Two-Thirds of a Ghost

by Helen McCloy

  “Just so Vera doesn’t stop off for a drink somewhere,” murmured Philippa.

  “Even Vera wouldn’t do that on a night like this!” said Tony, loudly and firmly.

  “Who else is coming?” asked Meg.

  Philippa sighed again. “At such short notice I had to scrape the bottom of the barrel. I’ve got a widow from down the road who is writing her first novel at the age of sixty-seven, and her son, home from school for the Christmas holidays. The name is Pusey. And then I’ve got the Willings from Westport, He is, or was, one of Tony’s authors.”

  “Willing?” repeated Maurice. “Not Basil Willing?”

  “You know him?”

  “I know of him. They call him a forensic psychiatrist but he seems to me more like a criminologist. He solved a number of rather curious murder cases when he was with the district attorney’s office in New York.”

  “You mean he’s really a sort of detective?” put in Philippa. “If I’d known that, I would never have dared invite him. There’s no knowing what he may find out about us!”

  Everyone laughed and Tony said, “I told you not to bury that last body in the dahlia bed! The next time you murder someone, use the incinerator.”

  Just then the doorbell rang.

  In the sudden silence, they could hear the Negro man’s step as he crossed the hall to the door.

  “It must be Amos!” Gus’s voice sounded as if he were praying.

  “And Vera.” Meg discovered that her hands were ice. Her heart was racing jerkily. Her gaze went through the archway to the hall and she saw lamplight shining on Vera’s brassy hair.

  Amos stumbled as he came into the room. Gus and Tony looked incredulously at Amos’s flushed face and muddied eyes.

  It was Tony who whispered to Gus, “God almighty, the bastard is drunk!”

  “Submerged in his mystique,” murmured Philippa. “Cottle spares us nothing.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Amos had reached the airport when the sun was a blurred halo in a low ceiling of gray cloud, formless and faintly silver as a light seen through a frosted windowpane.

  The plane was due in ten minutes. Information said that it was on time and directed him to Gate 14 near the Orville Wright Cocktail Bar. Even on’ Sunday at four in the afternoon there were a few limp, masculine figures draped over the mahogany bar, and other men with women sitting at little tables. Amos eyed them with contemptuous tolerance. To think that he had once been like that!

  It was cold waiting. He stood with his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched and his bearded chin snuggled inside his coat collar, a sullen figure who seemed bored with the whole business of airports. Through a vast wall of glass he could see the landing field. It had been snow-plowed, but here and there a patch of greasy slush caught the light like a slick of oil on water.

  He remembered the wheels of his car spinning uselessly on his driveway this afternoon. Landing speeds were close to the edge of the margin of safety. Suppose, just suppose, there was a spot of half-melted ice slippery as oil on the runway beyond Gate 14. And suppose the great transcontinental plane skidded and lost traction at landing speed. It would spin in a circle and overturn and there would be a flaming explosion and—all the problems created by Vera’s arrival would be ended decorously without his lifting a finger. Then he’d be free, really free, for the first time in his life. After he made a little more, he’d retire to Majorca….

  He sighed and shrank deeper into the warmth of his overcoat. A man should not allow such thoughts to invade his mind. Where did they come from? This unseen, unproved, unknown subconscious the. psychiatrists prated about? Or some force outside his own being that medievalists personified as the devil? Perhaps the subconscious was just a pipe line to forces outside the individual. Had the psychiatrists ever thought of that? Probably not. The pontifical posture of medical research had always irritated him. Whoever decided to name primitive tribal magicians “medicine men” must have felt the same way. …

  Lost in his musings, he did not see the plane land, but he saw Vera before she saw him. He had a moment to observe her when she did not know she was being observed. Her face had changed little. There were no lines, hardly any sagging, yet it had a curiously used look that did make her seem older than he remembered her.

