She came back, a little pink around the edges, but carrying herself proudly and well. She slid onto the bench and said, "I wasn't babbling. I meant it… about the money."
"Can you afford a gesture that expensive?"
"I'm on a good salary. There's nothing I want so badly I can't get along without it. But you have to keep your side of the bargain and leave me alone."
"Why is that so important?"
"A lot of people thought he was a very nice guy. I want to leave it that way. And I don't think I want to know any more than I know right now."
"I weaken a lot easier when I have the money in my hand, honey."
"Don't you believe me?"
"Let's go look at it. Or did you put it in a lock-box?"
She finished her sherry and put her glass down. "Any time you're ready Mr. McGee."
"Trav."
She shrugged. "Trav, then. But there's not too much point in it. I don't plan to get to know you. I don't think Mike would want me to know you. I don't think he knows you."
"He used to. But people change."
"He shouldn't have guessed about the money. I started to tell him. I wish he hadn't guessed."
I finished my drink, beckoned for the check. "It brought me to you at a dead run, Miss Nina."
"How marvelous for me!"
Nina Gibson was clean but not neat. Great stacks of decorator and craft and design magazines. Shelves of presentation designs that never quite worked out. A high drawing table with Luxo lamps clamped onto it, like big gray metal grasshoppers. Art books. Big action paintings, Kline-like, but without Kline's sober weight and dignity. A great big push-pin wall with her working drawings stuck all over it. A ratty, unhoused assortment of high-fidelity components.
When they get you into their nest and the door is closed, they stiffen up. It is one of the syndromes of the new freedom, I guess. Man and woman in the living place, in the food and bed place. This is my cave and I live here. Stiffness and exaggerated informality and the laughter goes Ha Ha, as if written down that way. And too much of silence between the very ordinary comments. This is because, I think, the living place, just being there, focuses the attention on sexual speculations. In the living place they tuck themselves in and walk carefully. How would we be together? It is the great unasked question. Eyes get a little shifty. Excuses are made in a lofty tone, and the special advantages are pointed out in the brass voice of a Greek guide describing the ruined temples.
Nina said, "Excuse the mess. I do a lot of work here."
I gave an unwelcome blurt of laughter. She stared at me as if I'd lost my mind. But I couldn't tell her about the wild Freudian slip I had suddenly remembered. Years ago I had taken a shy girl to dinner. She had eaten like a wolf pack, even to having a second piece of coconut-cream pie. I had gone up to her place for the well-known nightcap. The girl she lived with was away for the weekend. We were feeling each other out, making chatty talk on one level, creating sensual tensions on another. I was deciding just when and how to make my pass, and she was wondering when it was coming and what to do about it-acceptance or rejection. She sighed and smiled and gave a little hitch to her skirt and said, "My goodness, I shouldn't have had that second piece of pants."
."Is something so terribly funny?" Nina demanded.
"No, I just…" I was saved by the telephone. She hurried to it and answered.
"Hello? Oh hi, Ben. What? No. No, I'm sorry I guess not. No, dear, it isn't like that. I'm on two more accounts now, and there just doesn't seem to be any time."
Her voice went on, polite, personal, unswervingly firm in rejection of whatever pitch Ben was making. I wandered over to the pushpin wall and looked at her work. One drawing of a jar was striking. It had a severe and classic beauty. She hung up and came over to me.
"Do you like that one?" she asked.
"Very much."
"You've got a pretty good eye, McGee. The client didn't like it. We go around telling each other that good taste will sell. Maybe it will, at the right time and the right place. But that is why commercial is a kind of vulgarity upgraded just enough to look like good the best ones in the business are the ones who can toss that kind of crap off naturally, and really believe it's great."
I looked down at her thoughtful face. "The trouble with that jar, Nina, what's there to put in it?"
"You have a point. Wait right here." She went into the small bedroom and closed the door. I prowled the place. I looked at the books and the records. Aside from an unwholesome taste for string quartets, and a certain gullibility about pre-digested sociology, she passed the McGee test with about a B+. Hell, an A-. Maybe somebody had given her the Vance Packard books. He has the profitable knack of making what everybody has known all along sound like something new and astonishing. The same way Norman Vincent Peale invented Christianity and James Jones designed the M-1 rifle. I could relate all three to her handsome jug. Theirs was an upgraded vulgarity.
She came out suddenly and marched across to me and put ten thousand dollars into my hand. I sat on her couch and bounced it in my hand and took the two rubber bands off it. Three packs of used bills in the bank wrappers, initialed by whoever had done the wrapping. Two packs of fifty fifties. One pack of fifty hundreds. She stood in her pale gray blouse and her suit skirt, in her dark pumps and her nylons and her discontent, and looked at me with a small defiant face. This was her gesture of disappointing love, and it seemed a shame to bitch it for her. I riffled the edges of the bills in silence, and snapped the rubber bands back on. I flipped the little brick of money at her head and she dodged wildly and stuck one hand up and surprised herself by catching it. She stared blankly at me. "What's wrong?"
I swung my legs up and stretched out on her couch, fingers laced at the nape of my neck. "It's a pretty little egg, honey, but I want to meet the goose."
She stomped her foot. "You son-of-a-bitch!"
"It tempted me a little, but not enough. This goose seems to be named Armister."
"Get out of here!"
"Let's have a nice little talk."
In her fury she made an unwise lunge to yank me off the couch. I caught her wrists. She was a very strong little girl. She nearly got her teeth into my hand before I could get my forearm under her chin. She tried to kick, but she didn't have the room or the leverage. But she fought-grunting, writhing, flinging herself around until she landed in a sitting position, with a great padded thump, beside the couch. She slumped then, breathing hard in exhaustion, a tousle of the blue-black hair hiding one blue eye.
