13 French Street

by Gil Brewer

  He strode down the hall and the door slammed behind him.

  Petra had started for the kitchen. She whirled.

  “Keep me company, he said!”

  The car wasn’t even out of the driveway before we were at each other like two crazy animals.

  I fastened my hands in her hair, jammed my mouth down on hers. She writhed away.

  “Upstairs!”

  I let her go. She ran for the stairs, undressing as she went. By the time we reached the door to her room, her dress was off.

  I grabbed her in the doorway and we fought against each other, staggering wildly toward the bed. She was moaning now and beginning to cry a little.

  We never made the bed. We fell to the floor and the house shook and her jetty hair spread out like a broad black fan on that thick auburn rug.

  Chapter Eighteen

  WE FINALLY did reach her bed, and, lying there now, Petra suddenly sat up. Then she leaped to the floor and hurriedly dressed.

  “He may be home any time. I’ve got to fix something to eat, like I said. Good Lord, it’s been almost two hours.”

  “Yes.” I didn’t look at her. Then I felt her hair fold heavily across my face and her lips brushed mine.

  “See you later,” she said, and I listened to her feet hurrying down the hall, down the stairs.

  There was only sickness inside me now, sickness over what had happened. I tried to fight it off, but it wouldn’t go away. Lying there, I stared up at the dark midnight ceiling, and it seemed I was lying at the bottom of that grave with the damp walls pushing in on either side and with the dripping coffin slung above me. There was Verne’s haggard face. A trusting guy. Why didn’t he know better?

  And then the pile of broken gray on the stone of the patio….

  Dressed, I went over and looked at the window. The torn screen was still the same. It would always be the same, too, in my mind. It wouldn’t change; the jagged edges, and down there on the bare stone the broken gray mass.

  I turned and went down the hall into my room and closed the door. Even closing the door didn’t help, but it did start the thought, I’ve got to stop now. It can’t go on. Something’s got to be done.

  I stripped and stood in the shower with the needles of cold water blasting on me, and I kept thinking of that grave out there on the knoll by the sycamore. And the pines were dripping beneath the forlorn gray half-light of an autumn sky. And when we had returned down the knoll to cross the creek, the creek was filling slowly, the grass along its edges soggy with an ability to draw more water from that mist than seemed probable. And the boards the men had put across the creek were swamped slightly, and in the orchard the mist jeweled brightly among thick spider webs.

  Wild, she had been, wild, there on that auburn rug.

  Rubbed down with a thick towel, I went back into my room and stood staring at the front window, beyond which the shank of the hill leaned against the road. Squatting among the brambles …

  Madge was in Chicago, wondering what was the matter, or maybe with a chip on her shoulder. And there would never be any way of explaining to her. If I wanted to explain.

  Murder.

  The sound of a car turning in the drive told me Verne was back. A moment later the front door slammed and I heard him going down the hall. Then voices very faint, from the kitchen, probably.

  There had been no rules. Just an acceptance of what was to come. She’d resisted, put up a barrier of sorts, held me off.

  She’d held me off until the old woman was in the ground. Then she’d exploded. And it hadn’t been sane, either. And me without guts enough to go to Verne, or at least to run. Yes. Without guts enough to run.

  There was a rapid tattoo of knuckles on the door. I turned. The racket ceased sharply, then commenced again. I slipped into a pair of pants and hurried to open the door.

  “Alex, Alex! He’s had an attack!”

  She stood there momentarily in the doorway, then sprang at me, not touching me, but standing there with her hands out and her face dead pale with passion. She wore a black housecoat, belted tightly at the waist.

  “What?”

  “A heart attack. Verne. When he was in town. He said it happened in the car, just as he started out of town. He stopped the car and waited, then drove on in.”

  I started past her. She clamped her hands on my arms, shoved her body in my way. “No. Let him be. He’s lying down. Don’t you see?”

  I tried to shove by. For a moment we pushed at each other and she began to curse. One look in her eyes was enough. I stopped.

  “Don’t you see?”

