Cry Hard, Cry Fast

by John D. MacDonald

  He took another look in the rear vision mirror. The truck was far back. They had just passed a shiny black Ford in the center lane.

  When he looked at the road ahead he saw the pale blue car. Traffic in the westbound lanes to his left had been a meaningless blur. Suddenly, shockingly, a big blue convertible with the top down detached itself from the opposing traffic. It bounded high over the curb, dug its nose into the dividing strip, bounded even higher, rolling toward him, clear of the earth, suspended in dreadful slowness.

  He hit the brake and tried to swing right away from it. He rebounded from the side of the Ford. The kids in the back seat came forward. Alice had her hands braced against the dash. The blue car seemed to hang over him and he thought for a fraction of a second that he could get under it. He tramped the gas pedal down and knew as he did so that he could not get under it.

  chapter 3

  A half-hour before the worst multiple-car crash in the three-year history of the new hundred-mile stretch of six-lane divided highway, Kathryn Aller walked from the small restaurant along the shoulder of the highway to the service station where she had left the new Ford.

  She was a tall woman, about twenty-eight, with dark blonde hair. She wore her hair in an unusual coronet braid. Her features, though delicately and beautifully cut, were somehow colorless. In contrast the thick gloss of the braid looked very alive. She wore a dark red suit, flat-heeled shoes, and carried a large gray lizard-skin purse. Though her suit was wrinkled in the back from long hours of driving, and though her driving shoes were not right with the suit, she gave an impression of cool elegance, of carefully contrived perfection. The cut of the expensive suit was flattering to her lean figure, and the hair style was exactly right for her. She gave an impression of competence, careful charm, gravity and a faint trace of severity.

  “Nearly done, ma’am,” the attendant said. “We’ll have it down off the lift in a minute.”

  Kathryn thanked him and walked into the station. She took a map from the rack, opened it and found her present location. She decided that she would stop early today and plan on arriving in Philadelphia sometime around noon tomorrow. She would take a hotel room, an inexpensive one, until she could find a small furnished apartment. From then on the future was a grayness that she could not penetrate. Obviously there would have to be some kind of a job, sooner or later. Walter’s generosity had made it possible for it to be later—much later. His generosity and her own savings. The word “generosity” left a sour taste in her mind. She remembered how close she had been to tearing up the check. She was glad she hadn’t. It was a truly handsome check. She hadn’t known how handsome until she had found it in her purse, long after that last scene.

  Payment for services rendered above and beyond the call of duty. Extra bonus for the irreplaceable Miss Aller, she of the private office, keeper of the private books, secretary extraordinary.

  Kathryn wished there were someone left in Philadelphia who could punish her by saying I told you so. There was no one left. Not after eight years. Eight California years which had ended in the inevitable heartbreak.

  “You knew what you were doing. You knew what you could expect,” Walter had said.

  Yes, I knew what I was doing. Every minute. But at least, beyond all else, I was a good secretary, wasn’t I, Walter Houde? The best you ever had or will ever have. A good secretary and an adequate mistress.

  “You’re all set, ma’am. With the gas that comes to, let me see, seven-eighty.”

  She gave him a ten and he made change. She went out and got into the new shiny black Ford. There were four thousand miles on it and it still had the interior smell of newness.

  “Are you going to stay out here?” Walter had asked, a certain wariness in his voice.

  “I’m going back to Philadelphia.”

  “I’ll give you a letter that will get you a good job wherever you want to show it. What reason will I put in it for your quitting?”

  “Family reasons. That’s correct, isn’t it?”

  “You don’t have to be nasty, Kat. Let’s try to be sane about this.”

  “Yes, of course, Mr. Houde. Sane.”

  “Get your book, please.”

  He had leaned his big weight back in the red upholstered desk chair, turning as was his habit so he could look out of the big windows across the evening bay.

