But one thing Gary wanted. You knew that. You could feel it. You had felt it this afternoon, when he kissed you in the car. Well, why not? Ivan didn't want you. Ivan wanted Erica. All right, to hell with Ivan. Damn Ivan.
Dolores reached for the bed lamp. For a moment--a long moment--her eyes ached with the sudden light. There was a brandy decanter on the table. That would help.
She turned on the room lights and went to look at herself in the bathroom mirror. The brandy felt good. She could feel relief coming from some remote place to fill her body. It was not here yet. But it would be.
Lipstick. Not too much. A little. She was trembling and her breath came fast. Fast. Fast woman. Fast breathing.
She let her hands run, once, over her body, palms pressed flat against the curving flesh. Then she turned off the bathroom light. Turned off the lights in the bedroom. Silently opened the hall door. Quietly moved along the hall toward the rear of the house. Very quietly. To hell with Ivan ...
IVAN CARTER
Dr. Ivan Carter left his wife's bedroom in the firm conviction of self-righteousness and a heavenly mission. Let the bitch carry on like this if she wanted to. At least there was Erica. The self-righteousness lasted two paces down the hall, and at the third he was already feeling immensely sorry for himself.
It was something that needed thinking out. He went downstairs to the study, and into the office. He was tired. There was a feeling of emptiness, as of a great sorrow, in his chest. But you couldn't let that feeling get you down. You had to fight it. He lay down on the leather couch, and let thoughts run through his mind.
Things were only getting worse this way. You might know how to straighten them out, but when you tried something else took over and refused to permit you. You had gone upstairs to woo your wife, and had remained to crack pseudowitticisms.
Ivan got up for a cigarette, and paced back and forth in the dim office, seeing his own grotesque shadow in gargantuan magnification leaping about the walls. After a while he shut off the light and felt his way to the door and out into the hallway.
The ancient grandfather's clock struck eleven as he went up the staircase and back to Erica's room. He pushed open the door without knocking.
Erica sat in the single comfortable chair. She was wearing a rather unattractive flannel bathrobe. It was a man's robe, and her attachment for it was as great as Ivan's distaste. She had been reading. Now, with a rather prim gesture, she removed her glasses and looked up at him.
"I've asked you not to come in here without knocking," she said. There was hopeless protest in her voice.
Ivan closed the door behind him and sat down on the bed, pointedly disregarding what she had said. Almost insolently he looked around the room, taking in the freshly washed stockings that hung on the bathroom doorknob, the rinsed-out panty drying on the back of a chair, as though this cleanliness was actually an indication of slovenly living. Then he said, "Why did you try to walk out on me today?"
She said nothing. She had let the book fall into her lap, and now a faint evening breeze ruffled the pages. "Can't you answer me?"
"Why do you ask me things like that?" She looked away. "What am I supposed to say? What do you want me to say?"
"You must know what you were thinking," he said. He spoke reasonably, as though with parental authority.
"I don't want to discuss it."
"Of course you don't. If you had you would have talked to me before calling the cab. But I do want to discuss it. In fact, I insist."
She said, "Ivan, for God's sake, stop it. Let me alone."
"Look at that bathrobe," he said. "Do you have to wear that dingy thing when I'm around? And this frippery dangling about? Do you have to leave things in such a mess? You know how I hate disorder."
She shook her head miserably. "The robe's perfectly clean." Then, realizing the futility of trying to answer him, she said, "Ivan, why do you do this to me? Don't you realize this is the kind of thing I was trying to get away from?" She tried to light a cigarette, found that her hands were shaking, and put it down unlighted.
"The things that I do are not precisely the point," Ivan said. "I want to know why you tried to sneak away this afternoon without giving me warning."
"I want a life like anybody else's. I'm twenty-two years old. I've got to begin some kind of living. I suppose it's one thing to be the mistress of a man who loves you and stays with his wife because he has to. I don't think I'd mind that, so much, but I'm just your mistress. You don't love me. You don't even want me except to take your resentment against your wife."
