I'll Call Every Monday

by Orrie Hitt

  “I didn’t mean that. I meant that you’ll catch a hell of a cold.”

  “Well, I haven’t got anything else to put on. I wanted to talk to you, Nicky, and I can’t sit around without anything on, because — we won’t talk. Now you know.”

  I grinned at her and went into the bedroom. I found another robe, a thinner one, packed with my stuff and I carried that out to where she stood by the fireplace.

  “Put this on and we’ll dry the dress.”

  “I am cold!” she said.

  While she was changing in the bedroom I went out to the kitchen and mixed a couple of drinks. When I came back I found that she had hung the dress over the back of a chair and that she was sitting, all stretched out, in one corner of the davenport.

  “That’s good,” she said, trying the drink.

  We sat there for a while listening to the crack of the fire and the murmur of the rain overhead.

  “I just had to see you,” she said.

  “That phone call put me into a half-spin,” I told her.

  She moved deeper into the cushions and the lines of her body came throbbing out at me.

  “He didn’t go to New York this week,” she said. She swallowed some more of the drink. “He isn’t going again until after Labor Day.”

  I thought about how she had come up that dark path through the rain.

  “I guess it doesn’t make any difference,” I said. “No.”

  “You could come — here.”

  “I’ll have to be careful, Nicky.”

  “We’d have to be that, anyway.”

  She put the glass down and moved her legs. I had an idea that we were wasting a lot of time.

  “He hangs around the hotel once in a while.”

  “I know that.”

  She looked at me closely for a moment, then smiled.

  “You really hit him,” she said. “First, he’d said that he’d been stung by a bee. I was sure he was lying about it. Hell, he hasn’t got anything a bee would want.”

  “So he told you?”

  She shook her head and pointed to her glass. “I could do with another one, Nicky.”

  “All right.”

  I went out into the kitchen and fixed some more drinks.

  “He got a few under his belt and started talking,” she said, after I’d sat down again. “He said that some guy walked up to the bar down at the hotel and whacked him. His description fitted you.”

  “Well, he had it coming,” I said.

  “He didn’t tell me what it was about.”

  I rattled the ice in my glass and watched the way the liquor swished around. I couldn’t look at her. I’d done a lot of thinking about that picture, and what it meant, but I hadn’t wanted to do anything about it. There was something there that could change a lot of things for both of us. Maybe things I didn’t want changed.

  “He had a picture,” I said, slowly. “He showed it to me. He wanted to sell me a set. He kept at it, kept — ”

  “The dirty bastard!” she said, pulling the words out of her heart. “The dirty, dirty bastard!”

  I put my drink down in a hurry and slid across the davenport to her. She had her head down, her legs pulled up, jabbing her fingers into her hair. Her back arched and swelled under the robe and I could hear her crying like she was ready to fall apart.

  “What’s that son-of-a-bitch been doing to you?” I demanded, jerking her around. “What’s he been doing to you?”

  “Please, Nicky!”

  “I want to know.”

  She turned her head to me and her eyes were frightened and hurt.

  “You’ve got to tell me, Irene!”

  She put her upper teeth down over her lower lips, trying to steady her chin. She kept blinking her eyes at me, chasing the tears out.

  “It’s awful. Awful!” she said, shaking her head.

  I knew in that moment that she hadn’t posed for that picture willingly. A warm glow spread through me. Nothing else seemed to matter.

  “You didn’t do that because you wanted to?”

  “God damn it, no!” she flung at me. “I had to be sure.”

  “Do you think I’d do a thing like that?”

  “Some girls must.”

  “Do you think I would, Nicky?”

  I put my head down there and burned my lips against her mouth. “No,” I whispered. “No, I never thought that.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “So am I.”

  She kissed me back and we clung there together, feeling the warmth of the fire on us, knowing that if this was all that there was for us, it would be enough.

  “That’s why I had to see you,” she said, holding her head back, letting the lights in her eyes wash over me. “I knew what you must be thinking, and I didn’t want you to think like that. It isn’t so, Nicky. It isn’t so!”

  “I believe you.”

  She kissed me briefly.

  “That’s all I wanted to hear, Nicky.”

  She got up, went over and got my drink and brought it back to me. The robe clung to her body and I could see her breasts moving around underneath.

  “I want to tell you about it, Nicky.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  Her lips clung to mine as she came down into my arms and crept in real close.

  “But I must,” she said. “You’ve got to know.”

  I reached in back of me and found the lamp. I snapped the switch and only the leaping light from the fire danced in the room.

  “I told you he was an artist, Nicky.”

  “Yes.”

  “He isn’t a very good one. He sells a picture once in a while to the pulp magazines, but not often. He doesn’t make enough out of that for us to live on. I guess he’s not so good at it.”

  “It takes time to get ahead in that.”

  “How long? Twenty years?” She shook her head. “He’s been trying long enough. It just isn’t there. I feel sorry for him because of that.”

  I found some cigarettes and lit a couple. She breathed deeply of the smoke.

  “How long have you been married to him, Irene?”

