“I don’t care what your husband is. All I want is for you to put on that dress and fix yourself up so we can go to dinner. Fix your hair somehow; I wish you could have gotten to the hairdresser’s. Possibly the hotel beauty salon is still open. You could do that while I wait for my shirts and take my shower.”
“How are you going to kill him?”
Joe said, “Please put on the new dress, Juliana. I’ll phone down and ask about the hairdresser.” He walked over to the room phone.
“Why do you need me along?”
Dialing, Joe said, “We have a folder on Abendsen and it seems he is attracted to a certain type of dark, libidinous girl. A specific Middle-Eastern or Mediterranean type.”
As he talked to the hotel people, Juliana went over to the bed and lay down. She shut her eyes and put her arm across her face.
“They do have a hairdresser,” Joe said when he had hung up the phone. “And she can take care of you right away. You go down to the salon; it’s on the mezzanine.” He handed her something; opening her eyes she saw that it was more Reichsbank notes. “To pay her.”
She said, “Let me lie here. Will you please?”
He regarded her with a look of acute curiosity and concern.
“Seattle is like San Francisco would have been,” she said, “if there had been no Great Fire. Real old wooden buildings and some brick ones, and hilly like S.F. The Japs there go back to a long time before the war. They have a whole business section and houses, stores and everything, very old. It’s a port. This little old Jap who taught me—I had gone up there with a Merchant Marine guy, and while I was there I started taking these lessons. Minoru Ichoyasu; he wore a vest and tie. He was as round as a yo-yo. He taught upstairs in a Jap office building; he had that old-fashioned gold lettering on his door, and a waiting room like a dentist’s office. With
National Geographics
.”
Bending over her, Joe took hold of her arm and lifted her to a sitting position; he supported her, propped her up. “What’s the matter? You act like you’re sick.” He peered into her face, searching her features.
“I’m dying,” she said.
“It’s just an anxiety attack. Don’t you have them all the time? I can get you a sedative from the hotel pharmacy. What about phenobarbital? And we haven’t eaten since ten this morning. You’ll be all right. When we get to Abendsen’s you don’t have to do a thing, only stand there with me; I’ll do the talking. Just smile and be companionable with me and him; stay with him and make conversation with him, so that he stays with us and doesn’t go off somewhere. When he sees you I’m certain he’ll let us in, especially with that Italian dress cut as it is. I’d let you in, myself, if I were he.”
“Let me go into the bathroom,” she said. “I’m sick. Please.” She struggled loose from him. “I’m being sick—let me go.”
He let her go, and she made her way across the room and into the bathroom; she shut the door behind her.
I can do it, she thought. She snapped the light on; it dazzled her. She squinted. I can find it. In the medicine cabinet, a courtesy pack of razor blades, soap, toothpaste. She opened the fresh little pack of blades. Single edge, yes. Unwrapped the new greasy blueblack blade.
Water ran in the shower. She stepped in—good God; she had on her clothes. Ruined. Her dress clung. Hair streaming. Horrified, she stumbled, half fell, groping her way out. Water drizzling from her stockings…she began to cry.
Joe found her standing by the bowl. She had taken her wet ruined suit off; she stood naked, supporting herself on one arm, leaning and resting. “Jesus Christ,” she said to him when she realized he was there. “I don’t know what to do. My jersey suit is ruined. It’s wool.” She pointed: he turned to see the heap of sodden clothes.
Very calmly—but his face was stricken—he said, “Well, you weren’t going to wear that anyhow.” With a fluffy white hotel towel he dried her off, led her from the bathroom back to the warm carpeted main room. “Put on your underwear—get something on. I’ll have the hairdresser come up here; she has to, that’s all there is.” Again he picked up the phone and dialed.
“What did you get me in the way of pills?” she asked, when he had finished phoning.
“I forgot. I’ll call down to the pharmacy. No, wait; I have something. Nembutal or some damn thing.” Hurrying to his suitcase, he began rummaging.
