Don't Open the Door

by Ursula Curtis

  (She was party, now, to a deliberate lie; the kind of person about whom she might have said surprisedly, “Why did she do it? Why didn’t she simply tell the truth then and there?” Why indeed?)

  “Blocks?” suggested Iris alertly after a moment’s thought. From her expression she might never have turned on Ambrose with the kind of contained savagery adults usually reserved for other adults. “No, of course, he has those in his room. Rocks? But he doesn’t collect them, does he?”

  “No. It’s probably something he’s made up, or an excuse to get into the tool shed.”

  (It would be nice to think, and it would place her in a more admirable light, that she had lied to Richard Morley purely out of compassion for his wife, who had just lost her sister under the most brutal circumstances. But it was only partly true.)

  “It’s a good thing that shed is locked,” said Iris, rising briskly with her cup and saucer. “The trouble a little boy could get into there, with all those pruners and things . . .”

  The wet morning deepened, and Eve blessed the clothes dryer which had seemed such an extravagance at the time. But the house was too small to hold Iris and Ambrose and the horned toad for hours at a stretch with any ease, and by eleven o’clock some break in the rainy day seemed imperative. Was it possible to play a restaurant against the toad?

  Eve told Ambrose a long tale about the toad’s wife and children appealing to her in the night; he liked things to be dramatic and no merely humane consideration would move him in the least.

  “Crying,” he suggested helpfully when she had finished, his long eyes sparkling with sympathy or perhaps cynicism. “All crying.”

  “Yes,” said Eve, somewhat nettled, “so I promised we’d send him home today. In fact, I said we’d bring him outside before we went to lunch.”

  Ambrose was diverted at once; restaurant lunches had obviously been rare in his life. He insisted on being a partner in the release of his pet, and during a lull in the rain he and Eve decanted the shoebox in the chrysanthemum bed, leaving the box as an emergency shelter. In all this activity he had forgotten about the rockles, which was, thought Eve. a mercy. The tool shed looked more uninviting than ever with its sides streaked and glistening with rain; it was possible to imagine the spiders and other inhabitants working in a frenzy of dark and silent activity on this dripping morning.

  The fact that Ambrose had dined in public very seldom was strongly indicative, and as she helped him get dressed, a process he was enormously particular about, Eve wondered where to go. The killing of time was an object, so was the lack of any large clientele. Someplace far enough removed from the business district that it was out of bounds for most people . . .

  Courageously, at a little after twelve, Eve set out with her problematical companion.

  In his office at the Heatherwood Construction Company, Arthur Pulliam was also having a difficult morning. On arriving he had told his secretary, “Absolutely no outside calls until I let you know, Miss Haines.” He had then sent for several files to buttress this statement, after which he had sat staring at his leather-cornered blotter with his neat head in his hands.

  He was certainly safer at home, where he need only lock the doors and refuse to answer his telephone; here he had only the doubtful protection of Miss Haines, who like all timid people could be hectored into submission by someone determined enough, no matter what her orders.

  He could take a leave of absence, as Mr. Heatherwood had suggested, but Mr. Heatherwood had suggested it with both distaste and disapproval—“Bite the bullet” was one of his gentler philosophies—and in any case he could not go away forever. A temporary vanishing from the scene would be like turning his back on an animal of uncertain, or rather certain, temper.

  He had been unable to resist asking Jennifer last night, very casually, if there had been any calls for him at the house while she was there that day, and she had said in her crisp noncommittal voice, “Just your broker, but I gather he was going to call you at the office. And two wrong numbers, same voice. I got the idea it was a professional pest.”

  At this, Arthur Pulliam had nearly groaned aloud. Now, he jerked electrically as his telephone rang. It was a summons to Mr. Heatherwood’s presence, and Arthur dried his palms and his forehead and swallowed a stomach pill in haste.

  Richard Morley, meeting Mr. Heatherwood once at the Pulliam house, had said disagreeably afterwards, “They’ve been carving peach pits for years, I know, but it’s amazing that they’ve got one to talk. What does he say at Christmas—ha, ha, ha?”

