Authors: John D. MacDonald
“Was Jake being silly again?”
“Thoroughly. I suppose I ought to be flattered. It just makes me feel like somebody’s grandpop. I hoped those newspaper articles would expose my feet of clay.”
“Oh, no. She told us that after you and she were married, there’d be no reason for that sort of nonsense.”
“I give up.”
“And that’s exactly what she expects you to do, Teed.”
“Look, you’re her sister. Do you have any influence?”
“Not the least bit. She calls me the ‘glacial’ type. She says that I can’t possibly hope to understand an undying passion.”
“Could you, Marcia?” he asked, wondering why he always felt it necessary to needle the girl.
She bit her lip. Without answering she turned and went out with her lithe stride, hips so firm as to almost be called chunky, swinging the tweed skirt, treading as lightly and surely as an Indian, or a Viking maiden. In her was none of Jake’s gawky grace. Marcia moved all of a piece. Teed had seen other girls who moved that way. The water skiers at Cypress Gardens. The equestrians with the circus.
Powell came home a bit later and decided that a bland drink for Teed would be in accord with his bland diet. After dinner Teed reported Armando’s comments.
Powell said, “He’s right when he says we can’t move in on Raval yet. Maybe we’ll never be able to. That Weiss is the bag man, the pickup man. Tony Stratter handles the pay-offs. Everything is cash. When and where and how Raval steps in for his cut is a deep mystery. That’s our choice, Teed. To wait and hope we can get some more while we strengthen the data we already have, or whether we pop it fast. I suspect Raval would like to have us step up to the plate right now.”
“Which is the best argument for waiting that I can think of,” Teed said, smothering a convulsive yawn.
“I forgot how this would tire you, Teed. Better go to bed.”
“I’m O.K. Just sleepy. I’ll be to work by Monday.”
“Don’t rush it. There’s plenty of time.”
“I wonder just how much time there is.” Teed said. He said good night to Powell and the girls and went up to bed. He was lost in a warm mist of sleepiness. Consciousness left him with almost the same speed that the room fell into darkness when he pulled the bed-lamp chain.
The dream has taste and color and texture. A woman-dream of astonishing vividness, of clinging warmth, of heavy scent. He struggled up through the soft strands of sleep to the awareness of the warmth against him.
“What in the …”
A hand like ice closed his lips. “Hush, Teed,” she whispered.
He pulled her hand away and whispered, “Dammit, Jake! What do you think you’re doing?”
She was shivering violently and her breath was coming fast. She pulled his arms around her, burrowed closer against his chest, her hair tickling his nostrils. His hand rested on a silky sheerness, on the trembling warmth underneath it.
“Oh, Teed, I love you so!”
“My God, you’ve drenched yourself with perfume!”
She shook with silent laughter. “Did I use too much?” she whispered. “I couldn’t see in the dark. And I couldn’t turn on the light. It’s nearly three. They’re asleep. I took one of Marcia’s nightgowns, too. I don’t have any like this.”
He wormed his imprisoned arm out from under her, rolled onto his back, folded his arms across his chest. “Jake, you go back to your own bed,” he whispered.
“Love me, Teed. It will be all right. We’ll be married, Teed.”
“By God, I’m not going to touch you. Go away. Get out of here.”
She rammed her head up into his neck, an arm across his body. “You can’t win, Teed. Even if you don’t, I’ll say you did. So see? You’ll have the name anyway, so you might as well have the game.”
“What do you think a man’s made of? I don’t love you. Even if I did, this would be a damn fool operation. Go back to your own bed, dammit.”
“I’ve got enough love for both of us, my darling.”
“O.K. You’ve got enough love for both of us. Let’s discuss it in the morning.”
“Please stop talking, darling.” She climbed up over his shoulder, found his lips with hers, her arms sliding around his neck. The scent was like a cloud around them.
He pushed her away. He heard movement and thought she was leaving.
“What are you doing?” he whispered.
“Just a moment, darling. I’m getting rid of this thing. I don’t want to get it all rumpled up.”
“Put it back on. At once!”
