In the Middle of the Night by Robert Cormier
Taking a deep breath, he swept it into the box, missing some, of course, doing it again, trying to avert his eyes, trying not to breathe but breathing anyway. He knew he would have to scrub the stoop later with soap and water.
Standing there with the reeking shoe box, he thought: Now what do I do?
He did the obvious—flushed it down the toilet, rinsed the box, scrubbed the doorstep with an old rag, placed box, cover and rag in a plastic bag and dropped it into one of the rubbish barrels in the driveway.
Back in the apartment, he waited as usual for the telephone to ring. He skipped his after-school lunch, his stomach still queasy from the chore he had just performed but his heart fluttering, anticipating Lulu’s voice on the telephone.
He sat in his father’s chair, next to the end table on which the telephone stood. He took off his watch and propped it against the phone, the better to see it. 3:09. The phone could ring anytime now. 3:16.
The apartment still, like a museum after hours. 3:21.
She might not call today. She sometimes skipped a day or two.
Restless, he got up, stretched, yawned that old boredom yawn, went to the porch door, swung it open, looked down to see if any stain remained. He shuddered, recalling the smell, as fresh now as at the moment of discovery.
He remembered what Lulu had once said about people doing things to his father.
A devastating thought:
Had Lulu placed that pile of stench on the doorstep?
Was it her shit he had flushed down the toilet?
No, it couldn’t be.
She could never do such a thing.
Not Lulu.
“Lulu.”
He said her name aloud, loved the sound of it. She hadn’t told him her name at first, seemed reluctant to identify herself, which added to the mystery of her calls. But she’d finally told him.
She’d been teasing him about his own name. She said she preferred Col-bair to Colbert. “Colbert is so hard and harsh, but Col-bair is soft and French and …”
He caught the beginning sound of an s, and wondered, excited, whether she was about to say “sexy.”
Flustered, he said: “You know my name but I don’t know yours …”
“Do you want to know my name?”
“Yes.”
“That makes me happy, Denny. Makes me feel that I mean something to you, that I’m more than just a voice.”
Thrilled and embarrassed, puzzled that he should be thrilled and embarrassed, he said, “I like talking to you.”
“I do, too. In fact, I like you, Denny.”
He figured she was avoiding his question, did not really want to tell him her name.
But she surprised him:
“Lulu. Call me Lulu.”
Call me Lulu …
“Is that your name or just what people call you?”
“Lulu is my special name. Only people who are close to me call me Lulu. And you’re close to me, Denny. So close …”
Aroused, looking down at himself—what’s happening here, what’s happening to me?—he could not speak.
“Denny, are you still there? I hear you breathing—are you all right? Did I say something wrong?”
“No,” he said, the word strangling in his throat as he tried to bring himself under control.
She always spoke softly, breathlessly, as if there were no one in the world except the two of them. As if they were friends—no, more than friends: as if they shared deep secrets. That smoky voice.
She made a dull day dance, made the most ordinary things sound exciting. Like September.
She was sad about September because it was over.
“Like a lovely woman gone away,” she said.
“A woman?”
“Yes, September’s like a woman. Beautiful. Voluptuous. You know what voluptuous means, don’t you, Denny?”
“Of course,” he said, heart racing: voluptuous, conjuring up visions of beautiful women, knowing in his heart that Lulu must be beautiful, too. And voluptuous.
Lulu’s voice was mesmerizing, a hypnotist’s voice—you are getting sleepy, sleepy …—but he wasn’t sleepy at all, exactly the opposite, wide awake, every pore open, soaking her words and her voice into every part of his body, and his body responding. He squeezed his thighs together.
“October’s a woman, too, Denny. But a witch. A ghost or a goblin. That’s why I don’t like October, hate it, because it ends with Halloween.” Her voice was suddenly bitter, sending chills through his bones. Then warm again and playful: “What month do you think I am, Denny?”
