“What if it is a—joke?”
“You just said it
“I know but—”
“Honey, whether it is or not—” Abruptly, she turned for the hall. “I’ll call them,” she said.
“No, I’ll do it,” he told her. “Go finish the dishes.” He walked past her into the hall, then turned and looked back. “Go on,” he said.
He turned to the table and lifted the receiver from its cradle. After a moment, she heard the clicking of the dial as he spun it once. There was a pause.
“Give me the police.” he said
He glanced across his shoulder at her, then looked away. “It’s all right.” he said, but there was no conviction in his voice.
“Why don’t they answer?’ she asked.
“Hello,” he said. She heard him swallow dryly. “Could you—send a patrol car to my house right away? I—I’ve been threatened.”
He stood silent for a moment
“Yes,” he said. “My name is—Christopher Martin I live at 1204 Twelfth Street” He repeated the address. “Yes,” he said. “He threatened me and I—I need protection. Or—”
He stood quietly for several seconds, then said “Thank you” and put down the receiver,
“What did they say?” she asked
“They’ll come over.”
“Why didn’t you tell them what the man said?” she asked. “All you told them was that he threatened you. You didn’t say he said he was going to kill you.”
“Honey, they’re coming.” he said.
Helen walked over to him and put her hand on his arm
“I’m sorry.” she said. “It’ll be all right.” But, even as she spoke, she knew she was doing it more to comfort herself than him; hoping that he’d put his arms around her and verify her words, tell her: “Yes, of course it will be all right.”
He didn’t. He stood beside her, wordless.
“How long did they say it would take them to get here?” she asked.
“Honey, I don’t know.”
“All right.” she said. “I’m sure it will be—”
Her voice choked off abruptly as, beneath her fingers, she felt his arm go rigid.
“What is it?” she gasped.
“What if he was phoning from the drugstore at the corner?”
He turned and hurried to the front door, locked it. He lowered the Venetian blinds across the casement windows and drew them. Then, whirling, he turned off the floor lamp, a pocket of shadows enveloping him. In an instant, he emerged from it and half ran across the room to the table lamp beside the sofa.
“Lock the kitchen door,” he told her.
She hesitated, watching him crank the front windows shut.
“And turn out the light!” he called as she pushed at the kitchen door to make certain that the latch caught.
“All right,” she answered. She turned the lock on the knob and tested the door with shaking fingers. It held. Hurriedly, she pulled the shade down over the window on the door, then, almost lurching for the wall switch, pushed it down.
The house was now completely dark. Helen stood restively in the kitchen doorway, watching Chris draw the blinds and drapes across the picture window that faced the backyard. The living room grew even darker, blocked from the faint illumination of the moon and the street light on the next block. Chris’s body became a formless shadow.
“Draw the kitchen blinds,” he told her. “And the shade over the sink.”
Helen turned back into the kitchen and drew the blinds, wondering what she’d do if the man were to appear outside. She cranked the windows shut, wincing at the grating sound they made. That done, she turned for the sink, her slippers scuffing across the linoleum. She bumped into the dishwasher, crying out faintly at the clank of crockery and silverware inside it.
“What is it?” Chris called urgently.
“Nothing,” she answered. She pulled the shade down and leaned heavily against the sink, eyes shut.
When she came back into the living room, she could hear the furtive sound of Chris cranking shut the two windows in Connie’s room and pulling down the shades. She hurried across the rug and into her and Chris’s room to close the windows and draw the blinds.
This part alone was a nightmare; the two of them rushing through the darkness from room to room, shutting window after window, drawing blind after blind, lowering shade after shade. What if this were a twenty room house? she thought. Before the windows were all shut and covered it would be dawn. The sob that trembled in her throat, under other circumstances, would have been a laugh. When all the blinds were drawn in their room, Helen pulled one back and looked out at the street.
It was quiet except for a slight wind which stirred the bushes just outside the window. Under the street lamp, a pool of pale light flooded up across the curb, immersing a segment of the lawn. On the parkway, the skeletal limbs of the small Chinese elm were shaking.
Helen could see directly into Bill Albert’s house across the street. In the darkness of their living room, the television flickered. She knew that Bill and his wife were in there and it gave her an eerie feeling. They knew nothing of the terror across the street from them. Engrossed, perhaps even laughing, they were completely separated.
Nearby, there was a sound and Helen whirled, her hands retracting spasmodically.
“You locked the kitchen door?” Chris asked.
She swallowed. “Yes.”
“Then he can’t get in.”
“Chris.”
“What?”
“Do you think that, maybe we should—leave? I mean, go across to Bill’s house or—?”
“No, we can’t.”
She stared at his outline in the darkness.
“Chris, what if the police don’t get here in time?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said after a moment. Helen felt a weight of terror pressing at her. Suddenly a sob forced back her lips and Chris put his arms around her. But what good were his arms if he couldn’t do anything? She tried to push the thought aside but couldn’t In a moment of fear, she turned, naturally, to Chris. If he acted unafraid— seemed to know what he was doing, then she wasn’t so distressed. Even if he pretended and she sensed it, it still gave her assurance.
But when he was as lost and frightened as she was…
“It’s all right.” he murmured. “It’s all right, Helen.”
“But what are we going to do?” She had the premonition that, once more, he was going to say he didn’t know.
“You’re going to stay in here,” he told her.
“What?”
“Come here,” he said. “Here. Sit down on the bed.”
”Chris, what are you—?”
“I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?”
