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The Encounter

by Kate Wilhelm

KATE WILHELM was born June 8, 1929, in Toledo, Ohio. She sold her first story in 1957, and she has been writing and selling steadily ever since. It is fashionable to say of our feminine celebrities, “In real life she is Mrs. John Blank.” Kate Wilhelm is married to author, editor and critic Damon Knight, which makes her Mrs. Damon Knight; but in real life she is Kate Wilhelm, her husband and three sons notwithstanding, and her individuality is as distinctive as her writing.

A Charter Member of Science Fiction Writers of America, she provided the original sketch from which the Nebula Award Trophy was designed. She was co director of the Milford Science Fiction Writers’ Conference from 1963 to 1969 and lecturer at the Clarion Writers’ Workshop from 1969 to 1972.

In addition to magazine appearances she has contributed stories to Volumes 1 through 12 of the Orbit series. She has had two collections of short stories published, The Mile Long Spaceship (1963) and The Downstairs Room (1968). More Bitter than Death (1962) is a mystery novel. Her four science fiction novels are The Killer Thing (1965), The Nevermore Affair (1967), Let the fire fall (1969), and Margaret and (1971). Two more science fiction novels were written in collaboration with Ted Thomas: The Clone (1965), and The Year of the Cloud (1970). Abyss (1971) contains two novellas, “The Plastic Abyss” and “Stranger in the House.”p>

She has been a Nebula Awards finalist four of the seven years the awards have been presented. Her story “The Planners” received the Nebula Award as the best short story of 1968, and in the 1971 balloting her name appeared on the final ballot a record four times: with her novel Margaret and I,- with her novellas “The Infinity Box” and “The Plastic Abyss”; and with her novelette “The Encounter.”

The bus slid to an uneasy stop, two hours late. Snow was eight inches deep, and the white sky met the white ground in a strange world where the grubby black bus station floated free. It was a world where up and down had become meaningless, where the snow fell horizontally. Crane, supported by the wind and the snow, could have entered the station by walking up the wall, or across the ceiling. His mind seemed adrift, out of touch with the reality of his body. He stamped, scattering snow, bringing some feeling back to his legs, making himself feel the floor beneath his feet. He tried to feel his cheek, to see if he was feverish, but his hands were too numb, his cheek too numb. The heating system of the bus had failed over an hour ago.

The trouble was that he had not dressed for such weather. An overcoat, but no boots, no fur-lined gloves, no woolen scarf to wind and wind about his throat. He stamped and clapped his hands. Others were doing the same.

There had been only nine or ten people on the bus, and some of them were beinggreeted by others or were slipping out into the storm, home finally or near enough now. The bus driver was talking to an old man who had been in the station when they arrived, the ticket agent, probably. He was wearing two sweaters, one a heavy, hip-length green that looked home-knit; under it, a turtleneck gray wool with too-long sleeves that hung from beneath the green sleeves. He had on furry boots that came to his knees, with his sagging pants tucked tightly into them. Beyond him, tossed over one of the wooden benches, was a greatcoat, fleece-lined, long enough to hang to his boot tops. Fleecy gloves bulged from one of the pockets.

“Folks,” he said, turning away from the bus driver, “there won’t be another bus until sometime in the morning, when they get the roads plowed out some. There’s an all-night diner down the road, three, four blocks. Not much else in town’s open this time of night.”

“Is there a hotel?” A woman, fur coat, shiny patent boots, kid gloves. She had got on at the same station that Crane had; he remembered the whiff of expensive perfume as she had passed him.

“There’s the Laughton Inn, ma’am, but it’s two miles outside town and there’s no way to get there.”

“Oh, for God’s sake! You mean this crummy burg doesn’t even have a hotel of its own?”

“Four of them, in fact, but they’re closed, open again in April. Don’t get many people to stay overnight in the winter times.”

“Okay, okay. Which way’s the diner?” She swept a disapproving glance over the bleak station and went to the door,, carrying an overnight bag with her.

“Come on, honey, I’m going there, too,” the driver said. He pulled on gloves and turned up his collar. He took her arm firmly, transferred the bag to his other hand, then turned to look at the other three or four people in the station. “Anyone else?”

Diner. Glaring lights, jukebox noise without end, the smell of hamburgers and onions, rank coffee and doughnuts saturated with grease. Everyone smoking. Someone would have cards probably, someone a bottle. The woman would sing or cry, or get a fight going. She was a nasty one, he could tell. She’d be bored within an hour. She’d have the guys groping her under the table, in the end booth. The man half turned, his back shielding her from view, his hand slipping between her buttons, under the blouse, under the slip, the slippery smooth nylon, the tightness of the bra, unfastening it with his other hand. Her low laugh, busy hands. The hard nipple between his fingers now, his own responsive hardness. She had turned to look at the stranded passengers when the driver spoke, and she caught Crane’s glance.

“It’s a long wait for a Scranton bus, honey,” she said.

“I’d just get soaked going to the diner,” Crane said, and turned his back on her. His hand hurt, and he opened his clenched fingers and rubbed his hands together hard.

“I sure as hell don’t want to wait all night in this rat hole,” someone else said. “Do you have lockers? I can’t carry all this gear.”

“Lock them up in the office for you,” the ticket agent said. He pulled out a bunch of keys and opened a door at the end of the room. A heavy-set man followed him, carrying three suit-cases. They returned; the door squeaked. The agent locked it again.

