Suspended Sentences

“He made a little trouble. I had it out with him today. I don’t know if it will do any good, but at least it gave me the satisfaction of telling him off.”

“That was a gutsy thing to do. What did he say?”

“Nothing. Maybe he’s just chewing on what I said, thinking about it. Maybe something of what I said penetrated that little pea brain of his. I don’t know. It’s hard to tell. Anyhow he didn’t do or say anything nasty.”

“Well, maybe that’s a good sign.”

“Maybe. I hope so. Listen, Charles?”

“Yes?”

“I wish you good luck and every happiness. I mean that.”

“I know you do. You’re a damn good person, Carolyn.”

“Good-bye.”

She went to bed and hugged the pillow to her; she felt acutely alone tonight. I have got to get out in the world, she told herself with force, and start making friends again. This was ridiculous. She was a healthy thirty-six-year-old woman without any entangling attachments or encumbrances; she was no beauty but she was reasonably attractive in her chunky short-waisted way — after all, there were men who liked freckles and big chests on their women — and it was idiotic to confine herself in this kind of self-pitying isolation; there was no need for it.

Tomorrow, she resolved, she’d start making phone calls. Even if it made her look like some sort of shameless wanton.

She fell asleep filled with determination; she awoke filled with the harsh scent of smoke. She couldn’t place it at first but then she coughed and tried to breathe and coughed again, choking.

The apartment was on fire.

The red glow flickered through the living room doorway. She leaped out of the bed, flung the window open, and climbed out onto the narrow ledge. It was merely a decorative brick escarpment but it gave her purchase for her bare feet; she held onto the window sill and yelled for help.

It was only a one-story drop and finally, when the heat and smoke got too much for her, she jumped to the lawn below, managing to hit the grass without breaking anything. The fire engines were just arriving — she heard the sirens and saw the lights and then it was all a welter of men and machines and hoses and terrible smells.

By morning half of the building was gutted but the fire was out, and she was taken, along with a dozen other displaced tenants, to City Medical to make sure there were no serious injuries.

The fire apparently had started in the furnace room immediately below her apartment and had come up the air ducts, spreading through the building; the hottest part of it had attacked her apartment and it was there that the worst damage had been done, both by the fire and by the tons of water that had been used to extinguish it. The superintendent was a ski

“No.”

“Too bad, Miss. I am very sorry. If there’s anything at all I can do —”

“You’ve been very kind. I think I want to sleep a while.” He went, and she thought vaguely, in song-like rhythm, Sorry-sorry-sorry-sorry…

She took a room in a residential hotel. Furnished. With daily linen and maid service. She bought a few clothes, enough to get by. She thought of moving to some other city.

Charles seemed very distant. He lent her money but not a shoulder to cry on; she could understand that but she needed a shoulder and resented his not providing one. All he said was, “Try not to persuade yourself that Murdoch set the fire. If he didn’t, you’d be making an unjust accusation. If he did, you’ll never prove it. Either way it’s no good torturing yourself.”

She was walking home from a solitary supper trip to the delicatessen when a car came up on the curb behind her at high speed. She heard it — she’d always had acute hearing — and dived flat against the display window of a furniture store, and the car swished past her, inches away. It was a shadowed place in the middle of the block and the car wasn’t ru

It had damned near killed her. She had that thought and then she crumpled and sat on the pavement for quite a while before she regained strength enough to walk.

Go to the police? And tell them what?

Call Charles? No, he’s got other things on his mind now.

Move away. Nothing to hold her here anymore. No real ties here. Go away. California maybe. Back to Illinois. New York. What difference did it make? Just get away from that madman.

That was it, then. Run. Run away.

And let him think he’s won?

She watched him get out of the old station wagon, lock it, put a cigarette in his mouth and light up. Then he turned and began to walk across the wide parking lot toward the low square stucco building that housed his realty office.

She let him get halfway across the parking lot. Right Out in the open. Then she put her car in gear.

“Sorry, Murdoch,” she muttered. “Sorry, sorry, sorry. It was an accident. I just couldn’t help it. I’m sorry.”

And she ran him down.

THE

SHOPPING LIST

“The Shopping List” was written out of a simple desire to write a detective story — red herrings, clues, solving a mystery puzzle, building to a surprise ending, all that. I rarely try to construct such plots; call it laziness if you like. The story was written to satisfy a curiosity. If it fools you, it worked.

It was awkward. She wouldn’t tell him the truth, obviously, but she’d always had trouble lying.

He phoned, as she’d known he would, on Tuesday afternoon. “I’ll be out of town on business until Friday. Not sure what time I’ll get back — don’t count on me for Friday di

Marie closed her eyes. “Oh, Severn, I’m sorry, I just can’t make it Saturday.”

There was a moment’s silence but then his deep reassuring voice rumbled down the line: “Sunday, then. I’ll get tickets.”

“Sunday’s fine.” She closed her eyes in relief. He really was marvelous. He took her on faith — no questions, no protestations. She said softly into the phone, “I don’t know if I can wait that long to see you. I do love you, darling — and I’m sorry about Saturday.”

“See you Sunday then. Around six, so we can have di

After a while she bestirred herself. She went through the apartment to the foyer and rummaged in her handbag for the list.

The handbag was on the sconce below the oval mirror and she examined her reflection briefly and wondered what Severn could possibly see in her: plump plain Marie, dark brown hair she never could do anything with, creases here and there that presaged the looming fortieth birthday — not a whole lot to draw the attraction of a man like Severn. He was thirty-five and successful; he’d been divorced for several years. When she’d asked him why on earth he wanted to keep seeing her, he’d only said, “You’re comfortable, love. I’ve had my fill of abrasive ambitious women.”

His ex-wife, she’d gathered, was a beautiful but brittle careerist — some sort of talent agent or casting director; Marie wasn’t sure — Severn rarely talked about her. “It wasn’t really a marriage. We both backed into it, trying to get out of things.”

Marie looked away. At first, after her mother had died and she’d moved into this apartment, she’d meant to take down the mirror from the foyer wall — she didn’t like mirrors; they only reminded her of her unattractiveness. But occasionally Aunt Leah and Uncle Arthur would come around to di