When he held out two yellow capsules to her she said, “Will they destroy me?” She accepted them clumsily.
“What?” he said, his face twitching.
Rot my lower body, she thought. Groin to dry. “I mean,” she said cautiously, “weaken my concentration?”
“No—it’s some A.G. Chemie product they give back home. I use them when I can’t sleep. I’ll get you a glass of water.” He ran off.
Blade, she thought. I swallowed it; now cuts my loins forever. Punishment. Married to a Jew and shacking up with a Gestapo assassin. She felt tears again in her eyes, boiling. For all I have committed. Wrecked. “Let’s go,” she said, rising to her feet. “The hairdresser.”
“You’re not dressed!” He led her, sat her down, tried to get her underpants onto her without success. “I have to get your hair fixed,” he said in a despairing voice. “Where is that
Hur,
that woman?”
She said, speaking slowly and painstakingly, “Hair creates bear who removes spots in nakedness. Hiding, no hide to be hung with a hook. The hook from God. Hair, hear,
Hur,
” Pills eating. Probably turpentine acid. They all met, decided dangerous most corrosive solvent to eat me forever.
Staring down at her, Joe blanched. Must read into me, she thought. Reads my mind with his machine, although I can’t find it.
“Those pills,” she said. “Confuse and bewilder.”
He said, “You didn’t take them.” He pointed to her clenched fist; she discovered that she still had them there. “You’re mentally ill,” he said. He had become heavy, slow, like some inert mass. “You’re very sick. We can’t go.”
“No doctor,” she said. “I’ll be okay.” She tried to smile; she watched his face to see if she had. Reflection from his brain, caught my thoughts in rots.
“I can’t take you to the Abendsens’,” he said. “Not now, anyway. Tomorrow. Maybe you’ll be better. We’ll try tomorrow. We have to.”
“May I go to the bathroom again?”
He nodded, his face working, barely hearing her. So she returned to the bathroom; again she shut the door. In the cabinet another blade, which she took in her right hand. She came out once more.
“Bye-bye,” she said.
As she opened the corridor door he exclaimed, grabbed wildly at her.
Whisk. “It is awful,” she said. “They violate. I ought to know.” Ready for purse snatcher; the various night prowlers, I can certainly handle. Where had this one gone? Slapping his neck, doing a dance. “Let me by,” she said. “Don’t bar my way unless you want a lesson. However, only women.” Holding the blade up she went on opening the door. Joe sat on the floor, hands pressed to the side of his throat. Sunburn posture. “Good-bye,” she said, and shut the door behind her. The warm carpeted corridor.
A woman in a white smock, humming or singing, wheeled a cart along, head down. Gawked at door numbers, arrived in front of Juliana; the woman lifted her head, and her eyes popped and her mouth fell.
“Oh sweetie,” she said, “you really are tight; you need a lot more than a hairdresser—you go right back inside your room and get your clothes on before they throw you out of this hotel. My good lord.” She opened the door behind Juliana. “Have your man sober you up; I’ll have room service send up hot coffee. Please now, get into your room.” Pushing Juliana back into the room, the woman slammed the door after her and the sound of her cart diminished.
Hairdresser lady, Juliana realized. Looking down, she saw that she did have nothing on; the woman had been correct.
“Joe,” she said. “They won’t let me.” She found the bed, found her suitcase, opened it, spilled out clothes. Underwear, then blouse and skirt…pair of low-heeled shoes. “Made me come back,” she said. Finding a comb, she rapidly combed her hair, then brushed it. “What an experience. That woman was right outside, about to knock.” Rising, she went to find the mirror. “Is this better?” Mirror in the closet door; turning, she surveyed herself, twisting, standing on tiptoe. “I’m so embarrassed,” she said, glancing around for him. “I hardly know what I’m doing. You must have given me something; whatever it was it just made me sick, instead of helping me.”
Still sitting on the floor, clasping the side of his neck, Joe said, “Listen. You’re very good. You cut my aorta. Artery in my neck.”