“Now, you boys will hold me up, won’t you? I don’t want to fall down in all that snow.”

“Doll, if you fall on your pretty little ass, I’ll dry you off personally,” the driver said.

“Oh, you will, will you?”

Crane tightened his jaw, trying not to hear them. The outside door opened and a blast of frigid air shook the room. A curtain of snow swept across the floor before the door banged again, and the laughing voices were gone.

“You sure you want to wait here?” the ticket agent asked. “Not very warm in here. And I’m going home in a minute, you know.”

“I’m not dressed to walk across the street in this weather, much less four blocks,” Crane said.

The agent still hesitated, one hand on his coat. He looked around, as if checking on loose valuables. There was a woman on one of the benches. She was sitting with her head lowered, hands in her lap, legs crossed at the ankles. She wore a dark cloth coat, and her shoes were skimpier than Crane’s, three crossing strips of leather attached to paper-thin soles. Black cloth gloves hid her hands. She didn’t look up, in the silence that followed, while the two men scrutinized her. It was impossible to guess her age in that pose, with only the dark clothes to go by.

“Ma’am, are you all right?” the agent asked finally.

“Yes, of course. Like the gentleman, I didn’t care to wade through the snow. I can wait here.”

She raised her head and with a touch of disappointment Crane saw that she was as nondescript as her clothing. When he stopped looking at her, he couldn’t remember what she looked like. A woman. Thirty. Thirty-five. Forty. He didn’t know. And yet. There was something vaguely familiar about her, as if he should remember her, as if he might have seen her or met her at one time or another. He had a very good memory for faces and names, an invaluable asset for a salesman, and he searched his memory for. this woman and came up with nothing.

“Don’t you have nothing with you that you could change into?” the agent asked peevishly. “You’d be more comfortable down at the diner.”

“I don’t have anything but some work with me,” she said. Her voice was very patient. “I thought I’d be in the city before the storm came. Late bus, early storm. I’ll be fine here.”

Again his eyes swept through the dingy room, searching for something to say, not finding anything. He began to pull on his coat, and he seemed to gain forty pounds. “Telephone under the counter, back there,” he said finally. “Pay phone’s outside under a drift, I reckon.”

“Thank you,” she said.

The agent continued to dawdle. He pulled on his gloves, checked the rest rooms to make sure the doors were not locked, that the lights worked. He peered at a thermostat, muttering that you couldn’t believe what it said anyways. At the door he stopped once more. He looked like a walking heap of outdoor garments, a clothes pile that had swallowed a man. “Mr.-uh-“

“Crane. Randolph Crane. Manhattan.”

“Uh, yes. Mr. Crane, I’ll tell the troopers that you two are up here. And the road boys. Plow”ll be out soon’s it lets up some.

They’ll keep an eye open for you, if you need anything. Maybe drop in with some coffee later on.”

“Great,” Crane said. “That’d be great.”

“Okay, then. I wouldn’t wander out if I was you. See you in the morning, then. Night.”

The icy blast and the inrushing snow made Crane start to shake again. He looked over at the woman, who was huddling down, trying to wrap herself up in the skimpy coat.

His shivering eased and he sat down and opened his briefcase and pulled out one of the policies he had taken along to study. This was the first time he had touched it. He hoped the woman would fall asleep and stay asleep until the bus came in the morning. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to stretch out on the short benches, not that it would matter anyway. He wasn’t the type to relax enough to fall asleep anywhere but in bed.

He stared at the policy, a twenty-year endowment, two years to go to maturity, on the life of William Sanders, age twenty-two. He held it higher, trying to catch the light, but the print was a blur; all he could make out were the headings of the clauses, and these he already knew by heart. He turned the policy over; it was the same on the back, the old familiar print, and the rest a blur. He started to refold the paper to return it to the briefcase. She would think he was crazy, taking it out, looking at it a moment, turning it this way and that, and then putting it back. He pursed his lips and pretended to read.

Sanders, Sanders. What did he want? Four policies, the endowment, a health and accident, a straight life, and mortgage policy. Covered, protected. Insurance-poor, Sanders had said, throwing the bulky envelope onto Crane’s desk. “Consolidate these things somehow. I want cash if I can get it, and out from under the rest.”

“‘But what about your wife, the kids?”

“Ex-wife. If I go, she’ll manage. Let her carry insurance on me.”

Crane had been as persuasive as he knew how to be, and in the end he had had to promise to assess the policies, to have figures to show cash values, and so on. Disapprovingly, of course.

“You know, dear, you really are getting more stuffy every day,” Mary Louise said.

“And if he dies, and his children are left destitute, then will I be so stuffy?”

“I’d rather have the seven hundred dollars myself than see it go to your company year after year.”

“That’s pretty shortsighted.”

“Are you really going to wear that suit to Maggie’s party?”

“Changing the subject?”

“Why not? You know what you think, and I know what I think, and they aren’t even within hailing distance of each other.”

Mary Louise wore a red velvet gown that was slit to her navel, molded just beneath her breasts by a silver chain, and almost completely bare in the back, clown to the curve of her buttocks. The silver chain cut into her tanned back, slightly. Crane stared at it.

“New?”

“Yes. I picked it up last week. Pretty?”

“Indecent. I didn’t know it was a formal thing tonight.”

“Not really. Optional anyway. Some of us decided to dress, that’s all.” She looked at him in the mirror and said, I really don’t care if you want to wear that suit.”

