Puzzle for Fiends

by Patrick Quentin

  “Nate? I thought he had to go to another patient. That’s what he said.”

  Her laugh was rich, husky. “I know, darling, but Mimsey wanted a fourth so I persuaded him to stay. Didn’t Mimsey give you a sleeping thing?”

  I shook my head.

  She kissed me. “Mimsey fancies herself as a nurse. Personally I’d think twice about letting her loose on a sick baboon. Never mind, baby. I’ll be here for the rest of the night. If you want anything—shout.”

  “Anything?” I let my hand stray over her glossy shoulder.

  “In time, baby. In time.” She grinned and fell back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. “Oh, life is such fun. Why do people have complexes and things? Why don’t they do what they want when they want and wallow in life instead of glooming around in Clean Living Leagues, with warts on their noses and smelly breath? Sleepy, baby?”

  “No.”

  “Want to start remembering things?”

  “No.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Just this.”

  “Baby!’ She took my head between both her hands. “You,” she said studying me. “Your jaw’s right. You smell nice. You’ve got real arms. Your lips are so—serviceable. You and your plaster of Paris.”

  She kissed me again, pressing herself almost fiercely against me. The spell of her was like a drug. I had seen her only twice to remember and yet I was already feeling as if I must always have wanted her in my life. It was a strange, rather frightening sensation—not like remembered love, rougher than that, a sort of hunger and a simultaneous desire to resist. Because something in me, something very weak, was still trying to warn me.

  Steady, it said. You don't know who your friends are.

  I didn’t pay it much attention. All my thoughts were with Selena.

  “I’m crazy about you, baby,” I said, hardly realizing I had spoken the words out loud.

  “I know you are.” She gave a soft laugh in which there was a faint ring of triumph. “Of course you are, Gordy. You always were.”

  Abruptly she pulled herself away from me. She picked up the empty pack of cigarettes, said “damn” and, crossing to her tumbled dress, pulled a thin platinum case out of the deep side pocket. She came back to the bed, lit two cigarettes at once and handed me one.

  “Like in the movies,” she said. She puffed smoke, enjoying it. “Baby, I’ve got an idea. A wonderful idea. About your memory.”

  “To hell with my memory,” I said.

  “No, baby. Listen. Please. Your father’s poems. For years and years, ever since you started to drink and heaven knows how long that’s been—whenever you went on a toot, your father made you learn by heart and recite one of his poems against drink. I’ll make you learn one again. Don’t you see? Association and things. It’s bound to be frightfully, frightfully therapeutical.”

  “I don’t want to learn a poem against drink,” I said.

  “Darling, don’t be dreary. “She got up again, fumbled in a bureau drawer and brought out a drab grey volume with gilt lettering. Casually, as if it didn’t matter one way or the other, she pulled an oyster white negligée from a closet and slipped into it. She sat down on the green chaise longue.

  “All published privately. At terrific expense.” She leafed through the book. “Ah, here’s my favorite. The Ode to Aurora. It’s divine. Disinfected Swinburne. Baby, you’ve learned this one fifty times. It must be needlepointed on your heart.” She looked up laughing. “Darling, I’m much smarter than Nate. You see.”

  I was bored. I wanted her to come back to the bed.

  “Ready?” she said. “I’ll read the first verse. Then you learn it.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Give with the disinfected Swinburne.”

  In a voice croaky with mock evangelical fervor, she recited:

  “ ‘Seven sins led our sons to Perdition,

  Seven sins that lure youth like a whore.

  And the first of them all—(Prohibition

  Alas can repress it no more)—

  Is alcohol, weevil-like borer,

  Only one can combat its foul stealth.

  That’s sober and saintly Aurora,

  Clean Lady of Health.’ ”

  She looked up. “Isn’t it heaven, darling? He doesn’t mean the Greek Aurora, of course. She was a frightful cut-up, sleeping with shepherds on mountains and things. This is all written to the Aurora Clean Living League of St. Paul, Minnesota.” Her eyes clouded earnestly. “Don’t you remember any of it, baby?”

