The Snake

Seventeen

If a day that started out badly kept on getting worse, it could turn out to be memorable. When Holly still hadn't shown up by 7:45 for a 7:00 date, Converse knew that the day-which had begun with the helicopter, and gone on with his being fired by the DI and having his neck squeezed, and had continued with his waking up sour and out of sorts from an afternoon nap-was going to be one of those red-staffed calamities that one could look back on in the future with awe and a sort of inverse pride.

For a while, he was sure he was going to turn the day around. He had phoned Holly at her newspaper, where three people, speaking brusquely against a background of clacking typewriters, had asked him to hold on. When he heard her voice he said, "This is Mark Converse. Can I see you tonight?"

"Yes, of course."

"I don't think you could classify it as a case of actual need. I just want to see you."

"I want to see you, too."

She had named the time and the place. The place was a five-minute walk from his apartment on Charles Street, and was called, for no reason of decor, or anything else that he could fathom, the Blue Griffin. Earlier, before she was forty-five minutes late, he had sat at the bar and amused himself by trying to think of more appropriate names. The one that seemed most successful was The First Person Singular. lt fit the clientele a lot better than the Blue Griffin.

The clientele were, as she had told him-warned him-writers who lived in the Village, plus an occasional uptown editor paying a visit to a resident author. Converse had heard of the Blue Griffin, but had always passed it by. Writers didn't interest him; not before Holly, at any rate.

Now, based on his forty-five minutes at the bar, he had concluded that writers were a misnomer. Talkers-that was the right word.

At 7:30 he decided to leave. Half an hour late was already too much leeway, it bespoke indifference, at the very least. But he ordered another drink, to delay broaching the heat outside for another little while, and also to see if two writers who were upstaging each other's books might eventually come to blows. He doubted it, even though they shouted fiercely, but in this weather you couldn't tell.

He became aware that someone was calling out his name. He responded, and wits told there was a phone call for him. He took his drink with him and edged between the two writers, who had by now abandoned scalpel wit and taken up bludgeons: "You're a prick." "Look, you motherfucker…

He found the phone booth in the deeper recesses of the room. It was Holly. "… trying to get you, but the damn phone there was busy. They talk a lot. Had you noticed? I looked for you at the hospital… What did you say?"

He had groaned.

She said, "You don't know? Didn't Captain Eastman call you?"

"Dead?"

"He's going to recover. He's a Purie. Why didn't they tell you?"

"I got fired this morning. Was he able to talk?"

"Fired?" The syllable was sharp, brittle. "What's that all about?"

"Where are you, Holly?"

"At the office. I'm finishing up my story. I'll leave in five minutes and take a cab down." She spoke hurriedly, as though to get the nonessentials out of the way. "What do you mean you were fired? How did it happen?"

"Finish your story," he said, "and come down here and I'll tell you."

"Tell me now. It belongs in the story."

"No."

"Why not?"

Because it's unimportant, he thought, because the only thing that matters is your getting here as soon as possible. He said nothing.

"If you won't tell me yourself I'll have to phone Captain Eastman and ask him about it."

"What do you mean have to?"

"And then it'll take longer, and I won't be able to leave in five minutes.

But if you tell me now-"

"It's a question of priorities, right?" He was deliberately sloshing his drink around, taking some sort of odd pleasure in its running over and wetting his fingers. She was silent. "Is that right?"

"Don't be unreasonable."

"Unreasonable. Unreasonable is what it's all about, isn't it?" He waited.

"Well, isn't it?" The line hummed between them. "You're a dumb bitch."

He hung up.

Converse stood at the bedroom window of his floor-through apartment, which faced the backs of the buildings on Perry Street and their postage-stamp-size backyards. Directly across the way, a handsome, nearly naked couple was broiling meat on a hibachi.

It was stifling in the room. He had turned off the air conditioner, partially to restore a little animation to the python, partially to punish himself, to make his body feel as miserable as his spirits. The bad day had gotten worse, but he was about to put a limit to it. He would take a leaf from his boyhood when, on disaster filled days, his mother would pop him into bed early. She had understood that the only cure was to retire from the day by imposing an end upon it. That was what he would do. Declare the day finished, by edict, by going to sleep at 8:30.

Tomorrow morning-a new, unsullied day-he would go to the park, descend into that hollow, and catch that damn snake once and for all. It was, he thought, quite a snake, even for a black mamba. How many had it killed already-four, five? He had heard of a black mamba in Africa that had killed some eleven people before it was taken. The herpetologist who had told him about it had characterized it as a "rogue." Well, he was inclined to give the snake in the park the benefit of the doubt. Irritable, yes, but with good reason, what with being in an alien terrain and under the constant strain of being threatened. But whether it was a rogue or simply a snake instinctively defending itself, it was sure as hell an aggressive individual of an aggressive species.

