marry her, even was ready to give up a woman who loved me, for one who was only interested in money. I thought about Lucy and a little jolt of guilt jabbed me in the navel. It was a physical thing and I felt sick to my stomach about the whole thing.
Oh, I could have Candy. All I had to do was get my hands on something in the approximate neighborhood of one hundred thousand dollars, that’s all. Then we could hop a plane to Acapulco and live together in sin and harmony for the rest of our unnatural lives. Well, maybe not that long. But at least until the money ran out.
Now where in hell was I going to get my hands on a cool hundred grand?
The answer was obvious.
Nowhere.
I lit a third cigarette from the butt of the second, stood up and paced the floor of my humble abode. Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home. And this was no place like home. I paced the grubby floor four times and killed five roaches en route. Then I dropped the cigarette on one of the roach corpses and ground it out. I flopped on the bed and closed my eyes with my dumb head buried face down in the pillow.
I just lay there, not thinking, not moving, with my mind a big continuous void. When I sat up again I could think very clearly. There were, I saw, two possibilities.
Possibility Number One—I could get hold of a hundred thousand dollars and hustle Candy off to Acapulco.
Possibility Number Two—I could live without her. And, because what the two of us had was not love but sex, I figured that I could do it.
Lucy. Lucy was my wife, my woman, a woman who had been mine first and who had never had anybody else. I remembered the first time when neither of us could wait any more, how we registered under phony names in a little hotel, how we went to the room together, how she was shaking with fear and how I was trembling with love for her.
How we undressed with the lights out, how the light filtered in from a street lamp through the window and how beautiful she was, how soft and warm her body was when I pressed myself against her.
How our love grew, swelled up higher and higher with the passion of our two young bodies moving together. How it happened, happened incredibly; first for her and then for me, instants apart, how we lay in each other’s arms and said quiet words to each other. How we slept.
How we were married, married with both of us very young and very much in love, how we found out that it was even better when you were married.
How we lived together.
How the years passed.
There is something wonderful that happens when two people live together for eleven years. There is something very good about knowing one other person inside and out, back and front, knowing how that special person’s mind and body work, knowing what every gesture and every facial expression means. They tell me that married couples who grow old together get so they look alike and this is something which I find it fairly easy to believe. There was a telepathy that had developed between Lucy and me, a different kind of telepathy from that nonsense with Doc Rhine’s ESP cards. She always knew what I was thinking; I could always say the very thought that had just come into her mind before she said it.
We loved each other.
We knew each other.
We had each other.
And I had been ready to throw it away for a sexed-up bitch who wanted to lay for a millionaire! It was hard to believe that Candy had such a great hold on me, but it was a hold I was suddenly determined to break.
What was the difference between them? Candy was good in bed; Lucy was as good. Candy was beautiful; Lucy’s looks were more subtle but no less attractive.
I tossed off my clothes, crawled under the covers and let my head submerge itself in the dumpy pillow. My mind was made up. In the morning I would go home, home to my wife. Somehow, God knows how, I would make it up with her. I would put myself on a diet and there would be no Candy on that diet, none at all.
I thought about it—how good it would be, how life would become sane again and the world would stop turning upside-down and giggling at me like a schizoid hyena. I thought about Lucy, my wife, my love, and my eyes closed and my body relaxed and I slept.
I got up, washed with the weird red water that came out of the rusty tap, put my dirty clothes back on again and got the hell out of the hotel. I didn’t bother about breakfast; I wasn’t hungry. Only one thing mattered now. I had to get home, had to get back to Lucy, had to get everything straightened out again.
The elements conspired against me. The subway took a long time coming. It waited at 72nd Street for ten goddamned minutes while I sat on my hands and some clods did things with the tracks. Finally the train limped to 96th Street and I got out and managed to get home.
I ran all the way, jumped into the elevator and got off at my apartment. I unlocked the door with my key and went inside.
I didn’t see Lucy.
Ah, I thought. It’s still early. The poor dear must be sleeping.
Her bed was empty.
Ah, I thought. It’s not
And then I saw the note.
The note was propped up on the dining room table right where I couldn’t miss seeing it, which, of course, explains why I had missed seeing it. It was hand-written in Lucy’s perennial childish scrawl on a piece of her blue note-paper. I unfolded it, switched on the light, and read it.
This is what it said:
I read the letter once standing up, then sat down and read it through a second time and a third time after that. It didn’t make sense, I told myself; it just didn’t add up at all. I yanked out a cigarette and wasted three matches before I got the damn thing lit—then after two puffs it tasted terrible and I dropped it on the floor and stepped on it.
I had come home to her. I was back, through with Candy, wanting only to be with my wife forever.
But Wifey doesn’t live here any more.
Wifey done gone home to Mama.
Wifey done left.
I lit another cigarette. If I’d only had the brains to come home the night before, it would have been all right. But no—I had to stay out, and Lucy had put two and two together and came up with five.
So I put out the cigarette and snatched up the phone and called her at her mother’s house in Brooklyn. Her mother croaked nastily at me and hung up, but before the phone went dead I heard a familiar screech in the background. I called back and this time Lucy answered.
“Look,” I began, “I have to see you.”
She said: “No.” She said it as though she meant it.
“I wasn’t where you think I was last night.”
“I don’t care where you were. I don’t care if you did it in Macy’s window with a crowd of two thousand watching you. I don’t care—”
“I was alone last night.”
“Go to hell.”
“I mean it, Lucy. I was alone all night.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Lucy, I love you. Lucy, honey—”