  She was using the latest Parisian cosmetic tricks, the so-called Chinese style—two shades of white powder, supposed to produce a lucent, porcelain effect, eyes and brows tilted as well as darkened, and a deep, ruby lipstick that followed the natural line of the lips. It was not a good style for Vera. It accentuated the smallness and petulance of the mouth and the mean, narrow point of the chin. The eyes that should have been languorous, as well as slanting, in such a mask were shrewd and alert, darting here and there with a look of restless greed. The hair, under the wide, fur turban, was a slightly paler shade of brass than when she left New York. Her furs were opulent and ample. You couldn’t see her figure at all, only the delicate, prehensile hands gloved in black suede and the tiny, brittle feet perched on tall heels. She clutched a luxurious-looking jewel case in one hand. The other hand lifted in a sudden signal: “Amos!”

  He slouched forward, unsmiling.

  “Dearest, take this!” She pushed the jewel case at him and pouted. “Aren’t you going to kiss me?”

  “No.” The ungallant word lay between them for a moment.

  “Darling, please don’t be tiresome!” It was a silky smooth voice, so light and gentle it was almost inaudible without a microphone. It was a voice that said: I am a lady. Really I am. There is no doubt about it whatever. The sharp, blonde face, with its heavy cosmetic mask, looked shrewish and hard. But when she opened her mouth you thought of velvet and vintage Burgundy and everything else that was soft and delicate. Amos had often wondered if it was artifice or accident.

  She went on, still more gently: “Where are the reporters?”

  “There are no reporters. This isn’t Hollywood.”

  “Oh…” She looked around the vast, impersonal waiting room and shivered in her nest of furs. “Such a brute of a day. Cold as death. And you’re as cold as the day. Do you know sometimes, Amos, I think you’re not completely human?”

  “Inhuman? Or subhuman?” They had fallen into step. He shortened his stride to keep pace with her Chinese tottering. Her feet weren’t bound, but her heels were five inches high.

  “Neither.” The painted brows met in a frown. “Just, somehow, incomplete. You lack something everybody else has.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. Just something. A dimension maybe. As if you were cut out of paper and had no depth.”

  He pretended to take her literally. “I weigh 147 pounds. I have volume so I must have depth.”

  Her glance flew past him and alighted on the neon sign: Bar. “Oh, Amos, I feel so miserable. I could use a drink, but I suppose you wouldn’t…”

  “I won’t drink, but I’ll go in with you,” he answered calmly.

  “Thank goodness!” She swerved and quickened her pace with a sly glance at him over her shoulder. “You’re not afraid of bars any more?”

  “Good lord, no! I don’t even want to drink these days.”

  “Antabuse?”

  “I gave that up long ago. I don’t need it. After all, a man has to be pretty weak if he can’t say no to a drink.”

  They passed through glass doors and found a table. She threw back her furs and he saw the new torso dressed in fluid, black crepe. Art had slimmed her waist, widened her pelvis and made her breasts, once rather full, just what Monsieur Dior said they should be—“little apples.”

  A waiter hovered. She didn’t wait for Amos to give the order, just as she had never waited for him to give the address to a taxi driver or the floor to an elevator man. She said promptly and clearly: “A double Scotch on the rocks.”

  The waiter glanced at Amos. “Just ginger ale, please.”

  Amos wondered uncomfortably just what the waiter was thinking of a man who let his
woman order for herself and then took ginger ale while she was taking whiskey. Why were all vices considered proofs of masculinity? Did most people secretly believe that it was impossible to be a man and be good? Perhaps women had invented the idea of decorum in prehistory and men had never accepted it wholeheartedly. Perhaps everyone realized this subconsciously.

  He studied Vera across the table. She still had many of the mannerisms of an irresistible siren, but there was a fatal flaw in her performance—she was bossy. A bossy siren: it was a contradiction in terms. She couldn’t be a really good actress or she would have learned by now to play her off-stage role with more art and intelligence.

  “Amos, why do you look at me like that?”

  He dropped his eyes.

  “You know I really meant what I said to the newspaper men about coming back to you. Is it too late?”

  He looked away from her. “It’s impossible, Vera. I like the life I have now. I don’t want to change. Why should I?”

  His gaze came back to her and he saw her eyes had narrowed to calculating slits. “It’s those awful people!”

