13 French Street (16 page)

I couldn’t answer.

“The coat doesn’t cover us very well,” she said rapidly.

“There is one way it will.”

“Yes, Alex, only—” she stopped. Her arms were tight around my neck.

“Only what?”

“Only hurry up!”

I held her very tight, then, very tight, and it was perhaps the most difficult thing I ever said in my life when I whispered, “I’m sorry, Jenny. We’ve made a mistake.” I kissed her and rose. She lay quite still, her face pale.

• • •

Jenny sat on a large boulder beside the lake and stared at the dark water with errant starlight moving in it. I had thought wrong. I didn’t want and wouldn’t have anyone but Petra.

I went over by Jenny. I was still drunk, but I didn’t want any more to drink right now and I felt bad about everything.

“It’s all right,” Jenny said. “I understand. You didn’t love me or anything, really. I supose I should curse you, or kick you. Anyway, it’s all right. There’s nothing you can do and you don’t want anybody but her. I’m not sorry.” She turned and looked at me. She smiled.

I didn’t say anything.

“Tell me about it, Alex. You can tell me.”

I tried to tell her something about how I felt. But not about the murder. I didn’t tell it to her straight, but I knew she understood. Then for a minute I busted loose and said, “I can’t get away!” My voice was loud.

“What about Madge?’

“Oh, God.”

“I’m glad you love her, really.”

“If I could only see her, be with her for a little while, it might help. But everything’s all messed up now.”

“You’re shaking all over, Alex.”

“I can’t help it.” I wanted to tell her I was scared, really scared. But sometimes you don’t speak of that.

Then it all piled on me hard. I couldn’t wait to get away from the lake, from Jenny. I knew it was the liquor wearing off. But that didn’t help, the knowing. I had to see Petra, had to get back there to the house. What was she thinking?

“I’m frightened, Alex, the way you act.”

I touched her shoulder.

“You really love this Madge? What’s her last name?”

“Collins.”

“You really love her, but Petra’s got you stuck?”

“Yes.”

“Only there’s more to it than that. More you’re not telling me.”

“Yes, there’s more. Let’s go, Jenny.”

We walked to her house and we walked fast. I kissed her. “I’ve got to go,” I said.

“I know. Don’t worry. It’s all right about tonight.” She didn’t smile. She seemed almost as worried as I felt.

I squeezed her hand. Ten minutes later I was on French Street in a taxi. Then we had stopped in front of the house.

My hands shook so I dropped change on the floor of the taxi. Then I was out, running toward the house. A light was lit in the living room.

I went in the front door. Right away her perfume struck me and she was there in the hallway.

“He’s upstairs,” she said. “Where have you been, Alex?”

“In town. I walked into town.”

Then she was against me and I breathed against the thickness of her hair.

“You wouldn’t try to run away from me, would you?”

“No, no.”

“I didn’t think so.”

I broke away from her, ran for the stairs. Reaching my bedroom, I locked the door. I heard her coming up the stairs.

I barely made it to the toilet. I blacked out in an agony of retching, tearing the stuff up, trying to vomit all the crazy hell out of the bottom of my guts.

S
HE
rapped on my door several times during the night. Softly. She whispered my name. I knew she waited for me just beyond that thin panel. I kept the door locked. I didn’t answer. Somehow I stayed in bed, cold with perspiration, staring through the dark at the filmy outline of the door.

“Alex, Alex, are you all right? Alex!”

Was Verne deaf? Was he blind not to realize what was going on in his own home?

Finally she went away.

This was my first victory. Then I knew how small, how truly petty a victory it was. Because I kept seeing her in her room. Maybe pacing the floor. Waiting, waiting….

The pulse of my emotions ran up and down a crazy scale. I wondered if I were thinking right any more—if I could think at all. I couldn’t sleep. I was exhausted but I couldn’t sleep.

Thinking of Jenny, I knew that consciously or unconsciously I’d got her drunk and tried to take her in a vain effort to knock the rot out of me. The clash of her sweetness against Petra’s savage evil kept reminding me that I’d done Jenny a wrong, even though I’d stopped short of the wrong I’d intended.