"Damn you!" she gasped. "Damn you, damn you, damn you!"
"Will you listen?"
"No!"
"It's all very simple. How about this guy, this wonderful marriageable Howard Plummer? What kind of a dreary excuse for a girl are you?'
"I'm not listening to you."
"The tiresome thing about you, honey, is that if he was still alive, you probably wouldn't listen to him either. Suppose you found the money and he was still alive. I can see the scene. Your eyes flash fire. Fists on your hips. A hell of a nasty tone of voice. Howie, darling, prove to me you're not a thief, and it better be good. Why, that poor slob really lucked out of marrying you, darling girl. Howie, darling, this little red smudge on your collar better be blood, you two-timing bastard. Howie, baby, don't you take a step outside our happy home without letting me know where you are every single minute."
"You… you filthy…"
"You poor righteous little prude. Poor Miss Prim."
"What are you trying to do to me?"
"Make you give your man the same break any court would give him. Innocent until proven guilty. And the court wouldn't have gone to bed with him before condemning him without a trial, baby."
I released her wrists. She belted me a good one, and a micro-second after it landed, I jarred her down to her heels with an open handed blow. The blue eyes swarmed out of focus and came back, shocked and wide, and then the tears hit her. They choked her and ripped her up, and she leaned into me, grinding her face into the side of my knee. I stroked her hair. It was all spasms, as convulsive as trying to steady a vomiting drunk.
I wondered if she had really cried since her Howie had died. She was ridding herself of poison, coughing it out. It took her a long time to slow down and begin to ride it with any kind of reasonable rhythm. I got up and boosted her onto the couch and went off and found her bathroom, brought her back a cold wet washcloth and a big soft dry towel. I sat on the floor beside the couch and patted her once in a while. She drifted into a limp exhaustion, punctuated by a hiccup now and again. She sighed and turned her face toward me. I swabbed it with the cold cloth and she dried it on the towel. She stared at me, quiet and solemn as a justly punished child.
"Trav. Tray, I've been horrible."
"So?"
"Don't you see? I didn't even give him a chance. He couldn't explain, and I didn't even give him a chance."
"Do you understand that, Nina?"
"N-No."
"You had to muffle the pain any way you could. Lessen the loss. By trying to believe he lied and cheated. But you couldn't really believe it. It's a proof of how much love there was."
"But it's so unfair to him."
"Not to him, honey. To his memory, maybe. Not to him."
"What… what can I do now?"
"There's just one thing we can do. It's what I came to do. It's what Mike sent me to do. Let's find out what happened."
"But you made me think it was just the money that…"
I pushed her hair back away from the other puffy eye. "Mike said I might have to shake you up.
She stared at me. She shook her head slowly from side to side. She made a mouth. "You two. You and Mike. How could you know more about me that I knew?"
"Is it a deal?"
Her smile was frail, but it was a smile. "We'll have a lot of nice little talks."
After she regained enough energy to check the larder, she told me how far and in what direction I had to go to find a delicatessen. When I returned, she had changed to baggy slacks and a big pink hairy sweatshirt. She had fixed her face and her hair and set a table for us by the window. She unloaded the sacks, accusing me of exotic and extravagant tastes. But she found herself hungrier than she had expected. Her voice was still husky from her tears, and I had left a small bruise along her left jaw.
After we had eaten and she had stacked the few dishes, we sat on the couch with drinks. "I didn't even know he had been killed until noon of the next day," she said in a soft thoughtful voice. "And I fell all apart. Those days are a blur. Sedatives, good friends standing by; I wanted to die too. It seemed such a horrid waste, to lose him that way. Sort of by mistake. Because somebody was greedy and scared and careless, some dirty sick animal out of nowhere. But I held myself together somehow. His sister flew out from California. There was a service here because of his friends here. She took care of his things, giving some away, giving me what she thought I'd like to have of his, closing his apartment. The body went back to Minnesota to be buried there in the family plot with his parents. I couldn't have stood going there and enduring another service. I think his sister understood. I hope she did. It wasn't until after she was gone that I remembered his things here. I was in such a daze. We weren't exactly living together. Just sort of. After we were married, we were going to live here and give up his apartment. It was handier for both of us. He had a key to here. And some personal things here. I didn't know exactly what he'd brought over. I'd already started taking up less room with my stuff to give him room. We knew what furniture of his we were going to bring over. I'd given him half my closet shelf. So finally I got the courage to go through the things he'd brought over, stopping every once in a while to lie down and cry myself sick. Over little things. I had to stand on a chair to reach the back of the shelf. The money was last. It was in the corner. It was wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. He died a week before my twenty-fourth birthday, Tray, and I didn't want to open it because I thought that if it was a gift for me hidden there, it would just break my heart so badly I'd never never get over it. I sat on the bed and unwrapped it… and it was the money. And suddenly there was a coldness in my heart, and I suddenly decided that he… that he… "
"Easy, Nina."
"When you think you know everything about a person and…"
"We both know it was a defensive emotional reaction."
"I wish I was as certain as you are, Trav. Maybe I am a lousy little righteous prude."
"And maybe we find out it was just what you thought it was."
She nodded. She slipped her hand into mine. "I know. I've thought of that. But now I know I do have to find out. And for that I have… I have to thank you. What should we do about the money?"
''We'll know later what has to be done. If it's all right with you, I'll take it along and put it in the hotel safe. Now tell me about his work."
In a little while she began yawning, and I knew she'd given all she had to give, for one day. She found a heavy manila envelope and I sealed the money into it. She came with me to the door and, sleepy as a child, unthinkingly lifted her face for a kiss. Her mouth was soft. She backed away suddenly and put her hand to her throat.
"I wasn't trying to be.. "
"Go to bed, Miss Nina. good dreams."
"I might. I just might."
"Go to sleep. Dream