Crawlspace by Herbert Lieberman

for the past several days had done its job well. There was barely the trace of an odor. Still, when you stood face to face with that square you were aware of something vaguely unpleasant.
    “Richard? I know you’re there. Why won’t you speak to me? I can hear you breathing.” I laughed, making a joke of it. “You spoke to me the other day. What have I done to deserve this silence?”
    Still no answer.
    “Well, tonight’s the night,” I went on. “I told you I’d be by at seven-thirty to take you up to supper. It’s five-thirty now, and I’ll be by for you in two hours. Mrs. Graves has gone to a great deal of trouble. I guarantee you won’t be disappointed.”
    I was suddenly aware of all the packages in my arms. “You said you had no clothes? Well, that’s all taken care of now.” The sound of my voice boomed back at me through the crawl.
    I put the packages down on the lower frame of the square and stacked them there neatly. “You’ll find a suit and several other things. There are some toiletries in there, too. I imagine you’ll want to wash up a bit before you put on your new clothes.” I was afraid that might have sounded rude. Nevertheless, I rushed right on. “As soon as I leave here now, Mrs. Graves and I will go directly upstairs and get ready for supper. The downstairs bath is ’all yours.” I peered into the darkness, listening to him breathe. It was a curiously animal-like sound. “Do you still want me to come down and get you at seven-thirty? Or perhaps you’d prefer to come up by yourself?”
    My heart sinking, I waited for some response. None came.
    “Very well, then. Shall we say you come up at your convenience.” I started to turn, then turned back. “I want you to know, Mrs. Graves worked very hard on this Christmas dinner. Seven-thirty is a good time for her. You see, we’d like to finish in time to clean up and go to midnight services. You won’t disappoint us, will you?” I suspect by that time I was pleading. There were no answers, no sounds, nothing. When I turned and crossed the basement and mounted the cellar stairs, I was sick to my heart.
    I was now absolutely certain he had no intention of coming. Just as the evening before I’d interpreted his silence as an affirmation, I now interpreted that same silence as rejection, an icy rebuff. The whole thing had been a misunderstanding. And not on his part, but on mine. What a fool I’d been. I knew all along, deep down, that he’d never come. He never said he’d come. I merely read it into his silence because it suited me.
    When I got back upstairs, I could barely face Alice. Before all this, we had planned a simple, modest supper for the two of us—a roast of some sort and the requisite bottle of good, but not superlative, wine. Now on the basis of some communication I imagined I’d had with Richard Atlee several nights before, we’d purchased about a hundred and fifty dollars’ worth of men’s clothing and prepared a dinner, something in the style and magnitude approaching a Roman banquet.
    When I came up, I went directly to the kitchen. Alice was there, on a chair, wrestling a large roasting pan down from a cabinet. She looked up, her face flushed from exertion and the heat of the kitchen.
    “What’s wrong, Albert?” she asked, but she didn’t have to. She could see it all in my face. She pushed a wisp of hair out of her eyes. “He’s not coming, is he?”
    “Let’s go upstairs,” I said very softly. “I’ll tell you there.”
    I took her arm and lead her up the steps. She permitted herself to be guided like a child.
    “It’s all my fault,” I said when we’d got upstairs and closed the door. “I simply assumed—”
    “But why? Why? Did he give you any reason?”
    “He wouldn’t even speak to me.”
    That appeared to confuse her. I went on trying to clarify. But things only got murkier. “The truth of it is, I don’t know if he’s coming or he isn’t.”
    “What do you mean, you don’t