Love Nest

by Andrew Coburn

  She refused to brood over what could not be undone.

  In overheated content, she sank deeper into the water, hot vapors coiling her hair into tight ringlets. A bead of sweat forged down a cheek, and another dithered at the end of her proud aquiline nose. Presently she closed her eyes, let suds overlap her chin, and contemplated her life without regard to the past, only to the future. Her only fear, a small one, was that she would not be able to rise out of the tub.

  Twenty minutes later, slightly woozy on her feet, she plunged into an immense towel and dried herself slowly and surely. In her bedroom she gripped a brass bedpost to steady herself and then slipped on a becoming robe that warmly sheathed her from her throat to her toes. Her legs felt elongated and trembly, but each step she took down the stairs was light and exact, executed with an economy of effort. One hand clenched the banister, the other the gin glass. When the telephone rang, an ironlike jangle, her impulse was to rip the cord away by the roots. Little was left of her drink. She killed it, then put the phone to her ear. The caller was Ed Fellows.

  “I thought I’d come over and discuss your proposal.”

  Her voice was controlled. “Everything’s settled. What’s there to discuss?”

  “Small points.”

  “They would bore me. You handle them.”

  “You don’t have an attorney. You can’t use William Rollins on this.”

  “The bank attorney will do. That was decided.”

  There was a lapse. Then: “Let me come over, Paige. Please.”

  She was firm. “No.”

  “I can’t handle everything myself.”

  “Try,” she suggested while picturing his heavy hand clutching the receiver, the knuckles prominent and bony. She had never liked his hands because of the knuckles, gnawed on when he was nervous. “Don’t ask too much of me,” she said coolly.

  “Why do you do this to me?”

  “You do it to yourself.”

  “I’m coming over,” he said.

  She said, “I won’t let you in.”

  But she did. He arrived with rain in his hair and on the dark shoulders of his coat, which he removed and draped over a chair. Clearly he had expected only to have his hand held, but at a glance he knew that she had been drinking. He trembled with emotion.

  “Your lucky day,” she said dryly and was reminded that she did not care for the broad slope of his brow and the tendency of his pale eyes to hover outside the lids, as if a blow to the back of his head had jarred them loose. Only his pinstripes kept him in perspective, but he was taking them off. “My rules,” she said.

  He struggled with his vest. “Where?” he asked. “Down here? Upstairs? Paige, I can’t believe it.”

  “No stupid stuff,” she warned.

  “I promise.”

  Upstairs on the brass bed, a foam-rubber pillow under the small of her back, she suffered his weight, his kiss, and then his harsh entry into her, which required her help; otherwise he would have hurt her.

  In his ear she whispered, “Where would you be without me?”

  • • •

  Sergeant Dawson drove home in the rain from the cemetery and backed his car into the garage for the night. In the house he raised the thermostat, heard the boiler rumble into being, and then stuck something frozen into the oven. Within the half hour he received two phone calls. The first was from Officer Lord, who said, “I forgot to ask you. You’re between women, right? I mean, you’re not seeing anybody special.”

  “What’s it to you, Billy?”

  “I mean, if you’re alone you got nobody to eat Thanksgiving dinner with. Wife thought you might want to come over here. We eat around two, you want to come.”

  “Thanks, Billy. The chief already asked me.”

  “Then you’re going there?”

  “No, I thought I’d stay home tomorrow. I’ve things to think about.”

  “Jeez, Sonny, that’s not good. Holiday, you shouldn’t be alone. I mean, you know.”

  Dawson laughed. “What do you think I’m going to do? Eat my gun?” His voice sobered. “No, Billy.”

  “I wasn’t thinking that, Sonny.”

  “What were you thinking?”

  “I was thinking it would be good to have you here.”

  The second call came a few minutes later. His heart stopped as soon as he heard the female voice, pitiless to his ear and constricting to his chest. “Life’s so short,” she said, “almost doesn’t seem worth it.” The voice had the right rhythm, the proper cadence, even the familiar little catches, which hooked him hard. “You should’ve married me,” she said, “I gave you the chance.”