  “What awful people?”

  “The Veseys and the Kanes. They treat you as if you were their property—a robot or a slave—and they don’t like me.”

  “But they do like you,” protested Amos. “Tony and Philippa are throwing a party for you this afternoon and you’re going to stay with them, aren’t you?”

  “Maybe. I haven’t decided yet.”

  “But Tony said you’d accepted their invitation.”

  “I can change my mind, can’t I?”

  Amos tried another tack. “Tony and Philippa will do everything they can to help you with your stage career in New York.”

  “So I’ll be too busy to be with you. I don’t want a stage career. I want you. Acting is hard work. I want to sit back and enjoy being the wife of a really successful author.”

  The softly implacable voice brought Amos to the verge of panic. “You’re—you’re Unreasonable, Vera. Why don’t you want to stay with Tony and Philippa? They …”

  “Look at this.” She lifted her jewel case onto the table and snapped open the locks. On top of the jewel boxes lay her wallet and a few papers. She picked out a letter and slid it across the table. “Read that.”

  He looked at it, puzzled. “The envelope’s addressed to you but the letter begins: ‘Dear Amos.’“

  “Exactly. Your charming Meg Vesey was so flustered when she heard I was coming east that she put the wrong letter in my envelope—a letter meant for you. That’s how I found out exactly what your precious friends really think of me, and I am telling you, Amos, whether we live together or not, I want you to get another publisher and another agent—people who will treat me with respect and consideration. I think you owe me that much courtesy. After all, I am your wife.”

  Amos glanced swiftly through Meg’s letter and pushed it back across the table. “I’m sorry, Vera. What you suggest is impossible. I cannot go to another publisher or another agent.”

  “Why on earth not?”

  Amos sighed. “For one thing, I don’t want to. For another, no other publisher or agent could do for me what these two are doing.”

  “I never heard such utter nonsense in my life!” The voice that still sounded like pigeons cooing emphasized the force in the words themselves. “Amos, I’m thinking of your interests as well as my self-respect. You know I have a copy of your contract with Sutton, Kane. I showed it to my Hollywood agent when I was out there. He said you could get much better terms from any other publisher in the business. Better publishers than Sutton, Kane, people like Random House or Dodd, Mead. And do you realize that Gus Vesey gets a great, big hunk of everything you earn? Why is that? Most literary agents get less. Have you ever stopped to think that Sutton, Kane is getting a large slice of all your subsidiary rights? Why? Even the royalty rate on the trade edition of your books is much less than any other publisher would pay an author as successful as you.

  “Jim Karp—he’s my agent—says that Sutton, Kane must be crooks and you should have your head examined. That’s one reason I decided to come east when the studio dropped my option. Jim says you could just about double your income if you had somebody like him to look after you. He has a New York office run by his brother Sam and I’m going to take you up there tomorrow.”

  Amos’s eyes hardened and he spoke between stiff lips.

  “Vera, this happens to be my business and not yours.”

  “I’ll help you get a start on the stage here. I’ll give you a divorce and pay you alimony. But I don’t want you messing up my relations with Gus and Tony. For the love of…”

  “What is the matter with you, Amos? Some insane idea of personal loyalty? Sentimentality just because Sutton, Kane published your first book? Have you ever tried asking either Gus or Tony for better terms? They can’t shoot you for asking, can they?”

  Amos looked as if he were going to weep. “Vera,” he croaked hoarsely, “I want you to mind your own business. I want you to…”

  He hadn’t seen the stranger approach. He was warned by the sudden change in Vera’s face. The petulance vanished in a warm, bright smile that matched the dove voice. She was all siren now. “Why, Tom Archer! Do you know my husband, Amos Cottle?”

  Amos rose, clumsy and disconcerted. The other man was tall and thin and rather untidy. Youth and credulity met happily in his long, plain face. “How do you do, Mr. Cottle? I’m a great admirer of your work. I left my drink at the bar. May I bring it over and join you?”

  “Of course!” Vera answered for Amos and he hated her for doing so. He stood awkwardly watching the tall, gangling figure stride back to the bar.

