I drove back and she met me on the porch.
“Did you take care of what you had to take care of?”
“Uh-huh.”
We had something between us now, but maybe she wasn’t going to admit it was there. They’re like that sometimes. You wallow in bed with them all night, and the next day it’s, “Good morning, Mr. Ruxton. Would you sign these forms, please? Thank you, Mr. Ruxton.”
She kept looking at me. Her eyes were cool.
“I hurried,” I said.
She smiled. I began to feel better, because the smile was in her eyes. It was going to be okay.
“How’s he doing?” I said.
“Who?”
“Victor. Good old son-of-a-bitching Victor.”
We went inside and she closed the door.
“I wish he was dead.” She came against me and held on. I kissed her and she pushed away and walked across the living room, and stood by the cocktail table, looking down at the folders and junk I’d left there.
I stood there and looked coldly at her back, and listened in my mind to exactly how she had said that.
I went up behind her and cleared my throat. She moved back against me and pressed, then looked up over her shoulder, smiling. I thrust her away. She turned and looked at me along her eyes.
“I’m wearing a skirt,” she said. “See.”
“I see.”
Her eyes were sly. The skirt was tight and dark blue. She had on a white blouse. She still wore the sandals.
“Would you want a speaker out back, too?” I said. “So it’ll cover the yard, in case you’re out there?”
She said, “Skirts are better.” Then she whispered, “You tore my pants all to hell.” She held her right palm against her leg on the skirt and dragged her palm upward. The thin skirt came with it, sliding against the white flesh until her thigh was bare to the hip. “See?”
I began to sweat. “The speaker,” I said. “In the back yard.”
She spoke normally, holding the skirt up. She moved her hip a little. “I was going to ask you about that, Mr. Ruxton. We may as well do a complete job while we’re at it.”
“Sure thing.” I shot a glance at his bedroom door. The door was closed. I looked back at her and her face had changed. Her expression was bad. She let the skirt fall down.
She turned without looking at me and headed straight for her bedroom, walking as softly as a cat. I followed her. She went into the bedroom and I stepped just inside the door. The room was at the rear of the house, opposite the kitchen. It was all done in pink, with ruffles, and it smelled of her perfume.
She looked at me. “I feel as if I’ve known you for a long while.”
“Yeah.”
“I mean it, Jack.”
It was the first time she’d called me Jack. No one else had ever said it quite that way, in just that tone of voice.
She sat down at the foot of the bed and leaned against the mahogany bedpost, and wrapped her hands around it, staring at the floor.
“Jack,” she said. “I can’t stand it.” She didn’t say anything for a moment, staring at the floor, and neither did I. Then she said, “I’ve got to talk to somebody about it. It’s driving me out of my mind.”
I waited. She kept on staring at the floor. There was a tenseness in the very look of her, and it had been revealed in her tone. Whatever it was, she didn’t really want to talk about it. You could see her struggle against herself. But she knew she would lose.
“I’m afraid,” she said.
Well, I began to really know, then. Before, I’d felt as if I might have read her wrong. Now I was sure about her. It could have been the mailman, the milkman, even Doctor Miraglia. Anybody. Then I thought, No, don’t get it wrong. You happened to be here and you saw it in her, and she knows you saw it. Somebody else might have missed it. Only I might never know exactly what it was that had tipped me.
“I’m scared to death, Jack.” She stared at the wall, looking toward the other side of the house. “He lies there. He’s dying.” She paused. I’d been right. She was pulling something up out of her that had been sealed and locked in dark secret compartments for a long time. Every word seemed to be painful. “It goes on and on,” she said. “It may go on for years and years. The doctor told me that.”
“You’ve got it pretty soft. Why kick?”
She looked at me and for a second hate shot out of her eyes. Her voice was tight and sibilant. “Soft? For three years I’ve done this.” It was tearing her apart to tell it. But the need was overwhelming. “Three long horrible years. You call that having it soft?”
I shrugged.
“You wonder why I do it,” she said. And now the bitterness. “Isn’t it obvious?”
I shrugged again.
“Well, isn’t it?”
I still didn’t speak.
She let go of the bedpost and sat very stiffly. Then she began rocking slightly forward and backward, rubbing her hands tightly against her thighs.
“Why not leave?” I said. “You can get a job.”
“No. I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s leaving me everything when he dies, that’s why. All his money. Everything.” She swallowed tightly. “He thinks I’m the only friend he’s ever had—something. I don’t know. It’s crazy. I can’t leave—I can’t.”
My throat felt dry. “It won’t last forever.”
“Any time is forever. Right now is forever the way I feel.”
She stood up, staring at me.
I said, “It’s a lot of money?”
She pressed both hands against the side of her face and said, “Yes.”
“If he were in a hospital, you’d be free. You wouldn’t have to worry about this. Only you don’t want him in a hospital. Do you.”
“No.”
“Why, Shirley?’
“I just don’t, that’s all.”
“Yes. But, why?”
“I just don’t. Isn’t that a good enough reason?”
“No.”
“I’ll take care of him. I promised.”
“No,” I said. “That’s not the reason. Think, Shirley. Why don’t you want Victor Spondell put away in a hospital?”
She tried to speak, but nothing came past her lips. She didn’t want to hear herself say it. Her eyes were dark now, the pupils large and black, staring from the strange pallor of her face.
“I’ll tell you why,” I said. “It’s because Victor might live on and on for a long, long time, and you couldn’t do anything to prevent it. You couldn’t get at him in a hospital. That’s why.”
She lunged at me and slapped my face. She slapped it again, striking savagely. She was crying, sobbing. I grabbed her wrists and tried to hold her. She fought like a wild Indian.
“It’s the truth,” I said. “Face it.”
“No!”
She wrenched one hand loose and raked her nails down the side of my neck. I grabbed the wrist again and held on. She squirmed and writhed and kicked. Her face was wrung with fright. She was crying inside, but there were no tears in her eyes.