  “Who is this?’ he asked.

  “Don’t you know?”

  His jaw lifted, as if he deserved the torment.

  “Is it raining there, Sonny? It’s raining here.”

  He took the thawed food from the oven and tossed it into the wastebasket. “Why are you doing this?”

  “The dead can do as they please.”

  It was a cruel hoax, heartless and profane, eloquent in its execution and artful enough in its mimicry to conjure up for him all the ambrosial charms of Melody’s youth, the heat of her smile, the image of washed hair drying slowly and trajecting its tones, mostly maroon.

  He said, “Within limits.”

  Nine

  Alfred Bauer’s receptionist, Eve James, approached him through the dim of his unlit office, where he stood as a shadow and waited for her to become a face. Her high heels, shots from a gun when she tread on a hard floor, made no sound on the carpet. He said, “Have you had your lunch?”

  “It’s after three,” she reminded him.

  “Yes, so it is,” he said, surprised, as if he were outside clock time and functioning with a rhythm determined by his own inner quivers. It was the first time she had really seen him to talk with since the death of his son, and she was uncertain what to say. She touched the soft, expensive sleeve of his suit coat.

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  He shook his head, and she drew her hand away and stood rigid, her thick cut of red hair brushed carefully back, the style boyish. Her earrings, hoops hanging to the edges of her jaw, shivered when she took a breath. Her circumflex eyebrows were dark against her white skin.

  “How is Harriet doing?” she asked, and he frowned.

  “Not good.” His voice went hoarse. “She spent Thanksgiving in Wally’s room. He meant everything to her.”

  “And to you,” she said as he looked toward the window.

  “It got dark early.”

  “It’s been dark all day.”

  He repeated his frown. “Are we alone?”

  “You told everybody they could go home.”

  “But you stayed.”

  “Haven’t I always?” She placed her hands in the shallow pockets of her skirt when he stepped close.

  “I haven’t had much time for you, have I?”

  “I don’t complain,” she said woodenly. “I’ve always known where I stand.”

  “You’re irreplaceable.”

  “No, but I’m loyal.” She lifted her nose. “You use too much bay rum. You always have.”

  He gazed at her hair. “I remember when you wore it long, all over your shoulders.”

  “I was a different person then.”

  “What are you now?”

  “The best-paid receptionist in the world,” she said and moved to one side, resting a hip against the front of his desk. He stayed where he was, something slowly intruding into his consciousness.

  “I need your advice,” he said.

  “You’ve seldom asked me for that.”

  “You know the cop. Sergeant Dawson.”

  “That was a long time ago. High school.” She spoke with a growing remoteness. “I was strung out on drugs. I may have been his first piece of ass.”

  Bauer said, “How can I hurt him?”

  The look on her face was doubtful and cautious, somewhat resentful. “I always do for you,”
she said, “more or less.”

  His voice an opiate, he said, “It’s more for Harriet than for me.”

  • • •

  Mr. Wholley, a shapeless figure in his wool cap and bulky jacket, waited at the front gates of the cemetery. He was dredging up his handkerchief, none too clean, when Sergeant Dawson arrived. The car squeaked to a stop. The window was already lowered. “Excuse me, Sonny.” Mr. Wholley put the handkerchief to his wrong-shaped nose. “Sometimes it doesn’t come out in the proper direction, so I got to be careful.” He averted his head, blew hard, and was successful.

  Dawson waited without expression.

  Mr. Wholley gave a final wipe and said, “You told me to call if somebody came to the girl’s grave.”

  “Yes, I got your message.”

  “Thing is, he comes here regular. Once a month maybe to see his people. They’re in the south section, but that’s not where he is today. He’s with her.” Mr. Wholley tugged at the visor of his cap. “I wouldn’t like you telling him I phoned you. I like to please everybody, Sonny, even the living.”

  “Is he still here?”

