“You already did.”
“In that case, back to the typewriter.”
While I squeezed out another page I heard her muttering to herself in the kitchen. I didn’t catch it all. All that came through was a grimly prophetic, “Murdered in our beds or something.”
—
“No, it’s flukey,” Ruth analyzed as we all sat having dinner that night.
I grinned at Phil and he grinned back.
“I think so too,” Marge agreed. “Whoever heard of charging only sixty-five a month for a five-room apartment furnished? Stove, refrigerator, washer—it’s fantastic.”
“Girls,” I said. “Let’s not quibble. Let’s take advantage.”
“Oh!” Ruth tossed her pretty blonde head. “If a man said—Here’s a million dollars for you, old man—you’d probably take it.”
“I most definitely would take it,” I said. “I would then run like hell.”
“You’re naïve,” she said. “You think people are . . . are . . .”
“Steady,” I said.
“You think everybody is Santa Claus!”
“It is a little funny,” Phil said. “Think about it, Rick.”
I thought about it. A five-room apartment, brand new, furnished in the best manner, dishes . . . I pursed my lips. A guy can get lost in his typewriter. Maybe it was true. I nodded anyways. I could see their point. Of course I wouldn’t say so. And spoil Ruth’s and my little game of war? Never.
“I think they charge too much,” I said.
“Oh . . . Lord!” Ruth was taking it straight, as she usually did. “Too much! Five rooms yet! Furniture, dishes, linens, a . . . a television set! What do you want—a swimming pool!”
“A small one?” I said meekly.
She looked at Marge and Phil.
“Let us discuss this thing quietly,” she said. “Let us pretend that the fourth voice we hear is nothing but the wind in the eaves.”
“I am the wind in the eaves,” I said.
“Listen,” Ruth re-spun her forbodings, “what if the place is a fluke? I mean what if they just want people here for a cover-up. That would explain the rent. You remember the rush on the place when they started renting?”
I remembered as well as Phil and Marge. The only reason we’d got our apartment was because we happened to be walking past the place when the janitor first put out the renting sign. We went right in. I remember our amazement, our delight, at the rental. We thought it was Christmas.
We were the first tenants. The next day was like the Alamo under attack. It’s a little hard to get an apartment these days.
“I say there’s something funny about it,” Ruth finished. “And did you ever notice that janitor?”
“He’s a creep,” I contributed blandly.
“He is,” Marge laughed. “My God, he’s something out of a B-picture. Those eyes. He looks like Peter Lorre.”
“See!” Ruth was triumphant.
“Kids,” I said, raising a hand of weary conciliation, “if there’s something foul going on behind our backs, let’s allow it to go on. We aren’t being asked to contribute or suffer by it. We are living in a nice spot for a nice rent. What are we going to do—look into it and try to spoil it?”
“What if there are designs on us?” Ruth said.
“What designs, hon?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I sense something.”
“Remember the time you sensed the bathroom was haunted?” I said. “It was a mouse.”
She started clearing off the dishes. “Are you married to a blind man too?” she asked Marge.
“Men are all blind,” Marge said, accompanying my poor man’s seer into the kitchen. “We must face it.”
Phil and I lit cigarettes.
“No kidding now,” I said, so the girls wouldn’t hear. “Do you think there’s anything wrong?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know, Rick,” he said. “I will say this—it’s pretty strange to rent a furnished place for so little.”
“Yeah,” I said. Yeah, I thought—awake at last.
Strange it is.
—
I stopped for a chat with our strolling cop the next morning. Johnson walks around the neighborhood. There are gangs in the neighborhood, he told me, traffic is heavy and the kids need watching especially after three in the afternoon.
He’s a good Joe, lots of fun. I chat with him everyday when I go out for anything.
“My wife suspects foul doings in our apartment house,” I told him.
“This is my suspicion too,” Johnson said, dead sober. “It is my unwilling conclusion that, within those walls, six-year-olds are being forced to weave baskets by candle light.”
“Under the whip hand of a gaunt old hag,” I added.
He nodded sadly. Then he looked around, plotter-like.
“You won’t tell anyone, will you?” he said. “I want to crack the case all by myself.”
I patted his shoulder. “Johnson,” I said. “Your secret is locked behind these iron lips.”
“I am grateful,” he said.
We laughed.
“How’s the missus?” he asked.
“Suspicious,” I said. “Curious. Investigating.”
“Much the same,” he said. “Everything normal.”
“Right,” I said. “I think I’ll stop letting her read those science-fiction magazines.”
“What is it she suspects?” he asked.
“Oh,” I grinned. “Just suppositions. She thinks the rent is too cheap. Everybody around here pays twenty to fifty dollars more, she says.”
“Is that right?” Johnson said.
“Yeah,” I said, punching his arm. “Don’t you tell anybody. I don’t want to lose a good deal.”
Then I went to the store.
