An Air That Kills

by Margaret Millar

  “Why drag me into it, for Pete’s sake?”

  “You dragged yourself. No one invited you.”

  Harry knocked on the door, and when Thelma didn’t an­swer it immediately he let himself in with his own key . . .

  They met in the hall.

  “Hello, Harry,” she said. “So you got out of the hospital. How are you?”

  He peered at her through the dimness, blinking, like a man accustomed to wearing spectacles, who without them finds the world strangely altered. “You’re dressed funny.”

  “Am I?”

  “I don’t remember that suit.”

  “I had it before we were married.”

  “Black . . . You’re going to the funeral?”

  “Yes. Are you?”

  He shook his head. “Turee says it would be bad form if either of us went, under the circumstances.”

  “Turee says this, Turee says that . . . Well, Turee can run your life for you but he’s not running mine. I’m going to the funeral. I have a right to go.”

  Harry smiled at her sadly. “We all have rights we don’t, or can’t, use. Technically, I have a right to come into my own house, kiss my own wife, make love to her if I want . . .”

  “Is this another of Turee’s ideas?”

  “No. My own.”

  “Well, you can stop that kind of talk, speaking of bad form. If you and Turee pretend to have such fancy manners, why don’t you practice them?” She turned away. “Besides, I—we have a visitor.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “He’s nothing, nobody. A man selling water-softeners. Claims they save money. I wonder if they really do.”

  “I wonder.” Harry still wore his smile but it seemed oddly changed. It was sly, wary, incongruous, a cat smile on a cocker spaniel. “You have a perfect right to have visitors, to buy water softeners . . . But then, as I said, I have rights too. It’s when our rights conflict that there’s bound to be trouble.”

  “I’m not afraid of your threats.”

  “You’re trembling.”

  “Oh, I admit you make me nervous, only it’s like walking in front of a small boy with a supply of snowballs—the idea of being hit by a snowball makes me nervous. But even if one should hit me it wouldn’t be so bad. It’s only snow. So go ahead. Throw one.”

  “It’s spring. There’s no snow. Small boys might switch to rocks.”

  “Oh, stop all this talk. Do what you came to do and get it over with!”

  “I will. I thought I’d better explain myself first. I’ve ap­pealed to you in various ways, Thelma, to save us both. I’ve begged for your mercy, and I’ve asked for your pity. But no matter what words were used it always amounted to me asking you. Now I’m telling you.”

  She looked at him, silent and sullen.

  “My bags are out in the car, Thelma. I haven’t unpacked since I left here on Monday afternoon.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m coming back,” he said calmly. “I’m moving back into my house with my wife.”

  “Stop talking like a fool.”

  “I’m not a fool. Or a small boy. And I have something in my pocket more authoritative than a snowball or a rock.”

  “What?”

  “A gun.”

  “You must be cra—Harry! Harry, listen to me . . .”

  She put out her hand to stop him, but he brushed past her and went into the living room. She could see, quite dis­tinctly, the contours of the gun in the lower left pocket of his suit coat.

  Blake was standing in the far corner of the room, clutching his pamphlets as if they were a passport to the outside world. Drops of sweat wriggled down his temples and behind his ears, leaving moist, shiny trails like slugs.

  “Hello there,” Harry said brightly. “About this proposition of yours, I think my wife and I might be interested. Tell me, does soft water make shaving any easier?”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  “Come, you’re old enough to shave, surely? How old are you?”

  “Twenty-one.”

  “A mere boy. Do you throw snowballs?”

  “I . . .”

  “Never mind. You must excuse my wife and me for ring­ing you in on our private little difference of opinion. My wife hasn’t been well lately. We’re expecting a child in a few months, our first. Say, that’s going to mean a lot of extra washing, isn’t it? I think a water-softener might be a good investment. How about it, Thelma?”

  “Harry,” she said dully. “Don’t. Stop.”

  “Go take a pill, Thelma. You’re not well.” He turned back to the young man who had managed one surreptitious step toward the door. “You look familiar to me. Have I seen you before?”

  “No,” Blake said, thinking, it’s true. He couldn’t have seen me, he had his eyes closed when I was talking to the nurse. She said he was out, out like a light . . .

  “What’s your name?”

  “Rod Blake.”

  “Funny, I’d have sworn we met some place. A hospital—­have you been in a hospital recently?”

  “No.”

  “Well, no matter. Tell me more about your product.”

  “We have—several models.”

  “Go ahead, talk about them. Speak your piece.”

  “Well—well, as I was just saying to your wife, this is my first day on the job.”

  “So?”

  “I don’t know much about it yet.” Though he was still pouring sweat, he had begun to shiver, as if a cold wind was blowing through the house up from the basement of the past. “I—I’ve thought of a good idea.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “Perhaps I could leave these folders with you and you can study them for yourself, facts and figures and so on. Then when you decide . . .”

  “I’ve already decided. We’ll take one.”

  “Which—which model?”

  “Any model.”

  “But . . .”

  “Any model,” Harry said graciously. “All we want is enough soft water for the baby’s clothes. I’ll probably be doing some of the washing myself, so my motives aren’t en­tirely unselfish. Are you married?”

