She picked up some dishes and went into the kitchen. When she did not return, after a moment, Conway took advantage of his opportunity to escape. He caught up the newspapers and started for his room, but her voice followed him.
“What shall I do with these manuscripts? Put ’em where they belong — in the—” He closed the door to shut out the rest.
He was safe in his room. She wouldn’t follow him there; that was one of the few things — one of the very few — that remained from the first days of their marriage. They had met just after the war and married a month later. Any sort of apartment was almost impossible to find, but Helen had insisted they must have three rooms so that he might have a “study” where he could work without interruption. Somehow or other she had found one, and she lived up to the rule she made herself — never to enter, or even to knock, when the door was closed. She had continued to live up to it for some reason. And that was about all that remained of those gay, desperately hopeful days when they had faith in each other — and in themselves.
They had occasionally quarreled in those days, too, of course, and usually about the same thing: Conway’s failure to sell a story, or what she called his laziness. As she was apt to consider anything less than eight hours a day at the typewriter laziness, some violent disagreements ensued. But in the fervid reconciliation that always followed so quickly, she was full of remorse for her outburst; it was, she explained, because, having no ambitions for herself, she was so terribly ambitious for him.
Conway sat down to finish the papers, but his eyes fixed on the photograph which stood on his desk. She had had it taken, at his request, shortly before they were married, and it was on the desk because it had always been there; now it took up space and was in the way and it disturbed him to have to look at it — but to move it would have been an overt act. She had been blonde then, with a handsome figure and large, intense eyes. She hadn’t changed much, Conway reflected — or, rather, she’d changed in degree but not in kind. She was not only still blonde, she was considerably more so. Her figure remained good, but it was verging on heaviness, although that, perhaps, was a matter of taste, and some might call it voluptuous. Her eyes were even more intense; to Conway, at times, they were frighteningly so.
And now, although it had never been said in words, they were through. It surprised Conway that she had not already left him, although he thought he knew the reason. But he would have to wait for her to make the break; she was not a woman to allow any man to discard her.
He got a cigarette from the dresser and stopped to gaze into the mirror. He saw a man of thirty-two, who looked older, with a well set up body, hair that was thinning slightly at the temples, and a skin which would have seemed pale even in New York. His pallor was typical of the frustrations he had met with since they had come here, and he wondered how much California had had to do with what had happened to Helen and himself. Not much, he decided; they had begun to get on each other’s nerves in New York. That had been one of the reasons Helen had wanted to come out here two years ago; she had said that if he could be out of doors more, he might feel better and work better. But, as it turned out, when he proposed taking a day off, she complained bitterly, so that he neither felt nor worked better, and their relationship had steadily become worse. And as it did, Conway’s writing became more laborious and less frequent — and less salable. It was a vicious circle, and — Conway realized that he was about to wallow in self-pity; he made himself acknowledge that the reason he hadn’t been writing, and wouldn’t write today, was because he hadn’t an idea in his head. He picked up the papers again and began to read, with a forlorn hope that he might come on an idea out of which he could, somehow, make a story.
There’s one thing to be said for the Los Angeles papers, he thought as he looked through them, they never let you down. No matter how low you may be, in body or spirit, a brief contemplation of the gallery of unfortunates presented daily in the press must make your own lot seem sheer bliss.
It appeared to be about an average day. “Couple Robbed in Parked Car,” with hints of darker deeds. “Nude Woman Dancing in Park Eludes Police” — that, he thought, was a new low even for the Los Angeles gendarmerie. “Waitress Slain by Sex Fiend” — a regular weekly occurrence; they must keep a standing headline for that one. Conway wondered if the police would ever capture one of these maniacs, who seemed to make up a sizable portion of the population of Southern California. To the best of his knowledge they never had. “Main St. Bars Raided; Two B-Girls Arrested.” A blind man on Main Street at any given moment after 10 P.M. could find twenty B-Girls with their hands in someone’s pockets, but the police found two, so things must be looking up. “Wife Who Vanished from Parking Lot Found in Motel with 16-Year-Old Boy; Husband to Seek Divorce.” Conway never ceased to be amazed at what precocious juveniles they breed in California.
He blew smoke at the ceiling and again scanned the headlines. The trouble with most of the crime news in Los Angeles, he had long since concluded, was that it was too bizarre for fiction. Or else, by repetition, it had become commonplace. There were no new angles; crime was in a rut.