2
Just as she tried to forget Lewis during office hours, in the evenings she tried to forget her work. She wasn’t entirely successful.
“You’re jumpy tonight,” Lewis said.
“Am I?”
“Could I flatter myself that it’s strictly from joy at having me back?”
“You could not.”
“You are glad, though? Aren’t you?”
“Of course.”
“I missed you, Charley.”
There wasn’t the usual banter in his voice. He sounded tired.
She went over and put her hand on his shoulder. It wasn’t often that she touched him first and on her own initiative. She was very proud; Lewis had to be the aggressor, to make the first move.
He was in his early forties now, a tall man, so rangy and loose-jointed that he could never fit into any ordinary chair. The one he occupied he’d bought himself and given to Charlotte. It was red leather and didn’t match the gray and lime color scheme of the rest of the sitting room. It stood out, compelled attention. When Lewis wasn’t there the chair was a symbol of him, a discordant note in the restful little room, as Lewis was the discordant note in her life.
He twisted his head so that her hand was pressed tight between his cheek and his shoulder. She had an irrational feeling that her hand was caught in a crevice between boulders.
She broke the silence. “Lewis?”
“Yes, darling.”
“Perhaps you should have stayed home with Gwen the first night . . .”
“I couldn’t,” he said simply. “Let’s change the subject.”
“All right. How was the trip?”
“Like any trip without you, long and dull.” He had gone with two other lawyers on a week’s fishing trip in the Sierras. It was an annual, routine affair. Lewis never enjoyed it; he went along merely because it was expected of him. Lewis liked to conform: his defiance of the conventions was purely verbal.
“I’m glad it was dull. I’ll seem exciting by contrast.” She spoke lightly, but she felt a twinge of pain that was part anger and part jealousy. Minutes with Lewis were few and precious. Yet he had squandered a whole week of them on a fishing trip. I’m getting possessive, she thought. I must watch myself. You can’t own people. I own my car, my house, my clothes—that ought to be enough. It wasn’t enough, though. The car had to have Lewis at the wheel; the clothes had been selected to please him; and she’d bought the house six weeks after she’d met him, not knowing why at the time, merely thinking that her apartment was too cramped and there wasn’t enough privacy.
The house had a high stone wall on three sides. On the fourth side there was a sweeping view of the city and the harbor. From Lewis’ chair by the picture window you could look down and see the city spread out below, a tangled network of lights all the way down the hill to the sea. The city was medium-sized, large enough to support half a dozen second-rate night clubs, and small enough to pass the word along if you patronized any of them. She and Lewis never went to night clubs or even to movies together. They met at her house—he hid his car in her garage or left it a block away—or they drove down to the beach at night, as anonymous in the dark as all the other lovers parked on the blowing sand.
“I like your hair,” Lewis said, raising his head to look up at her. “It’s brown, plain brown. You don’t often see plain brown hair anymore; it’s usually tinted red. . . . Charley, you’re not even listening.”
“I am. You said I had brown hair.”
“What I really meant was that I love you. Everything about you is right.”
“That’s nice.”
“Nice.” He frowned; his black, bushy eyebrows made him look cruel. “Charley, there’s something the matter with you tonight. I’ve said or done the wrong thing again. Or you’re still sore about the fishing trip.”
“I’m not sore. I have something on my mind. A patient who came in this afternoon.”
“Tell me about him.”
“Her. I can’t tell you.”
“You often do, medical ethics to the contrary.”
“I know . . . Lewis, I think I made a mistake.” She stood at the window locking and unlocking her fingers. Somewhere in the city, in the chaos of yellow and red and green lights was the light that belonged to Violet—a dim, flyspecked light in the back room of a boarding house on Olive Street. And Gwen—there was a light for Gwen, too, as she sat waiting for Lewis to come home, patient and sweet as always, with the collies beside her, all of them as gentle as Gwen herself.
“As long as you didn’t kill anybody,” Lewis said, “by giving them the wrong prescription.”
“I don’t make mistakes like that. This was an error in judgment. The girl—everything the girl said was right. I was afraid, I still am. But such silly, trivial fears compared to hers . . . And she said I’ve never been desperate. I haven’t. I’ve never had anything to make me desperate.”
She turned suddenly, aware of a subtle change in the atmosphere. Lewis was lighting a cigarette. She knew from his expression that he was disappointed and angry at the way the evening was turning out. Their first evening together for a week—it should have been perfect, and it wasn’t, and Lewis was silently blaming her, as if it were her fault that the two of them couldn’t live separate from the rest of the world. She and Lewis would never, could never be alone, in spite of the stone wall on three sides of the house. The fourth side was unguarded, unprotected. Violet crept in, and Gwen and Miss Schiller, even the two men who’d gone with Lewis on the fishing trip.
She said, with a sigh, “I feel depressed and quarrelsome, Lewis. Perhaps you’d better go home.”
“Perhaps I had.” He ground out his cigarette in the myrtle wood ashtray he’d brought her from up north. “Though I don’t like being ordered around like a little boy.”
“I didn’t mean it to sound unpleasant, darling. I meant, we’ll only quarrel if you stay.”