—
“I knew it,” Ruth said. “I knew it.”
She gazed intently at me over a dishpan of soggy clothes.
“You knew what, hon?” I said, putting down the package of second sheets I’d gone down the street to buy.
“This place is a fluke,” she said. She raised her hand. “Don’t say a word,” she said. “You just listen to me.”
I sat down. I waited. “Yes dear,” I said.
“I found engines in the basement,” she said.
“What kind of engines, dear? Fire engines?”
Her lips tightened. “Come on, now,” she said, getting a little burned. “I saw the things.”
She meant it.
“I’ve been down there too, hon,” I said. “How come I never saw any engines?”
She looked around. I didn’t like the way she did it. She looked as if she really thought someone might be lurking at the window, listening.
“This is under the basement,” she said.
I looked dubious.
She stood up. “Damn it! You come on and I’ll show you.”
She held my hand as we went through the hall and into the elevator. She stood grimly by me as we descended, my hand tight in her grip.
“When did you see them?” I asked, trying to be nice.
“When I was washing in the laundry room down there,” she said. “In the hallways, I mean, when I was bringing the clothes back. I was coming to the elevator and I saw a doorway. It was a little bit open.”
“Did you go in?” I asked.
She looked at me. “You went in,” I said.
“I went down the steps and it was light and . . .”
“And you saw engines.”
“I saw engines.”
“Big ones?”
The elevator stopped and the doors slid open. We went out.
“I’ll show you how big,” she said.
It was a blank wall. “It’s here,” sh
e said.
I looked at her. I tapped the wall. “Honey,” I said.
“Don’t you dare say it!” she snapped. “Have you ever heard of doors in a wall?”
“Was this door in the wall?”
“The wall probably slides over it,” she said starting to tap. It sounded solid to me. “Darn it!” she said, “I can just hear what you’re going to say.”
I didn’t say it. I just stood there watching her.
“Lose something?”
The janitor’s voice was sort of like Lorre’s, low and insinuating. Ruth gasped, caught way off guard. I jumped myself.
“My wife thinks there’s a—” I started nervously.
“I was showing him the right way to hang a picture,” Ruth interrupted hastily. “That’s the way, babe.” She turned toward me. “You put the nail in at an angle, not straight in. Now, do you understand?” She took my hand.
The janitor smiled.
“See you,” I said awkwardly. I felt his eyes on us as we walked back to the elevator.
When the doors shut, Ruth turned quickly.
“Good night!” she stormed. “What are you trying to do, get him on us?”
“Honey. What . . . ?” I was flabbergasted.
“Never mind,” she said. “There are engines down there. Huge engines. I saw them. And he knows about them.”
“Baby,” I said. “Why don’t . . .”
“Look at me,” she said quickly.
I looked. Hard.
“Do you think I’m crazy?” she asked. “Come on, now. Never mind the hesitation.”
I sighed. “I think you’re imaginative,” I said. “You read those . . .”
“Uh!” she muttered. She looked disgusted. “You’re as bad as . . .”
“You and Galileo,” I said.
“I’ll show you those things,” she said. “We’re going down there again tonight when that janitor is asleep. If he’s ever asleep.”
I got worried then.
“Honey, cut it out,” I said. “You’ll get me going too.”
“Good,” she said. “Good. I thought it would take a hurricane.”
I sat staring at my typewriter all afternoon, nothing coming out.
But concern.
I didn’t get it. Was she actually serious? All right, I thought, I’ll take it straight. She saw a door that was left open. Accidentally. That was obvious. If there were really huge engines under the apartment house as she said, then the people who built them darn sure wouldn’t want anyone to know about them.
East 7th Street. An apartment house. And huge engines underneath it.
True?
—
“The janitor has three eyes!”
She was shaking. Her face was white. She stared at me like a kid who’d read her first horror story.
“Honey,” I said. I put my arms around her. She was scared. I felt sort of scared myself. And not that the janitor had an extra eye either.
I didn’t say anything at first. What can you say when your wife comes up with something like that?
She shook a long time. Then she spoke, in a quiet voice, a timid voice.
“I know,” she said. “You don’t believe me.”
I swallowed. “Babe,” I said helplessly.
“We’re going down tonight,” she said. “This is something important now. It’s serious.”
“I don’t think we should . . .” I started.
“I’m going down there,” she said. She sounded edgy now, a little hysterical. “I tell you there are engines down there. Goddamn it, there are engines!”
She started crying now, shaking badly. I patted her head, rested it against my shoulder. “All right, baby,” I said. “All right.”
She tried to tell me through her tears. But it didn’t work. Later when she’d calmed down, I listened. I didn’t want to get her upset. I figured the safest way was just to listen.
“I was walking through the hall downstairs,” she said. “I thought maybe there was some afternoon mail. You know once in a while the mailman will . . .”
She stopped. “Never mind that. What matters is what happened when I walked past the janitor.”