Instead of helping matters, it only made everything worse. It added another bit to my own personal agony of mind.

The mental torture was something I would never have believed possible. To be any kind of criminal one had to be conscienceless. The ones who had a conscience, the ones who went through despair afterward, were those who did the screwy things. Like running out on the street, shooting up the town, going hog wild.

I could never do it. But it would be a pleasure to kill her. Not with a gun—not even with a knife. With my bare hands. Choke her, strangle the putrid life out of her, watch her writhe, make her scream for release.

It was like being chained. Better than that. That would be something you could fight, knowing what it was. It wouldn’t be something in your head, in your body, uncontrollable.

I’d read someplace that there was one woman like this for every man. One evil bitch, or not evil, but one that could scar your soul, shred it to a bloody pulp, just with a glance. With a thought, even. Snare, trap you, talk you into anything. One you’d do anything for, knowing you didn’t even love her. Knowing it was only want, desire. One that could drive you into black madness, into a deathless, grinning glassy-eyed hell.

Madge. It was like a name mentioned in some cool beyond I couldn’t reach.

My hand lying on the sheet clenched. I yanked and the cloth ripped, stuttering in a violent agony of sound.

Getting out of bed, I went over by the window and stared at the black outline of the brambled hill and waited for the dawn.

• • •

Anything to stay away from her.

At noon I was standing in front of the house watching the dirty sky piling up in the east. I was sick in every way a man can be sick. All morning Verne had watched me, puzzled. I had avoided Petra as much as possible.

Deep in thought, I didn’t hear the approaching horses until they were almost opposite me on the road.

“Whoa!” It was Emmetts. He was driving a team dragging an empty stone boat along the shoulder of the road. Standing on the boards of the stone boat, he spat and watched me. His mouth loosed itself in a grin, but he appeared nervous. His shoulders hunched beneath a threadbare jacket. “Nice day,” he said.

I didn’t answer. It seemed as if every way I turned I ran against a hot iron wall.

“Don’t you think? Don’t you think it’s a nice day?”

I still didn’t reply.

“Ain’t talkin’, hey? They’re talkin’ in town,” he said. He glanced quickly toward the house. There was something in his eyes now that hadn’t been there before. His hands were nervous, fussing thickly with the leather reins. “C’mere,” he said quietly.

I stepped closer.

“They’s talk in town,” he said. “Plenty.”

One of the horses jerked forward, the other pulled back. “Whoa, you walleyed sons-o’-bitches!” The horses ceased, ears twitching. “Listen,” he said, “Bring five hundred tonight.” His mouth jerked loosely.

“Scared?” I said.

“Y’heard me.” His voice went loud for an instant, then quiet again. Turning, he spat a wad of yellow tobacco into the road. “Five hundred. An’ bring her. Don’t forget, damn it. Bring the gal!” He lashed the horses, ran beside the stone boat a few paces, then leaped on.

I watched him go along the road. He didn’t look back. His shoulders were hunched and there was something about him that had changed. He was nervous and he was overanxious.

Five hundred dollars? Five hundred dollars….

• • •

“Verne’s going up to the grave. We’ll have time.”

“No,” I said. “Watch out. Watch out, damn you!”

“Alex, what’s got into you?”

“Nothing. Stay away, that’s all.”

She reached up and opened the front of her dress. She wore no brassiere. Her face was full of defiance. “There,” she said. “Come here, Alex!”

The kitchen door slammed.

“Oh, God!” she said. She ran upstairs. I watched her go and something went through me that I didn’t recognize as yet.

Verne came into the hallway.

“I thought I heard Petra,” he said.

“No. I don’t think so. She’s upstairs.”

“Oh.” He came up to me. “Alex, you look like hell. What’s up?” He wore a gray sweater that once probably fitted him, but it hung on him now, like the rest of his clothes. His face was gaunt, his eyes unclear and sunken.

“Nothing,” I said. “Guess I hit the bottle too hard.”

“Go into Allayne last night?”

“Thought I’d look the town over.”

We watched each other for a while. He frowned. He shook his head. “Alex,” he said, “things have changed, haven’t they? Those days back there in the war—it’s all sort of unbelievable, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Alex, you sure you feel all right?”

