to the other with nothing on but a raggedy blouse, flapping out behind her. I caught her. Just as I got my hands on her, she gave a yell, and this Doctor Miraglia popped up from behind all the TV sets. I came awake in a sweat.
I got up and burned all the paper I’d been figuring on, and flushed it down the john. It was daylight outside.
The buzzer sounded. It was Grace at the door.
“I just stopped over to say goodbye,” she said.
“Okay,” I said. “Goodbye.” I started to close the door.
“Goddamn you, Jack!”
She lunged against the door and came into the apartment. She stood there looking at me. I wasn’t sure whether she would cry or scream or what.
“I told you not to come here,” I said. “For Christ’s sake, it’s practically still dark outside.”
She began pacing up and down, rubbing her hands together. I watched her. I didn’t like any part of it. All I wanted to do was get her the hell out of here. She was slim and blonde, with a tightly packed, well-shaped body. She had on a fresh pink dress, and she wasn’t carrying anything, not even a purse. She always walked kind of heavy on her heels, and I watched her breasts jiggle as she moved around the room. She was trying to look determined, and having a hard time of it.
“What do you want?” I said. “Look, Grace. Start using your head, will you?”
She turned and stared at me for maybe three seconds, her eyes real cool. “All right, Jack. I wanted this to go right. I see it hasn’t. It never will. I’m going away, leaving town. I’ll quit bothering you. I wanted to say I’m sorry.” She started pounding toward the door, and stopped in front of me, and her lips twisted with it. “But I’m not sorry.”
“Okay. So long, Grace. Take care of yourself, for old times’ sake.”
She was a finagling woman. Sometimes she more than just scared me. I stood there waiting for her to go, afraid to say anything else for fear she’d take it wrong. No matter what you said, Grace would take it as an insult, or some kind of probe among her defenses.
“You won’t see me again,” she said. “Don’t worry.”
I still didn’t say anything. I wondered if she was going to start the suicide bit again. She didn’t. She kept looking at me for a minute, with her mouth kind of twisted up that way, then she went over to the door, and out into the hall. She slammed the door. I listened to her walking away down the hall, the heels smacking.
The next day was rough. I worked hard and got the intercom units wired into the house. I left the business about the television set on the ceiling in his bedroom until last, because I figured to get the intercoms in so he could fiddle with them and get tired of them as soon as possible.
We had a few minutes in the kitchen when I first started working; we went over everything together again. She had come up with one or two minor snags, like Doctor Miraglia showing right at the moment when Victor was dying, or Victor maybe somehow getting out of bed and running into the street because she wasn’t helping him. I told her those were chances we had to take. I convinced her they wouldn’t happen.
“I spoke to Mayda,” she said. “I told her Victor had to have absolute quiet from now on, and he mustn’t get excited, so she shouldn’t come into the house. I told her I was very sorry. She understood, all right.”
“She’s a big mouth,” I said. “She might mention it to Miraglia, later on, and he’d say he never gave any such orders.”
“I’ll tell him about her, when I see him. I’ll tell him I used him as an excuse to get rid of her because she’s such a bore.”
“Good. That’s perfect.”
“She mentioned you.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s all right, though. I fixed that. I told her you were an awful dope, stuff like that. How you couldn’t wait to finish the job. I didn’t make any big thing of it, of course.”
“Shirley,” I said. “I just thought of something. You’ll have to impress this on your mind until it’s an automatic action. The speakers I’m going to put up out back in the yard will have a volume control. You’ll have to see that they’re turned off. And as soon as he’s—gone, you’ll have to turn them on—and you can’t be seen doing it. It would cook us. If he started yelling over the intercom before the unit grounds out, somebody would sure as hell hear him.”
“Could they hear him from inside the house?”
“His voice is too weak to carry that far. Like as not, the unit will short right out. Now, don’t worry about that. I can do it perfect. But you’ve got to be sure you turn those speakers on, because that’s where you’ll say you were when it happened. In the dark, by the Gulf, sitting. You can say you like to sit out there at night.”
“I’ll remember. You’ll have to show me the volume controls.”
“Yeah.”
“Jack, you don’t think they’ll suspect us.”
“How can they? Don’t you worry. It’ll be my fault, like I said, and that won’t mean a thing. I’m just a television repairman, see? There’s nothing between you and me. We’ve only just met. That’s the first thing. Any number of people can attest to that. They’ll never suspect you. All they’ll think is that you got a break.” I hesitated, and pulled her to me, and kissed her, then let her go, because I didn’t want anything starting up right then. “Know what the word will be?” I said. “They’ll say, Poor old Spondell, he’s better off dead. He was suffering. It’s a shame to say it, but you’re better off, and he’s better off. All these years you’ve nursed him, waited on him hand and foot. If they think anything bad, it’ll be counteracted by their own thoughts that he’s better off dead.”
“Don’t say it anymore, Jack.”
“I know. It kind of gets you, sometimes. But, listen, Shirley. We can’t be seen together, and you can’t call me. I’ll contact you somehow, if need be. We can use the alibi of my coming out here to adjust something—once, maybe twice. No more. I’ll be out once to solder the condenser. We should leave it at that.”
“I’ll go crazy.”
“No, you won’t.”
It wasn’t easy, the way she paraded around the rest of the day. She had on a pair of white shorts and a white sweater. The only thing that kept me from busting a seam was the thought of what we’d have when it was all over.
I explained to Victor how the unit in his room worked. He got a kick out of it. He was like a kid.
“All you have to do is flip that switch, and talk,” I told him. “Simple.”
“Maybe you’re not such a son of a bitch, after all, Ruxton,” he said, grinning up at me. There were little dabs of bright red coloring on his cheeks today, and his eyes were bright. He looked over where she was standing at the foot of the bed, by those feet. “Shirley,” he said. “Honey, you go out in the kitchen and listen for me. Say something.”
She did. It went on that way. He kept her jumping and pretty well tied up, talking nonsense from one room to the other, playing radio announcer, and imitating Jack Benny.
Like a kid, he was.
Just the same, he was going to die.
All the time I worked, I kept going over and over every point on the program. I examined each point from all angles. It occurred to me that Victor would want to show Miraglia how the intercoms worked. Shirley would have to go along with that and show some excitement. I told her, and she okayed it.
While I was out back putting up the two PA speakers, one on the coconut palm and the other on the side of the house, somebody called.
“Hello, handsome.”
It was Mayda Lamphier, over in her yard, beyond the hedge. I nodded and kept working. She stood there for a while, wanting to say something. She gave it up, and went inside her house.
I put the speakers down just low enough so Shirley could reach the volume controls.
We had to move his bed so I could fasten the TV set on the ceiling. I worked with a ladder, with him lying in bed, watching. I got the set up there with a sling hoist, and bolted it to brackets fastened through the ceiling to rafters.
Shirley kept saying, “Are you all right, Mr. Ruxton? Can I help you, Mr. Ruxton?”
I just grunted.