Giggling, she clapped her hand to her mouth. “Oh God—you’re such a freak. I mean, you get words all wrong. The aorta’s in your chest; you mean the carotid.”
“If I let go,” he said, “I’ll bleed out in two minutes. You know that. So get me some kind of help, get a doctor or an ambulance. You understand me? Did you mean to? Evidently. Okay—you’ll call or go get someone?”
After pondering, she said, “I meant to.”
“Well,” he said, “anyhow, get them for me. For my sake.”
“Go yourself.”
“I don’t have it completely closed.” Blood had seeped through his fingers, she saw, down his wrist. Pool on the floor. “I don’t dare move. I have to stay here.”
She put on her new coat, closed her new handmade leather purse, picked up her suitcase and as many of the parcels which were hers as she could manage; in particular she made sure she took the big box and the blue Italian dress tucked carefully in it. As she opened the corridor door she looked back at him. “Maybe I can tell them at the desk,” she said. “Downstairs.”
“Yes,” he said.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll tell them. Don’t look for me back at the apartment in Canon City because I’m not going back there. And I have most of those Reichsbank notes, so I’m in good shape, in spite of everything. Good-bye. I’m sorry.” She shut the door and hurried along the hall as fast as she could manage, lugging the suitcase and parcels.
At the elevator, an elderly well-dressed businessman and his wife helped her; they took the parcels for her, and downstairs in the lobby they gave them to a bellboy for her.
“Thank you,” Juliana said to them.
After the bellboy had carried her suitcase and parcels across the lobby and out onto the front sidewalk, she found a hotel employee who could explain to her how to get back her car. Soon she was standing in the cold concrete garage beneath the hotel, waiting while the attendant brought the Studebaker around. In her purse she found all kinds of change; she tipped the attendant and the next she knew she was driving up a yellow-lit ramp and onto the dark street with its headlights, cars, advertising neon signs.
The uniformed doorman of the hotel personally loaded her luggage and parcels into the trunk for her, smiling with such hearty encouragement that she gave him an enormous tip before she drove away. No one tried to stop her, and that amazed her; they did not even raise an eyebrow. I guess they know he’ll pay, she decided. Or maybe he already did when he registered for us.
While she waited with other cars for a streetlight to change, she remembered that she had not told them at the desk about Joe sitting on the floor of the room needing the doctor. Still waiting up there, waiting from now on until the end of the world, or until the cleaning women showed up tomorrow sometime. I better go back, she decided, or telephone. Stop at a pay phone booth.
It’s so silly, she thought as she drove along searching for a place to park and telephone. Who would have thought an hour ago? When we signed in, when we shopped…we almost went on, got dressed up and went out to dinner; we might even have gotten out to the nightclub. Again she had begun to cry, she discovered; tears dripped from her nose, onto her blouse, as she drove. Too bad I didn’t consult the oracle; it would have known and warned me. Why didn’t I? Any time I could have asked, any place along the trip or even before we left. She began to moan involuntarily; the noise, a howling she had never heard issue out of her before, horrified her, but she could not suppress it even though she clamped her teeth together. A ghastly chanting, singing, wailing, rising up through her nose.
When she had parked she sat with the motor running, shivering, hands in her coat pockets. Christ, she said to herself miserably. Well, I guess that’s the sort of thing that happens. She got out of the car and dragged her suitcase from the trunk; in the back seat she opened it and dug around among the clothes and shoes until she had hold of the two black volumes of the oracle. There, in the back seat of the car, with the motor running, she began tossing three RMS dimes, using the glare of a department store window to see by. What’ll I do? she asked it. Tell me what to do;
please
.
Hexagram Forty-two, Increase, with moving lines in the second, third, fourth and top places; therefore changing to Hexagram Forty-three, Breakthrough. She scanned the text ravenously, catching up the successive stages of meaning in her mind, gathering it and comprehending; Jesus, it depicted the situation exactly—a miracle once more. All that had happened, there before her eyes, blueprint, schematic:
It furthers one
To undertake something.
It furthers one to cross the great water.