by Peter Straub
“I take too much for granted.”
“Christ, you said it.”
“I mean, I didn’t think you could misunderstand me that much. I promise you, Nora, I had no intention of doing anything you didn’t want to do.”
“And one of the best things about our relationship is that we always wind up in bed, so after I felt good and safe, you’d really help me out and have sex with me.”
“Let’s face it, Nora, we do go to bed together, and we do feel better afterwards.”
“You feel so much better afterwards you go out and get married. You always have girlfriends, don’t you, Dan? When one wife finally figures you out and gets fed up, you have her replacement lined up to put her name on the prenuptial agreement. The first time I turned up here, you brought me home from the motel to meet Helen and give her a really good reason to get out quick so you could marry Lark. You couldn’t marry me, I’m too crazy.”
“Nora, you don’t want my life. There isn’t enough excitement here for you.”
She turned away, went to the chair, and stepped into her jeans with her back to him.
“I’m crazy about you. I think you’re an amazing woman.”
“You don’t have any idea who I am. I’m your shipboard romance.” She fastened the jeans and threw the robe aside, let him gape. “You’re tantalized by the chaos I bring to your tedious, self-important existence, but you want to keep it at bay. It’s whoopee time with the emotional bag lady, and when party time is over, back to the girl in the on-deck circle, right?” She had been wrestling the T-shirt, trying to pull it right side out but in her agitation only bundling the body of the shirt into one of the sleeves. She pulled fabric out of the sleeve and tugged the shirt on inside out. “The girl whose things are all over the bathroom, the one who called you twice this morning, the girl who swipes little mementos from the hotels the two of you stay in when you go away together.”
“All the fiction in the world isn’t in novels,” he said, marvel-ing.
“This is the same girl who told you she was coming over here this morning, when you suddenly changed your mind and decided to whisk me off to Mark Foil’s house. You figured you could fend off the third Mrs. Harwich for a day or two. I’m too much of a risk to keep around longer than that, aren’t I?”
Harwich was sitting up in bed with his arms around his raised knees, watching her with an expression of mild, half-amused perplexity. He hesitated for a conspicuous beat before speaking, as if assuring himself that she had finished at last. “Would you like to stop fantasizing and listen to the truth?”
“The only thing I don’t understand,” she said, “is why she doesn’t sleep in your bedroom. I really don’t get that part. Does she snore like a pig, or are the two of you saving a whole night together in the master’s bedroom for after the wedding, like a reward kind of deal?”
Harwich inhaled deeply, leaned forward, and opened his hands, palm up, the image of beleaguered reason. “This whole picture you’re describing is all made up. It isn’t real. Dick Dart knocked you for a loop, remember? As long as you can keep in mind who I am, the real me and not this monster you just invented, I’ll be as patient and supportive as I know how. Maybe you can’t accept that right now, but it’s the God’s truth.”
This spoke to all of her old feelings about Dan Harwich, and his reasonableness, his steady, kind, affectionate regard, filled her with doubts. This was Harwich, she reminded herself. Three years ago she had thrown herself at him. Could she blame him for catching her? It was true. She had willingly helped him speed up the wreckage of his first marriage. “Say more,” she said.
“I don’t blame you for feeling strange about Lark. But I was honest about her. I told you I was already seeing her when you came here last time. I can’t pretend I’ve ever been a faithful husband, because I haven’t. Okay? I confess. I mess around. I get bored. I need what you have, that . . . spirit. But honest, this is the truth, I don’t have a new bride waiting in the wings.”
“Then whose stuff is that in the bathroom?”
He looked sideways for a moment, considering, then again met her eyes. “Okay. But bear in mind that I don’t really have any reason to explain this or anything else. You see that, don’t you?”
“So explain.” Her angry certainty was ebbing away.
“What the hell, Nora, I’m not a monk. During the course of my tedious, self-important life, it has now and then come to my attention that some women really do prefer having their own separate bathroom. So I put some toothbrushes and other stuff in there just in case.”