  “No,” I said. “Fortunately.”

  “Oh, baby.” She grimaced. “Really, you’re awfully tiresome. Never mind. Learn it. Maybe that’ll help.”

  She reread the first two lines. I repeated them. The rhythm made it easy to learn by heart. But it brought absolutely no recollection.

  “How did we ever recite it without laughing out loud?” I asked.

  “Laughing?” Selena looked horrified. “My dear, you wouldn’t ask that if you remembered your father. He was simply terrifying. You were more scared of him than any of us—except maybe Marny. That’s why you got drunk really. It was the only way you could feel brave. Want to try the next verse?”

  “No,” I said.

  She leaned forward coaxingly. “Gordy, baby, please—just one more.”

  “Okay.”

  “This is really my pet verse.”

  She started to read:

  “ ‘In the taverns where young people mingle

  To sway their lascivious hips,

  The youths with sin’s wages to jingle

  At the maidens with stains on their lips.

  Smoke rises like fumes from Baal’s altar,

  Ragtime drums like a plague in their blood.

  Oh, come and rend off its lewd halter,

  Our Lady of Good.’ ”

  I learned that verse too. Selena made me repeat both verses together. But nothing happened. Discouraged, Selena gave up and soon she was lying in the other bed.

  “Night, baby.”

  She leaned toward me, turning out the light between the beds. Her hand came through the moonlight, touching my cheek and caressing it. I kissed the soft, blue-white fingers.

  “Night, Selena.”

  “Won’t be long, will it?”

  “What won’t be long?”

  “The cast, baby.”

  “I hope not, Selena.”

  As I lay alone, drowsy but not really tired, the magic Selena cast began to fade and my old disquiet returned. I didn’t remember my father’s poems. I didn’t really remember Selena. I didn’t remember anything. A vision of Netti’s pink, red-veined gums swam in front of me. Somehow that peroxide maid with her weakness for gin-nipping and her giggled hints seemed the only normal, real person in the house. All the servants had been fired on the day my father died. Suddenly that one fact seemed to be the focus of everything that was wrong. “Selena?” I called.

  Her voice, thickened by sleepiness, murmured: “Yes, baby?”

  “Why did you fire all the servants when father died?”

  “What?” Her voice was alert now.

  “Why did you fire all the servants when father died?”

  “My dear, what weird questions you ask.”

  I had an absurd sensation that she was stalling.

  “Please, baby. I want to know. It’s one of those things that stick in your mind,” I lied. “Maybe, if you tell it’ll help me remember.”

  She laughed softly and her hand, stretched across again, rested on my pillow. I didn’t touch it. Somehow I didn’t want to.

  “Baby, that’s frightfully simple. In the old days Father hired all the servants. My dear, you can’t imagine how spectral and dismal they were, creaking around in elastic boots and sniffing in drawers for contraband cigarettes. Your father paid them to spy on us. Firing them was our first act of emancipation. Mimsey did it. She was wonderful. She just swept them out like dead leaves.”

  It was a soothing explanation. It fitted so wel
l with the setup. I reached for her hand and squeezed it.

  “Thanks, Selena.”

  “Help you remember anything?”

  “ ’Fraid not.”

  “Damn. “Selena drew her hand back. “Night, baby.” After a moment she gave a little chuckle.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I was just picturing how you’d look swinging lascivious hips in that plaster cast.”

  Now that Selena had told me there was nothing sinister about the firing of the servants, the last lingering fumes of my suspicions were dispersed. For the first time that evening I felt an unqualified sense of well-being. There was no pain in my leg or my arm. My head didn’t ache. Sleep stole deliciously through me. My last conscious thought was:

  I’m Gordy Friend. Selena’s my wife.

  My last conscious act was to turn my head and look at her. She was lying with her back to me, the long line of her hip visible under the humped bedclothes. Her hair gleamed metallic on the pillow.

  I dreamed of her hair. It should have been a wonderful dream but it wasn’t. The cream hair was tumbling over me, curling around my throat, smothering me.

