He began to clean up.
'She came,' Henry said. 'Oh yes, she came. And she was... excited
and happy.'
'What?' Dex said.
'Excited,' he repeated. 'She was whining and carping the way she
always did in that high, unpleasant voice, but that was just habit, I
think. All those years, Dex, the only part of me she wasn't able to
completely control, the only part she could never get completely
under her thumb, was my friendship with you. Our two drinks
while she was at class. Our chess. Our... companionship.'
Dex nodded. Yes, companionship was the right word. A little light
in the darkness of loneliness. It hadn't just been the chess or the
drinks; it had been Henry's face over the board, Henry's voice
recounting how things were in his department, a bit of harmless
gossip, a laugh over something.
'So she was whining and bitching in her best 'just call me Billie'
style, but I think it was just habit. She was excited and happy, Dex.
Because she was finally going to be able to get control over the last
... little.., bit.' He looked at Dex calmly. 'I knew she'd come, you
see. I knew she'd want to see what kind of mess you gotten
yourself into, Dex.'
'They're downstairs,' Henry told Wilma. Wilma was wearing a
bright yellow sleeveless blouse and green pants that were too tight
for her. 'Right downstairs.' And he uttered a sudden, loud laugh.
Wilma's head whipped around and her narrow face darkened with
suspicion. 'What are you laughing about?' She asked in her loud,
buzzing voice. 'Your best friend gets in a scrape with a girl and
you're laughing?'
No, he shouldn't be laughing. But he couldn't help it. It was sitting
under the stairs, sitting there squat and mute, just try telling that
thing in the crate to call you Billie, Wilma--and another loud laugh
escaped him and went rolling down the dim first-floor hall like a
depth charge.
'Well, there is a funny side to it,' he said, hardly aware of what he
was saying. 'Wait'Il you see. You'll think--'
Her eyes, always questing, never still, dropped to his front pocket,
where he had stuffed the rubber gloves.
'What are those? Are those gloves?'
Henry began to spew words. At the same time he put his arm
around Wilma's bony shoulders and led her toward the stairs.
'Well, he's passed out, you know. He smells like a distillery. Can't
guess how much he drank. Threw up all over everything. I've been
cleaning up. Hell of an awful mess, Billie. I persuaded the girl to
stay a bit. You'll help me, won't you? This is Dex, after all.'
'I don't know,' she said, as they began to descend the stairs to the
basement lab. Her eyes snapped with dark glee. 'I'll have to see
what the situation is. You don't know anything, that's obvious.
You're hysterical. Exactly what I would have expected.'
'That's right,' Henry said. They had reached the bottom of the