“You didn’t change your mind about taking me to see Mark Foil because your new girlfriend said she was coming over?”
“I don’t blame you for letting the past few days make you suspicious of men. And I know it looks bad, my getting into bed with you, but cross my heart, I had no intention of coercing you into having sex. I hope you believe me.”
She sighed. “Honest to God, Dan, I almost—” The telephone in the bedroom down the hall rang once, twice, and Harwich’s face modulated from earnest entreaty to a spasm of irritation and back to a close approximation of innocent indifference before it rang a third time. “Don’t you want to get that?”
“This is more important.”
“It might be the hospital.”
“Trust me, it’s just some pest.”
The distant telephone continued to ring: a fifth time, a sixth, a ninth time, a tenth.
“Don’t you have an answering machine?”
He held her eyes expressionlessly for a moment or two. “I turned off the machine on that line.”
“Why would you do that?” Nora watched calculation, annoyance, and something alert and wary appear in his face. “Why, Dan?”
The telephone stopped ringing.
“I guess it wasn’t such a good idea,” he said. “But hell, nobody’s perfect.”
“You bastard.” She felt as though she had been punched in the stomach. “You slimy, self-serving, lying creep.” The feeling in her stomach intensified. “You almost had me talked into getting back into bed with you.”
“Do it anyhow. What’s the difference? This is about you and me. To hell with anybody else.”
“You still think you have a chance, don’t you?”
“Consider this. I was protecting your feelings. Okay, I have a woman friend, I’ve known her for a couple of months, and she stays here from time to time. I don’t know if I’m going to marry her. If I’m not willing to let her destroy our relationship, why should you?”
She looked at him in outright amazement. “You really are an absolute bastard. Boy, I wonder what you . . . No, I already know.”
“You know what I think of you? I doubt that very much. But don’t waste time brooding about it, just get in your car and go. At this point, I don’t see much point in prolonging the situation. Take off. Nice to know you, kind of.”
She considered throwing some heavy object at him but then realized with a sad, final thump of defeat that he was not worth the effort. “Answer one question for me, will you?”
“If you insist.”
“Why does this woman sleep in here instead of your bedroom? I don’t get it.”
“Because of the pillows,” Harwich said. “If you really want to know.”
“The pillows?”
“She’s allergic to down pillows, and they’re the only kind I can stand to sleep on. These are foam. I think sleeping on a foam pillow is like having sex with a condom.”
She found she could smile. “Dan, I don’t see much of a future for your third marriage.”
His eyes hardened, and his mouth thinned like a lizard’s. “The truth is, Nora, you were always a little nuts. Being nuts was okay in Vietnam—it probably helped you make it through—but it sure as hell doesn’t work anymore.”
“I’m beginning to understand that you have a lot in common with Dick Dart.” She walked down the side of the bed toward the door. Harwich slid an inch or two away, trying to pr
etend that he was merely finding a more comfortable position. “On the whole, I prefer Dick Dart. He’s a lot more upfront than you are.”
“See what I mean?” he said, smirking, now that he was out of reach.
She opened the door and looked at him as calmly as she could. “Aren’t you a little worried?”
“Why don’t you just leave? Do I have to tell you never to come back, or have you figured that out for yourself?”
“That old Ford is parked really close to your car,” she said, and closed the door behind her. She could hear his shouts as she went down the stairs, and they followed her through the kitchen. By the time she had raised the garage door and started the car, he was standing naked in the back door, no more than an absurd figure with a potbelly, stork legs, and graying pubic hair, yelling but too afraid of being seen by his neighbors to come any closer. She backed out without touching the Rolls.
63
“D-E-O-D-A-T-O,” NORA SPELLED.