He thought of frigid January and warm July, hot August, himself suddenly hot and perspiring, as if August had arrived. He swallowed hard, squirming, the words not coming at all.
“I hope you think I’m September, Denny, and not February, not cold and freezing …”
“September,” he said, stammering a bit, heart tumbling inside of him, like a September leaf in the wind. Finding the courage, at last, to say: “Yes, definitely September.”
He wondered how old she was. Her voice provided no clue. If she’d been calling his father all these years, she couldn’t be young. But a part of him denied that she could be old. He wanted her to be young.
Finally, mustering his courage, he asked: “How old are you, Lulu?” He loved saying her name.
“How old do you think I am?”
Like a teacher, answering a question with another question. But never a teacher in school like Lulu.
“I don’t know.” Not daring to guess.
“When you hear the sound of my voice, Denny, do you think I’m old? Or young?”
“Young.” Hoping.
“Ah, Denny …”
She had to be young.
“Do I sound nice? Or not so nice?”
“Nice,” he said. Said it again: “Nice.”
“That’s good. I want you to think I’m nice. So that you’ll keep talking to me. I look forward to these calls. The days when I can’t call you, I feel lonesome …”
“I do, too,” he heard himself saying.
“Know what, Denny? I don’t call your father at night anymore. Maybe other people call him, but I don’t. Know why?”
“No.”
“Because I’d rather talk to you. I like talking to you …”
“I like to talk to you, too,” he said, wondering if she heard the tremor in his voice, if she knew what was happening to him.
And didn’t care whether she was young or old.
Now he looked at the clock.
3:31.
Today’s big moment hadn’t arrived. She hadn’t called. The apartment, suddenly desolate, the bright sun mocking him as it splashed on the carpet. Should be raining to match his mood.
He drilled his eyes at the phone, commanding it to ring.
But it didn’t.
“Hey, Denny, I saw your sweetheart the other day.”
Dracula stopped pummeling Son of Frankenstein to make the announcement.
Denny pretended indifference, acted as if he had not heard what Dracula said. He did not trust the little monster. Even at twelve years old, he had the manner of a gangster from old movies, and looked, in fact, like a juvenile James Cagney.
Even sweetheart was a James Cagney kind of word.
“Where did you see her?” he said, voice crackling, which did not help his act of indifference very much.
“I dunno,” Dracula said, bored with hitting Son of Frankenstein and turning toward Denny. “Downtown.”
“Where downtown?” Denny said, controlling his voice.
“I dunno. Kenton’s Department Store.”
Denny didn’t say anything for a few seconds. He did not want to appear too eager, sensing that Dracula would shut up if he thought Denny was really interested. Finally, he said: “What was she doing there?”
Dracula looked at him with suddenly innocent eyes. “In the department store?” He knocked Son of Frankenstein to the pavement.
“Yes,” Denny sai
“She was working, I think. She was standing behind the counter. The perfume counter. She looked great. She has big bazooms.”
Denny shot him a look of disgust. “You sure it was her?”
“What do you think, I’m stupid or something?” He turned away scornfully. Then shot Denny a glance over his shoulder. Smirking, he said: “Hey, Denny, if she’s your sweetheart, how come you didn’t know she was working at Kenton’s?”
The bus appeared out of nowhere, belching and lurching like some kind of movie dinosaur, saving Denny the embarrassment of responding.
The moment she saw him, a big happy smile lit up her face and she beckoned him to the counter. He went straight to her and found himself immersed in a haze of smells, all kinds of perfume and cologne filling the air, making it seem as if she herself exuded the scents.
Her hair was pulled behind her head in a ponytail. She was still beautiful, her smile radiant, just as he remembered.
“I’m so glad to see you,” she said. “I was hoping someday I’d look up and there you’d be …”
“I’ve been trying to find you,” he said. “I don’t know your last name, only Dawn. I don’t know where you live. So I couldn’t call you. I hung around Barstow High one day after school trying to find you. I never did.”