  It was true that Mr. Heatherwood was small and intricately wizened, and held strong views about drinking, smoking, the eating of what he termed “flesh meat,” Democrats, women who left their stoves except in a decent clerkly capacity, and many if not most ethnic groups. Nevertheless, he had advanced from nothing to a great deal of money, and Arthur Pulliam, who admired as well as feared him, resented his brother-in-law’s gibes; it set his teeth on edge to hear the firm’s president being referred to as Mr. Leatherhead.

  Usually Arthur attended these audiences pleasurably enough; although he was only one of three vice-presidents he was something of a favorite, as Eugene Moles sometimes played golf on Sunday and James Sanderson had been foolish enough to admit to a deer hunt. (“Those dear innocent creatures,” Mr. Heatherwood had said, closing his nutshell eyelids briefly before raising them again to write a sharp memo about coffee breaks. “To be frank with you, my boy—who is this Mrs. Pincus, who complains that her absenteeism is due to a hardship case?—I don’t know how a man who calls himself a man could commit such an act.”) Mr. Heatherwood often called Arthur “my boy.” What would he call him if—?

  But although he had confessed himself to be not pleased at the publicity for the firm in the matter of Molly’s untidy death, Mr. Heatherwood was affability itself; he even extended a ceramic bowl full of raisins. “Well, Arthur. How would you feel”—he twiddled his swivel chair full circle to achieve maximum impact—“about stepping into second place? I mean it, my boy. The fact of the matter is that Jim Sanderson, for whom I have had the highest professional regard, is being divorced. And of course you know my feelings about that.”

  The pill in Arthur Pulliam’s stomach began to send out quivering tendrils. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he began carefully. “It’s very unfortunate—”

  “Unfortunate!” snapped Mr. Heatherwood, and embarked on a ten-minute eulogy of a woman engaged in truly saintlike occupations, like serving on the Welfare Home board of governors and raising prize gladioli. “And for such a person to be dragged through the humiliation of a divorce—well, we simply don’t tolerate it at Heatherwood Construction, although we may be accused of being old-fashioned.”

  There was an unmistakable crisping of his tone here, and Arthur found himself saying that he didn’t think adherence to the moral laws should ever be criticized. He added that he hoped he would be worthy of the confidence Mr. Heatherwood was placing in him and returned to his own office, which already seemed to have shrunk a little. He had green carpeting and chintz; Jim Sanderson had thicker carpeting, gray with matching draperies, plus a maroon settee and a flourishing rubber plant.

  Miss Haines arrived in a flurry of interest. “Oh, Mr. Pulliam, is it true about you replacing Mr. Sanderson?”

  “Changes in personnel always come from Mr. Heather-wood’s office,” Arthur told her distantly. “If you’ll bring your book I’ll do some dictation now . . .”

  Second vice-president, he thought as he worked. An increase in salary as well as in importance; a handsome bonus, certainly. Forget about Sanderson, whose private life had forced him out of this place in spite of his years of competence. With care, with planning, no one would ever—

  Miss Haines had departed with her shorthand notes and was buzzing him on the interphone. “I know you said no outside calls, Mr. Pulliam, but the party claims it’s an emergency. She wouldn’t give her name.”

  A hint of mockery there? Surely not; Miss Haine
s was much too meek, and besides—

  “Very well, I’ll take it,” said Arthur, pettish on principle although he now felt as though he had swallowed a very lively snake, and an instant later the dreaded voice was saying with sweetness, “Arthur? Sweetie?”

  9

  LIKE countless men before him, and countless men to come after, Arthur Pulliam could not fully have explained this disastrous entanglement even to himself.

  Eight months ago, when it had begun, he had been a contented, successful, much-respected man, with an attractive home comfortably run by a wife who was pretty as well as fond and loyal. Into this unexceptionable situation, on the strength of her filling in for two weeks as his secretary when Miss Haines had pneumonia, he had introduced Rosalinda Lopez.

