“Sorry. Misery proliferates.”
“Believe it or not, you’ll get through the night.”
“Tell me again what I’m really feeling.”
“It’s not hunger.”
“It feels like hunger.”
“It’s what you’ve always recognized as hunger, responded to as hunger.”
“So what is it?”
“Digestive pangs.”
“I’m feeling digestive pangs, not hunger pangs?”
“Believe it.”
“Is it true?”
“How do I know? It’s just an idea of mine. For now, I suspect you’re better off believing it.”
“Okay. I believe. Why are you awake so late?”
“Doctor Radliegh died after dinner.”
“How? Did someone kill him?”
“Yeah. I did.”
“How did you do that?”
“Just by talking to him.”
“Mister Mortimer said no one should ever listen to you.”
“He’s right, I guess.”
“Digestive pangs, not hunger pangs,” she scoffed. “Who ever heard of such a thing? That’s okay, Fletch. You can still talk to me.”
Fletch couldn’t help yawning. “Try to sleep, Crystal.”
“Digestive pangs means I’ve eaten. That right?”
“That’s right.”
“Well,” she sighed. “I guess I have. Good night, Fletch.”
“Sleep tight. Don’t let the lobsters bite.”
“Thanks, Fletch.”
Fletch yawned again. “Thanks died at Hialeah, or something.”
•
“Jack?”
The full lengths of their bodies were on their sides facing each other tight together. He had held Shana through the night.
As still as something inanimate, she had wept silently.
At some point, not moving, Jack had fallen back asleep.
Now dawn light was in the windows.
“Jack? Make love to me gently? Softly? Slowly?”
“Are you sure you want me to?”
“Yes. Please.”
•
It was full light when Jack was shaving in his little bathroom.
Shana’s face appeared beside his left shoulder in the bathroom mirror.
Her eyes narrowed and turned hard.
She was looking at the scar on his back.
She said: “Alixis.”
She disappeared from the mirror.
To his surprise, he heard his cottage door close before he had the soap off his face.
22
“This place will go to ruin in no time,” Mrs. Houston said to Jack.
He could not disagree with her.
Vindemia was already ruined.
Confused, concerned, curious, Jack had bicycled around the estate after he had cooked and eaten a large breakfast alone in his cottage.
Although it was early Sunday morning there were cars coming and going on Vindemia’s roads. And they were not maintaining the sedate speed limit. Nor were they all vehicles that belonged to the people who worked and lived on the estate. A few honked at him impatiently to get himself and his bike out of their way, off the road. An approaching car passing another sent him and his bike into a ditch.
The gates of Vindemia were open.
The guardhouse, which had stone walls a foot thick and sat in the middle of the double road, was empty. The telephone had been pulled from the wall and taken. When Jack had entered Vindemia he thought he had seen a small television in the guardhouse. There was none there now.
The gatehouse itself appeared empty. A first floor window had been smashed. Curtains flapped through an open second story window. The screen on the back door had been broken.
From there, Jack looked back at the main house, a mile away.
The ten huge blue and white flags were not waving from the roof of the house. No one had raised the flags, even to half mast.
Jack realized he had missed the sound of the flags snapping in the wind.
He rode to the village.
In the streets around the village cars were parked in front of nearly every house. A few cars were parked on the lawns immediately in front of houses. There were more children’s toys scattered in the yards than there were children playing with them.
There were many cars and pickup trucks parked in front of the General Store. The woman who had been clerking the store stood on the porch in a housedress and slippers. She glanced at Jack when he pulled up on his bike. She had a coughing fit. Two men came out of the store carrying cases of groceries, passed her on the porch, went down the steps and packed the cases in the trunk of a small car.
On the sidewalk in front of the Recreation Center had been spray painted: GIMME SOME SUGAR, SANDY.
At the end of the street the digital clock in the tower whirred silently. The flag on the tower had not been raised.
Deducing easily, Jack rode to the vehicle compound.
The chain locking the gate had been cut through. The chain-link gate was open. The door to the shed had been kicked in.
Almost all the cars, except Jack’s, were gone.
In the shed Jack found his own car keys hanging on a peg and pocketed them.
Only a few airplanes, the two small jets marked RADLIEGH MIRROR, the ancient two- seater, and another small corporate jet were still there. Jack had been hearing the planes of party guests taking off much of the morning, even before dawn.
There were no cars in the parking lot of the office building.
He rode around the country club. There were many cars parked there. Sunday midmorning it sounded as if a party were raging. Jack smelled pork barbecue smoking. Golf carts were lined up at the first tee like toll booth traffic. There were more brightly clad people stirring around the country club than Jack knew were on Vindemia.
He watched teen-agers racing golf carts. The youngsters were trying to brake and spin the golf carts simultaneously to cut up the lawn. One racing golf cart nearly tipped over on the slope surrounding the swimming pool. That caused a laugh.
Biking back toward the main house, Jack found Mrs. Houston walking on the green verge along the side of the
