moving silently.
He knew she’d be in the bedroom. Where else could she be, the slut? Where else in all the world?
He came in and she was there as he’d expected, sitting cross-legged tailor fashion on the bed, a cigarette dangling from her loose mouth. She was half-asleep. She looked up and frowned at him, and she wasn’t frightened. She wasn’t even angry. All she did was act weary, disgusted, this-is-too-much-to-bear. ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ she said.
The details of his revenge had never been clear in his conscious mind. He had known only that he had returned to this city in order to even the score with Ellen. Now he was here, at the very core of Hell, at the brink of vengeance, and he felt an instant of utter panic because he had no idea what to do next.
He could see her eyes assessing his weakness, see her lips curling around the opening phrase of another cutting remark. He could see everything that would happen now; her verbal arrogance, his helplessness in the face of her, his clumsy, sullen, pathetic retreat.
Not this time.
His head turned this way and that, his eyes searched the room for something he didn’t yet remember he remembered and then he saw the silver X on the wall, sleek and sharp.
It was too late for thought. Words were slipping from her mouth, ready to cut him.
He reached up his band, and the silver X became a silver stroke, a diagonal slash separating the wall into metric feet, and the other slash was in his hand. He didn’t know yet what he would do with it - though the hilt felt so perfect in his grip, so natural, so inevitable — and for an instant he just stood there, holding it above his head like a Goth on the way to Rome.
If even then she’d been frightened, everything might still have been all right. Even at that point, he might have been able to convince himself he had only taken the sword down to frighten her with, he meant no physical harm; anyone could see he wasn’t the type.
But she wasn’t frightened. Or if she was she made no sign of it. Instead she said with utter scorn, ‘You moron, what are you going to do with that? You never could slab me, not with -‘
Knowing what she was going to say, knowing in advance all the ways she now meant to hurt him, he also knew he had to stop her. There wasn’t any choice, none at all.
He lunged forward, and his right arm pushed ahead of him, and he impaled her forever on that red instant of time. The words remained unspoken, would remain unspoken ever after. The world tick-locked on, and Ellen remained back there in that blood-red second, slowly slumping around the golden hilt.
It was as though he had stabbed her from the rear observation platform of a train that now was rushing away up the track, and he could look out and see her way back there, receding, receding, getting smaller’ and smaller; less and less important, less and less real. Time was rushing on now, like that rushing train, hurtling him away.
That’s what death is; getting your heel caught in a crack of time.
He had to get out of there, get away, but he couldn’t turn his back on her. It was as though the sword wasn’t enough to impale her there; she was being held also by his eyes, as though once he stopped staring at her she would live again, move again, speak again. As though, should he turn his back, catlike she would leap on it and bear him down under her weight.
Police. There would be police now. Had he left any clues?
He was wearing gloves; that was a lucky thing. He’d worn them because of the cold outside, not to cover fingerprints, but it came to the same thing. So he was safe there.
Anything else? Anything of him in this apartment, anything he hadn’t taken away with him last time?
He studied the room and saw nothing, and then opened the closet door and saw the suitcases and all the guns.
All those guns.
And when he opened the suitcases — given the presence of the guns, he had to open the suitcases — when he opened them they were full of money. Bills and bills, green and green.
For a minute or two he forgot Ellen completely, sitting over there on the bed in a posture of contrition. He closed up the suitcases again, he grabbed one of the handguns at random and stuck it into his pocket, and he lugged the suitcases out of the bedroom, out of the apartment, out of the building.
His Ford, still grayed with the dust of Mexico, was across the street. He stowed the suitcases in it and clambered in behind the wheel, and looked out through the windshield to see the stranger across the way at the intersection walking back to Ellen with a package in his arms. He had a heavy, solid way of moving, as though he were made of metal. He looked inexorable, like’ fate.
These must be his suitcases, his gun. The closet had been full of the stranger’s guns.
The stranger reached the building and turned and went up the steps and inside. He would go upstairs, find Ellen, and find the suitcases stolen and he would come looking.
In the rearview mirror he could see a telephone booth on the corner, all glass, held together by strips of green metal. He climbed out of the Ford and ran back to the phone booth, fumbling for a dime, fumbling for a plan. The thoughts clicked through his head like numbers through an adding machine. He was like a man on a bob-sled; later on he would have leisure to wonder just how he’d gotten down that bastard hill.
‘Operator. May I help you?’
‘Operator, there’s a woman been murdered.’ His voice was a hush. ‘At 106-12 Longmans Avenue, apartment fourteen.’
‘What?’
‘Get the police. Hurry! He’s still there, the killer’s still there.’
‘Sir, would you —’
