13 French Street (7 page)

“It’s about Verne,” she said quietly.

“Suppose his mother finds us here.”

Her fingers bit into my arm. “Don’t say it!”

I listened to her breathe.

“I want to tell you this. There’s nothing wrong with me, only I’m too much for him.”

“Too much?”

“Yes.” She didn’t say it, she breathed it. “He couldn’t keep me—happy. Now he doesn’t even try.”

“You mean—” I tried to move away from her on the bed, but every movement only brought her closer. “You mean Verne’s like that because of you?”

“Yes. He’s sapped. He’s dead weight. He can’t do anything any more.”

I thought of tales of the succubus.

“He keeps me cooped up here. Yet he offers me nothing—nothing of what I need. Must have. I’m not crazy.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I love you, Alex. I want you to know. And you love me, you know you do.”

“My God, woman, you’re off your rocker.”

“Don’t say that!” Her fingers bit into my arm again. “It’s not what you think. Verne tried—hard. But he didn’t really love me, ever.”

My voice was hoarse; I hardly recognized it. The smell of her perfume, the warmth of her body … “Why don’t you divorce him?”

“And lose all this? His money? He’s going to die. I could kill him myself, I think. Merely by—His heart is weak. He—”

I tore her hand off me, started up in the bed, grabbed the sheet, began to sweat. “Get out, Petra!”

“Listen! You’ve got to listen. He wouldn’t let me divorce him anyway. He wants me here, he wants to torture me.” Her voice was a shrill whisper now, her hands against my chest. She leaned closer. I felt her thick hair brush my shoulder as her face neared mine. “I watched him fade away. Bad business lately has helped. He’s losing weight steadily. I love you, Alex! Don’t you see? Are you blind? I’ve loved you for months.”

“You’ve never—We never saw each other till yesterday, Petra.”

“We didn’t have to. My letters told you.”

My hand brushed her thigh. I jerked it away and it struck her breasts. She grabbed it and held it there in the soft dark valley between her breasts. I could feel her breath, taste the odor of her perfume, hear the sound of our bodies touching.

“You wrote me regularly,” she whispered. “You must have known. Don’t pretend you didn’t know. Don’t pretend anything. I can’t bear it, Alex. We’ve got to face this thing. We can’t escape.”

“Good Lord, Petra!”

“Yes.”

She came down against me then and my arms circled her, pulling her to me. Her lips brushed mine, then she tugged savagely away, her knee on the bed, pushing.

“Petra!”

“Not now. We can’t. That old hag!”

My fingers clutched at her nightgown. She slapped my hand away. I had to have her now.

“We must wait for that!”

She was up, standing beside the bed, her breasts rising and falling in the moonlight.

“Petra. Is this true?”

“Yes. You saw my husband. He’s a dead man already.”

I stared at her, wanting her, frightened, wanting her, wanting to run, escape.

She bent over the bed, over me, and her hair fell across my face as her mouth met mine. She fell away from the bed, started for the door. “There,” she said. “You may leave now, if you wish. If you can.” She stood by the door. “But don’t forget what I said about Verne. There have been no other men, though I tried once. I was desperate. Nothing happened, but Verne caught me. Now, leave, if you can.”

She was gone. The door was closed. The air was full of her presence. The sheets were damp and cold.

An instant later I heard her talking loudly in the hall. I went to the door. “Get to bed, Mother!” she shouted. “What are you doing?”

“Harlot! Harlot!” the old woman shrieked.

I opened the door a crack.

“I shan’t tell him. Not yet,” the old woman said.

Petra was walking swiftly toward her room. Her door slammed. The old woman stood in a flannel nightgown in the hallway, her thin gray hair wisping about her tiny, sly face. Her arms quivered like reeds. She turned and shuffled off. I closed the door and returned to my bed.

I didn’t sleep until the first faint gray feelers of dawn touched the floor through the front windows. And I had discovered that I no longer wanted to leave this house.

She was torturing me, but I’d have her. Somehow. If I had to take her by force. Perhaps that’s what she wanted. I knew it was wrong. My conscience was like a rasping steel file sawing back and forth inside me. But I refused to listen. And I would refuse. I had to.

