The Black Angel by Cornell Woolrich

fearfully, without quite reaching me.
    â€œYou’re Marty, aren’t you? Marty Blair.”
    I saw, by the little start of remembrance he gave, that he hadn’t been hearing the name for a long time past; it had just come to him it was his own. Or rather had once been his own.
    â€œHere, have one of these,” I said soothingly. I even had to put the cigarette to his mouth, strike the match for it. He seemed too dazed, incapable of moving, of doing anything but just looking incredulously at me.
    Then finally he said, “But you’re in her seat.” His eyes went to the empty jigger glass that had been before it on the table the whole time. “And what’d you do, finish off her drink? I always buy one for her every time I come in here. Even when I can’t buy one for myself I always see that she gets one at least. Then sometimes she don’t feel like it, and she lets me have it afterward.”
    I didn’t know what to say. “She won’t be here tonight, Marty. She couldn’t come. That’s why she sent me instead. I’m a friend of Mia’s, Marty. I’m a very good friend of Mia’s.”
    I waited to see what the name would do to him. It did plenty. The pain was livid, like an incision made across his whole face.
    I gave him a little time. I would have sent for another drink for him, but I was afraid it would send him off into the dark again. Finally I said, gently as I could, “You think quite a lot of her, don’t you, Marty?”
    He smiled at me in a pitiful, helpless sort of way. Gee, that smile was an awful thing to behold. It was—I don’t know how to say it; did you ever see a dumb animal run over and crushed out in the middle of the street, so that its hind part is paralyzed? It no longer feels any pain, but it drags itself up on the curb to expire, and it offers a convulsive, fanged grin just before it does.
    I said to myself, “He could have done it. It could have been he very easily.” It was in that smile just then, that terrible smile he gave. Pain, festered love that no longer knows what it’s doing, no longer can distinguish between the rights and wrongs of murder.
    Then after the smile came the answer to what I’d said. Totally unexpected, like something bursting in my face. He said quietly and without inflection, “I was her husband; didn’t she ever tell you that?”
    Even in the first shock of discovery my mind found time to note the tense he’d given it. “Was,” he’d said.
    I didn’t have to be so careful with him as I would have with a normal person; his faculties were still tinctured with smoke. “Yes, I know that,” I said demurely. I looked down at the table to try to keep his suspicions allayed. “Weren’t you ever—was there a divorce, or something like that?”
    â€œNo,” he said, “I just got left behind—after she started having friends and all——”
    â€œWhen was the last time you saw her?” I kept looking down. I traced an imaginary line along the soiled table with the tip of my finger. Then I traced another one over the other way.
    â€œI see her every night. The smoke clears away and there she is. She sits next to me, and I buy her a drink. She comes with me into every one of these places——”
    â€œYes, but when was the last time you really saw her?” I urged with gentle persuasiveness. I smiled a little, trying to show him that I didn’t refuse to accept her on his plane; it was just that I wanted to know a little more about her on the other plane.
    I waited, but he didn’t answer.
    â€œYou used to go up and see her sometimes, too, didn’t you, as well as having her come down here to see you?” And to make it stick I added: “She told me you did.”
    â€œYeah,” he said, “I used to. I used to lots. It hurt too much, though. So mostly I didn’t go in;