  “Did you call a doctor?”

  “He won’t have a doctor. Simply won’t have one.”

  “Call one anyway, Petra. For God’s sake. The man may be bad off. He might die.”

  “That’s right. Don’t you see?” She flung herself against me. I grabbed her and swung her around at the bed. She sprawled to her knees beside the bed, still talking, gesticulating with her hands. “Don’t you see, Alex? This is our chance. I told you his heart was bad. He’ll never admit it’s as bad as it is. The doctor told him he can’t smoke or drink, but he doesn’t care. He’s down there now, with a bottle of brandy.” She paused. She spoke so rapidly that her voice seemed to run over itself, as if she were talking against time. “All that money, Alex. He’s worth plenty. It would be mine—ours.”

  I stared at her without comprehension really, not even believing I heard straight. “Petra. His mother’s just buried this morning.”

  She rose to one knee, imploring, her mouth a bloody gash almost as black as her eyes and hair against the pallor of her face. “Yes. Yes. That’s right. The shock of his mother’s death. It could kill him. We could see to it. Don’t you understand? I can’t bear it any longer, it’s been too much. We could …”

  I stepped in close, brought the flat of my hand, the heel, sharply against her jaw. She lifted backward against the bed. I wanted to hit her again but I couldn’t. It was like striking water, because when you drew your hand away nothing had changed. She lay there watching me, breathing harshly. The housecoat was half off her, her legs spraddled out, her breasts bared, with only the dark belt holding the flaring housecoat around her.

  She watched and watched while little beads of bright scarlet purled from the corner of her mouth.

  “You love me,” she whispered. She nodded slowly as she spoke. “You love me and it’s hard for you to prove it, but you say it when you do things like that. You can’t stand hearing me tell what’s true; what’s in your own mind. You can’t stand it because you know I’m right and you love me.”

  I couldn’t answer.

  “It’s you. You’re still fighting against yourself,” she said. “Why don’t you stop, let yourself go? Admit it to yourself, why don’t you? Because you struck me now you’ll want me more than ever. You won’t sleep, because you can’t stand it. I’ve heard you pacing the floor at night. You keep thinking about that girl in Chicago. Was she as good as I am, Alex? No. I can see it in your eyes, she wasn’t. She couldn’t be. She doesn’t know what love it—the need. Even to kill for it, how better to prove it? How could you—”

  I walked out of the room and hurried down the stairs. At the foot of the stairs I glanced back. She was leaning in the doorway of my room, looking down at me.

  Verne lay on the couch in the living room with a bottle of brandy cradled in his arm. He was extremely pale and his face and shirt were bathed with sweat. He didn’t move as I stepped up, but his eyes followed me.

  “How do you feel?” I asked.

  “Fine. I’m fine.” His voice was hollow, and when he smiled it wasn’t a smile at all, just a torturing of the muscles around his mouth. There was something like fright in his eyes. But that went away as I stood there.

  “Let me call a doctor, Verne. Petra said you had a heart attack.”

  “No doctor, Alex. I’m all right. Had these damned things before.”

  “Hadn’t you better lay off the bott
le?”

  “No. It’s good for me.” He grinned. “Hell. You know how I always drank cognac.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, this is cognac.”

  “Fine. How do you really feel?” I kicked the ottoman over by the couch and sat on it.

  “Tired. Outside of being tired, I feel fine.”

  “Did it hurt much?”

  He grinned this time, took a swallow from the bottle. “No. It’s not bad. You just wonder how many more you can stand. Or if this is the one, or what. Have some?” He offered me the bottle.

  I took it and had a couple of good swallows. It was really good. I hadn’t drunk any in a long while, and the flavor of it brought back flashing memories of times and of lots worse cognac.

  As I sat there beside my friend, it began to get. very bad. The realization of what had happened and of the things I had done in this house began to eat at me. It was the beginning of the really bad time ahead. No matter what I said to Verne, it was shaded on some side by a lie.

  “I think I’d better call a doctor,” I said.