  Molly was blond and plump and gay; Rosalinda was fierily dark and thin and had the temper of a cat with its tail being pulled. Pointed ivory face defiant, she had tossed badly typed letters on his desk at two minutes of five every afternoon; she might have been swinging back an invisible cape. Arthur, who had been worshipped by his mother and assorted female relatives, taken anxious good care of by his wife and tiptoed around by his secretary, was captivated.

  He said on the day before Christmas Eve, pretending to frown, “Really, Miss Lopez—Rosalinda?—these letters can’t go out this way. I’m afraid you’ll have to do them over, and they must go out tonight. Oh, and if any question comes up, I’ll be here for an hour or so myself. I have a few things on my desk to clear up, so you can come right in at any time.”

  Rosalinda had been a beauty from the cradle, in her intriguingly scornful fashion, and understood perfectly. “But I have a date, Mr. Pulliam, and I’ll have to call. What time shall I say?”

  “Oh . . . better make it six-thirty,” said respectable Arthur Pulliam, “because after working you so hard, and in the holiday season, I’ll have to buy you a drink, won’t I?”

  As easily as that, it was begun. Rosalinda was as unnaive as she looked, and knew that there was no question of divorce and eventual marriage; she did not even expect extravagant gifts. Born for display in handsome settings, she was content with an occasional excursion to Denver or Phoenix or El Paso.

  Arthur was complacently shocked at himself. He was well aware without seeming to be that many people regarded him as reliable but dull, that Jennifer and Richard * Morley thought of him as something that had more or less happened to Molly, like arthritis; that Molly herself would have crowed with affectionate laughter at the mere notion of his being unfaithful. He looked at his own sober album image when he shaved, and told himself that still waters certainly did run deep.

  The affair had already begun to pall, and some coldly practical considerations to emerge into his hitherto dazzled consciousness, on that terrible night when Richard finally located him in Denver. Rosalinda was there at a nearby motel as a last—or perhaps next-to-last—gesture; Arthur had already made up his mind that he would end the thing. Rosalinda had after all known that nothing lasting could come of it and she was not a girl to spend her evenings knitting when she discovered him to be increasingly tied up by business—in fact, Arthur had a strong suspicion that that first date had been the result of a tempestuous quarrel with someone else. In any case she would speedily find herself another attachment.

  In this frame of mind, he learned the appalling news of Molly’s death. Even through the daze of shock and horror he realized that the impediment to possible marriage had been removed.

  Marriage to Rosalinda Lopez.

  The mere thought—let alone a vision of the Morleys, his friends, and his business colleagues; worst of all, his Wichita relatives—was so frightful as to make his glasses steam. In a sense, the impact of Molly’s murder was cushioned; he would not be wholely given up to grief when he was already possessed by fear. Rosalinda had only to come forward and his life would explode. Not in a legal sense, as she was of age and he had been provably out of the state when his wife was killed, but she could still send him to a kind of grave.

  Rosalinda did not come forward; with a delicacy he would not have expected she did not even send a note of condolence or any other communication. Arthur, at first weak with relief, began to realize that this was how volcanoes were born. Every ring of the telephone, every echo of the door chimes made him tremble because it would be Rosalinda with her implicit offer of marriage or ruinous headlines. Or it might even be her stepfather, a great hulking overalled brute whom Arthur had been careful not to meet but had seen at a distance.

  Now, since his interview with Mr. Heatherwood, he had infinitely more to lose—and here was Rosalinda, saying in the purring tone which from her was more ominous than a shriek, “I’ve missed you so much.”

  “That’s very kind,” said Arthur, patting at his forehead with his already damp handkerchief. “Actually, I’m rather tied up right now with accumulated work. Suppose I call—”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t have to take you away from your desk,” said Rosalinda, prettily deferential. “I could come there.”

  So it had started. “Wait, Miss Haines has just put a memo on my desk,” said Arthur rapidly, “and it seems that—yes, I’m free for lunch after all. Could you meet me—” He paused, riffling frantically through his mind for a restaurant where they might pass as tourists. Some place far enough away as to be an unlikely spot for any of his fellow employees.

