"Sometimes," he had said, "I don't feel like a man at all. But like a boy. A little boy."
That was all. He had gotten up then and left the room. But as she lay there and thought about it, she had realized that his manhood was in question in his own mind because he had never done anything to win it. And at last she knew what curse was upon the children of the rich.
From that night on she had tried to bolster his ego, to praise his slightest accomplishment, but he saw all too easily what she was trying to do, and he resented it. Finally she ceased her efforts and treated him as she had previously.
When, much later, he'd suggested the experiment in The Pines, he had seemed quite honest about his motivations. "Two reasons, Gabrielle," he had said to her. "The first is to find if life can exist after death. The second … is to prove something to myself by facing . . . whatever's there."
"Prove what?" she'd asked.
"I have never," he had answered sadly, "never in my whole life done a thing that any other man couldn't have done with my background and my money."
"The tennis tournaments," she had offered feebly, "the sailing, the . . ."
He laughed bitterly. "With my teachers, an ape could've done as well."
It was the approach of death, she knew, that had wrought this final change in him. She had hoped that here, in The Pines, he might see that there was no conflict in which he was expected to take up arms, that nine out of ten people spend their whole lives without once being called upon to prove themselves. To Gabrielle, it was not a world of high drama, but a world in which people should live as finely as possible and find as much happiness as they could before life ended.
But the instant that voice had come booming out of the silence, as soon as David's eyes had shone with that fanatical light, she knew she had lost him. He would sit in the living room of their suite, staring for hours on end at the logs snapping and flaring in the fireplace. When she asked him if he wanted to join her for a meal, he would decline, saying he wasn't hungry, and when she came back he would be gone. Twice she had gone looking for him, and had found him once in the study, where he brusquely asked what she wanted, and another time she had not been able to find him at all.
She knew that he would die here. He was half dead already.
Dead from the waist down.
She bit her lip at the cruelty of the thought, and looked up in surprise, as if someone else in the room had spoken such vicious slander. But the room was empty.
You bastard.
Where was the voice coming from?
David, you self-righteous, self-pitying bastard …
It was hers, though she was not speaking. Yet so perfect was the mimicry that she pressed her hands to her mouth to make certain her lips were not open, her tongue was not forming the words that she heard her own voice speak.
Never a thought for me in all your brow-beating.
Never a thought about my needs.
A woman's needs.
Or maybe bastard's the wrong word.
Maybe it's fairy.
Yes, fairy, faggot, gay, cocksucker.
You deserved what I did to you.
I'm glad I slept with Martin! Yes that's right glad and his cock was so hard and it filled me filled me like yours never did never not even when you were Mister Hotshit at the Sorbonne and we used to get it on in that apartment of yours you were at your best then but you could never touch Martin and I'm sorry I killed his baby it was a man's baby and I hope you see it when you die and I hope you look at it and it opens its mouth and laughs at you and says Martin was my father and Gabrielle my mother and you are NOTHING you limp-dick billionaire rotting corpse!
Then she screamed. Screamed at the horror of the words and the intensity with which she'd felt them, as if her throat and stomach had spewed forth bile that had been festering inside her for years.
Chapter Five
As David Neville stalked the ghosts he thought haunted The Pines, so Seth Cummings stalked David Neville. Maybe Neville was insane, as McNeely had thought, but sane or not, to Cummings he exuded power, and Cummings was drawn to power like a moth to a candle. He could help Neville; he knew he could. He was bright, aggressive—hell, hadn't he been in trade for years, and in a company second only to Neville's own? He had a lot to offer, that was for damned sure.
All he needed was the opportunity.
All he needed was to find Neville, and the cellar was the only place he hadn't looked.
Since he'd run into him in the kitchen, two sleeps had passed. It had been hard to doze off on that bed where he had seen the man and woman, so he'd slept on the sofa in the suite's living room, and had seen no more manifestations. He hadn't seen Neville either, though he'd looked nearly everywhere. He hadn't really expected to find him in the cellar, so it surprised him when he heard a sound coming from what Neville had called the fire chamber. It was a soft shuffling, and he thought that perhaps Neville was inside checking provisions.
But as he crossed the large central room toward the fire chamber, he noticed that although its door was ajar, there was no light on inside.
The prick. Heard me coming and turned it off. He won't get away that easy.
"Mr. Neville? Hello! You in there?"
The shuffling continued. It was odd. If Neville had wanted to remain unfound, wouldn't he have been quieter? Wouldn't there in fact be no sound at all?
"Mr. Neville?" Scaring me off?
Shuffling. So soft in there in the dark.
"Hey? Who's in there?"
Cummings suddenly wished there was more light in the cellar than that of the sixty-watt bulb that glowed thirty feet behind him, throwing his own small shadow partially on the steel door and partially on the dark wedge where the door was open.
My shadow's in there. The thought was absurd and he recognized it as such, but he moved so that his shadow was now totally on the outside wall.
The shuffling grew louder.
"Wickstrom?"
Was the door moving?
"McNeely?"
Moving further open?
"Hey?"