  Still Vera did not raise her voice but there was deadly menace under the restraint now. “Tom writes for the Times.” It was almost a whisper. “Second-string theatrical and movie stuff. Either you let me tell him that we are reconciled and going to live together or I’m going to tell him about the sort of contract you have with Sutton, Kane. You’ll have to change publishers when he prints that.”

  “He can’t print it,” said Amos. “There are laws of libel.”

  “How can it be libel when it’s true? Anyway he can always print it as a rumor: ‘It is alleged that Amos Cottle is dissatisfied with his contract with…’”

  “That wouldn’t be theatrical news.”

  “Your wife’s an actress—that will make it theatrical news. I’m going to tell him that you’re thinking of writing a play for me because you’re disgusted with Sutton, Kane’s handling of your books and…”

  “Be quiet, Vera. He might hear you now.”

  “What of it? You can’t silence me. I hate those Kanes and Veseys and I’d love to let the cat out of the bag about the way they’re exploiting your genius.”

  “Vera! If you will keep your mouth shut about my affairs, you may tell Archer that…” He gagged a little. “That we are reconciled.”

  Her eyes widened. His sudden surrender had surprised her so much that she was silenced for a moment, completely off balance. He saw calculation replace surprise and he knew what she was thinking: Once we’re living together again I’ll work on him day in and day out until I get him away from Tony and Gus. She believed every word Jim Karp had told her about the contracts with Gus and Tony and she would never forgive Meg for that letter. Vera didn’t know how to forgive.

  It was many years since Amos had felt quite so trapped as he did now. He was no longer ashamed of wishing that Vera’s plane would crash on landing. If he could have killed Vera at this moment without immediate consequences to himself he would have done so.

  Tom Archer was smiling as he came back from the bar. He looked at the empty ginger ale glass in front of Amos. “Oh, I didn’t realize you needed another. What will it be?’’

  Amos hesitated. It was years since he had felt any craving for alcohol. The old habit was broken. Of course the pompous doctors didn’t think so. They warned him not to be too sure of his cure. They clai
med that it was the first drink that counted in cases like his. Once he had taken that first drink, his defenses would crumble, they said, and he would be unable to stop.

  It wasn’t true, of course. The fool doctors had no idea how he had learned to discipline himself, how strong his will had become. He’d been a good boy for a long time. He’d gone to literary cocktail parties and stuck to ginger ale or iced tea for nearly four years now. It was no longer an effort to do so. He didn’t mind the sly jokes or the feeling that his abstinence was a silent reproach to others that made them uncomfortable. He had gone through many trying times—headache and disappointment and fatigue—without resorting to the lift of alcohol, and he had resisted the even more subtle temptation to celebrate his success when the TV show first won a high rating.

  “Just this once—champagne, not hard liquor,” the sponsor had said and, even at the risk of offending the sponsor, Amos had shaken his head. The physiological craving that had been so strong in his days of poverty and insecurity was entirely gone. He never had liked the taste of the stuff. Now he had no desire for its effect either. He had the thing licked. He could take it or leave it alone.

  He had actually done what so many doctors said no man could do. The true alcoholic is never cured, for a single drink will always start him on his way again. That was nonsense and he could prove it. It was years since he had had to rely on the pathetic crutch of Antabuse. He had cured himself entirely by his understanding of that great psychological mystery, the will, one of the very few things that really did distinguish man from other animals. What had Jung said: Will is domesticated instinct. The impulsive force that drove animals to instinctual acts as predetermined as posthypnotic suggestion harnessed by man in the service of free, reasonable choice. A neat conception, possibly a true one.

  He was his own master now. He knew better than the doctors and suddenly he saw this moment as a great opportunity to prove it.

  Of course there was that speech he had to make at the Bookbinders’ Award Dinner. Gus had warned him to be especially circumspect until that was over, but…One little drink this afternoon wouldn’t affect his condition Wednesday night. After all, wasn’t the award for the Most American Author of the Decade? Wouldn’t it be distinctly un-American never to take a drink at all, at any time?