  He looked at me. “No. Give me the bottle.”

  I took another drink and handed him the bottle. I knew I should phone the doctor anyway. But I didn’t. It was a minor thing, but maybe there was that much trust he could place in me.

  “Petra’s had a bad time of it with my mother,” he said. He closed his eyes. The beads of sweat stood out on his forehead as large as field peas. “What will I do now?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing.” His eyes stayed closed. “Alex, will you stay on a while yet?”

  “Yes.”

  I heard the piano from the other side of the house. It was exact, brilliant, passionate playing. At first I didn’t catch the music, then I did, and glanced quickly at Verne. His eyes were still closed.

  “Petra,” he said. “She certainly can play. It’s been a long time since she’s touched the piano.”

  I stared at him, wondering how he could have such a small knowledge of music as not to know what she was playing. It was patent that he didn’t know.

  It was Saint-Saëns’ “Danse Macabre”; the very well-known Dance of Death. I wondered if she had taken time to dust the keys. I remembered how I’d caught myself whistling the melody the first night I’d been in the house. The way she played sounded a little mad, and a chill touched my shoulders. It was foolish and maybe melodramatic, but I felt that this was a house of death, of evil. Standing away from it, I wondered if it would be possible to detect any humor in it. All I could feel was horror at my own faults.

  And I knew that I couldn’t leave without telling Verne everything. I wondered how much he knew, how much he guessed.

  Cecil Emmetts. The afternoon would go fast, and then the evening, and he would wait beside the bushes on the highway.

  I could tell him only one answer. There was only one.

  The piano ceased. I looked at Verne. He was asleep, the bottle beginning to slide from his arm. I took the bottle and drank deeply. As I set it on the floor by the couch I knew it was taking hold and it helped. But not much.

  I went to the music room. The door was closed. I opened it, went in, and shut the door.

  “Hello, darling.”

  She was seated at the piano. She still wore the black housecoat, but she also wore stockings now and high-heeled shoes. As she turned and looked at me there was an instant when I couldn’t believe all that had happened. Then I could.

  I sat in the chair by the window. The window sill was damp from the rain, but she had closed the window. She rose and came over to me.

  “Look,” she said. “I forgot to show you.” She smiled. “Guess you were too busy to notice.”

  She undid the belt of the housecoat and, lifting her left leg, placed her foot on the left side of the chair cushion. She unhooked the garters from her stocking and peeled the stocking down her full thigh. “Here,” she said. “See what you did when you grabbed me yesterday?”

  There was a large black-and-blue mark on her thigh.

  She took my hand and ran the palm across the mark.

  “You’re getting excited,” she said. “I can tell.”

  I stood quickly and walking over to the piano, felt of the keys. Most of them were still partially gritty with dust. “Why did you play that?” I asked.

  “Because I felt like it. It was suitable. Why do you fight yourself?” She was fixing the garter on the stocking. Her legs, all of her body was white, voluptuous, and like fire to my heart and blood—just watching. Her eyes gleamed darkly and as yet the fighting within me was no good.

  The brandy had gone to my head completely. “Damn you.”

  She put her leg down from the chair. The housecoat draped open. She wore nothing beneath it but the garter belt.

  She smiled and her scarlet lips glistened. “You love me,” she said. “Why deny it?”

  My voice said it. It wasn’t me, yet it was me. “Damn you. Lock that door.”

  She did.

  “Come here,” I said.

  She did. The smile had changed from a smile of amusement to sudden passion.

  • • •

  “Why can’t we forget it all? You, I mean,” she said. “Why can’t you forget it? We could have fun then. We could be like we should.”

  I was sitting in the chair again. She was perched on the arm of the chair, one hip against my shoulder. The housecoat was in a heap on the floor.

  “Dress,” I said. I rose and unlocked the door, peered into Verne’s study. The house was silent. I closed the door but didn’t lock it and watched her as she slipped on the housecoat. She did it carelessly. Her breasts were large, perfectly formed, upthrusting, and firm. Her body was flawless, as if she had been carved with some lusty godlike precision from a warm, utterly unblemished slab of pure alabaster.

