Into the Night

“The next night he came over to me in the lobby, and took me into one of the lounges, and bought me a drink. The night after, he bought me dinner. When time was up, we came back to the city separately, but we had arranged to meet again after we returned, and we did. By that time, I was in love with him already. He wasn’t in love with me, I see that now. I was the one way out in front all through the whole thing. But we both made the same mistake: we both mistook my love for him for a return love on his part. When he kissed me, he was only answering my kisses, not giving me originals. When he held me in his arms, he was only completing the half circle of my own embrace. On the strength of this illusion, we got married; he said the words, I put them into his mind.

“It was a bad risk from the start. I was safe only as long as he still hadn’t come up with a love of his own. When he did, and it hit him, I was all screwed up.

“It hit him about two and a quarter years after we were married. Twenty-seven months; that would be about right. We got along very well, those first twenty-seven months. He didn’t even know he didn’t love me. For that matter, I even forgot about it myself, I was so taken up in loving him.

“I can’t pinpoint exactly when she came along. I’m not that good. She didn’t break one of those electronic beams that open or close a door, her arrival wasn’t that precisely registered. But somewhere between the twenty-sixth and the twenty-eighth month she came along.

“The one thing I can’t explain now is how I knew. There was some subtle change in him. I knew what it was then, and looking back now I know that I knew then, but I still can’t say how I knew, any more than I could at the time.

“She was young, I knew that about her too. I saw him glance at a girl of eighteen or nineteen when I was with him on the street one day. He wasn’t interested in her per se, it was a speculative look, so I knew that he must have been comparing her to this other one, and I knew by that that this other one must be around the same age, eighteen or nineteen. Even in a love affair, detective work can be brought into play.

“Pretty soon I knew everything about her, everything but her actual face and her actual name. I knew almost as soon as it happened when they had begun loving up together.

“I used to sit by the hour, thinking, Maybe there’s still some way I could win him back. Maybe it’s not too late even yet. It’s happened before. It’s happened to others. Why not to me?

“Yes, but how? I’d say to myself each time. How? I was never able to get past that ‘how?’

“Then one night something happened that gave me an idea, and I thought I saw the way. I was sitting there alone, watching TV and yet not paying any attention to it, both at the same time, when the phone rang. It was a man, and he had the wrong number. He asked if Miss Somebody-or-other was there. I said, ‘Nobody by that name lives here.’ It turned out our two numbers were identical but for the two last digits, and even those were the same but in opposite order. He’d gotten them transposed, and gotten me by mistake. He excused himself and got off, and that’s all there was to it.

“But I started to think about it, and the more I thought about it, the more I felt it might be the very thing I’d been looking for. Jealousy. Try jealousy. Patience hadn’t worked, lack of opposition hadn’t worked. If I raised hell and stormed at him, I’d only lose him all the quicker. But maybe jealousy would do the trick. Maybe if he felt that somebody else wanted me, even though he no longer did, I would look good to him again. Men were funny that way: what the other guy didn’t want, they didn’t want either; there must be something the matter with it. What the other guy wanted, they wanted too; there must be something good about it. They were like sheep. Or I suppose I should say, wolves.

“It took me almost a week to get up enough courage to try it. I thought about it all the time, but I still didn’t do anything about it. I used to try to visualize his face on the night he would come home and find out I’d been carrying on behind his back. Stunned, first. Then angry. Maybe he’d even slap me. Maybe he’d swear me out, call me all those low-down names they call their women when they catch them cheating. I hoped so, how I hoped so. Anything, anything would be better than this indifference.

“On the day of the night that he would next be seeing her (and I told you, I was as sure of them as I was of my own birthdays) I went out and bought a few necessary props, I guess you might call them. Things I didn’t habitually buy.

“I went into a cigar store and I asked the clerk for the name of a good, expensive brand of cigar.

“‘Garcia y Vega,’ he said. ‘Twelve-fifty a box.’

“‘I don’t want a whole box,’ I said. ‘Just let me have two.’

“He put them into a small bag for me and remarked, ‘Your husband’s going to like these.’

“My husband, I said to myself, is not going to like these, is what I hope.