The Snare

10. HOTEL CROYDON

10. HOTEL CROYDON "Hotel Croydon" was what a voice said when Julia called the number. She did not ask for the extension. She said "Wrong number" and hung up, to evaluate things. It was one of the cheapest hotels in town. Who could be calling her? From that sort of place? Nobody connected with anybody she would do well to know, including Tommy Arnold. Maybe it was something that had to do with her message-bearing and the money she got for it. It might, even worse, be connected with Mamie and the Wharton woman. But then, too, it might be something to do with Jake. The next afternoon, after work, she went down to that part of town on the bus and saw it from a distance. Earlier there had been a thunderstorm so severe several people at the hospital said it looked like a tornado was striking and patients who had to have intravenous got scared they'd be blown away with needles plugged into their veins. Those with stomach pumps felt worse yet. There was some joking after it was over, but not much while it was going on, black and turbulent. Julia had gone out into the cleared air. Even down as far toward the river as the Croydon Hotel, the sad little streets looked freshened from the storm. Blown twigs and broken branches still had the look of victims. From a drugstore across the street from the hotel Julia watched and at last saw a girl—a girlish young woman really—walk from a grocery store and turn into the hotel. Who would that be if not Jake's wife, the one on whose 279 2 8 O T H E S N A R E account she'd been abstaining from even looking at the paper in order not to see her picture? He would do that, she thought. Just pick out somebody nice with a good figure, somebody who'd adore him. Young. But am I even right? She felt she was right and turned away. She went to the back of the drugstore and called the number and this time asked for the extension, too, because I'm going to do it sooner or later, she thought. And a girl-voice answered . Why, I was right, she thought. She could have laughed. Yet her heart had started hammering and her fingertips throbbed against the black smooth texture of the telephone . "Hello, hello. Who is it, who is it?" So far she hadn't said a word. Because she couldn't. The voice was tense. If there was such a thing as a T.V. phone they'd be staring at each other's eyes, like one woman into a mirror, both knowing the eyes belonged to Jake. "Hello." She gotit out, even disguised it, with a stagey sort of accent she could do. "Somebody sent this number to a friend of mine." "A friend! Who? What friend?" "Her name is Julia. Does that mean anything?" "Oh yes. Yes, it does. I want to ... can she . . . Can I see her, talk to her . . .?" "She's out of town,but she " "She what? You see, she knew my husband once and now they think . . . well, you must have read about it in the papers. Marnie and Springland . . . all that?" "What's Julia got to do with it?" "Well, you see, she knows . . ." "Knows what?" "Listen, it's her I want to talk to. Just for a few minutes . Not to anybody else." The tone's tension mounted; in a moment the girl-woman would scream or cry. God, thought Julia, she's strung up like a piano wire. She hung up, knowing well what the silent click would do to ears like that. And gentle to him, isn't she? And soft at night, and oh! She leaned her head against the toll box, the Elizabeth Spencer 281 plastic covering above the directions. Does she know his songs? The songs were rocking through her head, all the old ones. The boxlike booth echoed, filled to the brim with the resonant strings. She fairly burst open the door and gulped down the sweetened air, which had even got all the way into the drugstore. On the way home she bought the paper she'd been denying herself. There were pictures, front and inside both. The girl she'd seen and just talked to...