• • •

When I woke I felt different. I remembered, but I felt wrong. I decided to fight. I’d stay and fight. And though I knew it was the right thing to shut up about everything, I figured I’d have a talk with Verne.

But Verne might not be home for days.

V
ERNE
called at ten. Petra spoke with him a few moments, then turned to me in the hallway. “He wants to talk to you, Alex.”

The old woman was eating breakfast in the kitchen.

“All right,” I said. I took the receiver from her hand. She didn’t move from beside me, pressed against me. Her hand smoothed my back. She smiled, then moved away.

“Alex! How’s everything?”

I was startled at the tone of his voice. He seemed full of life, very different from the way he’d been when he’d left.

“Fine,” I said. “Everything’s fine. Only I wish to God you were here.”

“That’s what I’m calling about. Sorry to hell and gone, but I won’t be able to make it till sometime Saturday.”

Saturday!
This was Wednesday. No, Tuesday. Not until Saturday. Petra was standing down the hall, nodding at me. She wore a black skirt, a tight white blouse, and a yellow ribbon in her hair. As I stared at her, she tucked the blouse more securely into the waist of her skirt, smoothed it out.

“I’m sorry, old man,” Verne said. “But that’s the way it is. Things are bad down here. I had a minor strike on my hands, had to increase wages. Got ten truckloads of lumber not fit to build an outhouse with. Had to return that. Found out my head man was knocking down. Had to fire him and hire another, and the government’s got some damned new clause …”

“Cripes,” I said. Then I realized this was my chance. My chance to leave and to explain at the same time. It would be bad enough that way, but it would be lots easier than staying and standing what might come. I looked straight at Petra and showed her my teeth. She sensed something. “Look, Verne,” I said. “It’s great here and everything, but why don’t I go on back home and wait till you get things—”

He interrupted sharply. His voice seemed snappy, full of power, aggressive. “Wouldn’t hear of it. Don’t suggest it again. If anything, you’re going to stay over longer!”

Petra was watching me. At first her eyes had narrowed, but now she saw my face fall and she smiled again.

I knew I couldn’t insist. I felt I couldn’t. I didn’t want to make him suspicious in any way. So now I was thinking like that.

“All right, Verne. Get home as soon as you can. We haven’t even got drunk together yet.”

“Yeah. Well, I’ve got to scram now, Alex. Keep the ball rolling. You get Petra to show you around.”

“Sure, I will.”

“How’s Mother?”

“Fine. She’s fine.”

“Say. I forgot to pay Jenny and the cook. Will you tell Petra we owe them two weeks?”

“Sure.”

“Thanks. See you Saturday.”

He was gone. The line was dead.

“You see, Alex?” Petra said. “You wouldn’t leave now, anyway, would you—really?”

• • •

We drove around the far side of the lake, a good twenty-five miles, ate lunch at a drive-in near Canyonville, and came up the near side of the lake.

We didn’t talk much. The old woman perched as usual in the center of the rear seat. She gabbled about the scenery until it began to get me down. But just being beside Petra, watching her from the corner of my eye, and listening to the stirring tones of her voice kept me still.

“I forgot to tell you,” I said. “Verne told me to tell you to pay Jenny and the cook two weeks’ pay.”

She didn’t look at me. “Yes. All right. See, we’ll park here a while. I’ll take you down and show you the lake.”

There were pines, and a glen that fed shallowly across the road, but showed great depth on the hillside. The lake flashed blue in the sun beyond the treetops.

“All right.”

Petra turned and shouted to the old woman, “I’m going to show Mr. Bland the lake. We’ll only be a minute.”

The old woman moved her mouth in what looked like some kind of secret smile.

Petra’s chin trembled. She opened the door on her side, ran around the car and down the slope into the trees. She ran toward the lake. Her skirt furled around her legs and her legs flashed in the early-afternoon sunlight.

She vanished into the shadows of the trees, whirled, and called, “Come on, slowpoke!”