  “I haven’t seen him drive out.”

  Dawson drove in.

  Attorney William Rollins’s Mercedes was parked half on the grass near Melody’s grave, and he was standing near the marker. He showed no surprise as Dawson slipped out of his car and came near. He adjusted his glasses and said, “Do you miss her too, Sergeant?”

  The grave was a mound of earth that would not settle until the spring. Dawson avoided looking at it. “Yes, Counselor, I do.”

  “Is that why you’re here?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so.” His hands were trembling, his sobriety uncertain. “My parents are buried here, yours too, I suppose. No mother, no father. That’s an icy feeling. I’ve never been able to get rid of it.”

  “That’s the way life is.”

  “It shouldn’t be. It should be pleasant. Pretty. Where’s the damn sun? It should be shining.” Dawson took him by the elbow. “I was a smooth, normal birth, Sergeant. My mother told me so. And I never gave her any trouble, but I never quite knew how to make her happy. Nor did my father. All we did was love her.” They moved together over the gray grass, Dawson doing the leading. He opened the passenger door of his car and deftly maneuvered Rollins into it, with no resistance until he started to shut the door. “What are you doing?”

  “If you got behind the wheel of your car, Counselor, I’d have to arrest you.”

  “I’m not drunk.”

  “But I can’t be sure.”

  Rollins laid his head back as they drove out of the cemetery, the narrow road bumpy in places. Dawson turned onto a street overshadowed by spruce and then into a subdivision of imposing new houses with ornate doorways and other architectural pretensions. Rollins said, “My mother would have laughed at these houses and the people living in them. She was a proud and haughty woman, sort of in the mold of Paige Gately, if you know what I mean.”

  “I think I do,” Dawson said.

  “She had a perfectly poised face that spent much time in a mirror, a mirror I sometimes held for her. Perhaps it’s a blessing she died young. Her beauty was her identity. Had she lost it, she wouldn’t have known who she was.” Rollins brought his head forward, his glasses slipping a little. “My father was one of those persons who always seemed somewhat dazed, more than a little sad, and vaguely apologetic. I suppose I’m like him. What do you think?”

  “If I had to guess hard,” Dawson said, his eyes on the road, “I’d say you’re right.” They were coasting through the area behind Phillips Academy, where the houses were old and gracious and bordered by gigantic shrubbery. “Your father was a lawyer too, wasn’t he?”

  “A lonely one, Sergeant. He and my mother died together on the Mass Pike, but in death I think they went their separate ways.”

  Dawson turned right onto South Main. He had been meandering, but now he decided on a direction and drove to Ballardvale Road, to his house. The only green on the ground emanated from a bed of pachysandra. The rhododendron was black and appeared crippled. “Let’s go in.”

  Inside the house Rollins sat at the kitchen table with his coat in his lap, his scarf still around his neck. Dawson dug out a bottle of scotch a downtown merchant had given him a couple of Christmases ago. He dusted the bottle and set out a single glass. Rollins said, “You think I’m drunk. I’m not. The fact is I haven’t had a drink, and I don’t want one now.”

  Dawson poured one, anyway. “Just in case,” he said and dropped into a chair. Rollins looked up, thin-jawed.

  “Why am I here, Sergeant.”

  “Melody. She won’t rest.”

  “Is she haunting you?”

  “A lot of things are. I’m no longer certain the Bauer boy killed her.”

  “Then you must be going through hell.” Rollins placed his hands on the table. They had become quite steady. “You must suspect everybody now.”

  “Did you kill her, Counselor?”

  “I wouldn’t know how.”

  “All it takes is a moment of rage.”

  “I don’t have any.”

  “Did you love her?”

  “Like you, I felt a need to be good to her. Is that love, Sergeant? I hope so. Also I wanted something more from life than gray. She brought color to my office. She was a flower at my dinner table. At my house I made meals for her. At your house she made them for you. That’s the difference, isn’t it? She thought she had something with you.”