The only sound was the shuffling. And the pounding of his heart.
"Hey . . ."
The door slammed shut with a crash of metal on metal, and Cummings turned and ran, ran across the stone floor, tripping on the step up into the cold cellar, stumbling up the stairs to the kitchen, once more an eight-year-old boy running home through the dark before the things that lived in the shacks caught him and dragged him behind those worn doors and shattered windows to do what those things always do to little boys, and as he burst into the clean bright fluorescent kitchen, it was as if his mother were there smiling, waiting for his return from the night.
He fell into a chair and sat there panting, but then he turned and saw the cellar door still open. He jumped up and pressed it closed, the sound of the clicking latch like a comforting litany.
Even then he didn't feel safe, so he left the kitchen, looking for company. Anyone would do, even Wickstrom. He found the billiard room empty, and moved on to the den. There was no one there either, and the darkly wooded walls gave him no comfort. The study was next, and there at last he found David Neville, sitting and staring mindlessly at a Hudson River landscape hung near the door.
"I was looking for you," Cummings said with relief. He did not choose his words; they simply came.
Neville jerked his eyes away from the painting. "For what?"
"I ... was in the cellar."
"What the hell ..."
"I heard something ... something in the fire chamber.”
“What were you doing down there?"
"Looking for you."
"Why, for Christ's sake?"
"I ... I ..." He realized he'd been babbling like a frightened child. But he was in too far now. "I wanted to talk to you."
"About what?" It was not a question. It was a snarl.
Cummings started to answer, then laughed and shrugged. "Business."
"Business."
<
br /> "I think that ..." This was not right, not the way to do it! Yet he could not stop. It had been bottled up too long. "I think I could ... would be good for you, for your business. I know shipping, I know import-export ..."
Neville gave an astonished laugh, as if Cummings had just told an outrageously funny and filthy joke in church. Though he smiled broadly, his tone was tight, angry. "You asshole. You're asking me for a job? A job?"
"I thought …"
"You're getting a million dollars, and you want more? I don't even hire people! I don't even hire the people who hire people!" He shook his head in disbelief. "What the fuck do you want?"
"I …”
"You stay away from me, Cummings." There was no humor at all now, only bile. "You stay out of this study, and if you see me, you walk the other way, or there's no million for you, boy. You're a shit, and I don't like you and I don't like your kind. I know why Stahr fired you and I know what a mean little bastard you are and that's exactly why—"
"That was a lie!" Cummings exploded. "That was bullshit!"
"I've seen the pictures!" yelled Neville. "And don't ever interrupt me! I said that's exactly why I wanted you here—because you're a mean little bastard and—"
"You don't—"
"And because ghosts won't scare you!"
The words rang in the room like the clanging of the cellar door.
"Will they, Cummings?"
Cummings couldn't speak, could only look at Neville's calm eyes that had been so wild only a moment before. Finally the words came. "What do you want? What do you really want from me?"
"Not much," Neville said softly. "Just to see you scared shitless. Maybe to even see you cry." He chuckled. "Yes. I want to see you cry, Cummings. How about it?"
Cummings stirred then, clenching his jaw so that the muscles stood out starkly.
"Cry, Cummings. Cry. And I'll give you a letter of reference. Hmm?"
"You're crazy." He could hear his voice trembling and hated himself for it.
"Crazy, huh? Fine. At least I'm not an asshole. Now, get out of this room. You're not to come in here again. That's one of my 'reasonable requests.' Got it?"
It's too late was all that Cummings could think. I've blown it. But the million—the million would still be his. They'd signed the papers, so Neville could go and …
"Fuck you, Neville."
Neville winced, and his smile faded momentarily as if a cloud had passed over a lake at noon.
"Who the fuck do you think you are?" Cummings went on.
"Your employer, for—"
Cummings laughed. "My employer? Sure. But that doesn't keep you from being a bastard. And it doesn't mean I have to kiss your ass either. I'll fulfill my part of the bargain. I'll spend the month here with you." Cummings's mind was racing. He knew what he was saying and didn't care. There was no way Neville would ever do a thing for him, and if he had the million, he had nothing to lose. So vengeance sprang up in Cummings's soul as it had done innumerable times in the past. This was a contest he knew he could win. Neville was merely sardonic. Cummings was vicious with the studied venom that only experience can bring.
"Yeah, I'll stay. But I don't like being around you any more than you like me. You stink, Neville. You stink of easy money and never doing a day's work in your life."
Neville whitened, and inside Cummings crowed, found it!
"So you play the lord of the manor and get us up here to play your goddamned games with us. Well, I don't play with kids! And that's all you are here, brother—a rich kid at summer camp, no better than the rest of us, and when it comes right down to it, a helluva lot poorer, because you don't know how to do shit! Your wife wipe your ass for you?"
Neville shot out of his chair, trembling with rage. "Don't you. . ."
". . . dare mention my wife like that," Cummings finished mockingly. "Okay, Ace, I won't. In fact, I won't even talk to you again, how's that?" He started purposefully toward the door, then turned. "As for crying, Mr. Neville, we'll just see who breaks down first before the month is over. And if you care to wager, I've got a million bucks just waiting for a sucker."
