“Uh, no,” I said. “Not at all.”
“I wasn’t sure if I should, after what happened to you in Oroville. I probably should have called first, but…”
“No, it’s all right.”
“May I come in?”
“Sure. Sure thing.”
I stepped aside and she brushed past me; that spicy perfume or whatever it was tickled my nose again and put funny thoughts into my head. When I turned to shut the door I saw her wince. She was staring at the back of my skull where they’d shaved off some of the hair and stuck the bandage on.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” I said.
“I hope not. Do you have much pain?”
“Not really.”
“That’s good.” She studied me speculatively for a moment. Then she smiled again, a different kind of smile this time. “Do you know what a sin-eater is?” she asked.
“Huh?”
“A sin-eater. A person who takes on the sins of others, absorbs them for purposes of absolution. It’s an old Cornish superstition.”
“Is that what you think I am? A sin-eater?”
“In a way,” she said. “But it’s not the sins of the individual you keep taking on; it’s the sins of the world. In microcosm, of course.”
She’s kidding me, I thought. Or is she? In any case, she was making me feel self-conscious. Here I was, standing around in my underwear thinking dirty thoughts, and she was nominating me for sainthood again.
“Well, uh,” I said, and stopped because I couldn’t think of anything to say. Then I was aware again of the portfolio she was carrying. “What have you got in there?” I asked her, not very brightly.
“Oh, yes-some photos I did for a piece on secondhand bookstores a couple of years ago. They’ll give you an idea of the sort of thing I want to do with your pulps.” She was looking at the shelves of them as she spoke. “That is an impressive collection,” she said.
“Well, I’ve been at it a long time.”
She opened the portfolio and took out a handful of eight-by-ten glossies and put them on the coffee table. “These are black-and-white,” she said. “I was going to do a black-and-white study, but all those bright colors are wonderful. Color would be much better.”
She went to the nearest of the shelves and I waddled over there after her; if I’d had a tail it probably would have been wagging. I watched her take down one of the pulps that I’d arranged so their covers faced into the room, slip it out of its protective plastic bag, and study it.
“This is fantastic,” she said. “I didn’t know they had covers like this.”
What she was holding was an early issue of Dime Mystery with cover art that depicted three half-naked young girls tied up in a room full of red firelight, an old hag with a gnarled cane and an evil leer, and a drooling Neanderthal type, whose name was probably Igor, dragging another attractive young victim into the lair. The issue’s featured stories were “Murder Dyed Their Lips” by Norvell W. Page and “Slaves of the Holocaust” by Paul Ernst.
“It’s typical of the shudder pulps back in the thirties,” I told her.
“Shudder pulps?”
“Also known as weird menace pulps. Sex-and-sadism stuff, though pretty mild by today’s standards.”
“Are women always treated so shabbily in these magazines?”
“The torture stuff? Pretty much, I’m afraid.”
She put the copy back on the shelf. “Then that’s something I’ll want to touch on in the article. Contrast the attitudes of the thirties with those of today.”
I said, “About that article, Ms. Emerson…”
“Jeanne. Now don’t tell me you’re going to say no.”
“Well…”
She stepped closer to me and put her hand on my arm and looked up into my face. It was an imploring look, but there was intimacy in it, too. That and the nearness of her and that damned musky perfume were enough to start me drooling like old Igor on the pulp cover.
And so of course the door opened and Kerry walked in.
She’d used her key; and she’d done it quietly enough so that neither Jeanne Emerson nor I had heard it in the latch. She started to sing out a hello, stopped dead when she saw us. Jeanne let go of my arm and backed up a step. I just stood there like a dolt.
The three of us looked at one another. The expression on Kerry’s face said: What’s she doing here? The expression on Jeanne Emerson’s face said the same thing. Christ only knew what the expression on my face said.
Nobody spoke for what seemed like a long time. Then I said, “Uh,” and “Uh” again, and finally found some words to go with the grunts: “Kerry, this is Jeanne Emerson. She’s a photojournalist, she wants to do a piece on me…”
“I’m sure she does,” Kerry said.
“She just dropped by to show me some photos…”
“Mm. How do you do, Ms. Emerson?”
“Fine, thanks. And you? Kerry, is it?”
“Kerry Wade. I’m just dandy.”
They smiled at each other in that overly pleasant, calculating way women have in situations like this. It made me nervous. I wanted to say something else, but anything I was liable to toss out between them would only make matters worse. I kept my mouth shut.
Kerry said at length, “We were going to have breakfast. Won’t you join us, Ms. Emerson?”
“No, thanks. I’ve already had my breakfast. Some other time, perhaps.”
“I’m sure I’d enjoy it.”
“I’m sure I would, too.” Jeanne went to the coffee table and scooped up her portfolio case. “I’ll leave these glossies here for you to look at,” she said to me. “In a day or two I’ll call you and we’ll set a time to begin shooting.”
“Well, uh…”
“Good-bye, Ms. Wade,” she said to Kerry. “Nice meeting you.”
“The same here, Ms. Emerson.”
When she was gone, Kerry looked at me for a time without saying anything. I felt like a kid who’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Except that I hadn’t been. Thinking about something doesn’t mean you intend to do anything about it.
“She came by unexpectedly,” I said. “What could I do? Tell her not to come in?”
“Did I say anything?”
“No. I’m just trying to explain…”
“Why do you think you have to explain?”
“Kerry, I told you before about Jeanne Emerson. I told you about that magazine article she wants to do…”
“You didn’t tell me you were such good friends.”
“We’re not good friends.”
“It looked like you were getting to be when I came in.”
“Nuts,” I said. “Let’s not talk about Jeanne Emerson, okay? Let’s have breakfast.”
So we had breakfast and we didn’t talk about Jeanne Emerson. We didn’t talk about much of anything. Kerry was as overly pleasant to me as she’d been to Jeanne, which meant that there was a storm of unknown magnitude brewing inside her. I wished she would let it come out; I wished she would cloud up and rain all over me, as they used to say. But that didn’t happen. All I got was the saccharine and the moody silence.
Over coffee in the living room, I said, “Eberhardt called after you did; he wants me to stop over for a while this afternoon. Why don’t you come along? That’ll keep him from pestering me about the partnership thing.”