"Let's not be mawkish," Ivan said. "All right, you are my mistress. But, goddamit, you're also my secretary. I don't expect to have you run out on me when I need you."
"You don't need me, Ivan. You don't need me. You just need somebody. I don't know what it is you do to me. But I can't go if you won't let me. And you're willing to do absolutely anything to keep me. In front of that cab driver this afternoon. In front of Reenie. You just don't care what you do."
"Oh, stop whining." Then he saw she was crying. "Come on. Baby. I guess I was little nasty about the whole thing." He reached out his hand to her. "Cheer up. I don't mean to be quite so unpleasant."
She took his hands, got up from the chair, and let him hold her, her head on his shoulder, her body quivering with unhappiness.
Then a new idea struck him, a faintly Machiavellian scheme. "Look, Honey," he said, "I have a list of abstracts I need from the New York Academy of Medicine Library. Why don't you take that--that new chauffeur, Heaslip, and have him drive you in tomorrow. Spend the day if you like."
"What do I need Heaslip for?"
"It's a long drive. You'll have company. Take the Jaguar if you like."
"All right, Ivan."
He left a few moments later and went to his own room. For a long time he read from the helter-skelter texts piled beside his chair, preparing the list of abstracts. About two o'clock he heard a car come in the drive and correctly decided Irene had returned from her date--though it was a little surprising that the car continued past the house to the rear where the garage was. He read a while longer, then put down the books and leaned back, drawing at his pipe and thinking.
He'd played the thing all wrong with Lor. Tonight she'd given him every chance. And the business about Heaslip and the hotel was probably just as she had said. After all, it was perfectly reasonable that she should drive to the hotel to get his things. Except--why should she go inside with him?
Ivan slowly undressed. He took a long hot bath, soaking out the tensions of the day, letting the angers and passions seep out into the warm water. Then he put on pajamas and a dressing gown and relit his pipe. There was still time. You could go in and see Lor. Find her lying there, warm and lovely, in her own bed. All you had to say was, "Sorry, darling," and she'd understand.
He chuckled to himself and put down the pipe. She was in there, in the room next door, just waiting. He turned out the lights and stepped into the darkened hall. Downstairs the grandfather's clock struck three, in miniature emulation of the chimes of Westminster. He moved quietly along the hall, and found the knob of Dolores' door. The bedroom was almost pitch dark. He let the door close behind him. "Lor?" he said softly. "Lor."
There was no answer. He went over to the bed. "Lor?" He ran his hands over the bed. The bedclothes were rumpled, but the bed was empty. He went to the bathroom and turned on the light. The shattered fragments of a glass lay in the washbowl. The light from the bath streaming into the bedroom showed it was empty.
He turned out the light. For a long time he sat in the silent dark, waiting in angry agony. At length he rose and silently passed into the hallway. As he reached his room the downstairs clock duplicated the chimes of London's Big Ben. It was four a.m.
V
GARY HEASLIP
The first thought Gary Heaslip had, as he shut off the alarm was that he had accomplished absolutely nothing toward his objective. Instead, he had managed to involve himself in a ne
w set of complications.
The airport and August Hennler were no more than three miles away. But he might as well have been in New York, or upstate in the rectory of his father's church with his mother and his brothers.
And now this other thing. What would Gary's father think of that? The minister's son involved with a seventeen-year old girl--and her mother. Well, not exactly involved with the girl. But the whole idea touched him with a certain glee. It would have had the old man hopping. The thought appealed to him. He hadn't wanted to take Irene out. But what could you do? You found her in the boat, heart broken because some neighborhood brat had stood her up, and then the big idea hit her that he should take her to the country-club dance. He'd talked her out of that one, but he hadn't been able to duck the next. "All right," she had said, "take me to the Green Dragon in Westhampton." There hadn't been any good excuse--or at least none that he could think of, so he had taken her. It hadn't been what he had expected. What he had been thinking about was the contrast in their ages. But she looked no younger than a lot of girls he had taken out. By the end of the evening the fact no longer disturbed him--only the idea.
