But he would go home to Lucy; they would raise her children together, and someday be reduced again to an apartment in the city and a pair of cats, and each other. It was a comforting vision and a daunting one; he was afraid of wanting it too much, afraid of losing it. For the first time in his life, he thought about his eventual extinction. He was afraid of dying. That’s what Lucy had gner, him. Something to lose.
The others, except his father, were already at the table when he arrived for dinner. Ethelyn Blood patted him on the shoulder as she served, forgiving him his tardiness as easily as she forgave his father the lapse of his drunkenness.
‘He only does this once or twice a year now. It does him good to have a blow out. It’s hard to be strong all the time, all alone, and getting old. And this time,’ she glared at Dolly, ‘he was provoked, Lord knows.’
The children, appetites whetted by the long hard afternoon of play, dug into Mrs. Blood’s lobster stew, shrimp puffs, and caesar salad with total concentration. Dolly too enjoyed her meal, and her own conversation, which she must have found fascinating, for she didn’t seem to notice that no one else at the table had anything to say.
Roger, looking a little green at the edges, could only pick at his meal and steal anxious glances at Lucy. Lucy, busy avoiding them, studied the tablecloth and the food, but ate mechanically and played with a small, sea-polished piece of glass. Put out with Dolly, whom he was certain was deeply pleased at having disrupted his father’s private grieving, and disturbed by his own disconcerting emotionalism, Nick Weiler could only listen to Dolly’s bright babble from within a shell of icy irritation.
Dolly had one more triumph. As Mrs. Blood served dessert, the phone rang, informing them that the promised helicopter would not arrive, because of mechanical problems, until first light in the morning. Whether he wanted her or not, Sartoris would be compelled to house Dolly and Roger overnight.
When the children had consumed their chocolate mousse, Lucy stood, excusing herself to put them to bed.
‘I’ll see you later,’ she told Nick softly.
And then she skirted Roger’s chair by a hugely unnecessary margin, as if he had something catching. She shot a frightened look at him and hurried out, leaving Nick mystified, Roger suddenly and for the first time, deeply involved in his mousse, and Dolly studying him with the interest of a cat at a mousehole.
‘I don’t believe it,’ Nick said. He couldn’t see her face very well. The terrace was lit only by a few torcheres; it was romantic, but in a literal sense, unilluminating.
She said nothing for a little while. The only sound was the clink of ice in her glass as she fidgeted with her drink.
‘I don’t believe it either. He’s fucking out of his mind. But I’m not going to do the job. I told you that way back. I told
her
that. I’m going to look at it, and tell her who to hire. What needs to be done. I’m not letting her have the kids for any kind of visit. Not with a nut like that around. He was right to warn me, only he didn’t know who or what he was warning me against.’
‘Why even look at the job either? Tell her to stuff it. What’s she ever done for you that you owe her any favors. Stay clear away from her and her creepy boyfriend.’
‘I gave my word.’ Her tone was flat and stubborn. She was warning him not to push her.
He sighed. ‘I wish you wouldn’t go anywhere near her. That’s all.’
And it was. She’d made her decision. The resistance she had wanted to show to Dolly she turned on Nick. She felt stupid and clumsy, and inexplicably frightened, sitting on the near-dark. Tears started in her eyes. He must have sensed her misery. He moved closer and kissed her hair.
‘I love you,’he told her.
She clung to him.
They necked peacefully for a few minutes, until it became obvious that the chairs would be too uncomfortable to continue in and the moment of going on or stopping had arrived. Ethelyn Blood, hearing soft laughter as she passed through the darkened dining room that looked onto the terrace, smiled. She turned to the bedrooms to look in on the little ones. After that, she thought, she would make herself scarce.
‘Let’s go to the studio,’ Nick whispered, making the housekeeper’s discretion quite unnecessary.
15
‘Lucy positively
scuttled around you,’ Dolly said.
‘I didn’t notice.’
‘Don’t play innocent. What did you do, pinch her bottom, grab a little tit?’
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Roger blushed obligingly.