“You can sound pretty officious. God, Charley, what do you think I’m made of? You keep me hanging around, you tell me to come, and then you tell me to go peddle my papers. You rant about some silly girl and her fears when we’ve got a million things to say to each other about us.” He got up and grabbed her roughly by the shoulders. “Who cares, who the hell cares? Charley, you haven’t changed your mind, you still love me?”
“Yes. Naturally.”
“When I hold you, you draw away as if I had a bad smell.”
“Oh Lewis, for heaven’s sake,” she said sharply, pulling away from his grasp. “I told you, I’m not myself tonight. Everything’s wrong, out of focus.”
He looked grim. “Because of this girl?”
“I suppose that started it.”
“Why?”
“She’s in trouble. I refused to help her.”
“Why should you help her? She’s probably just an ordinary tart who got caught.”
“No. She’s a nice girl, sensitive, and very bewildered.”
“You’ve had cases like that before. Why does this one worry you?”
“Because of us, Lewis. Don’t you see . . . ?”
“No.”
“If we go on together, if we become lovers, I might accidentally end up in the same boat she’s in.”
He let out a snort of disgust. “I see now. For some extraordinary reason you’ve identified yourself with this girl, and me with the man who got her in trouble, the callous, bestial male.”
“No, I haven’t.” She looked up at him, searching his face for some sign that he understood. “What would you do if I got pregnant?”
“Considering our present platonic relationship that’s rather funny.”
“You aren’t laughing. What would you do?”
“Oh, come off it,” he said. “You wouldn’t get pregnant.”
“It’s possible.”
�
�Not with the proper insurance.”
She smiled, a little bitterly. “That’s a funny analogy. When you take out earthquake insurance it means you’re protected financially against an earthquake. It doesn’t guarantee that there won’t be an earthquake. The sense of security is false.”
“Now earthquakes. God, Charley, what’s got into you? You’re becoming a neurotic.”
“Am I?” She averted her face. “I think you’d better leave.”
“Certainly,” he said. “Certainly.”
He crossed the room towards the door, slowly, giving her an opportunity to call him back. She didn’t. She stood at the window until she heard his car roar out of the garage. The furious racing of the engine indicated that Lewis was taking out his temper on the car.
His cigarette was still smoldering. She carried the ashtray out to the kitchen and washed it, moving awkwardly because she was angry. Hers wasn’t a hot and immediate anger like Lewis’; it couldn’t be satisfied, as his could, by racing the engine of a car or breaking a golf club. Charlotte’s anger was slow and cold; it crept gradually through her body, depressing the nerves, making her almost incapable of moving and talking.
She thought of all the things she should have said. Then she said them silently to herself, rephrasing and cutting them until they were sharp and elegant as diamonds. It was the kind of childish satisfaction that she seldom permitted herself.
She looked at the clock. Nine-thirty. Lewis would be home by now, making up a lie for Gwen. Miss Schiller would be putting up her hair and talking to her cat, perhaps even telling it about Violet: “Today a bad girl came in, bold as you please, and wanted doctor to get rid of the baby—oh, the things that happen! And the people you meet!”
Yes, the things that happen. Charlotte felt a stab of regret. I should have helped the girl, she thought. I meant to do something for her, but she’d already gone.
She stood at the window, locking and unlocking her fingers. A low grey fog hung over the distant housetops and gave them the contours of a dream. Under one of the housetops was the girl Violet worrying out the night, friendless, penniless, thinking of death.
916 Olive Street. The address had stuck in her memory as the girl’s grief and terror had stuck in her throat.
With a decisive movement Charlotte turned from the window and went to the hall closet for her coat and hat.
3
Olive Street threaded north-south through the city. At one end there was an imposing hotel that rented ocean views at twenty dollars a night, at the other a flour mill. In the center, once a select suburb, the grandiose old three-storied Victorian houses had been gradually debauched by slums and abandoned. The slums had pushed ahead like an army of grasshoppers destroying everything that grew in its path. Nothing would ever grow again in that concrete wilderness except people. More and more people, whites and Negroes, Mexicans, Chinese, Italians. They kept alive and multiplied. They worked on the dock or at the freight yards; they were gardeners, busboys, charwomen, bookies; they took in washing and roomers; they sold tamales, green tea, religion, firecrackers, used furniture, souvenirs, rose bushes, and Mexican silver jewelry.
Olive Street was never empty or quiet. It had no set hours of work and rest like the middle-class parts of town. It was awake all day and all night. After dark there were fights and crap games, police sirens and recriminations.
Charlotte knew the section well. She had two regular patients within a block of 916. Though she wasn’t apprehensive about visiting Olive Street, she took the precaution of locking her Buick and removing the radiator cap that the garage man had fixed so that she could take it off and put it on herself. (She’d lost two before she caught on to the fact that you couldn’t make people trustworthy by trusting them. It was better to withdraw the temptation.)
916 was a relic. Built to last, it had lasted stubbornly through sixty years and a major earthquake and a succession of owners and tenants.