  “You gave her a job. Why didn’t she keep it?”

  “She didn’t see a future in it.”

  “You gave her a key to your house.”

  “Just so she’d always know she was welcome. That was important to her. Isn’t that why you gave her one?”

  “I took mine back.”

  “I never would have.”

  Dawson’s face was set in a recalcitrant frown. “Some say she wanted to die. I never got that impression.”

  “No, I don’t think she really wanted to die — just at times she didn’t want to live.”

  “There’s a difference?”

  “It’s in all of us, Sergeant, a cold spot. Call it a chip of ice, bigger in some of us than others. You know it’s there when you wake up in the small hours and can’t get back to sleep. That’s when you know you’re all alone in this world, no matter who’s beside you. If it’s someone who cares for you, it helps. But only a little.”

  Dawson was quiet.

  Rollins said, “Maybe you should have that drink.”

  “That’s a thought,” Dawson said, loosening his wristwatch, a Timex with slashes for numbers. He laid it gently on the table, face up.

  “Are we waiting for something.”

  “You can never tell.”

  “I’m a little worried about my car.”

  “It’ll be all right.”

  “The keys are in it.”

  “The dead don’t drive.” Dawson rose from his chair. “Excuse me for a minute,” he said and went into the bathroom. He washed his hands, splashed his face, and smoothed his hair back with wet fingers. The top of the sink, near the taps, was scummed with soap and toothpaste, and he cleaned it with a cloth, slowly, deliberately. While rinsing drool from the soap dish, he heard the telephone ring and reentered the kitchen on the third ring. “Get that, will you,” he said and opened the refrigerator, which was smelly from something that had gone bad.

  “Please,” Dawson said over his shoulder.

  The telephone was on the wall. Rollins, slow to act, rose with uncertainty and answered it in a stilted tone. Seconds later he went white. Dawson, closing the refrigerator, observed him carefully.

  “Who is it, Counselor?”

  “Take it.”

  “Anybody we know?”

  From Rollins came a soft soughing of breath as he extended the receiver as far from him as he could. “It can’t be.” His spectacles slipped, his eyes filled. “Is she alive? Plea
se tell me.”

  “If only she was. Hang up, Counselor.” Striding past him, Dawson picked up the glass of scotch, downed half of it, and nodded to him. “The rest is for you.”

  • • •

  Ed Fellows’s office was on the third floor. He rode the elevator down to the bank’s concourse, where he greeted customers, chatted briefly with some, paused to joke with an elderly teller who had been with the bank when his father ran it, and then threaded his way to Fran Lovell’s desk. “In regard to the Silver Bell,” he said, leaning over her shoulder. He sniffed for scent in her hair but found none. “I think we should look over the premises before the sale.”

  “Why?” She tilted her head. “We’ve had it inspected and appraised.”

  “I like to be careful.”

  “You’re the boss,” she said, sorting documents on her desk. “Give me a minute.”

  He waited for her in the parking lot behind the bank. She emerged in her rugged-looking coat, a drab figure until the wind blew her hair back and seemed to add something daring, like a false innocence, to her face. He escorted her to his shiny, ponderous car and opened a heavy door for her, watching her bend at the middle to climb in. When he joined her from the other side, she had tipped the rearview mirror her way and was assaulting her mouth with lipstick. “I might as well try to look presentable,” she said harshly, as if the effort conflicted with her better judgment.

  “You suit me,” he said, laying heavy eyes upon her. She retracted the red bullet of rouge into its casing and placed a single finger on his wrist.

  “Don’t start anything.”

  He maneuvered the car out of the lot and onto Main Street, slid along with the traffic, and eased to a stop at the lights where Chestnut Street intersected. His eye went to the decorated display window of a travel agency. “Remember when that was a drugstore, Fran? The fellow made his own chocolate syrup in the back room. The best chocolate from Holland. If you went in on a Monday you were treated to the aroma. I can still smell it, can’t you?”

  “No, Ed, I have a sinus problem.”