  “N-no sir.”

  “Ah well, you’ve plenty of time. I was well over thirty when I got married—took me that long to find the right girl. I found her, though, I found her. And I don’t intend to lose her.”

  “Well—ah, I’d better be going now.”

  “What’s your hurry?”

  “I—the fact is, I have to get hold of an expert to come and measure—measure things.”

  “I can see you’re a real eager-beaver. Ever see a beaver dam, by the way?”

  “No sir.”

  “Highly interesting. You should go out of your way to find one some time.”

  “Yes sir. I will.”

  “Industrious lot, beavers.”

  “They certainly are.” Blake began moving toward the door, breathing heavily, as if he had just completed build­ing a dam entirely by himself with no help from any beavers. “I’ll—I’ll put your order in right away and see about in­stallation.”

  “Oh, there’s no great rush about it.” Harry smiled fondly at his wife. “We can’t hurry Mother Nature anyway.”

  “Harry. Listen to me.”

  “Now, dear, don’t be embarrassed or upset about a per­fectly natural process.”

  “Be quiet.” Thelma watched Blake approach her and she stood squarely in the middle of the doorway, so that he couldn’t pass her on either side without pushing her away. “We don’t want a water-softener. My husband is merely amusing himself at your expense and mine. He’s probably been drinking.”

  “Not drinking,” Harry said. “Thinking.”

  “Drinking,” she repeated to Blake, softly, as if she were
confiding a secret. “And he has a gun.”

  “I know, I know, but what the hell am I supposed to do? I want to get out of here.”

  “You can’t leave me alone with him.”

  “You said before you weren’t afraid.”

  “I didn’t know about the gun then.”

  “Sweet Jesus,” Blake whispered, and he felt his knees buckle like a sick colt’s. Let me out of here in one piece and I’ll go to church every Sunday for a year.

  “Thinking,” Harry went on, as if he had not heard the exchange or else considered it too trivial to bother about. “Yes, my dear, that’s what I’ve been doing, a lot of plain, common sense thinking. And I’ve decided that you’re in no condition to make the decisions for the family, now that there are going to be three of us. You’re too emotional to be allowed a freedom of choice. It’s up to me to take a firm stand, and I will. I’m head of this house, it’s time you real­ized that. I will decide the future. You hear that, Thelma?”

  “Yes,” Thelma said. “I hear.”

  “I’m glad you’re coming to your senses. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but the fact is, you’ve always been a little unstable.”

  She looked grim. “Have I?”

  “So it’s up to me to take over, to make all the decisions. Now the first decision I wish to make is about the water-­softener. I want a water-softener and I intend to get one. Is that clear?”

  “Yes.”

  “You see how easy your role is going to be from now on? All you have to do is agree.”

  “Yes.”

  “Actually, it will save you trouble, it will be easier on you if I shoulder the burden of responsibilities. It puts too much of a strain on a woman, making decisions, being boss. It puts a strain on anyone.” He passed the back of his hand across his forehead. “A great strain. I’m—I’m really quite tired. Haven’t been sleeping much. Working all day, think­ing all night, thinking . . .”

  “You should lie down here, Harry, and get a good rest.” She crossed the room and began arranging the pillows at one end of the davenport. “Lie down, Harry.”

  He didn’t have to be told. He sank back among the pil­lows, limp with exhaustion. “Lie down with me.”

  “I can’t right now. I have to go out.”

  “Not to the funeral? You’re not . . .”

  “Of course not. If you don’t want me to, I won’t. You’re the boss, Harry.”

  “Where are you going, then?”

  “To the store. Now that you’re moving back into the house I have to stock up on groceries. What would you like for dinner?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, closing his eyes. “I’m so tired.”

  “Fried chicken?”

  “I don’t know. Kiss me, Thelma.”

  Her lips touched his forehead briefly. It felt hot and dry, like something cured in the sun, or slow-baked in an oven. “You rest now, Harry. It’s such a strain, all this thinking and being boss, it’s given you a fever.”

  His eyes snapped open, painfully, as if he had been pierced by a splinter of irony from her voice. “You don’t care. You don’t care about anything.”

  “I do care, very much.”

  “No . . . You listen to me, Thelma. I’m the boss. I want fried chicken for dinner tonight. Hear that?”

  “Yes.”

  “I make all the decisions from now on. Is that clear?”

  “Of course.”

  With a sound of desolation he turned and buried his face in the pillows.

  She stood looking down at him, tight-lipped, cold-eyed. “I’ll need the car keys if I’m going to do the shopping. Are they in your pocket?”

  He didn’t respond. She waited for several minutes, still as a stone, until Harry began to snore. Then she bent over him, and, moving with delicate precision, she took the car keys from one pocket and the gun from the other, and put them both in her purse. Blake watched her from the doorway with the awed expression of a man witnessing the dismantling of an unexploded bomb.

  When she turned and saw that Blake was still in the house she seemed surprised and displeased. “I thought you’d left.”

  “No.”