Wordlessly he turned and went back to the closet to find his dinner jacket and black trousers. How easy it would be, a flick of a chain latch, and she’d be stripped to her hips. Was she counting on someone’s noticing that? Evers maybe? Or Olivetti! Olivetti? What had he said? Something about women who wore red in public. Like passing out a dance card and pencil, the promise implicit in the gesture?

“Slut!” he said, through teeth so tightly pressed together that his jaws ached.

“What? I’m sorry.”

He looked up. The woman in the bus station was watching him across the aisle. She still looked quite cold.

“I am sorry,” she said softly. “I thought you spoke.”

“No.” He stuffed the policy back in his case and fastened it. “Are you warm enough?”

-

“Not really. The ticket agent wasn’t kidding when he said the thermostat lies. According to it, it’s seventy-four in here.”

Crane got up and looked at the thermostat. The adjustment control was gone. The station was abysmally cold. He walked back and forth for a few moments, then paused at the window. The white world, ebbing and growing, changing, changeless. “If I had a cup or something, I could bring in some snow and chill the thermostat. That might make the heat kick on.”

“Maybe in the rest room … ” 13e heard her move across the floor, but he didn’t turn to look. There was a pink glow now in the whiteness, like a fire in the distance, all but obscured by the inter-vening clouds of snow. He watched as it grew brighter, darker, almost red; then it went out. The woman returned and stood at his side.

“No cups, but I folded paper towels to make a funnel thing. Will it do?”

He took the funnel. It was sturdy enough, three thicknesses of brown, unabsorbent toweling. “Probably better than a cup,” he said. “Best stand behind the door. Every time it opens, that blizzard comes right on in.”

She nodded and moved away. When he opened the door the wind hit him hard, almost knocking him back into the room, wrenching the door from his hand. It swung wide open and hit the woman. Distantly he heard her gasp of surprise and pain. He reached out and scooped up a funnel full of snow and then pushed the door closed again. He was covered with snow. Breathless, he leaned against the wall. “Are you all right?” he asked after a few moments.

She was holding her left shoulder. “Yes. It caught me by surprise. No harm done. Did you get enough snow?”

He held up the funnel for her to see and then pushed himself away from the wall. Again he had the impression that there was no right side up in the small station. He held the back of one of the benches and moved along it. “The wind took my breath away,” he said.

“Or the intense cold. I think I read that breathing in the cold causes as many heart attacks as overexertion.”

“Well, it’s cold enough out there. About zero by now, I guess.” He scooped out some of the snow and held it against the thermostat. “The furnace must be behind this wall, or under this area. Feel how warm it is.”

She put her hand on the wall and nodded. “Maybe we can fasten the cup of snow up next to the termostat.” She looked around and then went to the bulletin board. She removed several of the notices and schedules there and brought him the thumbtacks. Crane spilled a little snow getting the tacks into the paper towel and then into the wall. In a few minutes there was a rumble as the furnace came on and almost immediately the station began to feel slightly warmer. Presently the woman took off her coat.

“Success,” she said, smiling.

“I was beginning to think it had been a mistake after all, not going to the diner.” .

..So was I.”

“I think they are trying to get the snowplows going. I saw a red light a couple of minutes ago. It went out again, but at least someone’s trying.”

She didn’t reply, and after a moment he said, “I’m glad you don’t smoke. I gave it up a few months ago, and it would drive me mad to have to smell it through a night like this. Probably I’d go back to them.”

“I have some,” she said. “I even smoke once in a while. If you decide that you do want them … “

“No. No. I wasn’t hinting.”

“I just wish the lights were better in here. I could get in a whole night’s work. I often work at night.”

“So do I, but you’d put your eyes out. What-

“That’s all right. What kind of work do I do? An illustrator for Slocum House Catalogue Company. Not very exciting, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, you’re an artist.”

“No. Illustrator. I wanted to become an artist, but … things didn’t work out that way.”

“I’d call you an artist. Maybe because I’m in awe of anyone who can draw, or paint, or do things like that. You’re all artists to me.”

She shrugged. “And you’re an insurance salesman.” lie stiffened and she got up, saying, “I saw the policy you were looking over, and the briefcase stuffed full of policies and company pamphlets and such. I knew an insurance salesman once.”

He realized that he had been about to ask where she was going, and he clamped his jaw again and turned so that he wouldn’t watch her go into the ladies’ room.

He went to the window. The wind was still at gale force, but so silent. With the door closed, the station seemed far removed from the storm, and looking at it was like watching something wholly unreal, manufactured to amuse him perhaps. There were storm windows, and the building was very sturdy and probably very well insulated. Now, with the furnace working, it was snug and secure. He cupped his hands about his eyes, trying to see past the reflections in the window, but there was nothing. Snow, a drift up to the sill now, and the wind-driven snow that was like a sheer curtain being waved from above, touching the windows, fluttering back, touching again, hiding everything behind it.

She was taking a long time. He should have gone when she left Now he had the awkward moment to face, of excusing himself or not, of timing it so that she wouldn’t think he was leaving deliberately in order to dodge something that one or the other said or hinted. She had done it so easily and naturally.-He envied people like her. Always so sure of themselves.

“Which face are you wearing tonight, Randy?” Mary Louise reached across the table and touched his cheek, then shook her head. “I can’t always tell. When you’re the successful salesman, you are so assured, so poised, charming, voluble even.”

“And the other times? What am I those times?”