‘You’re impossible,’ she scolded. ‘I’ll just have to punish you, that’s all.’
Roger didn’t want to be punished. His head hurt, his stomach regretted skipping supper, and his feet stung and itched unmercifully. Enough punishment, and all self-inflicted, he thought.
‘Just let me tie you up,’ she pleaded.
‘Ohh,’ he groaned, ‘I don’t know.’
She pouted, beat on his back with her fists. ‘Goddamn it, you haven’t been any fun at all today.’
‘Ow,’ he protested.
‘You don’t want me anymore,’ she moaned, and tears leaked from under her silvery lashes. ‘You want Lucy.’
Roger felt awful. He had never seen her cry. ‘No, no,’ he told her, even if it was a little lie. Sometimes little lies make good Kleenex. Of course he wanted Lucy, he’d have to be out of his mind not to, but she didn’t want him.
. ‘Just like Nick,’ Dolly went on, sniffling, ‘chasing after young girls.’
It was not the moment to remind her that he wasn’t just like Nick Weiler, he was only thirty-six himself, and that Lucy wasn’t jailbait anymore. Would it soothe her wounded pride to think she was in a losing war with a woman just turned thirty?
He held her, because there was nothing else to do, and she moved subtly against him, arousing him almost before he knew what she was doing. Lay back and enjoy it seemed to apply here.
They must not make any noise, she told him, and gagged him with a pair of panties, after she had tied him to the conveniently old-fashioned brass bed with an assortment of scarves and pantyhose.
It went on a long time. The bonds seemed unnecessarily tight and struggling against them in the throes of the encounter only tightened them more. At the end, he fainted.
He swam through thick hot air to consciousness, into a lightless web of panic. Struggling, he tightened the ligatures around his wrists and ankles until the shooting pain shattered his rage. There was nothing he could do but lie as still as possible. Slick with sweat, and naked, he quickly chilled, and involuntary shivering brought the pain of his bonds again.
After a little while, his vision adjusted to the dark; he could
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make out Dolly, bundled in the blankets from the bed, sleeping peacefully on a window seat. The gag in his mouth, absorbing saliva, constantly threatening to choke him, kept him silent.
Through the night he dozed off and on, always brought back to semiconsciousness by the sudden tightening of the bonds as his body relaxed against them. The daylight was very long in coming.
He came to again to the sounds of her shower in the bathroom that adjoined their bedroom. It was easier to enumerate the parts of his body that didn’t hurt, ache, sting, or itch than to list his damages. His penis, so abused the night before that he thought it might never function again, attested his powers Of recovery by standing up proudly. And that was the worst discomfort of all because it wanted not pleasuring but a ten-minute pee.
Dolly came out of her shower humming, laughed to see his tumescent organ peeking at her with its one blind eye, and flicked it casually in passing with a wet towel. Ignoring Roger’s writhing, she powdered and creamed her body elaborately. She slipped into bra and panties, then a white silk blouse, gray linen pants, and a mauve ascot.
Sitting down at the vanity, she did her eyes in shades of mauve and wine, her lips in a wine-red lipstick. Her cap of platinum curls was quickly brushed into place,
Cristalle
perfume sprayed on generously, and the jacket matching the pants shrugged on.
Throwing her things into her overnight bag, she smiled sweetly at Roger.
‘Feeling a little yukky, darling?’ she asked. ‘Foot and mouth disease, I think. Listen, tell me the truth and I’ll untie you. Did you tell Lucy?’
Roger’s head bobbed frantically.
Yes.
Dolly frowned. ‘Bad boy. You did deserve punishing. That was very, very stupid. I’m afraid I’ll have to take your toy away from you. You’re not very responsible, are you?’
Roger’s whole body rose up at once against the restraints, lifting the brass bed a fraction of an inch off the floor. It settled immediately with a heavy thump.
Dolly, dangling the minimizer in its case before his eyes, laughed again. ‘Tsk, tsk. What a temper.’
She stepped into her shoes. ‘Since you’re not feeling well, I think you’d better stay here a little longer, until you get your feet under you again. Don’t worry, the old bastard’s not so heartless that he’d throw a poor bed-ridden soul like yourself onto the beach.’