  I was awake suddenly. I knew I was awake because a hand was touching my cheek. My mind was quite clear. Selena, I thought. The touch was light, just the tips of the fingers moving gently across my skin. There was a faint perfume too. What was it? Lavender.

  I didn’t open my eyes. Contentedly I raised my arm and imprisoned the hand in mine. The fingers weren’t smooth and soft like Selena’s. It was an old, old hand, bony, coarse and wrinkled like a lizard’s skin.

  With a chill of disgust and horror, I dropped it. I opened my eyes wide. I stared up.

  A figure was bending over me. The bright moonlight made its reality unquestionable. It was a female figure, short and dumpily shapeless in some black trailing garment.

  Its face was less than a foot from mine. Lines splayed over cheeks dry as parchment. Eyes, round and luminous, in puckered sockets stared straight into mine. There was an odor of old age and lavender.

  It had happened too quickly. I wasn’t ready for it. My skin started to crawl.

  “Gordy. “The name was whispered in a subdued, croaking whine. “Gordy. My Gordy.”

  “I’m Gordy,” I said.

  “You!’ The peering eyes looked closer. The voice trembled with ancient, impotent rage. “You’re not Gordy. They said my Gordy’d come back. They lied to me. They always lie to me. You’re not Gordy. You’re just another of Selena’s...”

  She broke off with a whimper.

  I sat up, quivering. “What d’you mean? Who are you? Tell me.”

  Something white—a handkerchief—fluttered across the face. The smell of lavender flew from it like moths.

  “Gordy,” she moaned. “Where’s my Gordy?”

  She turned from the bed.

  “Come back,” I breathed.

  She didn’t seem to notice. She started away. I could hear the shamble of her bedroom slippers across the carpet.

  “Hey,” I called in an urgent whisper. “Come back. Please come back.”

  But the bedroom slippers shambled on. I heard the faint squeak of the door opening and closing.

  She was gone.

  For a moment I lay back against the pillows, my heart racing.

  You're not Gordy Friend. They lied to me.

  Now that she was gone, I could hardly believe in that unknown old hag. She seemed like the materialization of my own amorphous suspicions.

  They said my Gordy’d come back. They lied to me. You’re just one of Selena’s...

  I turned to the other bed. Selena’s hair gleamed motionless in the moonlight.

  “Selena,” I called. “Selena.”

  She stirred slightly.

  “Selena.”

  “Yes, darling.” The words were slurred, reluctant, coming from half sleep.

  “Selena.”

  “Yes, yes, I hear you, baby.”

  “Selena, wake up.”

  She started into a sitting position, rubbing her eyes, tossing back her hair.

  “What... Who... Oh, Gordy, Gordy, baby, yes. What is it?”

  “That woman,” I said. “That old, old woman. Who is she?”

  “Old woman?” She yawned. “What old woman, dear?”

  “The old woman. She just came in here. I woke up. I found her bending over me. Who is she?”

  Selena sat for a moment saying nothing. Then she murmured: “Baby, I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

  “An old woman,” I persisted. “Who’s the old woman who lives in this house?”

  “Mimsey? Really, I don’t think anyone would call her an old woman.”

  “I don’t mean her. Of course I don’t.”

  “Then you don’t mean anyone, baby. There’s no old woman in this house.”

  “But there must be. She was wearing bedroom slippers. She…”

  Selena suddenly burst out laughing. It was a deep, pulsing laugh. “You poor baby, you’ve been dreaming. Dreaming of old hags in bedroom slippers. What a depressing mind you must have.”

  “I wasn’t dreaming,” I said. “I saw her as plainly as I see you.”

  “Baby. Don’t worry your poor head. It’s only the drugs and things. You’re simply stuffed full of drugs, darling. Probably, if you tried, you could see a moose.”

  She pushed back the covers and slipped out of her bed, coming to mine. She sat close to me, warm from sleep. She slid her arms around me and kissed my forehead, drawing my head down to her breast.