“Afraid.”

Drawing back from her hand, tight and self-contained again, watchful, he said, “Isn’t it lucky that I can keep the two separated, then? How successful a salesman would I be if I put on the wrong face when I went to work?”

“I wonder if mixing it up a little might not be good for you. So you wouldn’t sell a million dollars’ worth of insurance a year, but you’d be a little happier when you’re not working

“Like you?”

“Not like me, God forbid. But at least I haven’t given up looking for something. And you have.”

“Yeah. You’re looking. In a bottle. In someone else’s bed. In buying sprees.”

“C ‘est la vie. You can always buzz off, you know.”

“And add alimony to my other headaches? No, thanks.”

Smiling at him, sipping an Old Fashioned, infinitely wise and infinitely evil. Were wise women always evil? “My poor Randy. My poor, darling. You thought I was everything you were not, and instead you find that I am stamped from the same mold. Number XLM 119543872-afraid of life, only not quite afraid of death. Someone let up on the pressure there. Hardly an indentation even. So I can lose myself and you can’t. A pity, my darling Randy. If we could lose ourselves together, what might we be able to find? We are so good together, you know. Sex with you is still the best of all. I try harder and harder to make you let go all the way. I read manuals and take personalized lessons, all for your sake, darling. All for you. And it does no good. You are my only challenge, you see.”

“Stop it! Are you crazy?”

“Ah. Now I know who you are tonight. There you are. Tight mouth, frowning forehead full of lines, narrowed eyes. You are not so handsome with this face on, you know. Why don’t you look at me, Randy?” Her hands across the table again, touching his cheeks, a finger trailing across his lips, a caress or mockery. “You never look at me, you know. You never look at me at all.”

He leaned his forehead against the window, and the chill roused him. Where was the woman? He looked at his watch and realized that she had been gone only a few minutes, not the half hour or longer that he had thought. Was the whole night going to be like that? Minutes dragging by like hours? Time distorted until a lifetime could be spent in waiting for one’ dawn?

He went to the men’s room. When he returned, she was sitting in her own place once more, her coat thrown over her shoulders, a sketch pad in her lap.

“Are you cold again?” He felt almost frozen. There was no heat in the men’s room.

“Not really. Moving about chilled me. There’s a puddle under the funnel, and the snow is gone, but heat is still coming from the radiator.”

“I’ll have to refill it every half hour or so, I guess.”

“The driver said it’s supposed to go to ten or fifteen below tonight.”

Crane shrugged. “After it gets this low, I don’t care how much farther it drops. As long as I don’t have to be out in it.”

She turned her attention to her pad and began to make strong lines. He couldn’t tell what she was drawing, only that she didn’t hesitate, but drew surely, confidently. He opened his briefcase and got out his schedule book. It was no use, he couldn’t read the small print in the poor lighting of the station. He rummaged for something that he would be able to concentrate on. He was grateful when she spoke again.

“It was so stupid to start out tonight. I could have waited until tomorrow. I’m not bound by a time clock or anything.”

“That’s just what I was thinking. I was afraid of being snowed in for several days. We were at Sky Mount Ski Lodge, and everyone else was cheering the storm’s approach. Do you ski?”

“Some, not very well. The cold takes my breath away, hitting me in the face like that.”

He stared at her for a moment, opened his mouth to agree, then closed it again. It was as if she was anticipating what he was going to say. “Don’t be so silly, Randy. All you have to do is wear the muter around your mouth and nose. And the goggles on your eyes. Nothing is exposed then. You’re just too lazy to ski.”

“Okay, lazy. I know this-I’m bored to death here. I haven’t been warm since we left the apartment, and my legs ache. That was a nasty fall I had this morning. I’m sore. I have a headache from the glare of the snow, and I think it’s asinine to freeze for two hours in order to slide down a mountain a couple of times. I’m going back to the city.”

“But our reservation is through Saturday night. Paid in advance.”

“Stay. Be my guest. Have yourself a ball. You and McCone make a good pair, and his wife seems content to sit on the sidelines and watch you. Did you really think that anemic blonde would appeal to me? Did you think we’d be too busy together to notice what you were up to?”

“Tracy? To tell the truth I hadn’t given her a thought. I didn’t know she didn’t ski until this afternoon. I don’t know why Mac brought her here. Any more than I know why you came along.”

“Come on home with me. Let’s pack up and leave before the storm begins. We can stop at that nice old antique inn on the way home, where they always have pheasant pie. Remember?”

“Darling, I came to ski. You will leave the car here, won’t you? I’ll need it to get the skis back home, and our gear. Isn’t there a bus or something?”

“Mary Louise, this morning on the slope, didn’t you really see me? You know, when your ski pole got away from you.”

“What in the world are you talking about? You were behind me. How could I have seen you? I didn’t even know you had started down.”

“Okay. Forget it. I’ll give you a call when I get to the apartment.”

“Yes, do. You can leave a message at the desk if I don’t answer.”

The woman held up her sketch and narrowed her eyes. She ripped out the page and crumpled it, tossed it into the waste can.

“I think I’m too tired after all.”

“It’s getting cold in here again. Your hands are probably too cold.” He got up and took the funnel from the wall. “I’ll get more snow and see if we can’t get the furnace going again.”

“You should put something over your face, so the cold air won’t be such a shock. Don’t you have a muffler?”