She had pressed against him in the car, cuddling and demanding a good-night kiss when he dropped her off before putting car away. But that was all.
The real shocker had been the other. The thing that happened later, of which he was still so unsure. The pale, lovely figure, gowned in mist, that had appeared at his bedside sometime in the small hours, and the uncontrollable passion that had flared between them. It had been impersonal, a dispassionate passion that was almost frightening in its violence. There had to be something a little crazy about a woman who came and demanded what she wanted. What would she get him into with Erica--whoever Erica was?
Someone knocked at the door and Gary said, "Just a second." He looked at himself in the mirror. He was in shirtsleeves, but everything essential had been done. He opened the door.
A girl stood there.
"You're Gary Heaslip, aren't you? I'm Erica Ledbitter, Doctor Carter's secretary."
Gary said, "Come in."
She was very pretty, he decided, except for the black-rimmed glasses she wore, and they added a certain piquance to her face. She sat down in a chair, pulling the full skirt close around her thighs as she crossed her legs. Her figure was lovely. You had to give the doctor credit. His taste in girl friends was as good as in wives.
"Doctor Carter wants us to drive into New York this morning," Erica said, "and he said I should ask you to drive me in."
"I'll be glad to," Gary said. "When do we start?"
They went downstairs together.
AUGUST HENNLER
For August Hennler the worst time of day was morning. It was the vicious, torturing necessity of seeing Evelyn's face, worried, unhappy, hurt, as she sat across from him in the little breakfast nook. Once that breakfast nook had been a joy as he looked out the little french windows that gave on their very own garden, their very own back yard, their very own garage.
Now, suddenly, it was all gone. There was no pleasure in the strong stalks of hollyhocks rising under the eaves of the garage. The garden furniture he had designed and built in his basement workshop--it no longer mattered that Jack Castle, next door, wanted a set built for him, too. The gradual lifting of the mortgage until they now owed only two thousand, one hundred and fifty six dollars and twenty-five cents for the house on Pearl Street, had ceased to be an easy gratification. All these homely delights had fallen, with a plummeting DC-3, into the ocean off Montaugan Point.
Now, the sunlight streaming on the checkerpattern of plasticized table cloth made his eyes ache. He avoided looking at Evelyn, eating his cereal in sullen silence. After a while he said, "Where are Alec and Bertha?"
"The bus from the day school picked them up just before you woke up," Evelyn said.
"Couldn't you have gotten me up so I could at least see them?"
"Augie, please don't be bad tempered. I thought you'd rather sleep a little this morning."
"You mean I was drunk last night, and you don't think the children should see me with a hangover? Is that it?"
"Oh, Honey," she protested, "why do you try to make everything I do lately seem like something wrong?"
"Stop whining, for godsake." That wasn't what he meant to say, either. But his head ached sullenly, and the residue of a dream, a frightening dream, had only just slipped out of sight behind the inner doors of his mind as he awakened.
He said, "Anything special happen yesterday?"--more than a little afraid that he had asked that question last night and that an important answer had somehow escaped him in the blur of the lost evening.
Evelyn was instantly alarmed. "What do you mean, anything special?"
He soothed her, "Like the kids or anything like that?" What he had really meant was, did anybody that shouldn't have come around?
"No. They were fine. A little wild, that's all You ought to spend more time with them, Augie. Lately you don't even see them."
"Is it my fault you don't get me up early enough to see them before they go to school? You could at least have called me."
She got up and turned off the gas under the silex. She carried the flask to the table where she set it on the trivet. For a moment she stood watching him as he ate the last of the cereal. He was aware of her gaze, and shifted uneasily. He looked up at her.
