“Jack?” he said. “It’s for you.” He grinned, covered the mouthpiece, and whispered, “Sounds like real stuff. What a voice. Va-voom!”
“Okay.” I was plenty nervous. I said, “Ruxton speaking.”
“It’s all set,” she said. “I flipped the switch. And it’s like you said, Jack. It doesn’t bother him much that it’s not working. He’s over the excitement of it, and I’ve talked him into using it only for emergencies. I told him to remember, that was why we really had it installed. He’s taken to watching TV, now.”
“I see,” I said, loud enough so Pete Stallsworth could hear. “I’ll be right out. I’m very sorry you’ve had this inconvenience.”
“He just says to have it fixed.”
“All right.”
“There’s something I’d personally like fixed, too.”
“What’s that?”
“You guess.”
She could be like a bomb, sometimes. I went out there, driving the truck like a madman. I had been practicing soldering connections and making a sloppy job of it, for two days. The right kind of perfect, sloppy job. I had it so pat I could make a unit ground out with my eyes closed, and time it to within a matter of seconds.
I parked in her drive, got out the tools, and went to the door. She opened the screen with her knee.
She whispered it. “I wore a skirt.”
“Well, keep it down,” I shot at her. “I want to be steady now.”
She was lovely. I wanted to stand there and stare at her. Her eyes were full of excitement, and her hair was brushed out thick and full. She wore a white blouse with a big curling starched collar, and a full, fluffed out print skirt, loaded with splotches of color.
His bedroom door was closed.
“Jack,” she said. “We almost fouled up.”
“How do you mean?”
“When I turned off the main switch, the TV set went off, too.”
It had completely slipped my mind. I broke out in a sweat.
“It’s all right,” she said. “I figured it out. I put the switch back on when he mentioned it, then just loosened the fuse for his section of the house. It’s marked on the box.”
“Good girl,” I said. “That was close.”
From then on, I intended to be a lot more careful. It showed me how easy it was to miss on some point, even when you were watching everything. It was an obvious point. That’s what made it so bad.
We went into his room. He lay there with his gray eyebrows snarling, and gave me the glad, “Hello, Ruxton. How’s the old son-of-a-bitch, today?”
I didn’t think he looked so hot. I hoped I was right. After he spoke, he just lay there, and watched, without much comment. The TV set was on, with the sound turned down. I thought how it would have been if I had plugged the TV into a socket in his room, instead of on a different line in the attic. She would never have figured it out. There would have been no way to turn off just the intercom alone.
“We’ll fix you up in a jiffy,” I said.
She stood behind me, watching. I knew she was nervous. He watched with those eyes, breathing sickishly. It got me nervous, too. I lit a cigarette, and uncovered the unit, and had a look.
“Blow a tube, Ruxton?” he said.
“Could be. We’ll see.”
I went around the house, and made as if I were checking all the units, after I disconnected the one in his room. I tightened the fuse in the fuse box in the utility room. Then I went back and picked up the unit in his room, and said, “Ah-ha! Here it is.”
So I soldered a .005 mfd coupling condenser to a grid terminal of a tube socket. The solder flowed like hot gravy. Not a slip-up. It was really a neat job of sloppy work.
I put the unit back together, flipped it on, and let him try it out. Then I turned it off. It would work for approximately ten seconds before heating up enough to expand the metal, make contact, and ground out. The clearance was so close that once it went out, it would stay that way for good.
I looked at him. He was staring at me.
“Questions?” I said.
He didn’t say anything, watching me.
“No, Ruxton,” he said. “No questions.”
I took another look at him, hoped it would be my last, and went into the living room. She was right there, showing me her skirt.
“I can’t hang around,” I said. “We can’t take any chances. Right now is when it’s easy to slip up, make some damned fool mistake.”
“Please, Jack—hold me.”
Well, I held her. I held her tight, and looked over her shoulder at his bedroom door.
I said, “Don’t call me unless something unforeseen comes up. Otherwise, I’ll read about it in the papers.”
“This is it, isn’t it, Jack.”
“Yeah, that’s for sure.”
“I mean,” she said. “You know, it isn’t a bad feeling. I mean, it’s exciting. There’s so much to come.”
“Let’s hope it’s all things we can handle. Don’t get cocky. Keep levelheaded.”
“I love you, Jack.”
“I love you, too.”
“Say my name.”
“Shirley.”
“It shivers me,” she said. “It’s going to be rugged, not seeing you.”
“That’s how it’s got to be.”
“Jack, I’m all yours. All of me. I just want to be yours.”
I said, “You know how it is. Neither of us would be worth a damn, without that money. That’s how it is.”
“I’m not forgetting that.”
I said, “You’re sure the money’s not tied up, so we can’t get at it.”
“It’s like I told you. There’s that in the bank, in cash. He does have some invested, but everything’s negotiable. There’s not a thing to stew about, believe me.”
“And you want to go through with this.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because now’s the time to say it.”
“I want to go through with it. God, how I want that.”
“Okay,” I said. “We’re on the way. This is it.”
I left, then. And, well, there was a look in her eye. I got to thinking maybe it wouldn’t be long before I spotted the story on the obituary page. I sure didn’t want to see it on page one.
Somehow I got through that first night. I kept hearing the phone ring. I would sit up in bed and stare at the dark, listening. There would be nothing. Once I got out of bed, tripped over a chair, scrambling for the phone, grabbed it up. “Hello—Hello!”
It hadn’t rung. There was nobody on the line. It was just me. Dreaming.
And the next afternoon, about two o’clock, I was in the store, changing some stuff around in the show window. I kept feeling this black shadow from the street. I’d felt it for quite a while, back and forth, but it hadn’t meant anything. I looked up and it was Shirley Angela, driving past in the black Imperial, her white face staring at me.
She motioned for me to come out, when she saw me look.
She was double parked, down a couple doors. “I’ve got to see you. Get in.”
“No,” I said. “Is it important?”
“Yes.” Her face told me that. It was as if somebody had been clubbing her, or something. Not marked up. I mean, behind the eyes, in the expression.
