Death Wish

“I’m a little surprised to hear you talk that way, after what happened.”

“I like to think my wife would have understood.”

Headlights swept into the motel room, slatted by the blinds. He switched on the free television and watched mindlessly for a few minutes; turned it off and went outside. The night’s residual heat oozed out of the walls and pavements. The boulevards were all neon and incandescence, the lights of cars slid by, the snores of big trucks shook the air. Against the dusty sky the mountains were a vague heavier mass.

He walked across the motel apron to the sidewalk and went along the neon-lighted strip to a stucco building that sat by itself in a dusty gravel yard, Schlitz and Coors signs filling its windows; he went inside and got his bearings. It was a cheap saloon—eight wooden booths, dark scratched bar with cracked-upholstery stools, glass-framed licenses, dusty snapshots, and half a dozen broken old guns on the wall.

There was a scatter of people in the place, hunched painfully over drinks, listening to the thump and whine of hillbilly records on the jukebox. Several people looked at him, saw he wasn’t an acquaintance and went back into themselves. Suddenly he didn’t want this; he almost turned and left, but the bartender was giving him a big smile and a “Howdy there,” and Paul went to an empty six-foot space at the bar and asked for a dry martini.

If his appearance hadn’t identified him, the martini order did; several sets of eyes flickered at him again. He took the drink across to an empty booth and sat down with his eyes half-closed and let the twanging music get into him. He didn’t want to think; thinking had become painful.

Cowboy boots went thudding past; he looked up at the receding shape of a big man in a business suit and a white ten-gallon hat. He had an urge to snicker. The man in boots and hat left the place and Paul swept his glance along the bar, the people at the bar. They were all so anxious that strangers should like their desert city. The forced hospitality, the desperate boosterism. It was an alien country to him; he’d felt less out-of-place in Europe. Sam Kreutzer would feel right at home, but not me.

I hear that lonesome train

Whistle down the rails;

Sometimes I hear you call my name

Down that far backtrail

From Yuma, all the way from Yuma

.

The guitar and the fiddle and the rhythm, the woeful plains-twanging voice. Always sad songs about lost loves. No Gershwin and Porter and Rodgers out here; it was a foreign tongue.

He bought another drink and sat listening to the sad simple tunes. They made the past a troubled reality; he drank quickly and bought a third, and sat twirling the glass in his fingers. Remembering the times when everything existed in its ordered place, when you could tell right from wrong. Days of black telephones, two-decker buses on Park Avenue, ticker-tape parades for heroes you didn’t laugh at, a pad of check blanks at every cash register, Grable and Gable and Hayworth and Cooper, an amiable cop on the beat, a fish wrapped in newspaper, clandestine dreams in plain brown wrappers, Uncle Irwin in the Depression wearing white shirts to prove to the world he could afford the laundry bill, the importance of chastity and the evils of alcohol and the goodness of Our American Boys, Pat O’Brien and apple pies and motherhood and tell-it-to-the-Marines and “The Darktown Strutters’ Ball” and Gle

“My name’s Shirley Mackenzie.”

She was standing by his table with a glass in her hand, pushing the ice cubes around with a swizzle stick. He was so startled he only stared up at her. She wore a maroon velvet band across her dark hair. A narrow large-eyed face with succulent cushion lips. A thin body clad in a silvery blouse and a short leather skirt. She smiled a little, not brazenly. “You sort of look the way I feel. That’s why I came over. I’ll shove off if you want.”

“No—no, don’t. Sit down.” He got clumsily out of the booth, remembering his ma

“I don’t really mean to intrude. I mean——”

“No, I could use some company.”

“Only if you’re sure.” She had a good voice, low, half a whisky baritone. A walnut-brown face; when she turned into the light he saw she was a good deal older than he had thought at first. Thirty-five or so. Her nails were chewed down to the quick.

Standing there while she slid into the booth he realized he was perilously close to being very drunk: his vision was blurred, his balance uncertain, his tongue thick and clumsy. He got back into his seat and watched her across the table. “Paul. Paul Benjamin.”

She acknowledged it with a vague smiling nod. “I don’t suppose names really matter, do they. I mean ships that pass in the night and all that.” Her lips quivered before she drew them in between her teeth. She had both hands wrapped around her drink.

“Well, then, Shirley Mackenzie.”

“You remembered it. Think of that.” Her face tipped to one side; the smile was wider now but filled with self-mockery.

“What did you mean, I look the way you feel?”

“Oh, sort of like the world had just fallen down around your ankles.” She tossed her head back and lifted her glass, a faint gesture of toasting; ice clinked against her teeth and she put it down empty of everything but ice cubes. “Look, I’m not a B-girl with a sob story if that’s what you were thinking.”

“At this point I’m not sure I’d mind.”

“That’s painfully honest. Honest for you, painful for me.” She smiled yet again to show she wasn’t offended.

“Would you like another?” He indicated her glass.

“Sure. I’ll pay for it, though.” She lifted her shoulder-strap bag onto the table.

“Not necessary,” he muttered awkwardly. “What was it?”

“Scotch and soda.”

“Any brand?”

“Bar Scotch. I never could tell the difference.”

He bought the two drinks and brought them back to the table. She didn’t make a fuss about his having paid, but her bag was still on the table. He took a swallow and knew his mouth would taste rancid by midnight. What the hell. “So,” he said, and stopped, unable to think of what to say.

“I’m sorry, I’m not much help either, am I? I’m not used to picking up strangers in bars.”

“Neither am I.”

They both smiled. Then the shape of her eyes changed. “Hate is a very exciting feeling, do you know that?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know, I was sitting over there at the bar thinking about killing my son of a bitch of a husband—ex-husband, pardon me. I mean really thinking about killing him. Imagining what it would be like to strangle him with piano wire or stick a kitchen knife in his throat. I’d never do it, of course, I’m not that crazy. But do you ever have daydreams like that?”

“I guess so.”

“It’s exciting, isn’t it. Gets all the juices flowing. You get very stimulated.”

“You know that’s true.…”

“You said that as if it’s happened to you but you never recognized it before.”

“Something like that, yes.”

She shook her head—the same mockery again. “I guess you don’t want to talk about yours either.”

“My what?”

“Whatever it is that made the world fall down around your ankles. All right, we’ll make a deal—we won’t talk about any of that, we’ll talk about something else. You live here?”

He widened his eyes. “Here? Tucson?”

“I guess you don’t.”

“I’m surprised—I thought it stuck out all over me. I’m from New York.”

“Well, if I were a local I’d probably have noticed. I’m from Los Angeles.”

“On your way to or from?”

“From. Emphatically from. I got this far today—I’m staying in the motel next door.”

“So am I.”

It caused a brief gap; she dropped her eyes to her drink. Paul said, “Look, I didn’t mean anything by that. It wasn’t a hint. I happen to be staying there, that’s all.”