“No.”
The wind shook the windows, boards and glass alike; she grabbed me. She was terrified. So I kissed her, just to settle her down. It led to more.
“You must think
“Not at all.”
“You think I’m shallow. You think I’m silly.”
“Sure. But not terrible.”
She laughed; it was a husky laugh. “I’m getting old, Nate. These breasts of mine are starting to droop.”
“Not that I can see. Anyway, I’ll be glad to lift ’em for you-anytime.”
“You. You.”
I kissed her again. She seemed to have forgotten about her kidnapper or ghost or whatever-it-was making footsteps in the hall and above the ceiling. Or had she invented that to find a way into my room, without looking “terrible”?
“That’s an ominous-looking thing.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.
“I mean the gun.”
“Oh. Well, ominous is a good way for a gun to look.”
“Have…have you ever killed anyone with it?”
“Yes. I killed a kidnapper not so long ago. That’s why Lindy thinks I’m a prince.”
“You talk about it so…casually.”
“I’m not really casual about it, Evalyn. I don’t ever mean to use a gun casually. That gun of all guns….”
“What about that gun?”
I didn’t say anything.
“What is it, Nate?”
“Evalyn, I…nothing.”
“What?”
“Well. Look, I’ll be frank with you. I might’ve dismissed you as a silly, shallow woman, if it weren’t for some of what you’ve been through. If you don’t mind my saying.”
“Such as?”
I swallowed. “Losing your son.”
She touched my face.
I touched her face.
She said, “You lost somebody, too, didn’t you?”
I nodded.
“Nate…are you…?”
I wiped my face with my hand; the hand came away wet. “No. Sweating. These blankets.”
“Who, Nate? Who did you lose?”
And I told her. I told her slowly, and in detail, about my father. About what I’d done to make him use my gun on himself. About how I carried that gun so I wouldn’t forget.
“But I do forget sometimes,” I admitted. “Life and death are cheap in this lousy goddamn world. Particularly in this lousy goddamn depression.”
“I’m not by nature contemplative,” she said, hugging my arm, staring into the near-darkness. “But the thing I wonder about most is why the universe is geared so to cruelty.”
I kissed her forehead.
The wind was settling down, now; it was making a whistling, almost soothing sound.
“Why don’t you tell me about your son? Tell me about your little boy.”
She did. For perhaps an hour, she told me of her “sweet and preternaturally wise” little boy. Little Vinson was the only ghost in the house, as the candle burned down and night turned to morning, and he was not a sinister presence.
A few hours later, the footsteps in the hall and the thought of ghosts seemed foolish to us as we went down for breakfast. Evalyn was wearing a casual black-and-white frock; I’d been allowed to abandon the chauffeur’s uniform for one of my two suits. Inga was fixing bacon and eggs-Gus the caretaker had dropped off some fresh supplies, it seemed-and the smells of the food and the morning were refreshing.
But Inga seemed even gloomier than usual.
We sat at an unpretentious square table in the kitchen as Inga served us our eggs and bacon and toast with a side order of bloodshot, black-circled eyes.
“My dear,” Evalyn said to the maid, “you must have had a dreadful night!”
Inga said nothing.
“Serve yourself, dear,” Evalyn told her, “and join us.”
Sullenly, Inga did. Her blonde hair hung in strings as she poked at her food. Suddenly she looked up, her eyes as wide and haunted as Evalyn’s had been when she entered my room the night before.
“Madam, if it is just the same to you, could I please change my room tonight?”
“Why, dear?”
“Somebody kept pulling the sheets off my bed every time I went to sleep.”
“Inga,” I said, “is there a lock on your door?”
“Yes-and I used it.”
“And your windows are boarded up, like mine?”
“Yes.”
Evalyn leaned forward, her blue eyes piercing. “You mean to say, Inga, that someone pulled the sheets off your bed when you were alone in the room, with the door locked and the windows boarded up?”
“Yes. Several times this happened. I hardly sleep.”
“You don’t think anybody was hiding in your room or anything?” I asked.
“I had a flashlight,” she said. “I looked under the bed, and in the closet. I was alone.”
“I’ll take that room tonight,” I told her.
For the first time Inga smiled at me. “Thank you, Mr. Heller.”
“With any luck,” Evalyn said, cheerfully, “before then, Means will show up and we’ll take delivery of ‘the book’ and be well out of this funhouse.”
But Means didn’t show.
We spent most of the day, Evalyn and I, walking the weedy, snow-patched grounds, threading through the tall bony naked trees, following paths Evalyn’s mother had traced. Often we held hands, like kids going steady; maybe, in a way, that’s what we were.
That afternoon, elderly, lanky, grossly mustached Gus-who chewed tobacco that he smelled just a little worse than-opened the door to the long-unused third floor. Gus claimed to have the only key, and the door seemed not to have been used in a while-and the caretaker had a hell of a hard time working the key in that rusty lock.
There were no ghosts on the third story other than a few more pieces of sheet-covered furniture. A layer of dust coated the floor, undisturbed by footprints.
Evalyn, standing just behind me, her fingers on my arm, said, “I must have just heard noises the wind made.”
“Must have,” I said.
I didn’t believe in haunted houses, of course, but then lately I’d been exposed to the likes of Edgar Cayce, Sister Sarah Sivella and Chief Yellow Feather, and I was starting to think we ought to start looking for Lindy’s kid in a magician’s top hat.
That evening was just as cold as the previous one, and we again huddled in the kitchen, drinking coffee, wearing blankets, waiting for either Means to show up or the phone to ring or at least some goddamn ghost to materialize. Nothing did.
Evalyn and I spent the night in the room Inga had abandoned. We sat up virtually all night, when we weren’t otherwise entertaining ourselves; Evalyn smoked a pack of cigarettes, and I ran out of Sheiks. It was a long, tiring, memorable night, but no ghosts showed, no footsteps sounded in the hall or on the stairs or on the ceiling, and nobody, flesh or vapor, pulled the covers off.
