Phantom lady by Cornell Woolrich

rim of the washbowl in the corner and relieved the leg that supported it of floor duty. He took it by the ankle with both hands and held it up. "I only met her once," he said thoughtfully.
    "Twice," Henderson corrected. "There was that time we ran into you on the street, remember?"
    "Yeah, I remember. She kept pulling you by the arm, from behind, to break it up."
    "She was on her way to buy some clothes, and you know how they are when that's in the wind. Neither time nor

    tide—" Then he apologized still further, in behalf of someone who was dead and gone, apparently without realizing how perfectly unimportant it was now. "We were always going to have you up for dinner, but I dunno—somehow— you know how those things are."
    "I know how it is," Lombard agreed with diplomatic understanding. "No wife ever yet liked her husband's premarriage friends." He took out the pow-wow cigarettes, threw them across the narrow cell. "Don't mind if they make your tongue swell up and your lips blister. They're from down there; part gunpowder and part insecticide. I haven't had time to change back to ours yet."
    He took a thoughtful drag. "Well, I guess you better give me the dope."
    Henderson pulled up a sigh from way in. "Yeah, I guess I better. I've been over it so many times already, I think I could reel it off backward, or in my sleep."
    "To me it's like a blackboard without anything written on it yet. So don't skip anything if you can help it."
    "That marriage of mine and Marcella's was just a prelim, not the main event it should have been at all. A guy don't usually go around admitting that, even to his friends, but this is the death house and it seems foolish to have reticences here. A little over a year ago, the main bout suddenly came up. And too late for me to take part in. You never met her, don't know her, so there's no reason for me to mention her name. They were decent enough to do that for me at the trial, too. All through it they just called her The Girl. I'll do that here, I'll call her My Girl to you."
    "Your Girl," Lombard assented. He had his arms folded, cigarette sticking out from behind his elbow, and was staring down broodingly at the floor, listening hard.
    "My Girl, poor girl. It was It, the real thing, the McCoy. If you're not married, and It comes along—you're safe. Or if your marriage itself happens to be It, that's better still, you're on pure velvet. Or if you're married, and It never comes along—you're still safe, even if you're only half

    alive and don't know it. It's when you're married, and It shows up only after it's too late—that you want to look out."
    "That you want to look out," murmured Lombard with a sort of musing compassion.
    "It was a clean little thing. I told My Girl about Marcella the second time I saw her. That was supposed to be the last time we saw each other. The twelfth time we saw each other we were still trying to make it the last time. We tried to steer clear of each other—like steel filings try to steer clear of a magnet.
    "Marcella knew about her within thirty days after it had started. I saw to it that she did. I went and told her. It wasn't a case of any sudden shock, get that. She just smiled about it a little, and she waited. Like someone watching two flies under a tumbler turned upside down.
    "I went to her and asked for a divorce. This was at about mid-point. That slow, thoughtful smile came out on her again. She hadn't seemed to set any particular store by me until then, that I could notice. Just that thing that dropped shoes in the next aisle over from her. She said she'd have to think it over. She thought it over. The weeks went by, the months. She took her time thinking it over, she kept me dangling like that. I'd get that slow, mocking smile every now and then. She was the only one of the three of us having a good time out of it.
    "It was pulling me inside out. I'm a grown man, and I wanted My Girl. I wasn't going to let myself be gypped. I didn't want any