“Just hung over.”

He stared, frankly puzzled. “It hasn’t been such a hot vacation for you, has it?”

“It’s been fine. It’ll be O.K. Think I’d better have a little drink. Hair of the dog.”

“Sure.”

I turned and walked toward the kitchen. I could feel his eyes boring into my back.

S
HE
tried to corner me.

I stuck by Verne. I stayed out of her way. I didn’t know what was happening. She had changed somehow. She acted different. She was still excited, but not excited in the way she had been.

Verne didn’t talk much and he watched me a lot. I began to wonder if I were coming apart.

It went on like that all day. It was the worst day I ever spent in my life. Late in the afternoon it started to rain again. It rained softly at first, but hour by hour it increased, until by eight o’clock it was a steady downpour.

“We could all go to a movie,” Petra said in the living room.

I grinned at her. Verne glanced at me and said, “Would you like to?”

I shook my head. “Let’s save it for another night.” I wasn’t sure what was going on in my mind, but it was something.

The minutes marched along to the round of rain.

The silence that descended was horrible. All three of us tried to break it, but it was like howling in the wilderness, shouting into a hurricane.

At ten to nine Verne went into his study.

“How are we going to leave?” Petra said.

I watched the faint tightness around her eyes and wanted to laugh. She came toward me as I got out of my chair.

“Don’t,” I said. I stared at her, at her body, at the gleaming black eyes and the thick jetty hair. I let my gaze linger on the rounded thrust of her thighs against her black skirt and the full curve of her breasts.

“Alex—”

I didn’t say anything. But I knew—I knew….

“Stay here,” I said I went through the back of the house, picked up a raincoat, and left by the rear door. As I glanced toward the house, a light came on in the kitchen. The curtains parted and I saw her face pressed against the glass.

Then I heard Verne call, “Petra. Petra.”

Her face vanished from the window. I sloshed through the driveway that had become a river until I reached the road. Then I started down toward the bend. The rain gusted in blinding sheets, driving in a vicious splattering across the road.

Already I was soaked to the skin. The raincoat was no help in this weather. As I neared the bend in the road I began to run.

This time he was waiting.

He stepped back as I reached him. “Where’s the gal?”

I laughed and rain washed into my mouth. “Here,” I said. “Here she is, damn you!” I feinted with my left, then slashed him with my right. He stumbled back into the bushes.

“Did you feel her?” I yelled. I dived at him, dived into the running mud and the streaming bushes. He sprang aside with a curse, then leaped at me.

As he leaped I kicked. My foot caught him squarely in the face. I felt his nose crumble and he let out a yell. Blood spurted from his face. He groped blindly for me.

“Go ahead,” I said. “Go ahead. Here’s your five hundred dollars!” I grabbed him by the front of his poncho at the throat, and put everything I had into the blows. Five of them, straight to his face, feeling the bone grit. He was senseless before I finished.

I helped him up. It wasn’t only the bone of his face; the bones in my hand were broken. Pain lanced up my arm. Still I hit him with a kind of blind, groping despair.

Then I let go. He sprawled at my feet. For a long moment I stood over him with the rain tearing at us. He began to moan. His face was covered with blood. He tried to push himself up, moaning and trying to talk. Only he couldn’t talk very well, with the blood streaming from his mouth.

I gripped my right arm around the wrist with my left hand, but it didn’t stop the pain. Then I whirled and ran back toward the house along the highway. A tearing brilliant white streak of lightning slashed through the sheeted rain. Thunder cracked and slammed overhead and the world rocked. And all the time I ran I was laughing, laughing like hell.

• • •

I dropped the raincoat on the back stoop and entered the house as quietly as possible. My shoes squished water, but I walked softly into the living room. Nobody was there. I headed for the stairs. As I passed the study, I saw Verne hunched over his desk.

I hurried quietly on up the stairs, still gripping my right arm. My whole hand was smashed. Two white, crimson-flecked spears of knucklebone jutted through the skin, and at the slightest movement of my hand they gritted with bright-iced pain.

I had to keep choking back laughter. It burst in my throat and I gagged with it, choking it back, my chest filled and heaving with laughter.