Running Man

there was a terrible urgency in his search through nighttown bohemia, a crying need to find and punish the source of his anguish

The telephone brought him out of a distant early sleep. He groaned and reached for it. The girl's voice—it was the voice of Louise—said: "Martin?"

"Yes," he answered thickly, heaving himself out of a dream he would never remember. "What's the matter, Louise?"

"I just want you to know where I am."

"What do you mean?"

"Where I am. Wake up."

He was sitting on the edge of the bed, hunched into the telephone. "OK. What are you trying to say?"

"I'm trying to say where I am. I am not at home. I am in the sack, Martin. I am in the sack elsewhere. I am in the sack with one of the most promising folk singers in the Bay Area. Right now, as I speak to you, at this very moment, he is doing something very interesting to me, elsewhere. I just wanted you to know."

The assault was so sudden and so totally unexpected that Martin Ford felt nothing at all but an icy clarity. It was like an electric needle into the source of feeling. He would not sleep that night, he knew that; but for the rest, all his love for Louise was annihilated in the stab of her words, and the reverse of love, jealous rage, also disappeared in a brief flicker like that of the needle, and there was nothing left at this moment but a chilled and emotionless curiosity. He did not even ask her for a reason. "OK," he said, "are you finished?"

"I think so. Ooah, Fred——" And then suddenly, when she spoke the man's name, Martin heard a scuffling curse:

"Didn't I tell you not to use my name, you——"

And then, before the telephone went dead, Martin heard Louise screaming, "Martin! Help! Help!"

There was silence. It was one o'clock on a winter morning in San Francisco, with the fog shrouding even the summit of Telegraph Hill as Martin gazed out, and nothing but silence on the chilled streets outside. He came thoroughly awake as he flung himself into his clothes. What day was it? Tuesday, no Wednesday morning. He and Louise had not spent the evening together because she was tired, he was tired, they decided to have a quiet evening separated from each other. It was so unlike their habit that they referred to it as their "nondate"—they had been inseparable for nearly a year. She was the girl whom, though she did not know it, he had planned to marry until about ten minutes ago. Dark and quiet, she was not like the chicks he had pampered and been pampered by in his wild bachelor days after Stanford; he found that he liked to be sure of a girl and he could be sure of Louise. That she did not surprise him had been a virtue. He wanted to leave courtship and uncertainty for marriage and career—he had planned to tell her soon; he wanted Louise to share these matters with him, and children, and the rest of the ordinary life which had come to be dear to him. A young lawyer could hell around in San Francisco and make out OK, but when he was no longer "young," just "youngish," he had to make some solid choices if he planned to gratify his ambition in a large law firm. He could keep the red MG, he could even display his prowess on the ski slopes, but it was time for reliability in love. Marriage—he had considered Louise and found her good. It was a bonus that she both seemed right for him and—and that other: He loved her. Martin loved Louise.

And now this. There were girls in his past who might have done what Louise just now did to him—crazy chicks, jazzy psychopaths, far-out beat broads doing anything for kicks but calling it Genet or Kenny Burrell or Hart Crane.

Not Louise.

He had believed her words, crazily believed her for an instant, because he too had his corrupted past, but this was not Louise's style. She was being forced. Someone who wanted to destroy her, to destroy him, had put some terrible threat at her throat: enough to hypnotize or terrify her so that she could speak the words she had just spoken.

He knew no Fred. Not a single one.

Did Louise know a Fred? They had agreed about discretion; neither of them had described the past; address books were private matters, and when she had referred to the men before him, she always said, "This person ... This person used to like the opera, but I hated it ... This person I knew was a careless driver ... This person was terribly jealous, impossible ..." The name Fred rang no alarm in him. He did not even sound like a "this person."

Martin reached for his telephone directory. He sighed like a man with a painful job to do, a man interrupted in his sleep; he even yawned, and this surprised him. He was in a state of terror. He was in a state of cold grief. And yet the body demanded oxygen and took it with a yawn.

He was telephoning Louise's best friend. She came grumpily out of sleep. "This is Martin," he said, "I can't explain now, but I've got to know something. Does Louise know anyone named Fred?"

