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He came around to face the girl and simply couldn't think of the words to say. She looked at him for a moment. "What is it?" she asked gently.
"I nearly lost my mind just then," he whispered, "I nearly did something that.... I can't even say it....."
She suddenly looked rather startled. "You mean... you were about to kill me?"
"I can't understand it. I can hardly believe it myself.. but it was as if, just for an instant, it wasn't me standing there. It was somebody else. And that.. other person.. was looking at your neck, and... and thinking...." His voice faltered.
The girl backed away slightly and glanced nervously towards the door.
"Please! Whatever your name is. I'm not going to hurt you. It was just that, for a moment there, something else seemed to take over. I would never do that. Never. Please don't be afraid of me."
She held the sweet-box very tightly and seemed to be still backing away slowly towards the door. "It's all right," she whispered, "I know you won't hurt me. But I want to go now. Is that all right?"
"Look, I don't want it to finish like this," he pleaded, "I like you. I liked you at the airport. I think you're very pretty... Couldn't we start again? Couldn't you tell me about this man Miller? Let me see if there's some way I could help?"
"You can't help me. Nobody can. But thanks for the offer."
Damn it, he thought, she's still backing away. She's terrified of me. I've blown it. One last try.
"Okay. You're frightened now. And you have every right to be. And I did try to steal that heroin, I admit that. I saw it, and I started thinking about all the things it could do for me, the way it could change my life. I got greedy. I wanted to keep it. But when I saw what it did to me just now, what it almost made me do, it scared me. I don't want that stuff. I don't want anything to do with it. I don't want to turn into that person. So... look, here's my best offer. I know you have to go now, that there's somebody waiting for that stuff and that you'll be in bad trouble if you don't deliver it. But this doesn't have to be the end for you and me. I'll still be here tomorrow, and the day after. We can meet up. We can get to know one another. Take our time. I'm not in any hurry. Will you give me one more chance? Please?"
He approached her again, but she drew back. He wished that he hadn't told her about that crazy impulse that he had felt. Wished that he hadn't been greedy. Wished that.... that things could have been different in so many ways.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I must go."
She hurried out of the room.
"Will you remember what I said?" he shouted after her, beginning to feel like a fool but somehow not able to give up.
"Yes," she said softly from the corridor, "I'll remember."
He watched her walk towards the elevator. "Forgive me," he said gently. She turned and for an instant a smile seemed to flicker across her face. Then she was gone.
He closed the door and sat down by the window. He pulled open the curtains and looked down on the street below, the teeming hordes of people, even here, where it was not a main road, even now, far after midnight, no part of this city ever rested, not for a single moment. He watched the headlights of the vehicles, the gaudy dancing patterns of the neon lights, the little food-stalls on the pavements, the lights of the shops and apartment blocks in the roads beyond. Far beyond that he could make out the dim outline of the harbor with its little bright daisy-chain of marker buoys, and on the other side of the harbor, more lights, more apartment blocks, more streets melting into a field of twinkling multi-colored points of brightness that became lost among the stars without any clear horizon. The vastness of it all suddenly seemed to be breath-taking. "You get one chance," he whispered to himself, "only one."
He sat there, looking out at the lights, until the sun came up and drove them all away.
AN END
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