“I called you a few times,” she said. “After school. But nobody answered. I even called from here once, on the pay phone in the mall. But the phone only rang and rang …”
All those calls he had not responded to in the afternoon, thinking it was that woman or the reporter and all the time—at least some of the time—it had been Dawn.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
They stood looking at each other across the counter, the perfume surrounding them, too heavy and too cloying, but he didn’t mind. A woman coughed, one of those attention-getting coughs, at the other end of the counter and Dawn made a small frown of apology at him and rushed off to serve her.
After a while, he grew uncomfortable standing at the counter—a perfume counter, of all places. Denny had a feeling customers passing through were eyeing him, either with suspicion or amusement. Suddenly conscious of his hands, he didn’t know where to put them. He dared not look around to see who was looking at him. Without realizing it, he picked up one of the sample bottles of cologne and somehow pressed the little thingamajig, releasing a blast that smelled like lilac into his face, his eyes, blinding him momentarily and bathing his face. Blinking his eyes, he met Dawn’s blue-gray eyes and they both laughed, even though he felt stupid.
Before a new customer could interrupt them, she told him her last name. Chelmsford. Scribbled her telephone number on a sales slip. “Call me,” she said.
He left the store in a cloud of perfume, inhabited by scents he could not even identify, overpowering scents that made him slightly nauseated. Outside the store, he paused before crossing the street to the bus stop. Felt … what? He wasn’t sure. He had her telephone number in his wallet. He could call her tonight.
He wasn’t as happy as he had anticipated—he felt empty, in fact.
Glancing at his watch, he saw that it was almost three-thirty. Disappointment accompanied him as he waited for the bus that would bring him home too late for Lulu’s phone call.
He didn’t call Dawn Chelmsford that night.
Too much homework.
More than that: the telephone was next to the chair where his father watched television.
It wouldn’t be possible to have a private conversation with Dawn Chelmsford within earshot of his father.
He’d wait to call her in the afternoon, when he got home from school and would be alone in the apartment.
But the next afternoon, he didn’t call her, either.
“Would you like to know what I look like?” Lulu asked.
“Yes,” he said, suddenly experiencing the usual leaping pulse and hammering heart.
“I’m taking a chance, you know,” she said. Tentative now, almost teasing.
“What kind of chance?”
“Well, you might not like how I look. I might be tall and blond and you might not like tall and blond girls. Or I might be short and dark. And you might not like girls who are short and dark.”
Taking a deep breath, he said: “I would like you, whether you were blond or dark …”
“Guess,” she said. “Guess what you think I look like.”
Another game, but a delicious one.
“Guess the color of my hair.”
He thought of her smoky voice and said: “Black hair. Long black hair.”
“Right,” she said. “See? I think we were meant for each other, Denny. Now, what else? Do you think I’m tall or short? Or just about your height? When you dance with a girl and hold her in your arms, do you like her to be a bit shorter or as tall as you are?”
He’d only danced with a girl that one time, with Chloe at Bartlett. She was shorter than he was, fitted nicely into his arms. She was also the only girl he had ever held in his arms.
“A bit shorter than me,” he said.
“Wonderful,” she said. “That’s me—just a bit shorter than you.”
“Wait a minute,” he said. “How do you know how tall I am? Have you seen me?” A possibility he had not pondered in all his thoughts about her.
“Of course I’ve seen you. You may not like the way I look, but I love the way you look, Denny.”
Thrilled again by her voice, her words, his body responded sweetly again. He was glad he was alone in the apartment, that she could not see him in all his confusion.
“Where? Where did you see me?”
“Someday I’ll tell you that. But not now, Denny. Right now, we’re finding out what I look like. For instance, am I pretty? Haven’t you wondered about that?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. But it did, of course. He wanted her to be pretty—beautiful, in fact. As beautiful as her voice, as beautiful as the way she formed words with that voice.