"Augie," she said, "What's the matter with you lately? What's happened to you? You've been acting, I don't know, crazy, for two-three weeks now. You come home tight. You yell at the kids. Last night you hit me. It's been going on ever since--ever since that smash-up. I don't know what's the matter with you. You act like it was your fault that crazy captain didn't do what he should've."
It was more than he had expected. Much more. He didn't know what to say, so he got up and went into the living room, where he picked up his uniform coat. He shrugged it about his shoulders with elaborate meticulousness and went back to the kitchen. "I got to go, Ev," he said. "See you tonight."
"You have plenty of time," Evelyn said, as he opened the door to the back entryway.
"No. I got a lot to do out there." He closed the door behind him, descended the short flight of steps and pushed at the screen door. It was hooked, but his panic suggested a trap. He struck it sharply and the hook ripped out. The door swung on its spring, slapping violently against the house.
He heard her call after him, just as he reached the garage, "Augie! You forgot your coffee." He paid no attention.
The garage door was open, as he had left it last night, and the car was badly parked. He squeezed past a tricycle and slid behind the wheel. He was trembling as he tried to insert the ignition key.
He thought, it was only a mistake. It only happened by accident. And I got a wife and kids. He tramped on the accelerator and the motor started instantly. He was ordinarily careful. His car ran flawlessly--everything checked like an "A & E" inspection.
He backed out the driveway. Not fast. Nervously. Because accidents did happen. In Pearl Street he backed the car around, and started toward Park Avenue and the airport. He looked back at his house--and almost lost control of the machine. A man was going up the front walk. An inspector? He drove to the corner and then stopped, looking back. The man rang the doorbell. Hennler felt the panic surging up again, worse than ever. First Evelyn. Now--what was this?
He shut off the motor as the house door opened. That would be Evelyn. What was she saying? "He's just left?" "Come in?" Who was the guy? What if he asked to see the tape recorder? Why hadn't he burned that damned tape--or at least erased it. Now it sat there in the living room, complete with the pasted-in parts he had dubbed to protect ... himself? No. Not himself. His home. His wife. His kids.
He would have lost his job--lost any chance of working as a radio operator--it they had found it was his fault. But now--if they found out about the dubbing-in of the new words on the sound-track--now it would be perjury. Now it would be a crime. Now you'd go to prison.
/> After all, what real harm could it do to Heaslip? He was young, unmarried. None of these flyboys had families.
The front door had closed behind the man. She'd invited him in after all. What was he doing in the living room? Was he fooling with the tape recorder? But how could he have found out? Nobody at the office knew about the machine. You'd only had it a few weeks. Nobody'd seen Evelyn come out to the airport. All the company personnel had left the field; all but the crew of flight one twelve which had landed a few minutes after the crash, and they had stayed at the main office.
But Evelyn knew, and what she'd said a minute or so ago--Had she looked at the recorder? But she didn't even know how to run it. Evelyn was nonmechanical--butter-fingered with everything. She'd even managed to break the vacuum cleaner the other day. She was just guessing. Not even guessing. What had she said? "Last night you hit me. It's been going on ever since that smash-up ... You act like it was your fault that crazy captain didn't do what he should've." Was that it? Were you giving yourself away like that?
The door of the house was opening. You could feel your heart pounding. Fast. One hundred fifty, maybe two hundred a minute. Fast. The man stood in the doorway, the screen held open with his foot. What was the son-of-a-bitch saying? Something like, "Has your husband been acting odd lately, Mrs. Hennler?"
The man held his hat in his hand. At least he was polite. But they were always polite--not like cops. The screen snapped closed, and still the man stood there. Through the gray haze of the screen he could see Evelyn's shabby housecoat dimly outlined. Poor kid. She needed new things--something decent to wear around the house. But first this would have to be straightened out. The man was turning. You were breathing fast, almost choking. And then you saw it. The shining cylindrical form. The snakelike trunk attached to the nose. The vacuum cleaner.
Private Chauffeur Page 5