He heard the cat spitting, and turned around. The python was crawling toward the cat, which stood its ground, back humped, eyes glowing. He grabbed up the python an instant before the cat leaped. The snake coiled around his arm. He unwound it and put it into its glass cage. He turned on the air conditioner and placated the cat with a bowl of milk. Then he evened matters out by feeding the python a live mouse.

He went back to the window to see how the couple was making out with their cooking. Hibachi, hot coals, and steak were lying in the dust, and the obvious culprit, a red setter, was grovelling with guilt. On any ordinary day, the scene would have been good for a laugh. But not on a bad day. With masochistic zeal, he totted up the disasters: helicopter, DI squeezing neck, getting fired, Holly's clay feet, and-why had he put it out of mind? — the biting of the Purie. If he had gone down into the hollow after the helicopter incident, instead of screaming at Eastman like a piqued adolescent, he would have deprived the Purie of the opportunity of getting bitten. It had never once occurred to him that someone else would find the snake's hiding place.

"Converse," he said aloud, "you're a murderer and a shit."

The self-accusation was exaggerated. The Purie was alive, thank God.

Nevertheless, he had behaved badly. And so, as he did whenever he was forced to admit that he was somewhat less than perfect, he became extremely drowsy. He watched moodily as the python began to ingest its mouse, then fell into bed and went to sleep.

He woke with the ringing of the doorbell. He got out of bed and felt his way through the darkness to the living room. Without bothering to ask who was there-that basic first line of defence against intruders-he opened the door. Holly. She was wearing tailored yellow slacks and some kind of a slip-over blouse. He was wearing artfully ragged denim shorts.

He said, "Sorry, no comment. I'm not talking to the press today."

She said, "I went to the Blue Griffin first, thinking you might still be there. Can I come in?"

"Don't waste your time-my lips are sealed."

"Please?"

He stepped aside to let her in. She walked halfway across the dim room.

He stood near the door and watched. She turned to face him.

She said, "You could use some light in this room. Can I have a drink?" it I don't give drinks to reporters." He heard his own voice with a feeling of surprise. It was small and pinched.

She said, "I do believe you care," and walked back across the room toward him, smiling.

Captain Eastman lay on the damp sheets of the cot in the office of the Commander of the Two-two, and slept intermittently and poorly. Earlier, he had attended a meeting at the Borough Commander's office on East 21st Street. The Borough Commander had said that there was no doubt that the Puries knew the whereabouts of the snake, and that they would go after it tomorrow, as their Reverend had promised. Therefore, the park would be saturated with police beginning an hour before dawn. Just to be on the safe side, there were augmented patrols out to night, with orders to pick up anybody on foot and run them out of the park.

There was no question, the Borough Commander said, but that the Puries were cooking up something. Their headquarters were under surveillance, and dozens of Puries had been coming and going ever since the Reverend's return from the hospital. They would stay for an hour or so and then leave.

"They all look alike. Cleancut kids, short hair, neat clothing. I never thought I would put down white, short-haired, cleanly dressed kids, but they make me sweat more than any black militant or bearded desperado I ever saw."

Eastman dozed briefly and woke, remembering his telephone conversation with Holly Markham, who wanted to know why Converse had been told off.

He had tried double-talking, but she kept pressing him, and finally, in a mood of exasperation he went beyond the scope of her questions and blurted out that he was pissed off because Converse knew where the snake was hiding. But when she kept after him, insisting that he ought to tell her what evidence he had to back up his statement, he retreated and said that there wasn't any evidence, that it was just a hunch.

"How do you know that in Converse's case it isn't just a hunch, too?"

He recognized, as much from the tone of her voice as what she had said, that she had suddenly changed her tack; that she had stopped being a newspaper woman and become an advocate. He had felt a deep pang of envy for Converse, for his youth, for the pretty, desirable girl who had sprung to his defence…

But he knew that he was right, that Converse did know. And the longer he thought of it, tossing on the lumpy mattress, the angrier he became. What I should do, he said, half aloud, is go down there and beat on him until he tells me where it is.

Outside, there was a sudden gust of laughter, and Eastman glared at the shut door, thinking, It's not funny, nothing is funny anymore.

Converse said, "I want to pay you a compliment. I hope you won't take it the wrong way and get your feminist hackles up."

She shook her head from side to side on the pillow and smiled.

She had an infinite variety of smiles, all bewitching; this one was a half-smile, and it was at the same time mysterious and tender. The sheet they had covered themselves with in an initial shyness was crumpled beneath her. Her slender thighs and long legs were beautifully shaped. So were her breasts, so was her chin. As though in self-defence, he searched for a flaw, and could find none.

He said, "You're even better-looking naked than with your clothes on."

She frowned.

"That's just a sudden thought that occurred to me. It isn't a compliment.

The compliment is that you're the brightest girl I ever had."

"Had?"

"I guess I have trouble expressing myself. Well, you know, fucked."