  “To whom it may concern, colon, paragraph. This will introduce Miss Kathryn Aller, a secretary of outstanding competence and unusual intelligence. She was employed as a stenographer by the Eastern Sales Division Headquarters of the Allied Chemical Corporation in Philadelphia blank years ago.”

  “Nine,” Kathryn said.

  “She became my personal secretary during the first year of her employment. Later I was transferred to San Francisco to the position of Sales Manager of Allied Chemical. As I was unable to obtain a local person of equivalent competence, I requested the transfer of Miss Aller. She has been my personal secretary ever since.

  “I deeply regret her decision to return east at this time. She has youth, energy, competence and considerable executive ability. I recommend her heartily and without any reservation whatsoever.”

  He turned from the window then and his face twisted and he said, softly, “Hell, Kat. This is a miserable way to… end it.”

  She stood up, crisp and tall. “A copy for the file, Mr. Houde?”

  “Yes, damn it.”

  She went out and rolled the letter head and second sheets into the electric machine and transcribed her notes in one long continuous errorless roll of the keys, ripping the paper out as she stood up. She placed them in front of him and he signed in his large bold hand. “Kat?”

  “Will that be all, Mr. Houde?”

  “Good-by, Kat. And… good luck to you.”

  “Good night, sir.” He was still sitting in his night-dark office, facing the bay, when she put the personal things from her desk into her purse, tilted the heavy machine down into the recesses of the secretarial desk, and let herself quietly out into the hall.

  “You knew what you could expect,” Walter had said. Yes, with my eyes wide open. She drove out onto the superhighway, heading east in the fast traffic, heading back east to where it had started.

  She had been terrified of Mr. Houde the day she had been asked to report to his office. His secretary had resigned. Mr. Houde had tried three other girls from the stenographic pool, rejecting each of them after a week. Mrs. Hale said to her before she left to go upstairs, “Kathryn, you are actually the most competent girl I have. I didn’t send you up before because you lack self-confidence. You act like a mouse. Now put your shoulders back and go on up there and report, and look him right in the eye. He’s really a nice guy, nobody to be frightened of.”

  The palms of her hands were wet when she stood before Walter Houde’s desk. Her knees were weak. He was a big-bodied, hard-faced man in his middle thirties. It was common knowledge in the Philadelphia office that he had risen quickly in the firm, would perhaps go much higher.

  “Miss Aller, eh? For heaven’s sake don’t jump. I don’t bite. Go get a notebook.” She hurried out and came back with pencils and a book, asked if she could place the book on the corner of his desk. He dictated slowly at first, gradually increasing his speed. She knew he was trying to reach a speed where she would have to ask him to repeat. It angered her. She transcribed the long letter with one minor error, writing “will” instead of “would.” He took a heavy pen and put a black X across the wrong word and looked at her, waiting for a reaction.

  She said nothing. He took a letter he had received, scrawled the word “No!” in the margin and handed it to her. “Write a letter to this joker. Make it formal.”

  She took it out to her desk, read it over, composed a reply. He read it, grunted, signed it. The whole week was like that. The week was hell. She saved her tears for the women’s room. On the following Monday he called her in and asked her to sit down.

  “Kathryn, I’ve been riding you.”
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  “Yes, sir.”

  “If you have any personal opinion about it, you’re free to comment.”

  She felt her face grow hot. “Maybe you’ve been trying to prove something. I don’t know what. It’s no pleasure working for you, Mr. Houde.”

  “Because it’s too rough?”

  “You can’t make it too rough,” she said evenly.

  He stared at her and then he laughed loudly. “Okay, Kathryn. You’re in. I live on pressure. I eat it. I look for it. I’ve got to have somebody who responds the same way. From now on, kid, we don’t pressure each other. From now on we make a team. You don’t work for Allied. You don’t work for your savings account. You work for me. Can you do that?”

  “I think so.”