“It matters, Denny. Because I want to be pretty for you. I want you to love my eyes, and my lips. I want you to love everything about me, Denny. I want you to love my body …”
That word conjured up wild thoughts and he was caught in a hurricane, gripping the phone fiercely, his palms wet.
“Want to know about my body?”
Unable to respond, he wondered whether she could hear his rapid breathing or his accelerating sheartbeat.
“I have all the necessary parts. Some parts are better than others …”
“What parts?” he, astonished, heard himself asking.
“You’ll find out,” she said.
He wanted to ask more. But could not bring himself to say the words, glad she could not see him at this moment, flustered and hot-cheeked.
“Next time I call, I’ll have a surprise for you,” she said.
He knew it was crazy, of course.
He was in love with a voice, with someone he had never seen, did not know at all, someone who might be a girl or a woman. Loved someone who was completely unknown to him, like someone in a dream.
Dawn Chelmsford was not a dream. She was real. She was beautiful. For a while, Dawn Chelmsford had been like a dream, out of reach, like all the other girls he had worshipped from afar—cheerleaders, girls in their bikinis on the beach or at a pool, lovely girls walking down the street who did not know he existed. Dawn had said, Call me. She’d said, I tried to call you. She’d said, I like the way you worry about the trees.
But Dawn Chelmsford was not the voice on the telephone. Dawn Chelmsford did not do things to his body and his mind the way Lulu did.
Am I some kind of crazy person? he wondered.
But all doubt was cast aside, postponed, as he lay curled up in bed, not wondering or worrying about middle-of-the-night phone calls now but holding himself, caressing himself, remembering her last words.
“Next time I call … I’ll have a surp
Later, in the far reaches of the night, the world hushed all around him, he could not sleep as those words echoed through his mind.
Hurrying into the driveway, running late, detained after classes for tutoring in math, Denny groaned audibly when he spotted the reporter from the Wickburg Telegram sitting on the steps of the porch, reading a newspaper.
A glance at his watch told him it was already after three-fifteen, that the telephone might be ringing at this moment.
The reporter glanced up and saw him.
Denny came forward, frowning, trapped.
“The story’s all written,” Les Albert announced, tucking the newspaper under his arm. “Except for the lead …”
Denny envisioned big black headlines, that old picture of his father on the front page. And everything that would follow.
“Know what a lead is, Dennis? Especially on a story like this? A lead determines the tone of the story, the mood, the theme. You don’t have much choice with a straight news story. Like: twenty-two children dead. That’s how a news story has to be written. But a feature story, now, that’s entirely different. Know why?”
Denny did not answer, thinking: twenty-two children dead.
“Because, in a feature, you can control the story. Sure, you need the facts and the figures. I’ve done all that. It’s all in the computer. When I have my lead, I can shift things around. Your father has got to be the lead, of course. Everybody else is gone. But how am I going to show your father? Still a suspicious figure after all these years? Still an unknown quantity? Or is he a good guy, after all? A family man, concerned for his wife and son? A martyr, sort of … It’s up to you, kid.”
“I’ve got to go in,” Denny said. “I’m expecting an important call.” Knew that sounded phony but couldn’t help it. Next time I call I’ll have a surprise for you.
“Tell you what, Dennis. I can give you, say, two more days. Then the story goes and I think all hell’s going to break loose. Understand?” He reached into his pocket, brought out another card, a quarter Scotch-taped to it. “This is all you need. Today’s Wednesday. Okay, Friday afternoon, call me collect at, say, three o’clock. We’ll set up an interview. If I don’t hear from you …” He sighed, tremulously. “I’m tired, kid. I work the night beat and I came all the way out here from Wickburg and my editor’s on my ass.” Denny was aware now of the gray face, the eyes bleary, probably with lack of sleep. “I’m not one of the bad guys, Dennis. I’ve got a wife and kids to feed. But I’ve also got a story to write.”