  “There, baby. Selena will protect you from predatory old women in bedroom slippers.”

  Nothing could have been more restful, more to be trusted than those smooth arms and the soft hair brushing my cheek. But the hair seemed like the hair in my dreams, suffocating me.

  “Over?” she asked at length. “Is the old woman over and done with, baby?”

  “I guess so,” I lied. “Thanks, Selena. Sorry I woke you up.”

  “Darling.”

  She patted my hand and slipped off my bed. Before she got into her own, she gave a little laugh, pulled open the drawer of the table by her bedside and took out a revolver. She dangled it for me to see.

  “There, darling, your own gun. Next time you see an old hag, scream and I’ll shoot.”

  She threw the gun back in the drawer and slid into bed, yawning: “ ’Night, Gordy.”

  “’Night, Selena.”

  She had confused me. After she had left, I lay trying to think. I was sick. I was full of drugs. It was just possible that the whole scene had been some bizarre illusion. I forced myself to remember every detail of that moment when I had awakened and seen the face looming over mine. I knew just how terrifically important it was to decide once and for all whether there had or hadn’t been an old woman.

  If there had been an old woman, the old woman had said I was not Gordy Friend. If there had been an old woman, Selena had deliberately lied to me. And if Selena had lied to me, then the whole situation surrounding me was a monstrous tissue of lies.

  The faintest scent of lavender trailed up to me. I glanced down. Something white was gleaming on the spread. I picked it up.

  It was a woman’s handkerchief, a small, plain, old woman’s handkerchief.

  And it smelt of lavender.

  Chapter 8

  I put the handkerchief in the pocket of my pajama jacket, hiding it under the big one Jan had brought me. I knew I had to keep steady. That was about the only definite thought I had at that moment.

  You—whoever you are—keep steady.

  The room, washed in moonlight, seemed particularly beautiful. Selena, blonde and insidious as the moonlight, was lying in the next bed, asleep or pretending to be asleep. Part of me was rash and yearned to call her name, to have her come over again, to feel the warmth of her bare arms around me. But I fought against it. I didn’t even look at the other bed. Because I knew now that Selena was false.

  That was
how this new, huge anxiety first came to me. The old woman had existed. Selena had tried to make her into a dream. Selena had lied. Selena had lied because if she had admitted the existence of the old woman then I would have demanded to see her and the old woman would say again what she had already said:

  You are not Gordy Friend.

  I repeated those words in my mind. With the ominous clarity that comes to the wakeful invalid at night, I knew then quite definitely that I was not Gordy Friend. My instincts had always known it. But there had been nothing tangible to support them until the arrival of this flimsy, lavender-scented handkerchief.

  I was not Gordy Friend.

  Strangely calm, I faced this preposterous truth. I was lying in a beautiful room in a luxurious house which I had been told was my own. It was not my own. I was nursed and petted by a woman who said she was my mother. She was not my mother. I was treated to reminiscences from an imaginary childhood by a girl who said she was my sister. She was not my sister. I was lured and made love to by a girl who said she was my wife. She was not my wife. My vague suspicions had been lulled whenever I voiced them by the plausible psychiatric pretenses of a doctor who said he was my friend.

  Friend. In that calm, moonlit room, the word seemed inimitably sinister. They called themselves Friend. They called me Friend. They were constantly soothing me with the sickly sweet sedative of their sentence: We're your friends.

  They weren’t my friends. They were my enemies. This wasn’t a calm, moonlit room. It was a prison.

  I was sure of that because there could be no other explanation. At least four people were banded together to persuade me that I was Gordy Friend. Mothers, sisters and wives do not embrace an impostor as a son, brother and husband, doctors do not risk their reputations on a lie—except for some desperately important reason. The Friends had some desperate motive for wanting to produce a make-believe Gordy Friend. And I was their victim.

  Victim. The word, falling on my mind, was chilling as the touch of the unknown old woman’s hand on my cheek.

  For all their cloying kindliness, I was the Friends’ victim, the sacrificial lamb being petted and pampered in preparation for—what sacrifice?