She felt she had told him a great deal about herself then, much more than was usual to her nature. She felt almost frightened, wondering what he would do with what she’d said, and the silence from the phone extended this time, and he did nothing with it, and finally she said, hesitantly, “Hello? Are you there?”
“I’m here.” He said it distractedly, and then there was silence again, and when next he spoke, his voice was matter of fact, seamless again, without the increase in pressure. “What you do right now,” he said, “you pack everything there that’s mine and get it out. Stow it all in one of the empty houses around there. But do it now, don’t wait till morning.”
“You don’t have that much here,” she said. Looking around the dimlit bedroom, all she saw of his was one pair of shoes on the floor near the closet.
“So it won’t take long,” he said. “If anybody comes looking for me, you don’t fight them. Understand me? You don’t fight them.”
She felt herself getting mulish again, thinking of the practice time with the rifle, but she fought the mulish feeling down and said, “What do I do instead?”
“Tell them you just run a message service, you only see me two or three times a year, when I give you some money for taking care of my messages. What you tell them, any time a message comes for me you call the Wilmington Hotel in New York and leave it for me in the name of Edward Latham. You got that?”
“Yes. But what—”
“Give me the names back.”
She hadn’t been paying particular attention to the names, not knowing they meant anything. She said, “Is it important?”
“Yes. Those are the names to use.”
“Wilmington Hotel,” she said, trying to remember. “Edward— I’m sorry.”
“Latham. Edward Latham.”
“Edward Latham. Is that all?”
“Don’t antagonize them. They’re very mean people.”
The very flatness of the statement made her believe him. “I know how to be a little mouse,” she said, remembering times when she’d fought male strength with female cunning, feeling strong in the memories.
“That’s good,” he said. “I’ll get back there as soon as I can.”
It was rare that he let her feel tender toward him. “I know you will,” she said.
“Clean my stuff out of there right away.”
“I will.”
She heard the click as he hung up, but held the phone to her ear a second or so longer, then reluctantly put it back in its cradle.
Get his things out of here. It was after two in the morning, she was ready for bed, the temptation was strong to let it go until morning. But she believed him about the people he was involved with, and she believed he knew best how to prepare for them. Reluctant, but dogged, she got out of bed again, turned on the overhead light, and got his suitcase from the closet.
One suitcase was all it took; that, and fifteen minutes. Then she dressed, putting clothes on over the nightgown, and lugged the suitcase through the kitchen and out of the house.
It was very dark out, patches of cloud in the sky, no moon. She stood on the gravel a minute, then put the suitcase down, went back into the house, and got the flashlight from its kitchen drawer.
Stow his things in an empty house, he’d said. The houses were empty on both sides, why not pick one of them? She shone the flashlight right and left, and chose the house to her left because there seemed to be fewer trees and bushes in the way.
She left the suitcase outside the lake-side door, and went around the house trying doors and windows, all of which were locked. Finally she broke a window on the side opposite her own house, unlocked it, raised it, and climbed in. The electricity was turned off, so she found her way through to the rear door by flashlight, unlocked it, opened it, and brought the suitcase inside. The bedroom closet seemed a perfectly adequate place to leave it. She went out by the door, leaving it unlocked, and went back across to her own place and inside, carefully locking the door behind her.
In bed again, in the darkness, the rifle on the floor under the bed, she lay gazing at the paler rectangle of the window and thought about Parker, and began to think sexually about Parker. She was lying on her back, but the sexual images involving Parker grew so insistent she rolled over on her side, trying to find a position without sexual connotations.
It was strange, this feeling. When she was involved with a man, and he was with her, she had very strong and healthy sex urges, but when she was alone she never thought very much about sex at all. She had always been glad to welcome Parker back after one of his jobs, because his own sexual appetites were always at their strongest then, but the time spent waiting was usually empty of sexual frustration. Yet tonight her mind was crowded with remembered incidents, moments, expressions, and she couldn’t get rid of them, couldn’t get to sleep.
After a long while the window rectangle began to lighten. “This is ridiculous,” she said, aloud, and got out of bed. She went to the kitchen and brought back the radio and turned on an all-night music station from New York. Listening to the music, the announcer, the commercials, she finally began to relax toward sleep. During the five a.m. news her mind at last shut down and she slept. And in her dreams Parker mounted her and stroked long and deep and endless, and it kept being spoiled for her because there was someone else just over his shoulder.
None of the dogs were any good. Today was Sunday, so no pet shops were open, and Claire had been limited to the private owners advertising in the local Sunday paper. Most of the dogs listed were puppies, and though under normal circumstances she would have like to start with a puppy and watch it grow, what she needed was a dog that would be a guardian and defender of the house right now.
Three of the advertised dogs were full-grown, and calls to their present owners had made them seem possible