  “Learn the way I think. Study the way I do things. I’ll load as much responsibility on you as you can take. Don’t trust anybody in this outfit but me. And I won’t trust anybody but you. Your pay doubles today. And for heaven’s sake don’t wear yellow. It’s a terrible color on you. And do something different with your hair. I don’t know what. Experiment, and I’ll tell you when you have it right. A deal?”

  She thought it over and nodded. He stuck his big hand out. She took it. It was a strong, warm hand. She blushed.

  Within a few months she knew him well. Knew how so much of his irritation was the result of the continual running battle with his rich, spoiled, slovenly wife; knew how edged and relentless was his ambition; knew how rare his moments of self-doubt, of indecision; knew the chameleon dexterity with which he handled people, flattering the vulnerable, bullying the arrogant, appealing to the loyal. And knew also that there were certain basic principles on which he was inflexible—thus learning that he was much man.

  She kept his appointments, administered his personal checking account, bought gifts for his wife and two children, guarded his door against the pests, the time-wasters, the opportunists. She kept his personal and his official files in perfect order, made his doctor’s and dentist’s appointments—all in all, she took the burden of trivia off him so that he could function more perfectly in the job he loved. As she assumed more of the burden her life outside the office shrank in proportion. She lived with an aunt who continually deplored Kathryn’s lack of interest in any social life.

  The best times were when the pressure of work was great and they would stay in the office late. She would go out and get sandwiches and coffee and they would work on until things were cleaned up. Then he would yawn and stretch and grin at her, maybe pat her clumsily on her slim shoulder, and go out of his way to drop her off on his way home.

  When word came of his promotion it filled her with joy. He was transferred to the West Coast and all the world became dull and tasteless. It was not like the times when he had been away on extended trips. She became secretary to his successor, a Mr. Guilliam, a cold, pompous, formal little man.

  The letter came to her home address two months later.

  Dear Kathryn,

  I have tried to make do with spooks out here, but I am weary of dandruffy girls to whom work hours are a desert between dates. I find myself burdened with the thousand and one things you used to do, and life is confusing indeed. This is a plea for help. I write you to ask your consent before I submit a request for your transfer through proper channels. Thereby I risk a few wagging tongues, but it would be for the greatest good should you agree. I can make a sturdy adjustment in wages to cover increased living expenses, and I can guarantee travel expense. If you wish to resume your life of bondage in a new setting, write me at the office and please indicate “personal” on the envelope. Local staff will indubitably try to cut your pale throat, but is that new? Please come and bring that stainless chromium roller-bearing brain with you.

  Pleadingly, Walter Houde

  Her aunt was difficult. There were veiled references to “that man” and “ruining your life.”

  The transfer came through ten days after she mailed her response. Four days later he met her at three in the afternoon at the airport. He shook her hand warmly and said, “Lord, it’s good to see you, Kathryn. Give me your baggage checks. Wait right here. The car is in front.”

  As they drove toward the city he said awkwardly, “This is sort of out of my line, but I knew you’d want a place to live. I really don’t know the sort of thing you like, outside the office, but I guessed you’d want something easy to take care of. I looked around last Sunday and put a deposit on a place, a furnished apartment. Small, but it’s got everything you need. There’s a view and a private entrance. It’s fifteen minutes from the office.”

  She felt shy. “You shouldn’t have bothered, Mr. Houde.”

  “I guess it was a gesture. Gratitude or something. You probably won’t like it. Please say so if you don’t.”

  The street was narrow and hilly. He turned into a drive. It was a garage apartment reached by outside stairs. He carried the bags up to the small landing, set them down, took the key out of his pocket. He unlocked the door and opened it and let her go in first. He followed with the bags.

  “Those big windows there make it sort of like a studio. The paneling is kind of dark, but I don’t think they’d mind if you had it made lighter. The roof pitch gives you some funny angles on the ceilings, but it’s well insulated. The kitchen is out here. All electric. Bath over there. That couch makes up into a bed. It looks pretty clean to me and… sort of cute. It’s eighty-five a month but that includes utilities. All except the phone, of course. Well… what do you think?”

