‘ “My head is splitting,” he said.
‘ “I’m sorry to hear that, Mr Jefferies,” I said. “I can get you some aspirin — ”
‘ “No,” he said. “That’s not it. It’s this idea. It’s like I went fishing for trout and hooked a marlin instead. I write books for a living, you see. Fiction.”
‘ “Yes, sir, Mr Jefferies,” I said, “I have read two of them and thought they were fine.”
‘ ” Did you,” he said, looking at me as if maybe I’d gone crazy. “Well, that’s very kind of you to say, anyway. I woke up this morning and I had an idea.”
‘Yes, sir, I was thinking to myself, you had an idea, all right, one so hot and so fresh it just kinda spilled out all over the sheet. But it ain’t there no more, so you don’t have to worry. And I almost laughed out loud. Only, Darcy, I don’t think he would have noticed if I had.
‘ “I ordered up some breakfast,” he said, and pointed at the room-service trolley by the door,
“and as I ate it I thought about this little idea. I thought it might make a short story. There’s this
magazine, you know . . . The New Yorker . . . well, never mind.” He wasn’t going to explain The New Yorker magazine to a pickaninny like me, you know.’
Darcy grinned.
‘ “But by the time I’d finished breakfast,” he went on, “it began to seem more like a novelette.
And then . . . as I started to rough out some ideas . . . ” He gave out this shrill little laugh. “I don’t think I’ve had an idea this good in ten years. Maybe never. Do you think it would be possible for twin brothers — fraternal, not identical — to end up fighting on opposite sides during World War II?”
‘ “Well, maybe not in the Pacific, ” I said. Another time I don’t think I would have had nerve enough to speak to him at all, Darcy — I would have just stood there and gawped. But I still felt like I was under glass, or like I’d had a shot of novocaine at the dentist’s and it hadn’t quite worn off yet.
‘He laughed like it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard and said, “Ha-ha! No, not there, it couldn’t happen there, but it might be possible in the ETO. And they could come face-to-face during the Battle of the Bulge.”
‘ “Well, maybe — ” I started, but by then he was walking fast around the parlor again, running his hands through his hair and making it look wilder and wilder.
‘ “I know it sounds like Orpheum Circuit melodrama,” he said, “some silly piece of claptrap like Under Two Flags or Armadale, but the concept of twins . . . and it could be explained rationally . . . I see just how . . . ” He whirled on me. “Would it have dramatic impact?”
‘ “Yes, sir,” I said. ” Everyone likes stories about brothers that don’t know they’re brothers.”
‘ “Sure they do,” he said. “And I’ll tell you something else — ” Then he stopped and I saw the queerest expression come over his face. It was queer, but I could read it letter-perfect. It was like he was waking up to doing something foolish, like a man suddenly realizing he’s spread his face with shaving cream and then taken his electric razor to it. He was talking to a nigger hotel maid about what was maybe the best idea he’d ever had — a nigger hotel maid whose idea of a really good story was probably The Edge of Night. He’d forgot me saying I’d read two of his books — ‘
‘Or thought it was just flattery to get a bigger tip,’ Darcy murmured.
‘Yeah, that’d fit his concept of human nature like a glove, all right. Anyway, that expression said he’d just realized who he was talking to, that was all.
‘ “I think I’m going to extend my stay,” he said. “Tell them at the desk, would you?” He spun around to start walking again and his leg whanged against the room-service cart. “And get this fucking thing out of here, all right?”
”Would you want me to come back later and — ” I started.
‘ “Yes, yes, yes,” he says, “come back later and do whatever you like, but for now just be my good little sweetheart and make everything all gone . . . including yourself.”
‘I did just that, and I was never so relieved in my life as when the parlor door shut behind me. I wheeled the room-service trolley over to the side of the corridor. He’d had juice and scrambled eggs and bacon. I started to walk away and then I seen there was a mushroom on his plate, too, pushed aside with the last of the eggs and a little bit of bacon. I looked at it and it was like a light went on in my head. I remembered the mushroom she’d given me — old Mama Delorme — in the little plastic box. Remembered it for the first time since that day. I remembered finding it in my dress pocket, and where I’d put it. The one on his plate looked just the same — wrinkled and sort of dried up, like it might be a toadstool instead of a mushroom, and one that would make you powerful sick.’
She looked at Darcy steadily.
‘He’d eaten part of it, too. More than half, I’d say.’
‘Mr Buckley was on the desk that day and I told him Mr Jefferies was thinking of extending his stay. Mr Buckley said he didn’t think that would present a problem even though Mr Jefferies had been planning to check out that very afternoon.
‘Then I went down to the room-service kitchen and talked with Bedelia Aaronson — you must remember Bedelia — and asked her if she’d seen anyone out of the ordinary around that morning. Bedelia asked who I meant and I said I didn’t really know. She said ‘Why you asking, Marty?’ and I told her I’d rather not say. She said there hadn’t been nobody, not even the man from the food service who was always trying to date up the short-order girl.
‘I started away and she said, “Unless you mean the old Negro lady.”
‘I turned back and asked what old Negro lady that was.
‘ “Well,” Bedelia said, “I imagine she came in off the street, looking for the John. Happens once or twice a day. Negroes sometimes won’t ask the way because they’re afraid the hotel people will kick them out even if they’re well-dressed . . . which, as I’m sure you know, they often do. Anyway, this poor old soul wandered down here . . . ” She stopped and got a look at me. “Are you all right, Martha? You look like you’re going to faint!”
‘ “I’m not going to faint,” I said. “What was she doing?”
‘ “Just wandering around, looking at the breakfast trolleys like she didn’t know where she was,” she said. “Poor old thing! She was eighty if she was a day. Looked like a strong gust of wind would blow her right up into the sky like a kite . . . Martha, you come over here and sit down. You look like the picture of Dorian Gray in that movie.”
‘ “What did she look like? Tell me!”
‘ “I did tell you — an old woman. They all look about the same to me. The only thing different about this one was the scar on her face. It ran all the way up into her hair. It — ”
‘But I didn’t hear any more because that was when I did faint.
‘They let me go home early and I’d no more than got there than I started feeling like I wanted to spit again, and drink a lot of water, and probably end up in the John like before, sicking my guts out. But for the time being I just sat there by the window, looking out into the street, and gave myself a talking-to.
‘What she’d done to me wasn’t just hypnosis; by then I knew that. It was more powerful than hypnosis. I still wasn’t sure if I believed in any such thing as witchcraft, but she’d done something to me, all right, and whatever it was, I was just going to have to ride with it. I couldn’t quit my job, not with a husband that wasn’t turning out to be worth salt and a baby most likely on the way. I couldn’t even request to be switched to a different floor. A year or two before I could have, but I knew there was talk about making me Assistant Chief Housekeeper for Ten to Twelve, and that meant a raise in pay. More’n that, it meant they’d most likely take me back at the same job after I had the baby.