"Fred? How are you, Fred? What are you doing calling me so late?"

"Sally, this is Martin! Martin Ford! Do you know anyone—does Louise know anyone named Fred?"

There was a long pause. Then: "You drunk?"

"Tell me which Fred you were referring to! This is urgent!"

Another long pause. "Martin, you can trust Louise. She really cares for you."

Martin was nearly sobbing with fury. "Please, no lectures! I've got to know who Fred is! Tell me!"

Sally's voice, which had gone from sleepy to psychoanalytic, now grew cold and angry. "Get a good night's sleep, Martin, and then ask Louise. Whatever you need to know, I'm sure she can answer."

Click. The telephone went dead. Martin was holding the telephone. Deep within himself Martin's day-to-day intelligence was registering a fact to which he had always been indifferent. For some reason Sally did not like him. It made no difference; he simply registered the fact. But now there were consequences. He should have explained more logically why he was asking that question—"Fred! Who is Fred!"—in the middle of the night. He dialed Sally's number again. The bell rang and rang. She would not answer; she was convinced he was drunkenly jealous; it was no good to try calling her. She lived in Sausalito. By the time he drove out and roused her——

Folk singer! he suddenly thought. Down the hill on Grant Avenue in the beat, bohemian area of San Francisco's North Beach, there was a folk singers' hangout called Trick or Treat. He checked his watch. It would still be open. He finished dressing in a moment and was running down the hill.

Trick or Treat was a place where the singers got paid out of a passed hat. There was a rapid turnover of south of Mission hillbillies, University of California blues shouters, pseudo-Appalachian whisperers from Pacific Heights, immigrants from Washington Square. The place did not serve alcohol; it was a meet for underage kids, student flamenco guitarists, freedom plotters, teenage fighters of the Spanish Civil War. Louise sometimes dropped by for a bit of midnight confusion; it was one of her wistful fancies which made her general reliability so charming. She lived nearby, on Greenwich Street, and she would stroll in for a hot chocolate when she couldn't sleep. Before she came together with Martin, she had sometimes dreamed away long evenings there—a dark, sweet, pouting girl who liked to sit alone, like a gloomy teenager, but was really a pensive 26-year-old librarian. Because the smoke made her hair smell, she washed it twice a week. But the chocolate was good and the whipped cream real, not instant skimmed whipped cream. They would know her; and, more important, they would surely know Fred.

When Martin entered, the place was nearly empty. There were no more than a dozen dreamy folkniks in the room. A Chinese boy was climbing onto a high stool with his guitar. "How-deh!" he said. "Ah'm Swingin' Jimmy Wing, and foh mah fust numbah, Ah'm a-gonna sing to you On Top of Old Smokey."

"On top of ole Smo-kee All kivered with snau"

"You got a folk singer here named Fred something," Martin said to the fat boy at the door. The boy was fumbling a Hershey bar.

"Lemme see now."

"Look at me!"

The boy looked up blandly, with a ring of chocolate about his mouth, and wiped a crumb from his lips. "Fred, Fred," he said. "Oh yes, Fred Nashun, Songs of All Nations. Yep. Know him."

"He in here tonight?"

"I guess he sing here earlier tonight."

"He go out with a girl?"

"I guess maybe he go out with a girl. Yeah, a girl. He don't go out of here much with a girl, so I guess I notice."

"Louise?"

"How do I know, mister?"

"You said he didn't often go out with a girl. You noticed." Martin suddenly remembered an old Indian trick for extracting information from reluctant informants—money. It was quicker than torture with a high school dropout. He put three loose dollars on the table and, first, described the girl: small, dark, long shiny hair, probably no make-up, probably from the neighborhood, probably wearing a skirt and sweater.

"Yep." He put his hands on the money, and Martin put his own hot hand on the plump one and kept it there so that the plump hand couldn't move.

"Yep isn't very much for three fast bucks. Now I want one more answer. Where does Fred live?"

The boy hesitated.

Martin's fingers tightened on the plump wrists. He said, "You want that three bucks?" as if it were a threat.