Her frown deepened, then smoothed away in laughter. She drew his head down and kissed him lightly. They exchanged playful kisses until suddenly the pressure of her hands on his back turned urgent. With some effort, he resisted the pressure.

He said, "When I said on the phone that you were a dumb bitch, it was because I thought you cared more about your lousy scoop than you did about me."

"Scoop. We don't allow scoops on my paper." Her hand trailed lightly down his chest. "My friend, there's a time for talking and a time for fucking.

You know what I mean?"

Her legs parted, and she pulled him down and into her. Later, with the sheet drawn up to their waists, they slept a little. When she woke he was faced toward her, and speaking seriously, even anxiously.

"Eastman?" She tried to wake herself to his question. "Eastman. He said you blew your stack about the helicopter this morning, and his boss walked in…" She trailed off, shrugging, and her breasts quivered beguilingly. "He's been looking for another herp."

Converse nodded. "There are some good ones in town. Very good ones." He looked away from her. "But a new herp won't know where the snake is."

"But you do. Eastman said you did."

"I could have caught it this morning, even after the helicopter, but I didn't. So that Purie found it and got bitten. I'm responsible for him getting bitten. Is that what Eastman said?"

"He wouldn't go any further, for attribution, than that he had a hunch you knew where it was."

"Did you write it up-what he said?"

"I tried to get him to come out and state it flatly. It's my job, Mark, you know. But he wouldn't, so I couldn't use it."

"Well, I'm telling you. I know exactly where that black mamba is."

"Okay, thanks. But it's a hard-and-fast rule of mine that anything I hear in bed is off the record."

"That's nice to know."

She assessed the tension in his voice and laughed and kissed him. "I just made that up. I've never been to bed with a news source before."

"It was wrong not to have picked the snake up this morning-right?"

She hesitated before saying, "Right, it was wrong."

"And the Puries are going after it tomorrow, and someone else might get bitten, maybe even tonight. Right?"

"Mark, I can't help you assess your guilt, you've got to do that by yourself. But not now, darting."

He rolled out of bed. He seemed to disappear in the darkness, but then she saw him straighten up Iron the floor. He started to pull on his jeans.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm going to catch the black mamba. Before it bites anybody else."

"Oh no. Don't go now. Please?"

He sat down on the edge of the bed and slipped on his shoes.

He wants to expiate his sin of ornission, she thought. "Mark, I don't want you to leave me, I really don't. Besides, it's dangerous at night, isn't it?" He shook his head. "Listen, come here a minute." He started to pull a T-shirt on, and when his head emerged he shook it again. She whispered, "Come back to bed. I want you. Right this second."

In the other room a buzzer sounded. Converse said, "Chrisesake." He went out to the living room and opened the window and looked out. He said, "Chrisesake" again, and called out, "I'll be right down." He shut the window and returned to the bedroom. "It's Eastman."

Her body gleamed whitely through the darkness as she got out of bed.

"I'll be dressed in two minutes. I'm going along."

"No way."

She turned on a bed lamp. "If you're going to act like a herp, you can't stop me from acting like a reporter, can you?"

She was a lovely girl, Eastman thought, and she glowed with youth and fulfilment. She was in love with Converse-or whatever word they used for love these (lays. He felt the bite of regret and envy, and mourned for his own it recoverable youth.

Converse, who was carrying his snake catching stick, a pillowcase, and a large flashlight, looked at the waiting taxi in surprise. "How did you know I would come? After all, your boss gave me the boot this morning."

Eastman said gravely, "Well, I'm a pretty good judge of character, you know."

"I really behaved like a shit this morning," Converse said.

They got in the cab and Eastman said to Holly, "Where can we drop you?"

She shook her head. "I'm going with you."

Eastman started to protest. Converse said, "Save your breath, captain.

I tried."

"She might get hurt."

"Don't worry, I'll see to it."

The driver was looking back at them through his protective glass. Eastman said, "Where do I tell him to go?"

"The Boys Gate, 100th Street and Central Park West," Converse said. The snake's territory was somewhat closer to the east side, but he was more familiar with the approach from the west. "Then into the park, and I'll tell him where to let us out."

"Police business," Eastman said. "Make time."

The driver's shoulders shook with laughter. Eastman thought, The Hawaiian shirt never fooled him, he had me made all the time. The taxi sped up Eighth Avenue, cheating on all the red lights. Converse and the girl were holding hands. Eastman tried to remember the last time he had held hands with a woman, including his wife.

The cab made good time until it reached 86th Street, and then it began to crawl and, finally, stop at the tail end of a long line of stalled traffic.

"What's this all about?" Eastman said to the driver. "Can you see anything?"

"Fya rengines," the driver said. "Fya rengines and cop cars."

Eastman rolled down his window and heard a clangorous, dissonant blend of emergency sounds: sirens, bells, wailers, hooters. A brightness caught at the tail of his eye. He pushed the door open and ducked his head out beneath the cab's roof.

"Christ Almighty," he said, "the whole goddamn park is on fire."