He stopped-He had crushed the funnel, he realized, and he tried to smooth it again without letting her see what he had done. He decided that it would do, and opened the door. A drift had formed, and a foot of snow fell into the station. The wind was colder, sharper, almost deliberately cutting. He was blinded by the wind and the snow that was driven into his face. He filled the funnel and tried to close the door again, but the drift was in the way. He pushed, trying to use the door as a snowplow. More snow was being blown in, and finally he had to use his hands, push the snow out of the way, not outside, but to one side of the door. At last he had it clear enough and he slammed the door, more winded this time than before. His throat felt raw, and he felt a constriction about his chest.

“It’s getting worse all the time. I couldn’t even see the bus, nothing but a mountain of snow.”

“Ground blizzard, I suspect. When it blows like this you can’t tell how much of it is new snow and how much is just fallen snow being blown about. The drifts will be tremendous tomorrow.” She smiled. “I remember how we loved it when this happened when we were kids. The drifts are exciting, so pure, so high. Sometimes they glaze over and you can play Glass Mountain. I used to be the princess.” ‘

Crane was shivering again. He forced his hands to be steady as he pushed the thumbtacks into the funnel to hold it in place next to the thermostat. He had to clear his throat before he could speak. “Did the prince ever reach you?”

“No. Eventually I just slid back down and went home.”

“Where? Where did you live?”

“Outside Chicago, near the lake.”

He spun around. “Who are you?” He grabbed the back of a bench and clutched it hard. She stared at him. He had screamed at her, and he didn’t know why. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You keep saying things that I’m thinking. I was thinking of that game, of how I never could make it to the top.”

“Near Lake Michigan?”

“On the shores almost.”

She nodded.

“I guess all kids play games like that in the snow,” he said. “Strange that we should have come from the same general area. Did your milk freeze on the back steps, stick up out of the bottle, with the cap at an angle?”

“Yes. And those awful cloakrooms at school, where you bad to strip off snowsuits and boots, and step in icy water before you could get your indoors shoes on.”

“And sloshing through the thaws, wet every damn day. I was wet more than I was dry all through grade school.”

“We all were,” she said, smiling faintly, looking past him.

He almost laughed in his relief. He went to the radiator and put his hands out over it, his back to her. Similar backgrounds, that’s all, he said to himself, framing the words carefully. Nothing strange. Nothing eerie. She was just a plain woman who came from the same state, probably the same county that he came from. They might have gone to the same schools, and he would not have noticed her. She was too common, too nondescript to have noticed at the time. And he had been a quiet boy, not particularly note-worthy himself. No sports besides the required ones. No clubs. A few friends, but even there, below average, because they had lived in an area too far removed from most of the kids who went to his school.

“It’s only two. Seems like it ought to be morning already, doesn’t it?” She was moving about and he turned to see what she was doing. She had gone behind the counter, where the ticket agent had said there was a telephone. “A foam cushion,” she said, holding it up. “I feel like one of the Swiss Family Robinson, salvaging what might be useful.”

“Too bad there isn’t some coffee under there.”

“Wish you were in the diner?”

“No. That bitch probably has them all at each other’s throats by now, as it is;”

“That girl? The one who was so afraid?”

He laughed harshly and sat down. “Girl!”

“No more than twenty, if that much.”

He laughed again and shook his head.

“Describe her to me,” the woman said. She left the counter and sat down on the bench opposite him, still carrying the foam cushion. It had a black plastic cover; gray foam bulged from a crack. It was disgusting.

Crane said, “The broad was in her late twenties, or possibly thirties-“

“Eighteen to twenty.”

“She had a pound of makeup on, nails like a cat.”

“Fake nails, chapped hands, calluses. Ten-cent-store makeup.”

“She had expensive perfume, and a beaver coat. I think beaver.”

She laughed gently. “Drugstore spray cologne. Macy’s Base-ment fake fur, about fifty-nine to sixty-five dollars, unless she hit a sale.”

“And the kid gloves, and the high patent leather boots?”

“Vinyl, both of them.” She looked-at him for an uncomfortable minute, then examined the pillow she had found. “On second thought, I’m not sure that I would want to rest my head on this. It’s a little bit disgusting, isn’t it?”

“Why did you want me to describe that woman? You have your opinion of what she is; I have mine. There’s no way to prove either of our cases without having her before us.”

“I don’t need to prove anything. I don’t care if you think you’re right and I’m wrong. I felt very sorry for the girl. I noticed her.”

“I noticed her, too.”

“What color was her hair, her eyes? How about her mouth-big, small, full? And her nose? Straight, snub, broad?”

He regarded her bitterly for a moment, then shrugged and turned toward the window. He didn’t speak.

“You can’t describe what she really was like because you didn’t see her. You saw the package and made up your mind about the contents. Believe me, she was terrified of the storm, of those men, everything. She needed the security of the driver and people. What about me? Can you describe me?”

He looked, but she was holding the pillow between them and he could see only her hands, long, pale, slender fingers, no rings.

“This is ridiculous,” he said after a second. “I have one of those reputations for names and faces. You know, never forget a name, always know the names of the kids, the wife, occupation and so on.”

“Not this side of you. This side refuses to see anyone at all. I wonder why.” ‘

“What face are you wearing tonight, Randy?” Mary Louise touching him. “Do you see me? Why don’t you look at me?”