"Hell, what's three bucks to me? Hell. OK, he lives above the laundromat at the corner." Martin was already on his way out. The fat boy said, "Jeez man, you are in one hurry."

As he went through the door, Martin heard Swinging Jimmy Wing announce his next number. "How-deh. Foh mah nex' numbah, Ah'm swingin' to ya Black Is the Colah a Mah True Love's Hai-yeh."

"You're a lucky man!" a witty folk lover screamed in the lonely room.

The street was deserted. It was nearly two o'clock. But up the block the lights of the all-night laundromat wavered their deathly fluorescent clarity out onto the street.

• • •

For just a moment, Martin felt the cool night mists swirling up Telegraph Hill. Foghorns out on the bay, a deep bass like that of mournful dogs, sounded their steady beat. The light atop Alcatraz made a yellowish glow in the low banks of fog, which seemed continuous with earth, which was in turn a thickly indistinct element continuous with sea and heaven. A man stood in the doorway of a shut-down morocco leather-goods shop with what Louise called "The Gallo Gift Wrap"—a paper bag crinkled about a bottle of wine. Martin hurtled past him and into the laundromat. There was the pay telephone with the frayed sign reading Out of order, the elephantine row of washers, the dryers (one hanging open), the cardboard carton with stray socks, errant underwear, the gathered debris of a neighborhood's linen, the decimated, steamed magazines in a heap on the window ledge. No one in the store. No echo of the beat housewives, the Italian mothers, the bohemian bachelors who gathered here usually in the evening. A copy of Theatre Arts lay open on a bench.

But there was a door. Martin pushed it open. It led up a stairway. At the top, another door and a card tacked to it:

Fred Nashun

"Songs of All Nations"

Folk singer

Lessons & Recitals

Guitar & Voice

Come in don't wait

Martin knocked. No answer. He tried the knob. The door was open. He pushed in and banged his shins on the outsize double bed which nearly filled the room. At first, as his eyes focused in the darkness—the glow of fog through the window gave a dim hold on things—it looked as if there had been a fight. The disorder seemed total, heaps of (concluded on page 148)Running Man(continued from page 138) papers, books, clothes, an overturned chair. But then, as he glanced again, he realized that this was an organic chaos: The books had been piled like that, the records were in little stacks on the floor, the clothes were scattered as if by appointment. And in the middle of the bed lay Fred Nashun, undisturbed by the eruption of a stranger into his room.

His eyes were open, but he barely moved. He reached up, pulled a cord, and a bed lamp went on. He waited for an instant and then said thickly, "Hi, Marty."

"That answers my question!" Martin shouted, and leapt at the man on the bed. "What did you do with her?"

Fred Nashun shook his head and pointed to the hands at his throat. He couldn't reply while being choked. Martin took his hands away.

"Very sleepy," Nashun said. "'Chout for my guitar."

And then, to Martin's astonishment, he simply shut his eyes and fell asleep. Martin shook him and the eyes came dimly open. They were unfocused and ill. He was receding down a long corridor.

"Where is she?"

"Who?"

"Louise!"

"Oh. You must be Martin ... Lemme go to sleep."

"Where is she!"

"Home. The chick went home. Go get her, boy." And his eyelids fluttered shut again.

The Woolworth alarm clock loudly ticking at the bedside said after two o'clock. Time was passing more quickly than Martin realized. Everything took time; everything took more time than one suspected. Fred Nashun was sound asleep. There was an empty pill bottle by his bed. He could still shake him awake and get something from him; he could call the police and have his stomach pumped; he could save his life. But that would also be to waste time. And in a moment, without thinking, Martin made a wartime decision, one of those decisions made without pain that risks haunting a man for the rest of his time on earth. He made it in an instant, in the turning of his body, the first of several absolutely mortal decisions which he had to make that night: Let him live his own way. Let him sleep. Let him die.

Would anyone question him?

What about fingerprints?