The present tenant, according to the crudely printed sign in the right front window, was Clarence G. Voss. The sign read, in full: Clarence G. Voss. Phrenology and Palmistry. Fresh-Cut Flowers for Sale. Piano Lessons.
Inside the house someone was playing, not a piano, but a harmonica, with brash inaccuracy. An elderly Italian sat rocking on the front porch, his hands pressed tight over his ears.
Charlotte nodded and said, “Good evening.”
He lowered his hands, scowling, “What’s that?”
“I said, good evening.”
“Cold and noisy.”
“Perhaps you could tell me if Mrs. Violet O’Gorman is at home.”
“I pay no attention to other people.”
He replaced his hands over his ears and withdrew into his world of silence. He kept his eyes on her, though, as if there was a remote possibility that she might do something interesting.
Charlotte pressed the doorbell.
“Out of order,” the Italian said.
“Thanks.”
“Nobody fixes anything around here.”
“I think the button is jammed.”
“You’re wrong.”
It was jammed. She fixed it in three seconds with a bobby pin while the Italian watched her with grudging approval.
Inside the house the harmonica stopped abruptly at the sound of the bell.
A man opened the door, a small, middle-aged man with a red baseball cap pulled down over his forehead. His ears jutted out from under the cap, extraordinary ears, pale as wax and enormous. His chin and nose were elfin and sharp, his eyes were like small black peas. Charlotte could see the outline of the harmonica in the pocket of his Hawaiian-print shirt.
Charlotte didn’t smile or even attempt to look pleasant. He was the kind of man who would immediately construe a smile from a strange woman as an invitation to intimacy; a man as quick to take offense as to take liberties.
“I’m looking for Violet O’Gorman. Is she at home?”
“I don’t know.” He had a surprising voice for his stature, deep and resonant. “Who wants her?”
“I do.”
“Sure, sure, I know that, but what name will I say is calling?”
“Miss Keating.”
“Keating. Come inside and I’ll go see if Violet’s home.”
She went in, showing none of the hesitancy she felt. He closed the door by giving it a shove with his foot. The hall smelled sour. In the light of an old-fashioned beaded chandelier Charlotte saw that the linoleum on the floor was grimy and split with age. Dust grew in the corners like mold, and the paint on the woodwork had alligatored.
He stood with his hands in his pockets, his eyes narrowed. “What did you want to see Violet about?”
“A personal matter.”
“My name is Voss. I’m her step-uncle.”
“I thought so.”
“Violet and me’ve got no secrets from each other. She’s one swell little kid, believe you me. Anybody’d harm a hair on her head I’d strangle him with my bare hands.”
“I’m in rather a hurry,” Charlotte said.
He hesitated, then swung around suddenly and skipped up the stairs, quick and neat as a cat.
Charlotte lit a cigarette and wondered if she’d been wise in giving Voss her name.
She wasn’t afraid of him, but the house made her uneasy. It had an air of decadent resignation, as if so many things had happened there that one more wouldn’t even be noticed.
She could hear Voss whispering upstairs. What is there to whisper about, she wondered. Violet is in or she’s not in, there’s no need for secrecy.
But the whispering went on, and the ceiling creaked faintly under the weight of cautious feet. She raised her eyes and caught a glimpse of a face peering down at her through the rails of the banister. The face drew back into the shadows so quickly that she wasn’t sure whether it belonged to a man or a wo
man. She had only the impression of youth and a picture in her mind of a flat, crooked nose that looked as if it had once been broken.
She called out sharply, “Voss!”
Voss appeared at the head of the stairs. “Violet’s not in. She must have went to a movie or something.”
“You might tell her that I was here and that I’ll call her early tomorrow morning.”
He came slowly down the steps, tracing a pattern on the banister with his forefinger. “Of course, if I knew what your business was, maybe I could help you. I’ve had a lot of experience one way or another in my lifetime.”
“Thanks, I don’t require any help.” She opened the door. “Good night.”
“Good night.”
She breathed in the cool, crisp air, feeling such an overwhelming and irrational relief that her knees shook a little. She was angry at herself for being too imaginative about the house. A house could be old and dirty without becoming the scene of a tragedy. And Voss, while he was a sleazy character, might live a fairly respectable life.
She crossed the dimly lit street to her car. The old Italian whom she’d talked to on Voss’s porch was sitting on the curb out of sight of the house, eating potato chips from a cellophane bag.
He watched her silently as she took the radiator cap out of her purse and replaced it on the car. Then he said, “Voss is a no-good bum.”
“Is he?”
“I see by your car you’re a doctor, eh?”
“Yes.”
“Voss doesn’t need a doctor, he needs an undertaker,” the Italian said gloomily. “He needs one bad.”
Charlotte unlocked the front door of the car.
The old man got up suddenly, spilling the bag of potato chips in the gutter. “Wait a minute,” he said. “I could ride down the road a piece with you.”
“Why?”
“I’m not going anywhere else.”
“That’s not a very good reason.”
A small black and white mongrel appeared and began to eat the potato chips one by one in a leisurely manner. The old man reached down and stroked its dusty back. “I have a good reason,” he said. “You want to know about Violet, don’t you?”
Do Evil in Return Page 2