  She looked at it and then she looked out the big windows. She spun around and said, “I think it’s perfect, Mr. Houde. Absolutely perfect! It’s exactly the sort of place I… I’d want to find for myself and never would.”

  He stood in front of her and grinned. “Lord, it’s good to see you! I’ve really missed you.” He put his hands on her shoulders. She stood tensely, overly aware of his hands. His smile faded away and his face changed as he looked at her. He took her strongly into his arms. She stood in still fright, enduring the kiss, feeling very far from home and alone. Then something that was locked across her heart broke free and she reached her arms around the bulk of him, at first shyly, and then strongly, warmly, possessively.

  He released her and went over to the windows, his back to her. She looked at the broad strength of him, and touched her fingertips to her lips wonderingly.

  “We’ve got to forget that,” he said harshly. “That kind of thing is no damn good. It spoils things. I suppose, figuring the apartment and all, you could imagine I had something like this in mind. I didn’t. That’s all I can say, I didn’t.”

  “I know you didn’t. I know you that well.”

  “We work well together. That alone is worth saving, Kathryn. This sort of act could ruin it. We’ve got to forget it happened.”

  “We can.”

  “I’m sorry it happened. It was my fault.”

  “I could have stopped it and I didn’t so it’s my fault too.”

  He turned and smiled tiredly. “So we forget it. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.” They shook hands somewhat gingerly. He told her whom she should see about a lease, how to get to the offices, how to reach him, and told her if she needed anything to call him. He would see her in the morning. He left her alone in the new apartment. She stood for a long time at the window, then sighed and began to unpack. When she was through she explored the neighborhood, bought staples and groceries, cooked her evening meal, read for a time and went to bed. It took her a long time to get to sleep.

  It was good to work with him again. But not the way it had been before. Within a month she was competent in the routines of the new position and had picked up all the odd jobs she had previously done for him. But it wasn’t the way it used to be. What had happened could not be forgotten. Their response to each other had been too vivid and meaningful. The new awareness would not fade. He was too hearty and jolly, without looking at her squarely. She was too polite and smiling, and when she walked away from h
im, leaving his office, she sensed that he watched her and it made little awkwardnesses in the way she moved and carried herself. Physical awareness was between them like the inexorable ticking of a great clock, set for a time neither of them could guess. At busy times the sound would fade into the background, but in the silences it would grow louder and louder. One rainy windy night, four months after she arrived in San Francisco, she was in her apartment when she heard slow fumbling steps on her outside stairs. Someone knocked heavily. She opened the door the few inches the night chain permitted. Walter stood there, light gleaming on his wet face, clothes soaked, eyes dull.

  “Kathryn,” he said thickly.

  She let him in. She realized he was very drunk. She had never known him to drink heavily before. He stood dripping on the rug, swaying a bit. He said, “Walked. Walked all over. Hours.”

  He closed his eyes. She tried to support him, but all she could do was ease his fall. She could not awaken him. She wrestled the soaked topcoat off him and his suit coat. His shirt seemed reasonably dry. She put two more logs on her small fire. Gasping with the effort, she managed to drag him over to the daybed. Getting him onto it seemed at first impossible. His legs were fantastically heavy. Finally she managed it. She loosened his tie, got a blanket and put it over him. She undid his belt, covered him to the chin, went to the foot of the bed and removed his wet shoes and socks. She grasped his pants cuffs and, bracing her feet, giving one hard yank after another, managed to pull his trousers off him and out from under the blanket. She tucked his feet in, hung his clothing near the fire to dry. She sat across the small room from him and watched him while he slept. The room was full of the smell of wet wool, and the sound of his heavy breathing. She did not think of anything. She just watched over him.

  It was after ten when she had covered him over. It was nearly four when he began to stir and mumble. There were a few embers in the fireplace. The room was cool.