I turned my head. “No, it isn’t, is it? I’ll have to go work up new gags. I think I’ll take a hot bath while I’m at it. I think I’ll run the water to the top of my upper lip and then make little waves. It should take me a long time to drown like that, shouldn’t it?”
She looked at me solemnly, then her lower lip dropped and she laughed. “You’re crazy,” she said.
I got out of the chair. “Around here,” I said, “that’s a virtue.” I walked out of the living room toward my room in the back wing. On the way I saw three of Maxine’s boys playing poker in the television room. The Irish boy was one of them. He looked as if he were wearing an eggplant under his nose.
I stuck my head in the door. “Well,” I said, “if it isn’t Bushy, Bagot, and Green. And how is the king tonight?” Three jaws dropped. The one who was dealing threw a card wild and it fluttered to the floor.
“Gi da hell ow uh here,” Irish said through stiff lips. His jaw looked sore. I went down the hall to my room, dragging my feet as if I had a tombstone tied to my back.
I had taken a long bath and worked on my sore arm with some kind of rubbing compound and was about to get into bed when the door was nudged open behind me. I looked over one shoulder. There was a face in the doorway, about four feet from the floor. Serious brown eyes studied me.
“Hello, Aimee,” I said.
The door inched open a little more. She was wearing blue pajamas and slippers with fur tops. Her straight black hair was brushed until it gleamed.
“I was lookin’ for Diane,” she said timorously.
“What makes you think she’d be here?” I asked her.
Aimee shrugged and crept into the room, her eyes peering around. Maybe she was lonely. She stopped at the foot of the bed and looked at me.
“Diane’s not upstairs, is that it?”
She shook her head. “No. She went out when she thought I was ’sleep.”
“But you weren’t.”
“No.” She turned around and lifted her bottom to the edge of the bed, sat there, her hands folded. “She went to the garage.”
“How would you know?”
She looked at me secretively. “z’Cause I followed her.”
“What did she want in the garage?”
Aimee shook her head again. “She didn’t go in.” She scratched at her nose, thinking about it. “She went to one of those cars. A black one. She took a package out of it.”
“A package? What kind of package?”
She held her hands about a foot apart, showing me. “Like this. I didn’t pay much attention. I went back upstairs and went to bed before Diane came back.”
“Then she went to bed, too,” I said encouragingly.
“No. She got her swimmin’ suit and put it on. She went downstairs in her swimmin’ suit with the package. I think it was a box or somethin’.”
“How long ago was that?”
Aimee shook her head. “I don’t know.” She sat very quietly then, hands folded, not looking at me. I glanced at my watch. It was twenty after twelve.
“Do you have a girlfriend?” Aimee said suddenly.
“Yes.”
Aimee sighed. “If you didn’t have a girlfriend, you could marry Diane, couldn’t you?”
I frowned inconspicuously. “Well — not quite—”
“Diane should marry somebody,” Aimee said worriedly. “Don’t you like her?”
“In a way,” I said.
“I guess Diane could marry Daddy,” Aimee said. “But she don’t — doesn’t want to. Sometimes I think she doesn’t like Daddy.” She put her legs up on the bed and crossed them. “Diane’s pretty,” she said coaxingly. “I know she likes you, too. She said so. And she’s not really as bad as she acts. I don’t think so, anyway.”
“You mean when she acts funny sometimes.”
“No. Diane doesn’t act funny. I mean not crazy. I’m talkin’ about — ” Her eyes seemed to become flat, suddenly blank. “But she said I couldn’t ever say anything about that.”
“About what?”
But Aimee wasn’t talking. Her lips pressed tightly together. “Not ever,” she said resolutely.
“Okay,” I said. “Don’t you think you ought to go back to your own room?”
“I don’t want to if Diane isn’t there.”
“If she just went for a swim she’ll be in before long. You could get into bed and leave the light on for her.”
Aimee’s eyes shied about the room. “Could I stay here a little while?”
“It wouldn’t be a good idea. I was just going to bed myself.”
Aimee hesitated a few moments, then slid off the bed.
“I’ll walk you upstairs,” I said. I took her hand and we went upstairs together. I thought about Aimee. When she was with me in the room, there had been the softest touch of something reaching out from her, a gentle tendril searching for an anchoring place. There was something very fragile about her, obscurely appealing.
In her room she got primly into bed and thanked me. Then she said, “I didn’t bring teddy.”
“What?”
“My teddy,” she said with sleepy patience. “I must have dropped him downstairs in the hall.”
“I’ll get it,” I said. I went back downstairs and searched until I found the stuffed animal. I picked it up and returned to the room. As I entered I saw that the bathroom light was on and the door open. Aimee was asleep.
Diane appeared suddenly in the doorway of the bath, drying her breasts with a towel. When she saw me she froze momentarily. Then she said, “Pete?” I couldn’t see the expression in her eyes.
“Yeah,” I said drily. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She was even better than I had imagined that first night on the beach. And with the bathroom light behind her there was nothing I couldn’t see.
She watched me silently for a moment, making no effort to conceal herself with the towel.
“Why don’t you come closer?” she said. She released the towel and kicked it away with one foot. She hadn’t moved, continued to face me squarely.
I walked toward her, tossing the teddy bear on her bed. I could see her eyes glistening now, the gleam of teeth behind parted lips.
As I reached out for her she switched off the light behind her, leaving us in darkness. Her hands caught my wrists, pulling me to her. She made love to me with lips, tongue, hard-tipped breasts, movements of her thighs, driving me to the verge of insanity. When she took her lips away from mine I tasted blood. There was a pressure inside me that had my ears ringing.
“All right,” I said, thickly, “let’s finish it.”
“It is finished,” she said almost dreamily. “That’s all, Pete. You can go now.” She released me and stepped back, shutting and locking the bathroom door before I got to her.
I said something under my breath, wanted to put my shoulder against the door and drag her out of there. But I remembered the sleeping child, and the nasty little scene Diane had made with Owen Barr. I took a deep breath and went back to my room. It was a long time before I could get to sleep.
