The Vengeful Virgin

She looked the nervous type, and loud.

“Shirley,” she said. Her voice was raspy, like the edge of a tin can against slate, “Where’ve you been, honey? I’ve looked all over hell for you.”

This was great.

“Mayda,” Shirley said. “What is it?”

The woman looked at me and made with the sideward glance, waggling penciled eyebrows.

“I’d like to borrow handsome, here. For just a few minutes,” she said. She was maybe thirty-two or three. “I thought you were inside, so I just crashed the gate. You know me.”

Shirley gave me a quick helpless look and tried to tell me something with her eyes that I couldn’t get.

“Mr. Ruxton,” Shirley said. “This is my next door neighbor, Mayda Lamphier.”

“Free, white and twenty-one,” the woman said. She waggled her eyebrows again. “What I mean is, my husband’s in Alaska. He won’t be back for six months. You can imagine how that is, can’t you?”

“What’s up?” Shirley said.

“He’s a TV fixer-upper, isn’t he?”

I said, “Yes.”

“Well, daddy,” she said to me. “My set’s acting up. I saw your truck over here.” She regarded Shirley with a smile. “I figured maybe I could borrow him for a few minutes. It’s probably nothing more than some adjustment.” She gave with the eyebrows again. “The set, of course, honey.”

“I’m just leaving,” I said. “Be glad to take a look.” I turned to Shirley. “See you in the morning, Miss Angela. I’ll try to get everything installed as quickly as possible.”

“Thanks, Mr. Ruxton.”

This was something Shirley hadn’t warned me about. It troubled her. I felt bad about it.

We went across to Mayda’s house and tinkered with the set.

“You were right,” I said to Mayda Lamphier. “It was just the horizontal hold out of kilter. You could’ve fixed it yourself.”

“But it’s so much nicer having you do it. What do I owe you?”

“Nothing. Glad to help.”

“How’s for one for the road?”

“One what?”

“Oh, come, darling. Give me time to get my breath.” She gushed some laughter, eyeing me, and meaning damned well everything she said. “A drink is what I meant.”

“Thanks just the same. I’ve got to get back.”

“I’m all alone in this house,” she said. “I’ve been married for ten years. This is the first time my husband’s ever been away. Think of that.”

I thought of that.

“Know what I mean?” she said.

“You sure must miss him.”

“I don’t miss him worth a hang.” she said. “You know what I mean.”

I looked over at her TV set, in the dimly lighted room. “If you’ll just leave that the way it is, it’ll probably stay okay for a long while.”

“You won’t hang around?”

“I’m sorry. The business keeps me hopping.”

“How you like Shirl?”

“Miss Angela, you mean?”

“You know who I mean, honey.”

“She seems like a nice kid,” I said. I turned and started over toward the door.

“She’s sure tied down with that old monkey,” Mayda Lamphier said. “Know what I mean?”

I opened the front door, turned and looked at her.

She waggled her eyebrows, smiling. “You’re real cute,” she said. “Maybe Shirl won’t have to go running off so much, with you around.”

I hung onto the door. “I don’t get you,” I said quizzically.

“Come, now, darling. She’s always running downtown, running off. Stuck with that old geezer, and as young as she is. I don’t blame her. She’s missing out on all the fun, and she knows it. At her age, she should be having boyfriends—but she doesn’t have a one. I mean, not that you can see. I don’t blame her, whatever she does. Not really.”

Not much, she didn’t. This one was a knife with a sharp blade. Just the same, it was good, having met her. I figured I had acted right with her.

“Well,” I said. “That’s how it goes.”

“You’ll be around—over at Shirl’s?”

“Some work I have to do. It might take a couple of days.”

“I might need you again.”

“Okay. So long.”

I walked out into the street and around the hedge, and back to where I had left the truck parked in the driveway. Shirley was in the shadow of the porch, standing in the driveway.

“Make it look right,” I said, as I came up to the truck. “She’s got a nose forty feet long, and eyes like telescopes. She’s got to be stopped from going in your house. I don’t care how you do it. But do it. Tell her the doctor said nobody’s to come in, because of Victor. Got that?”

“All right, Mr. Ruxton,” she said, just loud enough so it would carry across the hedge. Then she got a little closer to me and spoke softly. “I was going to tell you about her. She’s perfectly harmless. She just thinks she’s full of hell.”

“Thinks or is,” I said. “Stop her. Coral snakes are harmless, too—if you stay away from them. It’s okay for now, because she really believes everything’s on the up and up. We’ve got to keep it that way. Get back inside, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Oh, God, Jack—if you could only stay.” I started the truck up and backed out into the street. Mayda Lamphier was walking back and forth in her living room. I saw her through the windows.

Six

I didn’t sleep worth a damn that night. I smoked cigarettes and lay there staring up at the ceiling, thinking about everything. I went over every detail, and I didn’t see how it could miss.

I got so excited my heart acted as if it had started freewheeling. It wouldn’t slow down. My breathing was all cockeyed, and I couldn’t lie still in the bed. I tried lying every way possible. Nothing worked. I held my breath, trying to slow down my heart and it would slow down, but the second I started breathing again it began hammering. Through it all I kept trying not to think of her, because she stirred me up so bad, just thinking of her, I knew I’d never sleep. I’d be lying there talking to her in my mind, laughing a little to myself, and once I caught myself motioning with my hands, explaining to her how everything would run smooth, and how we’d have the money, and then I’d be kissing her, with my hands snarled in her hair, and we’d be wild. So I’d get up.

I tried fixing a stiff drink. It only made things worse. So I quit trying to sleep. I took a scratch pad, and pencil, and got in bed, and lay there figuring loopholes. I made lists of everything I could think of. I put her down in black and white. Shirley Angela. I tried to coldly analyze all the movements she would make from the time Victor had The Attack until after the will was probated, and we had the money, and then the waiting after that. I’d find myself lying back staring into a misty pastel Rio de Janeiro, with her laughing and pushing against me with her hip, or maybe the two of us lying in a ritzy hotel bedroom on one of those oversized beds. And she would be naked, with that auburn hair fanned out around her head on the pillow.

So then I began all over again, with the intercom units. I would solder the coupling condenser to the grid terminal, and do a sloppy job.

I thought about how I would act, how sorry I would be when they told me it was my fault he died. So I got off that tack, right away, and began thinking about the big beds with her again, and somewhere along in there I konked off and Shirley Angela turned into Mayda Lamphier. I kept chasing Mayda Lamphier through an endless living room full of TV sets. She would stand on a TV set, and take off pieces of clothing, until she was leaping from one TV set