“Too late. Ah, much too late,” she whispered, sliding back against him, pressing hard against him, round warmth against him. Her breathing was quick and shallow, her hands chill, her heart racing so hard that he felt its soft thud against his arm. He knew that she was frightened, seriously frightened, but beyond threats, beyond repulse. His will told him to get out his side of the big bed, walk over to the windows, get a cigarette from the bureau. But the sweetness and the warmth had stirred him. Even as he resolved to leave her, he turned toward her, sliding his right arm under her, finding her lips, finding, under his fingertips, the long incredible silken slope of her back. And as he searched her mouth, he felt the stiffness of fear in her body, as his hand swept across her body he felt the shrinking, the virgin reluctance, the shock at the impact of maleness.
It was enough, and just barely enough, to break the spell. He pushed her away and moved back so that they no longer touched.
“I’m not afraid, Teed,” she said in a barely audible
whisper, and he knew that she had realized what had made him stop.
“Unless you’re out of this room in thirty seconds, Jake, I’m going to turn the lights on, get dressed, and leave this house.”
“You can’t. You’re not … well enough. Teed, please.”
“I never meant anything more than I mean that, Jake. And I’m right. You would have hated me, afterward.”
“I could never hate you.”
“Get dressed, Jake.”
He watched. The room was so dark that she was nothing but a pale shadow. He heard the silky rustle. Her perfume grew strong again as she leaned over the bed. Her lips were like a child’s lips. They touched his cheek, slid lightly to his mouth.
“Good night, Teed.”
“Good night, Jake. This never happened. We dreamed it, Jake.”
“It never happened, my darling.”
The door latch clicked and then clicked again as it shut. There was a faint creak of a floor board in the hall. Silence. Just the perfume left, more faint than before. He clenched his fist and struck hard at his upraised thigh. Little girl playing games with a woman’s body. Little girl with sophistication borrowed from cheap movies, philosophy from the confession magazines, glamour from the pendulous bosom of television.
He struck his thigh again and then grinned into the darkness. Not such a stupid little girl, maybe. She’d certainly left him wound up like a four-dollar watch. But better than the other way. Better than hearing her harsh intake of breath at the first stab of the incredible, unexpected pain. Better than listening to the brave smothering of child tears. Better than the feeling of unthinking brutality and shame that would be his. He composed himself for sleep, knowing that it would come reluctantly, if at all.
When he went downstairs dressed, at ten, Powell had gone to the office, Marcia was marketing. It was Saturday and Jake was home. In blue jeans and fuzzy yellow sweat shirt, she bustled around the kitchen, getting his breakfast.
She talked too gaily, her voice pitched too high. He noticed that she was pale and there were blue shadows under her eyes.
She served the bacon and eggs and toast and coffee, then sat at the table across from him, head tilted, cheek resting on her clasped hands, elbows on the table.
“I suppose every person makes a mistake once in a while, Teed.”
“Standard practice.”
“Thank you for saving me from making my mistake.”
“You’re welcome. You cured now?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve got over me, I hope.”
“Oh, goodness, no! I lay awake and I realized that all I was doing was cheating us. Our first time won’t be like that, Teed. Not sneaking and hiding and whispering in the dark. No, it will be in a big hotel. Maybe in Havana. With a little patio off the room. And we’ll have all the time there is. Just think! All the time there is.”
“When is this alarming sequence going to take place?”
She frowned seriously. “Now I figure it this way, Teed. I haven’t told Daddy, but I’ve been changing some of those silly precollege courses to practical things. Home Economics. A course about babies.”
“Do they tell you where they come from?”
“Now, don’t be childish, Teed. This is my senior year. I’ll be out in June. I think I can break it gently to Daddy, about no more school, I mean. My birthday comes on June twenty-sixth. School will be out then. This job you and Daddy are doing ought to be quiet by then. And if we get married on my birthday, you’ll only have one date to remember instead of two. Men are so backward about remembering
dates. And they say Havana isn’t hot at all in the summer. Cooler than Florida, they say.”
“You stayed awake and organized my future, did you?”
“I don’t want a big wedding. A really big wedding. Do you?”
“This is pretty sudden, you know.”
“And sex is important, of course, but not
all
important. Having kindred interests is a big part of it. Our backgrounds, in general, are the same. Of course, I’ll take courses after I’m married, so I won’t be
too
stupid for you.”