“What?” I said, afraid of what was coming.
“He smiled,” she said. “You know the way he does. Sweet and murderous.”
I let it go. I didn’t argue the point. I still didn’t think the janitor was anything but a harmless guy who had the misfortune to be born with a face that was strictly from Charles Addams.
“So?” I said. “Then what?”
“I walked past him. I felt myself shiver. Because he looked at me as if he knew something about me I didn’t even know. I don’t care what you say—that’s the feeling I got. And then . . .”
She shuddered. I took her hand.
“Then?” I said.
“I felt him looking at me.”
I’d felt that too when he found us in the basement. I knew what she meant. You just knew the guy was looking at you.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll buy that.”
“You won’t buy this,” she said grimly. She sat stiffly a moment, then said, “When I turned around to look he was walking away from me.”
I could feel it on the way. “I don’t . . .” I started weakly.
“His head was turned but he was looking at me.”
I swallowed. I sat there numbly, patting her hand without even knowing I was doing it.
“How, hon?” I heard myself asking.
“There was an eye in the back of his head.”
“Hon,” I said. I looked at her in—let’s face it—fright. A mind on the loose can get awfully confused.
She closed her eyes. She clasped her hands after drawing away the one I was holding. She pressed her lips together. I saw a tear wriggle out from under her left eyelid and roll down her cheek. She was white.
“I saw it,” she said quietly. “So help me God, I saw that eye.”
I don’t know why I went on with it. Self torture, I guess. I really wanted to forget the whole thing, pretend it never even happened.
“Why haven’t we seen it before, Ruth?” I asked. “We’ve seen the back of the man’s head before.”
“Have we?” she said. “Have we?”
“Sweetheart, somebody must have seen it. Do you think there’s never been anyone behind him?”
“His hair parted, Rick,” she said, “and before I ran away I saw the hair going back over it, so you couldn’t see it.”
I sat there silently. What to say now?—I thought. What could a guy possibly say to his wife when she talks to him like that? You’re nuts? You’re loony? Or the old, tired, “You’ve been working too hard.” She hadn’t been working too hard.
Then again maybe she had been working overtime. With her imagination.
“Are you going down with me tonight?” she asked.
“All right,” I said quietly. “All right, sweetheart. Now will you go and lie down?”
“I’m all right.”
“Sweetheart, go and lie down,” I said firmly. “I’ll go with you tonight. But I want you to lie down now.”
She got up. She went into the bedroom and I heard the bedsprings squeak as she sat down, then drew up her legs and fell back on the pillow.
I went in a little later to put a comforter over her. She was looking at the ceiling. I didn’t say anything to her. I don’t think she wanted to talk to me.
—
“What can I do?” I said to Phil.
Ruth was asleep. I’d sneaked across the hall.
“Maybe she saw them?” he said. “Isn’t it possible?”
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “And you know what else is possible too.”
“Look, you want to go down and see the janitor. You
want to . . .”
“No,” I said. “There’s nothing we can do.”
“You’re going down to the basement with her?”
“If she keeps insisting,” I said. “Otherwise, no.”
“Look,” he said. “When you go, come and get us.”
I looked at him curiously. “You mean the thing is getting to you, too?” I said.
He looked at me in a funny way. I saw his throat move.
“Don’t . . . look, don’t tell anyone,” he said.
He looked around, then turned back.
“Marge told me the same thing,” he said. “She said the janitor has three eyes.”
I went down after supper for some ice cream. Johnson was walking around.
“They’re working you overtime,” I said as he started to walk beside me.
“They expect some trouble from the local gangs,” he said.
“I never saw any gangs,” I said distractedly.
“They’re here,” he said.
“Mmmm.”
“How’s your wife?”
“Fine,” I lied.
“She still think the apartment house is a front?” he laughed.
I swallowed. “No,” I said. “I’ve broken her of that. I think she was just kidding me all the time.”
He nodded and left me at the corner. And for some reason I couldn’t keep my hands from shaking all the way home. I kept looking over my shoulder too.
—
“It’s time,” Ruth said.
I grunted and rolled on my side. She nudged me. I woke up sort of hazy and looked automatically at the clock. The radium numbers told me it was almost four o’clock.
“You want to go now?” I asked, too sleepy to be tactful.
There was a pause. That woke me up.
“I’m going,” she said quietly.
I sat up. I looked at her in the half darkness, my heart starting to do a drum beat too heavily. My mouth and throat felt dry.
“All right,” I said. “Wait till I get dressed.”
She was already dressed. I heard her in the kitchen making some coffee while I put on my clothes. There was no noise. I mean it didn’t sound as if her hands were shaking. She spoke lucidly too. But when I stared into the bathroom mirror I saw a worried husband. I splashed cold water in my face and combed my hair.
“Thanks,” I said as she handed me the cup of coffee. I stood there, nervous before my own wife.