  “Seven years,” she said, in the same tone as though it had been seventy. “I was a model, listed with an agency in New York. He sent up to have someone pose for a head. I got the job and went over to Brooklyn. He was living there then. That’s how I met him.”

  “And you fell in love?”

  “I thought it was that,” she said. “He had a nice place and he seemed to be doing good. He had me come over quite often. He tried to get me to strip down for him, but I wouldn’t do that. He got some other model to do it for him, but he kept seeing me, taking me out. We used to go up to his brother’s place sometimes, just for the ride. His brother was a doctor in the city and he had a place in the country. Near Eldred. Know where that is?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Not far from my old home.”

  “His brother was nice. There was just the two of them left in the family, no one else, and the doctor wanted Shep to make good. It wasn’t until after we were married that I found out that the doctor was practically keeping us, that Shep couldn’t make very much at painting.”

  “So he started taking pictures,” I said. “He made a pile.”

  “Not until after his brother died a couple of years ago.”

  “I see.”

  “Amy — she was the doctor’s wife — wouldn’t have much to do with Shep after that. I don’t know where she is now. I’d like to. She was a nice person.”

  “When the grocery bill got too big, he got out his camera? Is that it?”

  “Sort of, Nicky.” She crept closer, trying to build a fence around what had happened. “I didn’t know about it for a long time. After we were married I used to pose in the nude for him, thinking nothing about it. Later, after his brother’s death, he said he was jumpy and couldn’t work with someone else around. So he used to snap pictures of me, getting me to stand in all kinds of positions, and he said he used these to paint
from.”

  “But he didn’t.”

  She shuddered at the thought of it. “No.”

  “The bastard!”

  “It was just before his brother died that we moved up here,” she went on. “I guess the doctor paid for the house, but I don’t know.”

  “It was after you got up here that he started taking those pictures?”

  “Yes, right after he had that studio rigged up over the garage. I never went out there much, only to pose for him, because I knew that it bothered him to have someone else around. Then one day, when he was in New York, a man drove up and wanted to see Shep. The man kept looking at me. He asked me if I could give him any picture sets. I can’t remember how many it was he wanted, but it was a lot of them. I told him that I didn’t know anything about it, but he just laughed at me. I — I guess he recognized my face.”

  “You poor kid,” I said.

  “After he was gone I went up into the garage and snooped around. I found the picture sets — a lot of them. And I found something else!”

  “What?”

  “A film,” she said. “I don’t know how he did it — set the camera or what — but he did it. He must have made it the week before, because that was the time he made love to me up there. We didn’t have anything on. And it was all there. I could see it by holding it up to the light. I burned it out in the back yard. Then I went into the bathroom and was as sick as I’ve ever been.”

  A cold knife laid the flesh open along my spine, but my face was hot and the hate in me burned deep and strong.

  “You should have killed him,” I said. “You should have shot the bastard right in his tracks.”

  “I thought of it,” she said truthfully. “But he’s going to die some day, so why bother?”

  “We all are,” I said. “Only some live too God-damned long.”

  “He won’t.”

  I got one of my hands under her chin and jerked her head around.

  “What the hell do you mean by that?”

  She reached up and took my hand away. Then she touched her lips to my fingers and smiled at me.

  “He’ll be lucky if he lives another year,” she said calmly. “That’s true of all of us.”

  “Not him. His brother bought that place so that he might get a couple of months more out of life.”

  “You’re way over my head, Irene.”

  “Well, you’ve talked with him, haven’t you?”

  “At the bar that day. That’s all.”

  “Did you notice anything about him? Something that bothered you?”

  “His voice,” I said, remembering. “It hurt me to listen to him talk.”

  “He’s got a cancer,” she said. “He doesn’t know it.”

  “But you do?”

  “His brother, the doctor, told me,” she said. “Shep had some trouble swallowing and he asked his brother about it. Afterwards, the doctor told me what it was. He said that there wasn’t anything that could be done. Only wait. He didn’t tell Shep and he didn’t ask me to — he said it would be better if Shep didn’t know. That’s why he drinks so much lately. He can’t seem to get the food down. But he doesn’t have any trouble with liquor. I don’t know why.”

  We sat there for a long time, close together, listening to the rain overhead, not saying anything. The fire in the fireplace fell down into a pile of red coals and the shadows in the room got deeper.

  “I don’t know how you thought you could get him insured,” I said.

  “It was just an idea,” she said.

  “There isn’t a company in the business that would touch him with a ten-foot pole.”

  “He’s got plenty of debts,” she said. “That’s all he’s going to leave me.”

  “You wouldn’t have to pay them.”

  “If they’re right, I’d want to,” she said. “If you owe something, you have to pay it. What’s his is mine — that’s the way I feel. He doesn’t, but that doesn’t make any difference. I have to live with myself, Nicky. I’d want to do what’s right. That’s why I thought about the insurance. There ought to be some way to do it.”

  I thought about that.

  “I suppose there is,” I said.