The distant thrumming of the helicopter blades punctuated her farewell. Blowing Roger a kiss, she slipped out the door, carrying her overnight bag and the carrycase that held the minimizer. Roger struggled, once again, against his bonds, lifting the bed from the floor once more. But the sound of its thumping descent was blotted out by the helicopter’s approach.
Dolly knocked on the bedroom door where Lucy and the i children were supposed to be sleeping. Opening it, she found the children stirring, wakened by the noise of the helicopter, and : Lucy’s bed unslept in.
‘Naughty girl, Lucy,’ she whispered to herself, and bent to gather the children in a hug.
‘Grandmother has to go now. That’s her helicopter coming,’ she told them.
Half asleep, they rubbed their eyes, yawned, and leaned against
J her.
‘I want to take your pictures, okay?’
That was easy. Curled together on Laurie’s bed like lost j children sleeping in the forest, Lucy’s little boy and girl waited patiently for Grandmother to take her photographs, just as they | had dozens of times before. She had some trouble with the funny-iooking camera, but perhaps it was new.
‘Goddamn,’ she said once, and that made Laurie and Zach eiggle, to hear Grandmother use a swear.
‘There,’ she said at last, and the flashbulb went off in a blinding red glare.
The pounding steps of the giant broke in on Lucy’s dreamless sleep. She knew what it was this time, and sat straight up. Slipping from the bed, where Nick was stirring, clinging to sleep in the face | of the noise, she picked up a robe and went out.
Dolly was in the hall, just picking up her overnight case outside the door of the room the children had been sleeping in.
A smile broke over the intense concentration of her expression.
Lucy, dear,’ she said, reaching to grasp Lucy’s hand and squeeze it. ‘I just kissed the little ones. They’re still asleep. I hope the noise of that machine doesn’t wake them.’
Lucy looked up and down the hall for Roger.
Dolly answered her unspoken question. ‘He’s gone out to meet the helicopter already. Listen, I’d better run. Take care, dear. My love to Nick.’
Lucy stood for a minute, watching her mother-in-law disappear
through the door into the kitchen. It was a little chilly, even with the robe she was wearing, and she found herself shivering. Hugging herself, she went back to Nick’s room, wondering at the mercurial creature her late husband’s mother was. She had discovered almost as soon as she had married that she had wed more than a gangly young flier; she had also, by some evil magic, acquired his mother as part of the bargain. Here she was in Nick’s father’s house, getting ready to do it again. At least, the old man was on record as being a hands-off sort of parent; she could hope this marriage would not be a triangle from the beginning. Except for Nick, who was getting her kids along with her.
Nick was awake enough to curl up against and to have all those interesting thoughts whispered into his ear. She could almost hear herself giggle as the helicopter beat its way into the air, leaving the island. But it was some minutes before the last ghostly pounding died and the curious thumping began to make itself heard.
On the third thump, Nick stopped kissing her and sat up straight.
‘For Christ’s sake, what’s that?’
Another exhausted thump. Down the hall. From Dolly’s room.
Flinging open the door, Nick saw Roger Tinker, trussed to the bed like a chicken spread for boning. Standing there open-mouthed, he was too astonished to say anything. Lucy hurried down the hall after him, peeked around him and backed hastily out, her face flooding red.
The mysterious thumping had drawn Ethelyn Blood, dressed but still wearing fluffy bedroom slippers and pincurls.
‘It’s Mr. Tinker,’ Lucy blurted, ‘all tied up.’
The housekeeper patted Lucy’s arm, stepped by her, and stuck her head in the bedroom, where Nick Weiler was fumbling at the knots in Roger’s bonds.
She gasped, turned on her heel, and swept past Lucy to the kitchen, muttering, ‘Merry Jesus God.’ Swooping through the kitchen door and back again in seconds, she rushed by with a wicked looking carving knive, as Sartoris, in his nightshirt, opened his bedroom door and stared blinking bloodshot eyes after his apparently berserk housekeeper.