Wind whistling past his ears, not really cold yet, not when he was standing still anyway, with the sun warm on him. But racing down’ the slope, trees to his right, the precipice to his left, the wind was icy. Mary Louise a red streak ahead of him, and somewhere behind him the navy and white blur that was McCone. Holding his ,. own between them. The curve of the trail ahead, the thrill of the downward plummet, and suddenly the open-mouthed face of his wife, silent scream, add in the same instant, the ski pole against his legs, tripping him up, the more exciting plunge downward, face in the snow, blinded, over and over, skis gone now, trying to grasp the snow, trying to stop the tumbling, over and over in the snow.

Had his wife tried to kill him?

“Are you all right, Mr. Crane?”

“Yes, of course. Let me describe the last man I sold insurance to, a week ago. Twenty-four, six feet one inch, a tiny, almost invisible scar over his right eyebrow, crinkle lines about his eyes, because he’s an outdoor type, very tanned and muscular. He’s a professional baseball player, incidentally. His left hand has larger knuckles than the right … .”

The woman was not listening. She had crossed the station and was standing at the window, trying to see out. “Computer talk,” ,. she said. “A meaningless rundown of facts. So he bought a policy for one hundred thousand dollars, straight life, and from now on you won’t have to deal with him, be concerned with him at all.”

“Why did you say one hundred thousand dollars?”

“No reason. I don’t know, obviously.”

He chewed his lip and watched her. “Any change out there?”

“Worse, if anything. I don’t think you’ll be able to use this door at all now. You’d never get it closed. It’s half covered with a drift.”

“There must be a window or another door that isn’t drifted over.”

“Storm windows. Maybe there’s a back door; but I bet it opens to the office, and the ticket agent locked that.”

Crane looked at the windows and found that she was right. The storm windows couldn’t be opened from inside. And there wasn’t . another outside door. The men’s room was like a freezer now. He tried to run the water, thinking that possibly cold water would work on the thermostat as well as snow, but nothing came out. The. pipes must have frozen-As he started to close the door, he saw a 3 small block-printed sign: “Don’t close door all the way, no heat in here, water will freeze up.” The toweling wouldn’t hold water anyway. He left the door open a crack and rejoined the woman near the window. “It’s got to be this door,” he said. “I guess I could open it an inch or two, let that much of the drift fall inside and use it.”

“Maybe. But you’ll have to be careful.”

“Right out of Jack London,” he said. “It’s seventy-two on the thermometer. How do you feel?”

“Coolish, not bad.”

“Okay, we’ll wait awhile. Maybe the wind will let up.”

He stared at the puddle under the thermostat, and at the other a larger one across the room near the door, where the snowdrift had entered the room the last time. The drift had been only a foot high then, and now it was three or four feet. Could he move that much snow without anything to work with, if it came inside? He shouldn’t have started back to town. She had goaded him into it, of course. Had she suspected that he would get stranded somewhere, maybe freeze to death?

“Why don’t you come right out and say what you’re thinking?” Red pants, red ski jacket, cheeks almost as red.

“I’m not thinking anything. It was an accident.”

“You’re a liar, Randy! You think I guessed you were there, that I let go hoping to make you fall. Isn’t that what you think? Isn’t it?”

He shook his head hard. She hadn’t said any of that. He hadn’t thought of it then. Only now, here, stranded with this half-mad woman. Half-mad? He looked at her and quickly averted his gaze. Why had that thought come to him? She was odd, certainly, probably very lonely, shy. But half-mad?

Why did she watch him so? As if aware of his thoughts, she turned her back and walked to the ladies’ room. He had to go too, but he remembered the frozen pipes in the men’s room. Maybe she’d fall asleep eventually and he’d be able to slip into her rest room. If not, then he’d wait until morning. Maybe this night had come about in order to give him time to think about him and Mary Louise, to really think it through all the way and come to a decision.

He had met her when he was stationed in Washington, after the Korean War. He had been a captain, assigned to Army Intelligence. She had worked as a private secretary to Senator Robertson of New York. So he had done all right without her up to then. She had introduced him to the president of the company that he worked for now. Knowing that he wanted to become a writer, she had almost forced him into insurance. Fine. It was the right choice. He had told her so a thousand times. But how he had succeeded was still a puzzle to him. He never had tested well on salesmanship on aptitude tests. Too introverted and shy.

“You make other people feel stupid, frankly,” she had said once. “You are so tight and so sure of yourself that you don’t allow anyone else to have an opinion at all. It’s not empathy, like it is with so many good salesmen. It’s a kind of sadistic force that you apply.”

“Oh, stop it. You’re talking nonsense.”

“You treat each client like an extension of the policy that you intend to sell to him. Not like a person, but the human counterpart of the slick paper with the clauses and small print. You show the same respect and liking for, them as for the policies. They go together. You believe it and make them believe it. Numbers, that’s what they are to you. Policy numbers.”

“Why do you hang around if you find me so cold and calculating?”

“Oh, it’s a game that I play. I know there’s a room somewhere where you’ve locked up part of yourself, and I keep searching for it. Someday I’ll find it and open it just a crack, and then I’ll run Because if it ever opens, even a little, everything will come tumbling out and you won’t be able to stop any of it. How you’ll bleed then, bleed and bleed, and cry and moan. I couldn’t stand that. And I can’t stand for it not to be so.”

Crane put his head down in his hands and rubbed his eyes hard. Without affect: that was the term that she used. Modern man without affect. Schizoid personality.. But he also had a nearly split personality. The doctor had told him so. In the six sessions that he had gone to he had learned much of the jargon, and then he had broken it off. Split personality. Schizoid tendencies. Without affect. All to keep himself safe. It seemed to him to be real madness to take away any of the safeties he had painstakingly built, and he had quit the sessions.

