . I thought I heard voices.” The hairpin disappeared between her shoulder blades.

  “Rosie . . . this . . . Miss Gonda, may I present—my wife? Rosie, this is Miss Gonda, you, Miss Kay Gonda!”

  “Indeed?” said Mrs. Perkins.

  “Rosie . . . oh, for God’s sake! Don’t you understand? This is Miss Gonda, the movie star. She’s . . . she’s in trouble, you know, you’ve heard about it, the papers said . . .”

  He turned desperately to his guest, waiting for support. But Kay Gonda did not move. She had risen, and she stood, her arms hanging limply at her sides, her huge eyes looking at them without blinking, without expression.

  “All my life,” said Mrs. Perkins, “I’ve known you were a rotter and a liar, George Perkins! But this beats it all! To have the nerve to bring that tramp right into your own home, into your bedroom!”

  “Oh, shut up! Rosie! Listen! It’s a great honor that Miss Gonda chose to . . . Listen! I—”

  “You’re drunk, that’s what you are! And I won’t listen to a single word out of you until this tramp is out of the house!”

  “Rosie! Listen, calm yourself, for God’s sake, listen, there’s nothing to get excited about, only that Miss Gonda is wanted by the police and . . .”

  “Oh!”

  “. . . and it’s for murder . . .”

  “Oh!”

  “. . . and she just has to stay here overnight. That’s all.”

  Mrs. Perkins drew herself up and tightened her robe, and her nightgown stood out in a bump over her chest, a faded blue pattern of roses and butterflies trembling on the grayish pink.

  “Listen to me, George Perkins,” she said slowly. “I don’t know what’s happened to you. I don’t know. I don’t care. But I know this: either she goes out of this house this minute, or else I go.”

  “But, dovey, let me explain.”

  “I don’t need no explanations. I’ll pack my things, and I’ll take the children, too. And I’ll pray to God never to see you again.”

  Her voice was slow and calm. He knew she meant it, this time.

  She waited. He did not answer.

  “Tell her to get out,” she hissed through her teeth.

  “Rosie,” he muttered, choking, “I can’t.”

  “George,” she whispered, “it’s been fifteen years . . .”

  “I know,” he said, without looking at her.

  “We’ve struggled together pretty hard, haven’t we? Together, you and me.”

  “Rosie, it’s just one night . . . if you know . . .”

  “I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know why my husband should bring such a thing upon me. A fancy woman or a murderess, or both maybe. I’ve been a faithful wife to you, George. I’ve given you the best years of my life. I’ve borne your children.”

  “Yes, Rosie . . .”

  He looked at her drawn face, at the wrinkles around her thin mouth, at the hand that still held the faded robe in a foolish knob on her stomach.

  “It’s not for me, George. Think of what’ll happen to you. Shielding a murderess. Think of the children.”

  “Yes, Rosie . . .”

  “And your job, too. And you just got that promotion. We were going to get new drapes for the living room. The green ones. You always wanted them.”

  “Yes, Rosie.”

  “They won’t keep you down at the company, when they hear of this.”

  “No, Rosie.”

  He looked desperately for a word, for a glance from the woman in black. He wanted her to decide. But she did not move, as if the scene did not concern her at all.

  “Think of the children, George.”

  He did not answer.

  “We’ve been pretty happy together, haven’t we, George? . . . Fifteen years . . .”

  He thought of the dark night beyond the window, and beyond that night an endless world, unknown and menacing. He liked his room. Rosie had worked a year and a half, making the quilt for him. The woman had blond hair, a cold, golden blond, that one would never dare to touch. Rosie had knitted that tie, over on the dresser, in blue and green stripes, for his birthday. The woman had thin white hands that did not look human. In another year, Junior would be ready for high school; and he had always thought of that college where Junior would wear a black robe and a funny square cap. The woman had a smile that hurt him. Rosie cooked the best corn fritters, just as he liked them. The assistant treasurer had always envied him, had always wanted to be assistant manager, and now he had beat him to it. That golf club had the best links in town, and only the best of members, solid, respectable members; not with their fingerprints in the police files and pictures in all the papers as accessories after the fact of murder. The woman had spoken of a dark, lonely street where he would want to scream . . . scream . . . scream. . . . Rosie had been a good wife to him, hard-working, and patient, and faithful. He had twenty years to live yet, maybe thirty, no more. After all, life was over.

  He turned to the woman in black.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Gonda,” he said, and his voice was efficient, like the voice of an assistant manager addressing a secretary, “but under the circumstances—”

  “I understand,” said Kay Gonda.

  She walked to the dresser and put her hat on, pulling it down over one eye. She put on her gloves and picked up her bag from the bed.

  They walked silently down the stairs, the three of them, and George S. Perkins opened the door. Kay Gonda turned to Mrs. Perkins.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I had the wrong address.”

  They stood and watched her walking away down the street, a slender black figure with golden hair that flashed once in the light of a lamppost.

  Then George S. Perkins put his arm around his wife’s waist.

  “Is Mother asleep?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  “I thought I’d go in and talk to her. Make up, sort of. She knows all about buying Frigidaires.”

  3

  Jeremiah Sliney

  “Dear Miss Gonda,

  I think you are the greatest moving pichur star ever lived. I think yur moving pichurs is swell. I want to thank you from the bottom of my hart for the joy you giv us in our old age. There is plenty of other pichur stars onlie it aint the same thing. There aint none like you and never was. My wife and me just wait for evry pictur of yurs and we set thru all the shows and come back the nex day. It aint like if we just liked you. It is like goin to church goin to your picturs that’s wat its like, onlie beter. I aint never understan it myself on akount of you act bad womin and such but what you mak me think of is a statoo of the Saint Mother of God what I see once onlie I dont no how that is. Yur what we’d like a doter of ours to hav bin onlie never had. We hav three children my wife and me, too girls of them onlie it aint the same. We are onlie old folks, Miss Gonda, an yur all we got. We want to thank you onlie I don’t no how to say it on akount of I never rote no letter to a swell lady like you. And if ever we cood do sumthin to show how grateful we are to you we’d just die happie on akount of we aint got much longer to go.

  Resspecfully yurs,

  Jeremiah Sliney

  Ventura Boulevard

  Los Angeles, California”

  On the evening of May 5th, Jeremiah Sliney celebrated his golden wedding anniversary.