He went into the hall, slamming the door behind him. Bastard! he thought, not sure whether he meant himself or Neville. He'd been a fool to talk to Neville like that, but he couldn't help it. All his life he'd sucked ass with people just like Neville, wearing that same supercilious look of calculated pomp. Jesus, what fun it had been to crack that mask so that the scars showed underneath! Neville had looked guilty, absolutely guilty. And angry. There was that too.
But what could Neville do here in The Pines? Not a goddamn thing, that was for sure. But what about later, when they were out? Neville was a rich man with powerful friends, and Cummings knew himself too well—the million wouldn't last forever. Even if it did, if he invested wisely and lived on the interest, he knew he couldn't stay out of the arena. He was a soldier just as much as McNeely was. The competition was his life. To sit on a houseboat in Florida drinking piña coladas all day would kill him as surely as a stress stroke. He'd have to work again, and shipping was all he knew.
Neville could hurt him, hurt him badly.
If Neville survived.
A month was a long time. Things could happen. Things could happen.
The thought of seducing Gabrielle Neville came a short time later. At first it was merely a tickle of thought, as he remembered how long it had been since he'd had a woman. But once the idea had established itself, it would not go away, and he found himself aching for her. He considered masturbation, but something stopped him, and he could not tell whether it was his own pride or the feeling of being watched that had hung over him since seeing the man and woman on his bed.
The more he thought about Neville's wife, the more convinced he became that he could make love to her. He'd never been turned down before, even by the more outwardly virtuous of his associates' wives, although admittedly there were those women to whom he would not make a proposal due to some quality about them that seemed to guarantee frustration.
Or perhaps, he thought, it was the lack of a quality that he sensed in them. There was an aura, faint and indefinable, about those women who responded eagerly. A spoor, was that the word? Whatever it was, Gabrielle Neville had had it. It hung around her like a red shawl.
Like a bitch in heat. He smiled, thinking about when he'd like Neville to find out about it. In one way, it would be nice to withhold the information until the month was up, then spring it as they left. That would certainly be the easiest.
But in another way, wouldn't it be nice if Neville knew before they left. Then Cummings could feel his hate and rage at being trapped in a house with the man who'd cuckolded him.
Both had their advantages and disadvantages. He decided to play it as it lay. First things first. He couldn't fuck her if he couldn't find her.
He left his suite and started to look for Gabrielle Neville.
~*~
She was in the billiard room.
She was wearing a dark brown bulky sweater in which her trim figure was totally lost, and a pair of camel slacks. She wore no makeup, and she didn't need any. She was alone.
His entrance startled her so that she muffed her shot, but she laughed easily at the rattling balls. "Mr. Cummings," she said, "I'm afraid you caught me at my worst."
He smiled charmingly. "Your form looked good."
She ignored the compliment. "Mr. McNeely and Mr. Wickstrom have been trying to teach me eight ball. At their peril, I'm afraid."
"Oh. Are they around?"
"They went up to the lounge for a drink. I decided I needed the practice more."
"I can hardly believe you'd need practice."
Her answering smile was a bit crooked, and he cautioned himself not to move too quickly.
"I mean, surely you've played the game before?"
"No, I haven't. A little billiards years ago," she said, gesturing to the smooth pocketless table across the room, "but David was never interested in pool, so I
never was either. But it seems that it's all there is to do around here."
"Well, in that case shall we play a game?"
"Fine. Eight ball is the only one I know so far."
"Eight ball it is, then." Cummings was a fair pool player. He'd had a table ever since he'd had a house with a rec room, and he beat Gabrielle handily in the first game. In the second he helped her more, suggesting the easiest shots, and at one point correcting her stance and grip so that he was able to put his arms around her. When she made no attempt to shrug off his instructive embrace, he grew even more confident. At first he had not been sure that the aura had been there, but now, as they stood pressed together, his fingers intertwined with hers on the end of the cue, he could sense it clearly.
"That's right," he purred into her ear. "That's the way."
"Like this, then?"
"Exactly." He stepped away and let her make the shot. The ball caught the edge of the pocket and swung in with a soft plunk.
She laughed. "You're a good teacher, Mr. Cummings.”
“Seth. My shot now."
They played a few more games while Cummings let the warmth grow into intimacy, and soon he knew the outlines of her life story. It was only bare bones, but he could see behind the words enough to know that something was missing, that she was desperately unhappy with her life. She loves her husband, he thought oddly. But still he knew that she was ready for something more.
After the fifth game, which he only narrowly won, he put his cue into the rack with a mock sigh. "I'm afraid I've had it."
"Oh, come on. Next game I'll beat you."
"I don't doubt it, so call it masculine pride. All I want is a tall cool drink."
"Let's go to the lounge then. George and Kelly are probably still there." She placed her cue beside his in the rack.
"To tell the truth," he said offhandedly, "I've had my heart set on a Gilbey's for the past half hour. There's only Gordon's in the bar, I believe."
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