During the seconds while the telephone reported a dense silence, she regretted the impulse to call the Chancels’ manservant. Why had she imagined that Jeffrey would not go immediately to Daisy, or Alden if Alden was home, or even the police? When the need to talk to someone in Westerholm had seized her, enigmatic Jeffrey had seemed the most likely candidate, although for an irrational moment she had imagined consulting Holly Fenn. She still wished she could talk to Fenn, absolute proof, if after Harwich she needed proof, of her rotten taste in protective men. A telephone began to ring, and she realized that she had not con-sidered what she would do if an answering machine picked up. Nora moved the receiver away from her head and heard a metallic voice say “Hello.” Was this voice Jeffrey’s? Nora envisioned a room full of cops in headphones leaning over a tape recorder. She moved the receiver back to her ear, more uncertain than ever.
A male voice, Jeffrey’s, repeated the greeting as a question.
She spoke his name.
Silence. Then, “Nora.” She had never before heard him speak her name without calling her “Mrs.” Most often, he had never called her anything but “you.” “Where are you?”
“In Massachusetts.”
He paused for a moment. “Would you prefer me to keep quiet about this? Or would you like me to speak privately to anyone in particular?”
“I don’t know yet,” she confessed, understanding that “anyone in particular” meant Davey. Jeffrey’s tact extended to his private life.
He weighed this. “Are you all right?”
“I think that remains to be seen. I guess I’m trying to decide what to do. Everything’s so complicated.” She fought the desire to break down into tears. “Jeffrey, I’m sorry to do this to you, but I don’t exactly feel safe right now.”
“No wonder,” he said. “All sorts of people are trying to find you.”
“Don’t make me ask a lot of questions. Please, Jeffrey.”
Nora could all but hear him thinking. “I’ll try to tell you what I know, but don’t hang up and disappear on me, okay? Nobody’s listening, I’m alone in my room, and you’re fine as long as you stay where you are, at least for now. You’re at a pay phone?”
“Yes.” Her anxieties ebbed.
“All right. It’s a good thing you called on this line. The other ones are all tapped.”
“Oh, God,” she said. “They still think I kidnapped Natalie Weil.”
“They’re acting that way.” An ambiguity hung in the air while he hesitated. “From what I overhear, Mrs. Weil isn’t making a lot of sense.” There was another brief silence. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think you went near her.”
“What about Davey?”
“Davey’s under a lot of pressure.”
“He’s staying with his parents?”
“Yes. Pretty soon he’ll be right here.”
“With you?”
“In my apartment. In what used to be my apartment. Until yesterday he was staying in your house, at least at night, but with all the excitement, Mr. Chancel persuaded him to move back here. He put his foot down about staying in his old bedroom, but after Mr. Chancel . . . um, temporarily changed the conditions of my employment, he agreed to take over my place.”
“Alden fired you?”
“Mr. Chancel called it a provisional suspension. He was very sorry about it. Our salaries will be paid through the end of the month, and if conditions are right, we can return. If not, he’ll give us two months’ severance pay and sterling recommendations.”
“Us?”
“My aunt and me. I’m packed up, and when she finishes we’ll be leaving.”
Nora discovered that she could be shocked. “But Jeffrey, where will you go?”
“My aunt is going to stay with some cousins on Long Island. I’d drive her out there, but she won’t let me, so I’m dropping her at the train station, and I’ll stay with my mother for a while.”
Nora had never considered that Jeffrey might have a mother. He seemed to have arrived on the planet fully formed, without the customary mediation of parents. “He ordered you and Maria out so that Davey could stay in your apartment?”
“Mr. Chancel told us that his business was not doing as well as it should, and that for the time being he had to make certain sacrifices.”
It sounded to Nora as though the German deal Dick Dart had mentioned had fallen through. Good. She hoped that Chancel House would dwindle and starve. For a time, her attention wandered from whatever Jeffrey was saying.
“. . . but still. Here’s Merle Marvell asking about that time, that place, and right away we get suspended, or fired, or whatever it is.”
