Free The Black Angel by Cornell Woolrich

heard him say. He ain’t who the lady wants anyway; he’s a short, fat little guy. Don’t you ’member him? He was in here only a couple nights ago, had the bed right across from mine.”
    Over and over, over and over. While the el rumbled by and you had to wait until it had finished passing before you could make yourself heard.
    â€œWe don’t take women.”
    â€œI know, but I’m looking for someone. Marty, his name is Marty. Tall and thin and light brown hair.”
    Down the stairs again, around into the next doorway, up the stairs.
    â€œNo dames. We only got dormitories here, so you may as well go on down again.”
    â€œMarty, his name is Marty; light brown hair.”
    Down the stairs, around, and up.
    â€œMarty, light brown hair——”
    One of the newspaper readers over by the window looked up, cackled: “I bet I know who she means, Haggerty. Heartbreak. That guy that’s always talking to a dame that isn’t there.”
    I stopped, came back a step or two.
    The man behind the slab looked around, asked the “reading room” in general: “Anybody here know his right name?”
    â€œBlake or Blair, something short like that; I think I once heard him tell it to somebody.”
    â€œBlair.” I nodded. “It’s Blair.”
    He shuffled forward, offering his services. But indirectly, via the clerk, afraid to address me personally. “I can show you where you’ll mostly find him. Down at Dan’s place; it’s on’y a little way from here.”
    The clerk had had a better look at me by now. “You better not go there, miss. I’ll send one of these fellows for you, have him bring him back here.”
    â€œNo, it’s all right; I’d rather go myself.”
    I’d never been in a Bowery drinking place before. I’d heard the phrase “the lower depths”; I don’t remember where. I think I’d read it once. This was it now. The lowest depths of all, this side the grave. There was nothing beyond this, nothing further. Nothing came after it—only death, the river. These were not human beings any more. These were shadows.
    And there was one thing more pathetic than themselves, more eloquent of what had become of them. It was the hush that fell when I went in. That bated breathlessness. I went into many places after that, but never again did that same thing happen in just that way. Men in a barroom will often fall silent when a woman comes in. This was not that. This was not admiration or even covetousness. I don’t know what to call it myself. It was the memory of someone in each man’s past, someone like me, long ago, far away, come back to mind again for a moment as his blurred eyes focused on me. For just a moment, before the memory darkened again and went out—forever. It was life’s last afterglow glancing off the faces of the dead as I brushed by them.
    I went up to the bartender. “Is there someone in here named Heartbreak? I’m looking for someone called Heartbreak.”
    His jaw hung slack. He forgot to go ahead with what he’d been polishing. He just looked at me and looked, as though he’d never get through. I didn’t get it at first. He just worked there; he just catered to the dead; he wasn’t one of them. He shouldn’t feel that way.
    â€œHeartbreak?” he said half incredulously.
    â€œYes, Heartbreak.”
    He murmured something to himself that sounded like “So there really was , after all——”
    Then I got it a little. What was it they’d said back at that flophouse? That he was always talking of or to a woman who wasn’t there. They hadn’t believed there was such a woman until now. Now, seeing me, they thought I was she. They thought I was his dream come down to the Bowery to seek him, to take him back to life with me.
    They were wrong; I wasn’t she. But I had an idea of who she might