  He did not now look in the least like a man congratulating himself on the fact that still waters ran deep, unless he were contemplating a pond with Rosalinda at the bottom.

  “—at Federico’s?” he said.

  Eve was pleased and surprised at Ambrose. True, he had spooned ice back and forth from her water glass to his with such tongue-protruding concentration that he had knocked over a small vase containing a rose, but that was easily mopped up, and although he had probed through his food as thoroughly as though it had suddenly begun to tick, he had done it quite neatly. Perhaps he was daunted by the ill-lit and rococo splendors of Federico’s.

  It had been a wise choice. From the fact that the women were hatted and gloved a good percentage of the diners were tourists, deep in discussion about points of interest. As it was too expensive to be a family restaurant the only other child in evidence was a frilly little girl whose porcelain-statue behavior threw Ambrose into a kind of brooding trance; Eve knew that there would be none of the terrible showing-off wars which could erupt without warning in public places.

  Nevertheless, he had been amiable now for over an hour, and Eve was conscious of time running out. Although she had said it twice before, she repeated again, “Don’t let your ice cream melt, Ambrose.”

  A man and woman had just entered the restaurant and were being ushered to a wall table. The woman had the faintly arrogant, arresting good looks of a model; Eve felt an odd little jump of recognition at the man. Although he might have been any insurance-company executive or Chamber of Commerce official he had looked at her from a newspaper page in another context quite recently. He was Arthur Pulliam, husband of the murdered woman.

  A waiter presented menus. Federico’s was dim indeed to someone who had just entered, and the woman, whose back was to Eve, put out a hand and switched on the wall lamp. Arthur Pulliam switched it instantly off. He leaned forward tensely and said something to his companion; she gave an easy shrug, consulted the menu, next consulted the mirror of her compact, and rose gracefully and strolled off toward the rear of the restaurant.

  Arthur Pulliam remained seated, conveying an impression of deliberate rudeness rather than oversight. He gazed after the woman, and very fleetingly something transformed his neat inconspicuous face. Eve, who could not have helped watching, felt as though a cold fingertip had been placed between her shoulders.

  Foresightedly, she had already taken care of the check. She said crisply to Ambrose, “We have to go now. Napkin beside your plate, please—”

  “I want this.” said Ambrose instantly, beginning to swivel his spoon wildly through his now-liquid ice crea
m. “I want it!”

  “Well, it’s too late, I warned you before. And if you pick up that plate,” said Eve softly, observing his next move, “I will spank you, in front of all these people. That little girl will see you.”

  The last was a mistake. “I hate her, I hate her!” shrieked Ambrose piercingly, and heads turned, forks paused, someone laughed. Eve, feeling herself to be the same terracotta color as he was, smiled apologetically at an alarmed waiter and swept her charge off with his sneakered feet thrashing. Safely outside, she gave him a single resounding smack on the seat of his dark blue shorts. “Don’t do that again,” she said breathlessly.

  Ambrose cried all the way home, but in a detached and practiced way; in the midst of his hiccups and the round tears speeding down his face he craned interestedly after a chihuahua, a helmeted boy and girl on a motorcycle, an immense old Indian woman in layers of gaudy satin. For her own part, Eve felt guiltily ashamed. Ambrose, not subject to a great deal of discipline at the best of times, had reacted to her reaction, and how was a boy of three to understand her instinctive recoil at the expression on a stranger’s face? For that matter, how was she to understand it herself?

  Except that his wife had been murdered a scant week ago, and his sister-in-law had paid a surreptitious visit to Eve’s landlord, and Eve, through nobody’s fault but her own, was now part of a distasteful he. It was a little like the transmittal of a germ.

  . . . When they left the house for lunch Iris Saxon had said, “Have a nice time,” with an unmistakably commiserating wink, and out of loyalty to Ambrose, Eve stopped the car as they neared home and administered a handkerchief to his moist and streaky face. She was additionally glad of this precaution when she turned in at the driveway, because the Saxons’ old car was there and Ambrose would have been exposed to two cool appraisals.