  She drew the black belt tight around her slim waist. “Why can’t we?” she asked again. “We never joke, it’s just fire. Of course, I like the fire, too.”

  “Shut up,” I said.

  “I won’t. You’re still fighting yourself. How long will it go on? How long before you’ll admit it?”

  I didn’t answer aloud but I said, Never, to myself.

  “It’s him—it’s Verne, isn’t it? You keep thinking about a foolish friendship that no longer exists. About a man who is no longer a man, but a machine. A machine with a broken part, at that—one that’ll quit any time.”

  I rubbed my hand across my face and the smell of her was on my hand like some acid eating into the skin, burning, until it could not be removed—ever.

  I left the room, walked through the study, and looked in at Verne on the couch. He was awake. He blinked at me.

  “What’d you do with my bottle?” he asked.

  “I drank it.”

  His hand had dropped down beside the couch. He grinned as his fingers touched the bottle. He took a drink. Then he sat up on the couch.

  “Feel a lot better,” he said.

  I stood in the doorway.

  “Since you’ve been here,” he went on, “I’ve felt better, somehow. A lot has happened, but maybe it’ll calm down now. Maybe everything’s ironed out.”

  I didn’t answer right away. Calmed down, ironed out. “It’s been fine,” I said. “Only don’t let anything get you down.” He looked better, all right.

  “I feel good with you here,” he said. “Like old times. It’s good to know you can depend on somebody.”

  His words slashed me, cut into me, dug at me. And he didn’t know. There was nothing I could say or do. If I’d never met despair before, I had now. And what in hell was I to do? You weak-willed coward, I told myself. You gutless wonder. Not alone taking your friend’s wife, but murder, too, and now blackmail, and all that wonderful clean world of yours gone.

  “Alex, is something troubling you? You don’t look right, the past couple of days. Somehow.”

  “Nothing. I’m all right. A little tired, maybe.” A little tired, I thought.
A little tired.

  “I know it’s been rough. I’ll make it up to you.”

  I laughed. It sounded like the last note of a funeral dirge. “Forget all of that, will you? I’m going up and take a nap.”

  He didn’t say anything this time, just stared at me, puzzled, maybe.

  I went on upstairs to my room and closed the door and stared at the bed.

  Panic was nothing to what I began feeling now. Panic was like a mosquito bite on a dying leper.

  I went and washed my hands, then smelled of them. The odor of her wouldn’t go away. I poured rubbing alcohol on them, then suddenly looked at myself in the mirror on the medicine cabinet. Something lurked in my eyes that I’d never seen there before.

  “You’re going crazy, you damned fool!” I said. “You’re out of your head.”

  But the smell was gone from my hands.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I WAS well on the way to being good and drunk by eight-forty-five. It was the first time I’d seen Petra slightly worried. The more she frowned and watched me, the more I drank.

  We were in the living room. Verne was still resting on the couch. He had drunk some, but sparingly, and was quite sober.

  “Alex,” Petra said, “you’re getting pie-eyed.”

  Verne said, “He’s on vacation. He ought to stay drunk all the time.”

  Only it wasn’t that kind of drunk. Things kept getting clearer and I knew I’d have to drink a lot before I reached the stage where I could forget, or become careless enough not to give a damn about what I thought.

  Petra said, “It’s ten to nine already,” and threw me a meaningful glance.

  “So what?” Verne said. “I’m not going to work tomorrow. Let the damned job take care of itself for a few days. I’ll handle it by telephone. Least I can do for Alex.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “It’ll be good for you, too.” I rose a bit unsteadily. “Think I’ll get some air, take a walk.”

  “Sure,” Verne said. “I’m lazy, myself. Go ahead with him, Petra.”

  I cut her a look that said, No!

  “No,” she said. “But don’t get lost and don’t be long, Alex. It’s still drizzling. Verne’s raincoat is in the hall.”