“Honey, just let me eat my eggs, will you?”
She beamed at him. “That sounds so nice and married, Teed. ‘Honey, just let me eat my eggs, will you?’ Oh, Teed!”
“Look!”
“And you should realize that marrying a younger woman will help keep you young. You won’t get stuffy so fast. I’ll catch up, and then we’ll both get stuffy together. I want babies right away, so I’ll be a grandma before I’m forty.”
She got up and said, “Now, darling, I’ll let you have your breakfast in peace so you can think it over. You don’t have to tell me today, or anything.”
“Thank you for the grace period,” he said hollowly.
After breakfast, and after Marcia came back, he repacked the bag that had been brought from his apartment.
“You’re not leaving!” Jake cried.
“I can take care of myself now, thanks. Just a little stiff. Not sore a bit any more. I’ll take a cab down to the Hall, stop in and tell Powell and drive my car back to the apartment. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate all you’ve done.”
He left in a storm of objections and solicitous advice. He lowered himself gingerly into the back seat of the taxi and waved at the two girls standing on the porch, Jake a half-head taller than the blonde Marcia.
Most of the Hall was on a five-day week, but there was enough traffic so that Teed sensed the intensity of the interest in him. Girls left their desks quickly to walk with overcasual step into the hall, just to be certain of seeing him. The Teed Morrow of a few days back would have felt a certain amount of wry amusement, would have enjoyed the sensation of playing a part in a drama that touched him lightly if at all. Now he could not capture the necessary
emotional remoteness. It was even an effort to keep from hurrying his steps to get out of range of the avid curiosity as quickly as possible.
As he went up the stairs a vast, billowing woman from the City Engineer’s office came down. She had always favored him with a mincing smile. She looked at him and through him, and sniffed audibly as they passed. City employees seem to develop a seventh sense. Catastrophe casts an invisible aura over its victims before it strikes. You must sense that aura and move carefully away to avoid sharing in a common disaster. Teed knew that this new attitude would also take in Powell Dennison. Co-operation would be much more difficult to obtain. Necessary records would remain stubbornly in the files. Even the switchboard would be slow and uncertain.
The little people on the city payroll had waited and watched, not quite certain whether or not the move toward new efficiency and economy would bear fruit, would affect them and their jobs. Now, mysteriously, word had gone out that it would all come to nothing, and so there was no more reason for caution. Now was the time to back away and say, “I knew it was a farce from the beginning.”
Even the sallow face of Miss Anderson showed the effects of the new attitude. The lines were etched a bit more deeply around her mouth, and she flung the typewriter carriage back with a clattering smash at the end of each line.
It was an old story to Dennison and Teed. They had felt it in the German city when it appeared for a time that higher command would force a revision of policy on the matter of employing known ex-Nazis. And, in the end, when Dennison had won his point, the attitude had changed mysteriously even before the statement of policy had been received.
Teed walked into Powell’s office. Powell leaned back in his chair. “Teed, you walk like you were carrying a pie plate between your knees. Should you be up and around?”
“I kissed the girls good-by, Powell, I’m going back to a bachelor existence.”
“Jake give you a bad time?” Powell said, with his slow warm smile.
Teed flushed. “Not bad enough to drive me out of the house. How’d you get a daughter as stubborn as that?”
“Her mother gave me just as much trouble.”
“Powell, do you feel the change of attitude around here?”
“It changed Thursday, Teed. The word went out, I guess. They’re wrong, you know. It’s going to be a hell of a shock to most of them.”
“Makes you wonder what the hole card is, doesn’t it?”
“Not when we’ve got aces showing, Teed. I finished that assessment survey. It shows enough so that when the Times publishes the results, nothing can stand in the way of the city hiring independent experts to come in here and revise the whole tax setup.”
“I’m going to take it easy over the weekend, Powell, but that’s no reason I can’t work on something at the apartment. What can you give me?”
“Sure you want to? O.K. Take this file. Don’t let it get out of your hands. It shows tax sales of unimproved property. A whole bunch of building lots just inside the south edge of town. And here’s a transcript of property sales in the same area. And a map. Seems that one L. L. Weiss has picked up a lot of land out that way.”