“I’m sorry, Jeffrey, I faded out for a little bit. What happened?”
“Merle Marvell asked Mr. Chancel if the firm had signed up a woman to do a book about . . . a certain subject. A few writers. Someone had just called him asking about it, and he thought it sounded funny because he’d never heard of it.”
“Hold on, hold, on.” Nora tried to grasp what he had said. “Merle Marvell told Alden someone was asking about a woman who claimed to be writing a book?”
“I’m sorry for bringing it up. I wondered . . . sorry. Forget it.”
“Jeffrey—”
“My aunt would jump down my throat if she knew I brought this up. The Chancels have always been very generous to us. Look, is there anything I can do for you? Do you need money? I’m coming up to Massachusetts anyhow, so I could bring you whatever you need.”
“Jeffrey,” Nora said, and then thought that she probably would be in need of money before long. But that was not Jeffrey’s problem” his problem sounded closer to home. “Did this woman’s book have to do with a place called Shorelands? And what went on there in 1938?”
Jeffrey did not respond for a moment, and then said, “That’s an interesting question.”
“I’m right, aren’t I?”
Again he considered his words. “How do you know?”
“Well, I hope you’ll keep this to yourself,” she said, “but I’m the woman.”
Jeffrey managed a partial recovery. “The woman pretending to be writing the book about Shorelands in 1938 was you.”
“Why does it matter to you?”
“Why does it matter to you?”
“That’s a long story. I think I’ll get off now, Jeffrey. I’m getting nervous.”
“Don’t hang up,” he said. “This might be straight out of left field, but have you ever heard of a woman named Katherine Mannheim?”
“She was at Shorelands that summer,” said Nora, more baf-fled than ever.
“Were you looking for information about her? Was Kather-ine Mannheim why you cooked up this story about a book?”
“What’s all this to you, Jeffrey?” Nora asked.
“We have to talk. I’m going to pick you up and take you somewhere. Tell me where you are and I’ll find you.”
“I’m in Holyoke. At a pay phone on a corner.”
“Where?”
“Ah, this is the corner
of Northampton and Hampden.”
“I know exactly where you are. Go to a diner or something, go to a bookstore, there’s one down the street, but wait for me. Don’t run away. This is important.”
The line went dead. Nora stared at the receiver for a second and then dropped it on its hook. No longer quite aware of her surroundings, she stepped away from the telephone and tried to make sense of what she had just learned. Jeffrey had overheard Alden’s half of a conversation with Merle Marvell. Mark Foil, no fool, had called Marvell to check on “Emily Eliot,” and the puzzled editor had immediately telephoned his boss at home. Why was Alden at home? Because the president of Chancel House had to face the unpleasant task of firing two long-standing employees? Or because Daisy had not recovered from
her fit, and the great publisher had to deal with the consequences of dismissing her caretakers? Nora could not imagine Alden fetching drinks and bowls of soup to his stricken wife . . . Ah, of course: tricky Alden, getting, as usual, exactly what he wanted. Daisy’s weakness had forced Davey back to the Poplars. Alden had put him under his thumb by linking his concern for his mother to the hypothetical independence of separate living quarters over the garage. Getting what you wanted was easy if you had the morals of a wolverine.
Nora’s satisfaction at having worked out this much evaporated before the remaining mystery, that of Jeffrey. Why should he care about an obscure, long-dead poet?
64
NORA WALKED SLOWLY to the edge of the pavement. There, side by side in the next block, stood the plate-glass window of Unicorn Books and a dark blue awning bearing the words Dinah’s Silver Slipper Café. As if on cue, her stomach told her that she was ravenous.
Into the bookstore she sailed, for the moment holding her hunger at bay. She moved along toward Night Journey and its less celebrated siblings, pulled all three paperbacks from the shelf, and carried them to the counter.
“Driver, Driver, Driver,” the man said. “Dark, darker, darkest.”
“I gather you don’t approve,” Nora said.