Hell, it was obviously suicide. No one would think of why. No one would worry about visitors. Martin stood up, gazed a moment at the gently breathing man on the bed—it was the body of a very long and thin man, a gangling and an ill man—and saw the neck of the guitar sticking out from beneath the bed. Then he went down the stairs, through the all-night laundromat, and out. Afterward he remembered thinking about Nashun's room: probably illegal for occupancy. Illegal for living. Probably the landlord will get in trouble after the coroner's report.

He was running up Greenwich toward the apartment house where Louise lived. He rang and rang at the front bell. No answer. He was worrying about what to say to the custodian if he had to get him to open at this hour, but then he remembered that the back door, through the garage, was usually left unlocked. He ran up the back stairway to Louise's door.

Now he was learning to be careful. It was a new building and sounds carried. This was something which Louise and he had giggled over. They had tried to be stealthy after their dinners on the long easy evenings. They piled pillows upon pillows and wrestled joyfully, laughing and tricking until the time for laughter and tricking came to an end. He put his ear to the thin door as if he could hear them inside. (Who? Himself and Louise? Fred and Louise?) No sound. He listened for her breathing or moving. Nothing. He knocked on the door. No answer. Then he remembered that he had her key. When he reached in his pocket, it turned out that he did not have the key. It was at home, in another pair of pants. He could break down the door, but then what if ... ? Better if he just got the key. Whatever had happened, Fred Nashun was home dying in his own bed, Louise was elsewhere. The best thing he could do was to work quietly, to plan quietly, and to run quietly.

Martin lived only a block away, but the swift climb up Telegraph Hill made him puff. It was only a block, but it was uphill. There was an automatic elevator in his building. He would be able to get his breath a little in the elevator, and then he would find Louise's key, and then he would go back and hope she was there. And what could she say to him now?

At this time of the year, the dawn was still several hours away. But the glow of the city off the dense droplets of fog in the air made a steady false dawn which grew no brighter, but damply rubbed off everything—light and moisture bathed him. Into the elevator and up.

His door was open. Louise was sitting there in the dark, with her cloth coat on over the slacks she wore for her solitary strolls in North Beach to the City Lights Bookshop, to the Trick or Treat, to the laundromat. She suffered a little from insomnia. It came with being 26 and unmarried and a girl who had been around. She walked in the city because she did not take pills, and now she had just walked into his apartment and sat composed, her hands in her lap, waiting for him.

"Louise! What happened?"

She flung herself into his arms and clung like a desperate child.

"Don't ask me. That's the one thing you must never do. Never ask me."

"What happened tonight?"

"Martin, will you marry me?"

"I found that Fred Nashun——"

But she had stuffed her hand against his mouth, and then, weeping bitterly, stuffed her mouth against his, kissing and kissing him. "I wanted to marry you, I did ever since I met you," he said. She was sobbing against his chest. "I still do."

"Oh, Martin, why didn't you ever tell me?"

"I thought you knew. I've been a bachelor a long time. But I was going to ask if you would——"

She let him go. She was looking at him as if she had not known him before. Her eyes were smudged with fatigue; her hair was damp and disordered; she had never looked so beautiful to him.

"Will you?" he asked.

"I would," she said.

"But just tell me what happened tonight."

She made him let her go. "Then I won't," she said.

"What happened?"

She answered with great calm thought. "You'll have to trust me. If you don't, that's the end. If you don't trust me, I'll never tell you what happened, I'll never refer to it, it will be finished. If you do trust me, the same."

She spoke these words with great finality.

Martin knew now that he would marry this girl, but that he would never reach the perfect understanding that he had dreamed of with her. And that perhaps this was really why he would marry her. He would be fed and nourished through the long years to come by what had happened this night—her disaster, his running. Something had been proved about both of them. What had been proved was that things can be what they seem and yet not, that answers do not satisfy the major questions between two human beings.

"Put it out of your mind," she said. "That will be best."

"We never will."

"But we have to put it out of our minds, because that is best."

As they embraced, the folk singer was sinking irreversibly into his final sleep in the room above the laundromat. As they embraced, Martin's unanswered questions formed the dense element which shored up their once unmoored, henceforward joined lives.

He leapt at the man on the bed. "What did you do with her?" he shouted.