  “Don’t you see?” she asked, sitting up straight. “It isn’t just that, Nicky. He’s used my body and he’s made a slut out of me. I’ve got to have something that’ll make me know it’s worth while for him to live.” Her voice rose. She came to me again, bringing the tears, hot and wet, to my shoulder. “Oh, Nicky, I don’t want to kill him! I don’t! He’s caused me enough trouble.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  “I can’t go any place, Nicky. I don’t know who’s seen those pictures.”

  “The son-of-a-bitch!”

  “It’s like being in jail.”

  “I’d think so.”

  I left her there and went out to the kitchen and fixed two more drinks. When I got back I stirred up the fire and sat down. “Who else knows about his sickness, Irene?”

  “Nobody.”

  “He ever been to another doctor — except the brother?”

  “No. And he’s dead.”

  “Yeah.” I let the liquor slide down and grab at the tense muscles in my stomach. “Is that why you bought those other insurance policies on yourself — just looking?”

  “In a way.”

  “But you never tried to do anything about it?”

  “No.” She lit a cigarette and the flame from the match lingered over the hollow between her breasts. “Everytime I started to go ahead with it I got scared.”

  “Until you met me?”

  “Yes, Nicky.”

  The liquor churned inside.

  “Why, Irene?”

  She touched the glass to her lips, then lowered it slowly to the floor. Her lips parted in a smile and her teeth were white and even. Her robe pulled apart and I could see her tanned thighs and the tiny bulge of her belly at the navel.

  “You God-damned fool!” she said huskily, moving close. “You know why!”

  Her tongue crept into my mouth and lingered there for an instant.

  “I can’t stay too long,” she said. “Just long enough.”

  She laughed and kissed me again. I got her robe untied and slid it down off her shoulders. The firelight dropped a red glow across her smooth skin.

  “You could carry me into the bedroom, Nicky.”

  I got her in my arms and picked her up. She wasn’t very heavy, but I seemed to be running toward that door and by the time I got in there I was breathing hard. I put her on the bed and began fumbling with my own clothes.

  The best day in the week is Monday.

  CHAPTER XI

  I TURNED IN THE SHEP SCHOFIELD application at the office on Thursday morning. There was a brief period of rejoicing and a lot of back-slapping. I took it in stride and shrugged off their congratulations. Fifty thousand was a nice piece of business. But they didn’t know the half of it.

  “Who is this guy?” Austin asked me.

  “He’s an artist.”

  “Well, he ought to be able to afford it.”

  “He can.”

  “Term should be about right for him.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  I was in Austin’s office and he’d been looking over the application. His eyes made a second tour through it and then he threw it in the Out box. I started to breathe again.

  “When’s he going to get examined, Nicky?”

  “Before the end of the week.”

  “You make an appointment with Dr. Tremble?”

  Dr. Tremble was the company’s regular doctor in town. I’d been to his office several times on past cases. I wasn’t going to him with this one.

  “He’s going to get examined over in Newburgh,” I said. “He goes over there all the time.”

  “It would be closer for him here,” Austin said. “Yeah. But he wanted to go to Newburgh for it. All artists are nuts, I guess.”

  “They aren’t the only ones,” Austi
n said. He got up. “Just so’s he gets examined, that’s the main thing.”

  Anybody in the insurance game would know what he was talking about. A lot of guys write a lot of business on people who never get within shouting distance of the medical examiner’s office. The applications lie around and finally get tossed out. The only purpose they serve is to get the manager’s foot off your neck the day you report them as written business.

  “Who does the exams over there for Northern?” I asked Austin. “Maybe I could get Schofield to go over there this afternoon.”

  He took the bait on that one, just as I knew he would. He picked up the phone and got long distance. Pretty soon he was talking to the doctor over in Newburgh. Yes, he would be in that afternoon. Yes, he could give the examination. Fine, Austin said, fine, and hung up.

  “You’re all set,” he told me.

  “I’d better call Schofield,” I said. “Might as well get this thing settled.” Austin beamed.

  “You’re right on the ball, Nicky! I wish the other guys would follow things through like that.”

  I picked up the phone and moved away from his desk, to the end of the cord. He couldn’t hear the voice on the other end from that distance. I checked my watch, said a silent prayer, and gave the operator the number out in Pine Valley. Irene had said that she’d be sure to chase Shep down to the village for groceries before nine that morning, and that she’d give him such a scattered list that it’d take him until eleven to get to all the stores.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “Mr. Schofield?” I asked, following it through just as we had planned it. “Darling!”

  I grinned at Austin and crossed my fingers.

  “Say, Mr. Schofield, I’ve had the office on the wire with that doctor over in Newburgh. He can take you this afternoon, if it’s convenient.”

  “This afternoon is fine,” she said. “Oh, darling, it worked!”

  I could give you his name, or I could go with you,” I said.

  Austin frowned at me and shook his head. He never liked to have you give a prospect a choice.

  “Darling,” Irene said. “I told him about it this morning. I told him that I was going to New York this afternoon and that I wouldn’t be back until late Sunday. He didn’t like it, but he didn’t say no. He couldn’t, very well. I haven’t been any place in God knows when. He’s going to take me down to the railroad station right after lunch.”