And now this strange woman that he was locked up with was warning him not to open the door a crack. He rubbed his eyes harder until there was solid pain there. He had to touch her. The ticket agent had seen her, too, though. He had been concerned about leaving her alone with a strange man all night. So transparently worried about her, worried about Crane. Fishing for his name. He could have told the fool anything. He couldn’t remember his face at all, only his clothes.

All right, the woman was real, but strange. She had an uncanny way of anticipating what he was thinking, what he was going to say, what he feared. Maybe these were her fears too.

She cane back into the waiting room. She was wearing her black coat buttoned to her neck, her hands in the pockets. She didn’t mention the cold.

Soon he would have to get more snow, trick the fool thermostat into turning on the furnace. Soon. A maniac must have put it on that wall, the only warm wall in the building. A penny-pinching maniac.

“If you decide to try to get more snow, maybe I should hold the door while you scoop it up,” she said, after a long silence. The cold had made her face look pinched, and Crane was shivering under his overcoat.

“Can you hold it?” he asked. “There’s a lot of pressure behind that door.”

She nodded.

“Okay. I’ll take the waste can and get as much as I can. It’ll keep in the men’s room. There’s no heat in there.”

She held the doorknob until he was ready, and when he nodded, she turned it and, bracing the door with her shoulder, let it open several inches. The wind pushed, and the snow spilled through. It was over their heads now, and it came in the entire height of the door. She gave ground and the door was open five or six inches. Crane pulled the snow inside, using both hands, clawing at it. The Augean stable, he thought bitterly, and then joined her behind the door, trying to push it closed again. At least no blast of air had come inside this time. The door was packing the snow, and the inner surface of it was thawing slightly, only to refreeze under the pressure and the cold from the other side. Push, Crane thought at her. Push, you devil. You witch. ‘

Slowly it began to move, scrunching snow. They weren’t going to get it closed all the way. They stopped pushing to rest. He was panting hard, and she put her head against the door. After a moment he said, “Do you .think you could move one of the benches over here?”

She nodded. He braced himself against the door and was surprised at the increase in the pressure when she left. He heard her wrestling with the bench, but he couldn’t turn to see. The snow was gaining again. His feet were slipping on the floor, wet now where some of the snow had melted and was running across the room. He saw the bench from the corner of his eye, and he turned to watch her progress with it. She was pushing it toward him, the back to the wall; the back was too high. It would have to be tilted to go under the doorknob. It was a heavy oak bench. If they could maneuver it in place, it would hold.

For fifteen minutes they worked, grunting, saying nothing, try-ing to hold the door closed and get the bench under the knob without losing any more ground. Finally it was done. The door was open six inches, white packed snow the entire height of it.

Crane fell onto a bench and stared at the open door, not able to say anything. The woman seemed equally exhausted. At the top of the door, the snow suddenly fell forward, into the station, sifting at first, then falling in a stream. Icy wind followed the snow into the room, and now that the top of the column of snow had been lost, the wind continued to pour into the station, whistling shrilly

“Well, we know now that the drift isn’t really to the top of the building,” the woman said wearily. She was staring at the opening.

“My words, almost exactly,” Crane said. She always said what he planned to say. He waited.

“We’ll have to close it at the top somehow.”

He nodded. “In a minute. In a minute.”

The cold increased and he knew that he should get busy and try to close the opening, but he felt too numb to cope with it. The furnace couldn’t keep up with the draft of below-zero air. His hands were aching with cold, and his toes hurt with a stabbing intensity. Only his mind felt pleasantly numb and he didn’t want to think about the problem of closing up the hole.

“You’re not falling asleep, are you?”

“For God’s sake!” He jerked straight up on the bench and gave her a mean look, a guilty look. “Just shut up and let me try to think, will you?”

“Sorry.” She got up and began to pace briskly, hugging her hands to her body. “I’ll look around, see if I can find anything that would fit. I simply can’t sit still, I’m so cold.”

He stared at the hole. There had to be something that would fit over it, stay in place, keep out the wind. He narrowed his eyes, staring, and he saw the wind-driven snow as a liquid running into the station from above, swirling about, only fractionally, heavier than the medium that it met on the inside. One continuum, start-ing in the farthest blackest vacuum of space, taking on form as it reached the highest atmospheric molecules, becoming denser as it neared Earth, almost solid here, but not yet. Not yet. The hole extended to that unimaginable distance where it all began, and the chill spilled down, down, searching for him, wafting about here, searching for him, wanting only to find him, willing then to stop the ceaseless whirl. Coat him, claim him. The woman be-longed to the coldness that came from the black of space. He remembered her now.

Korea. The woman. The village. Waiting for the signal. Colder than the station even, snow, flint like ground, striking sparks from nails in boots, sparks without warmth. If they could fire the village, they would get warm, have food, sleep that night. Harrison, wounded, frozen where he fell. Lorenz, frostbitten; Jakobs, snow-blind. Crane, too tired to think, too hungry to think, too cold to think. “Fire the village.” The woman, out of nowhere, urging him back, back up the mountain to the bunkers that were half filled with ice, mines laid now between the bunkers and the valley. Ordering the woman into the village at gunpoint. Spark from his muzzle. Blessed fire and warmth. But a touch of ice behind the eyes, ice that didn’t let him weep when Lorenz died, or when Jakobs, blinded, wandered out and twitched and jerked and pitched over a cliff under a fusillade of bullets. The snow queen, he thought. She’s the snow queen, and she touched my eyes with ice.

