The Kill-Off

Goddammit, are you listening to me?'

'Certainly, certainly, yessir,' I said. 'If you were thinking about pouring a drink for yourself, Mr. Pavlov, I will take one, too.'

'Dammit, this is important to you,' he said. 'There'd be a nice piece of change in it for you, and all you'd have to do is-' He broke off with a disgusted grunt. 'Hell! I must be going out of my mind to even think about it.'

'You appear very depressed, Mr. Pavlov,' I said. 'Allow me to pour a drink for you.'

'Pour one for yourself,' he snarled, with unaccustomed naivete. 'Then you're gettin' the hell out of here to a restaurant.'

It was a quart bottle, and it was practically full.

I picked it up, and ran.

I hated to do it, naturally. It was not only ungrateful, but also shortsighted; in eating the golden egg, figuratively speaking, I was destroying a future hen. I did it because I could not help myself. Because it was another nothing-else-to-do.

When a man is drowning, he snatches at bottles.

I ran, making a wild leap toward the door. And I tripped over the door sill, the bottle shot from my hands, and it and I crashed resoundingly against the ballroom floor.

I scrambled forward on my stomach, began to lap at one of the precious puddles of liquor.

Mr. Pavlov suddenly kicked me in the tail, sent me scooting across the polished boards. He yanked me to my feet, eyes raging, and jerked me around facing him.

'A fine son-of-a-bitch you turned out to be! Now, get to hell out of here! Get out fast, and take plenty of time about showing up again.'

'Certainly,' I said. 'But listen, listen, Mr. Pavlov. I-'

'Listen, hell! I said to clear out!'

'I will, I am,' I said, backing out of his reach. 'But please listen, Mr. Pavlov. I will be glad to assist you in a fake holdup. More than glad. You have been very good to me, and I will welcome the opportunity to do something for you.'

He had been moving toward me, threateningly. Now he stopped dead in his tracks, his face flushing, eyes wavering away from mine.

'What the hell you talkin' about?' he said, with attempted roughness. 'You better not go talkin' that way to anyone else!'

'You know I won't,' I said. 'I don't blame you for distrusting me after the exhibition I just put on, but-'

He snorted half-heartedly. He said, 'You're crazy. Crazy and drunk. You don't know what you're sayin'.'

'Yes, sir,' I said. 'And I don't know what you said. I didn't hear you. I wasn't listening.'

I turned and left. I went out onto the boardwalk, wondering if this after all was not the original sin, the one we all suffer for: the failure to attribute to others the motives which we claim for ourselves. The inexcusable failure to do so.

True, I was not very prepossessing, either in appearance or actions. I was not, but neither was he. He was every bit as unreassuring in his way as I was in mine. And as you are in yours. We were both disguised. The materials were different, but they had all come from the same loom. My eccentricity and drunkenness. His roughness, rudeness and outright brutality.

We had to be disguised. Both of us, all of us. Yet obvious as the fact was, he would not see it. He would not look through my guise, as I had looked through his, to the man beneath. He would not look through his own, which would have done practically as well.

It was too bad, and he would be punished for it-as who is not?

And I was in need of more-much, much more-to drink.

Down at the end of the walk, a girl was standing at the rail, looking idly out to sea. I squinted my eyes, shaded them with my hand. After a moment, she turned her head a little, and I recognized her as the vocalist with the band.

She was clad in bathing garb, but a robe was draped over the rail at her side. It seemed reasonable to assume that the robe would have a pocket in it, and that the pocket would have something in it also.

I walked down to where she stood. I harrumphed for her attention and executed a low bow, toppling momentarily to one knee in the process.

'Listen, listen,' I said. 'How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O, my princess. Thy-'

I broke off abruptly, noting that her feet were bare. I glanced at her midriff, and began anew:

''Thy navel is like-''

'You get away from me, you nasty thing, you!' she said. 'Go on, now! I don't give money to beggars.'

'But who else would you give money to?' I said. 'Not, surely, to people with money.'

'You leave me alone!' Her voice rose. 'I'll scream if you don't!'

'Very well,' I said, and I moved back up the boardwalk. 'Oh, verily, very well. But beware the night, madam. Lo, and a ho-ho-ho, beware the night.'

The warning seemed justified. Molded as she was, the night could hold quite as much danger for her as it did delight.

Ahead of me, I saw Mr. Pavlov come out of the pavilion and swagger away toward town. Studying him, his high-held head, the proud set of his shoulders, the hurt I had felt over his caution in talking to me was suddenly no more.

He had behaved thusly I knew-I knew-because he actually did not intend to perpetrate a fake holdup. He neither intended to nor would. He might think the contrary, go so far as to plan the deed. But he would never actually go through with it.

He was as incapable of dishonesty, of anything but absolute uprightness, as I was of sobriety.

He turned and entered the post-office building. I crossed to the other side of the street, continued on for another block and suddenly lurched, and remained lurched, against a corner lamppost.

People passed by, grinning and laughing at me. I closed my eyes, and murmured alternate threats and pleadings to the Lord World.

Halfway down the block, there was a grocery store. Mr. Kossmeyer, the lawyer who comes here every summer, was parked in front of it, loading some groceries into the back seat of his car.

I pushed myself away from the lamppost, and stepped down into the gutter. I walked down to where Mr. Kossmeyer was, and tapped him on the shoulder.

He jumped, cursed and banged his head. Then, he turned around and saw that it was I.

'Oh, hello, Ganny,' he said. 'I mean-uh-Judas.'

'Oh, that's all right, Mr. Kossmeyer,' I laughed. 'I know I'm not really Judas. That was just a crazy notion I had.'

'Well, that's fine. Glad you've snapped out of it,' Mr. Kossmeyer said.

'I'm really Noah,' I said. 'That's who I really am, Mr. Kossmeyer.'

'I see,' he said. 'Well, you shouldn't have to travel very far to round up your animals.'

He sounded rather wary. Disinterested. His hand moved toward the front door of his car.