  “You’re free to go any time.” She went into the hall, closing the door behind her, and began putting on her hat, arranging the black veil over her face, tucking in wisps of hair. There was a mirror built into the hall rack but she didn’t even glance toward it. “You’re free to go,” she re­peated. “You were so anxious to leave a few minutes ago.”

  “Naturally. What did you expect me to do, tackle a crazy man?”

  “He’s not crazy. He’s emotionally exhausted.”

  “Same difference, as far as I’m concerned. You’d better watch out for yourself, Mrs. Bream.” He appeared reluctant to leave, as if he had misgivings about his behavior and wanted to confess and apologize but didn’t know how to go about it. “What are you going to do about the gun?”

  “I have no idea. What does anyone do about a gun?”

  “Unload it, that’s the first thing. Let me see it.”

  She opened her purse. She knew nothing about guns but it seemed odd to her that it wasn’t heavier, more substantial.

  “It’s not real,” Blake said, in a high, tinny voice.

  “Pardon?”

  “It’s a toy, a cap pistol.” The color of shame and fury spread across his face. “A cap pistol. And I was taken in. I was . . .” I was a coward. I was scared by a toy gun and a little man years older than I am. Scaredy-cat, scaredy-cat.

  “I’m so relieved,” Thelma said. “I should have guessed, of course. Harry just isn’t the type to harm anyone even if he wanted to. People can’t get away from their own type no matter how hard they try.”

  “Can’t they?”

  “Poor Harry. A toy gun. Well, I suppose we’ll all look back on this some day and laugh. I mean, there was I, scared out of my wits, and you—I thought you were going to faint, you looked petrified.”

  “I wasn’t frightened in the least,” he said, and giving her a look of hatred, he turned and opened the door and ran down the porch steps, fleeing from his own identity, pur­sued by his own shadow.

  Thelma started to call after him, to tell him not to bother about the water-softener, but at that moment the telephone began ringing again. This time she answered it promptly because she didn’t want Harry to wake up.

  “Hello?”

  “Thelma, this is Ralph. I’ve been trying to reach you for hours.”

  “I was out.” I don’t even have to lie, she thought. I was out. Out of patience. “Is anything wrong?”

  “Maybe. Harry came to my office this morning. He looked in terrible shape, as if he’d been on a binge for a week. I know that can’t be true, though. He’s afraid to drink since he had to pay that two hundred dollar fine after the acci­dent.”

  “Why worry about him?”

  “He was talking—well, pretty unrealistically. About you, and going home, and how he intended to get a firm hand on the reins, that sort of thing.”

  “So?”

  “I thought you should be warned. He’s a hell of a good guy, Thelma, it’s up to us to keep him out of trouble.”

  “Not us,” Thelma said dryly. “You.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He’s here now. Sleeping. After making a delightful scene in front of a total stranger. It’s the last straw. If he’s going to be kept out of trouble you’ll have to do it, you and Bill Winslow or Joe Hepburn. You’re his friends. I’m not.”

  “What are we supposed to do?”

  “I’m going out now, to Ron’s funeral—and you can start raving and ranting about bad form or anything else, but it won’t do any good. I’m going. And when I get back, I want Harry out of here, out of this house. If he’s still here when I come back, I’m going to phon
e the police and have him arrested for threatening me with a gun.

  “A gun?”

  “Oh, just a cap pistol, as it turned out. But the threat was real and I have a witness. Harry can be arrested.”

  “You wouldn’t . . .”

  “Wouldn’t I? Listen, I’m fed up. I’m sick and tired and fed up. These scenes are tearing me apart. I have my health to consider, and my baby. I need peace and quiet, relaxation. How can I get any, with him barging around like a maniac? I would do anything to get rid of him. And I will, if you don’t prevent it.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “He won’t be here when I come back?”

  “No.”

  “Promise?”

  “Yes.”

  “I suppose I should thank you in advance, only—well, whatever you do will be for Harry’s sake, not mine. I ask no favors from anyone.”

  “I understand that. Go-it-alone Thelma, as usual.”

  “I’m not quite alone.” She hung up.

  In the living room Harry lay crushed among the pillows, dreaming of triumphs and defeats, the rhythm of his gentle snoring broken now and then by a catch of his breath, a pause, a sigh.

  What long eyelashes he has, Thelma thought. Then she said softly, “Good-bye, Harry.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Harry remained at home and slept through the funeral, partly from a desire to escape it, partly from genuine weariness. By the time Turee and Bill Winslow arrived at the house, he was awake and sitting up on the davenport, though still dazed.

  “How did you fellows get here?”

  “Thelma left the door unlocked,” Turee said.

  “No, I mean, what brought . . . ?”

  “Action now, explanations later. Come on, Harry.”

  “Come on where?”

  “To my house.”

  “I don’t want to go to your house. I’m staying here. I’m waiting for Thelma.”

  “Thelma’s not coming back until you leave.”

  “But she has to. She promised to make me fried chicken for dinner. I commanded her to.”

  “Oh, great, great,” Winslow said. After the funeral, he’d had three quick, long martinis which had submerged his sorrow but left a lump of anger sticking in his throat like an olive pit. “You commanded her to. Fine. With a toy gun. Even better. What makes you pull such damnfool stunts?”