“Mr. Crane, please wake up. Please!”

He jumped to his feet reaching for his carbine, and only when his hands closed on air did he remember where he was.

“Mr. Crane, I think I know what we can use to close up the hole. Let me show you.”

She pulled at his arm and he followed her. She led him into the ladies’ room. At the door he tried to pull back, but she tugged. “Look, stacks of paper towels, all folded together. They would be about the right size, wouldn’t they? If we wet them, a block of them, and if we can get them up to the hole, they would freeze in place, and the drift could pile up against them and stop blowing into the station. Wouldn’t it work?”

She was separating the opened package into thirds, her hands busy, her eyes downcast, not seeing him at all. Crane, slightly to one side of her, a step behind, stared at the double image in the mirror. He continued to watch the mirror as his hands reached out for her and closed about her throat. There was no struggle. She simply closed her eyes and became very limp, and he let her fall. Then he took the wad of towels and held it under the water for a few moments and returned to the waiting room with it. He had ` to clear snow from the approach to the door, and then he had to ,. move the bench that was holding the door, carefully, not letting it become dislodged. He dragged a second bench to the door and climbed on it and pushed the wet wad of towels into the opening. He held it several minutes, until he could feel the freezing paper start to stiffen beneath his fingers. He climbed down.

“That should do it,” the woman said.

“But you’re dead.”

Mary Louise threw the sugar bowl at him, trailing a line of sugar across the room.

He smiled. “Wishful thinking,” he/she said.

“You’re dead inside. You’re shriveled up and dried up and rot-ting inside. When did you last feel anything? My God! You can’t create anything, you are afraid of creating anything, even our child!”

“I don’t believe it was our child.”

“You don’t dare believe it. Or admit that you know it was.”

He slapped her. The only time that he ever hit her. And her so pale from the operation, so weak from the loss of blood. The slap meant nothing to him, his hand meeting her cheek, leaving a red print there.

“Murderer!”

“You crazy bitch! You’re the one who had the abortion! You wanted it!”

“I didn’t. I didn’t know what I wanted. I was terrified. You made the arrangements, got the doctor, took me, arranged everything, waited in the other room writing policies. Murderer.”

“Murderer,” the woman said.

He shook his head. “You’d better go back to the ladies’ room and stay there. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Murderer.”

He took a step toward her. He swung around abruptly and almost ran to the far side of the station, pressing his forehead hard on the window.

“We can’t stop it now,” the woman said, following him. “You can’t close the door again now. I’m here. You finally saw me. Really saw me. I’m real now. I won’t be banished again. I’m stronger than you are. You’ve killed off bits and pieces of yourself until there’s nothing left to fight with. You can’t send me away again.”

Crane pushed himself away from the glass and made a halfhearted attempt to hit her with his fist. He missed and fell against the bench holding the door. He heard the woman’s low laugh. All for nothing. All for nothing. The bench slid out from under his hand, and the drift pushed into the room like an avalanche. He pulled himself free and tried to brush the snow off his clothes.

“We’ll both freeze now,” he said, not caring any longer.

The woman came to his side and touched his cheek with her fingers; they were strangely warm. “Relax now, Crane. Just relax.”

She led him to a bench, where he sat down resignedly. “Will you at least tell me who you are?” he said.

“You know. You’ve always known.”

He shook his head. One last attempt, he thought. He had to make that one last effort to get rid of her, the woman whose face was so like his own. “You don’t even exist,” he said harshly, not opening his eyes. “I imagined you here because I was afraid of being alone all night. I created you. I created you. “

He stood up. “You hear that, Mary Louise! Did you hear that? I created something. Something so real that it wants to kill me.”

“Look at me, Crane. Look at me. Turn your head and look. Look with me, Crane. Let me show you. Let me show you what I see ….”

He was shaking again, chilled through, shaking so hard that his muscles were sore. Slowly, inevitably he turned his head and saw the man half-standing, half-crouching, holding the bench with both hands. The man had gray skin, and his eyes were mad with terror.

“Let go, Crane. Look at him and let go. He doesn’t deserve anything from us ever again.” Crane watched the man clutch his chest, heard him moaning for Mary Louise to come help him, ` watched him fall to the floor.

She heard the men working at the drift, and she opened the office door to wait for them. They finally got through and the ticket agent squirmed through the opening they had made.

“Miss! Miss? Are you all right?”

“Yes. I broke into the office, though.”

“My God, I thought … When we saw that the door had given under the drift, and you in here … alo- “The ticket agent blinked rapidly several times.

“I was perfectly all right. When I saw that the door wasn’t going to hold, I broke open the inner office and came in here with my sketch book and pencils. I’ve had a very productive night, really. _ But I could use some coffee now.”

They took her to the diner in a police car, and while she waited for her breakfast order, she went to the rest room and washed her face and combed her hair. She stared at herself in the mirror appraisingly. “Happy birthday,” she said softly then.

“Your birthday?” asked the girl who had chosen to wait the night out in the diner. “You were awfully brave to stay alone in the station. I couldn’t have done that. You really an artist?”

“Yes, really. And last night I had a lot of work to get done. A lot of work and not much time.”

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