over a perilous route of antic steps that wavered and faded and fell away before her. Moreover, her thigh was now paining her. It was a dull, throbbing pain concentrated near the hip. Each time she lifted the leg to feel for the next elusive step up, the throbbing was sharpened by the tension of muscles.
Three flights up, she felt her way along the wall to her door. There, she stood staring at the knob and the keyhole below the knob, and she felt that the stuff of her body had lost all quality of adhesion and that she was about to fly into innumerable tiny fragments. Because, having come so far, she could go no farther. Because, having lost her purse, she had no key. Oh, it was a grand joke. Oh, she had been the butt recently of an abundance of grand, hilarious jokes. They were so funny, really, that she was compelled to laugh at herself. She leaned against the door and did so, the laughter rising at first from her belly in soft waves that shook her body with only the faintest aspirate sound but acquiring as it grew, as the joke became bigger and better, an ascending shrillness.
Down the corridor, a man separated himself from the wall and approached her. Taking hold of her by an arm and pulling her away from the door gently, he reached down and turned the knob and pushed the door inward.
“You must’ve forgotten to lock it,” he said. “I took the liberty of trying it.”
This made the joke still better, and she kept right on laughing. Forgetting to lock the door, which was something she couldn’t remember ever having done before. A perfectly strange man coming along to try the knob and hanging around to tell her about it. It all fitted into the pattern of hilarity, and the whole world, which had reached a nadir of evil, was now abandoned to the most delicious idiocy. She laughed and laughed, tears pouring down her cheeks, and the man smacked her sharply across the mouth with the hand that had turned the knob. Her head struck the frame of the door, and the rising welter of laughter died in her throat in a series of diminishing gasps.
She stared at him with wide, incredulous eyes. “You hit me,” she said dully.
“Sorry. Best treatment for hysterics, sister. You better go in and sit down.”
This struck her as being a reasonable explanation and a wise suggestion. She accepted the one and acted upon the other. She went inside and sat in a chair with her legs stretched in front of her, and her feet were such a great distance away that she had difficulty seeing them. Vision improved shortly, however, and she could see not only her own feet quite clearly but also another pair of feet beyond them. They must belong to the man who opened the door, she decided. He must have followed her into the room. He must have turned on a light, too. She hadn’t, she was certain, and if he hadn’t done it, the room would be dark. She resented this. She wanted him to go away. She was grateful to him for his service, of course, but he had no right to presume on her gratitude. Had she thanked him? Maybe he was waiting for that. She thought that she he’d, but it could have been the cabbie she was remembering. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll be quite all right now.”
“Will you?”
“Yes.”
“I’d like to talk with you. Do you feel capable of talking?”
“I could talk with you if I wanted to, but I don’t believe I want to. You’ll have to excuse me.”
“Can you see this?”
He was holding a hand toward her palm up, and the light gathered and glittered on something in the palm, but she couldn’t tell what the thing was. She squinted, peering at it, shaking her head.
“What is it?” she said.
“A badge. My identification. My name’s Sergeant Tromp. I’m a policeman.”
His words were a glacial wind, and the mist condensed and fell inside her skull like icy rain, leaving exposed for a terrible moment the ugly, distorted shape of terror waiting patiently beyond the frail defenses of delusion and fantasy and alcohol. Then the mist rose again from the surface of her feverish brain, blurring the vision and delaying the certain issue.
“A policeman?” she said. “What do you want?”
“Like I said, to talk with you. Not me, to be exact, but Lieutenant Ridley. Down at police headquarters. He sent me to bring you.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know any Lieutenant Ridley. I don’t know any lieutenants at all.”
“That’s all right. He doesn’t know you, either. He’d like to get acquainted.”
“Policemen are to arrest people. Does he want to arrest me?”
“You done anything to be arrested for?”
She shook her head, looking at him craftily from under lowered lids. “You’re trying to trick me, Sergeant. You’re trying to make me incriminate myself. I don’t have to answer that.”
“Sure, sister. That’s right. You don’t have to answer anything.”
“I don’t mind, though. I don’t mind answering. It’s not what I’ve done, you see. It’s what I have.”
“What’s that?”
“Look at me. Can you see anything wrong?”
“You’ve had too much to drink, that’s all I can see.”
“No, no. It’s my hair. Can you see anything wrong with my hair?”
“It needs brushing. Otherwise, it looks okay.”
“I mean the color. The color is wrong. Is this lieutenant going to arrest me because of my hair?”
“Look, sister. Save the jokes for Ridley. He’s a very literate guy with a sense of humor. He likes a good joke.”
“Joke? I guess it is a kind of joke. On me. Someone always keeps playing jokes on me, Sergeant. Like giving me hair of a nameless and abominable color. Don’t you think that’s funny? They’re taking me to prison for the color of my hair. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? You’ve come to take me to prison for the color of my hair, haven’t you?”
He said wearily. “Not prison. Not yet. Just down to Headquarters. Listen to me, sister. Putting it bluntly, you’re drunk, and it’s getting late. The lieutenant will be getting tired of waiting. What you need is a cold shower. Suppose you go get one, like a good girl, and I’ll wait for you here.”
“A shower?”
“That’s what I said. Go along, now. You wouldn’t want me to help you, would you?”
She shuddered and stood up. Placing her feet very carefully, she walked past him and into the bedroom. Terror waited in the mist, but the mist was warm and shielding and would not rise. The mist was thrice blessed. The mist was her last friend on earth. She walked through it across the room until her knees struck the edge of the bed. Gently, with a long sigh, she lay down on her face, and the mist closed in upon her and darkened and was perfectly still.
In the other room, Sergeant Tromp waited a reasonable length of time for the sound of the shower, and then he went into the bedroom. Standing beside the bed, he looked down at the recumbent figure. His emotional state was a bitter mixture—tiredness and cynicism and vestigial pity. He was tired because a man just naturally gets tired after so long a time on a road that isn’t going