“Be right with you.” I turned to the old woman. “Excuse me,” I said. “We won’t be a moment.” I had forgotten that she was deaf. She didn’t hear me. She was watching the darker shadow of the woods where Petra had disappeared.

I went on down, following Petra’s course. It was very cool. As I neared the water the air was still cooler and I could smell the water. It was a spring-fed lake, Petra had told me, and very clear and cold. Very fine for swimming if you like fresh, clear, icy water.

“It’s a little late for swimming, isn’t it?” I’d said.

“It’s always whatever you make it.”

I went into the trees along the glen with the stream of water from the glen running over black slate to my right. I came out on the shore of the lake. It was about a mile and a half wide. The larger of the three hills on the other side looked like some huge green monster, like a buffalo, perhaps, hunched over, asleep.

I didn’t see Petra at first. Then she called to me from nearby, “Hurry, Alex. Hurry!”

She was standing naked on the shore of the lake.

I stood still for a long moment because I couldn’t move and couldn’t think. The sun shone on her back over the tops of the trees.

She faced me.

“Come here, Alex.”

I took two steps, halted. “The old woman!” I said. “She’ll—Petra!”

I stepped back as she ran gingerly toward me over the pebbled shore. Her hair streamed back on both sides of her head and she was beautiful, too damned beautiful. Her beauty struck me very hard without release.

“Petra!” The old woman’s voice reached us from the highway, just beyond the trees.

“Oh, God!” Petra said.

I turned and ran back to the car. I stumbled and slipped over the water-black slate in the glen and once went in clear to my knee. Scrambling up the slight rise onto the highway, I reached the car. I looked back but Petra wasn’t in sight. I’d never forget the way she had looked standing there on the shore of the lake with the sun gleaming like liquid gold on her white skin and her black hair flowing around her shoulders and throat like a dense, fiery fog.

Standing there by the car, I heard splashing sounds beyond the pines and other trees surrounding the lake. And standing there I cursed the old woman silently. Then I cursed her aloud, knowing she couldn’t hear. I cursed her until I could think of nothing else to say. Then I climbed inside the car. The old woman was still watching the patch of shadowed woods where Petra had vanished.

Pretty soon Petra came back to the car. She was breathing hard. “Wasn’t it fine!” she said.

“Yes.”

I looked at her, my hand brushed her leg. Her skirt was damp. Her hair was damp. She’d been in the water.

“I went for a swim,” she said. “You should have, Alex.” She turned to the old woman and shouted, “I went for a swim. Don’t you wish you could go swimming, Mother?”

The old woman didn’t answer.

• • •

The days flicked by like the shadow from a sundial’s finger as you glance at it from hour to hour. Petra put me through hell and there was no way to combat it.

If we were near the old woman, she lured me with eyes of promise and surreptitious caresses. But the instant we were alone it was all I could do to hold her in my arms.

“You want me now, don’t you?”

“I’ll have you.”

“Stop. Here she comes.”

“Petra, let’s go someplace.”

“We can’t leave Mother alone. She’d try to follow. She’s suspicious now. She’s saying awful things to me.”

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday—Saturday. It was the longest day, Saturday. And it was that day I realized I hadn’t written Madge, nor had I mailed the other letter I had written. I went to the mailbox on the front of the house. Above it in brass scroll I read the number 13; 13 French Street. How many times had I addressed letters here?

There were three letters from Madge. I took them upstairs and laid them on the desk in my room, unopened.

The old woman was everywhere. She had become a shadow. She carried the cane always now and she hardly ever spoke in my hearing.

I wanted Petra now. I didn’t understand what she was doing, why she was acting this way, when she said she loved me. She told me that all the time. “I love you, Alex,” her lips and her hands speaking too, but when we were alone she became an eel.

I couldn’t sleep. I suddenly realized the decanter of whisky in Verne’s study was empty. On Saturday morning it was full again. I hadn’t seen Jenny or the cook since the day I’d come. I asked Petra.

“I gave them some time off.”

I knew I was a little out of my head now, and I looked forward to Verne’s home-coming sometimes with distaste, but always a little later with the last bit of hope within me.

I didn’t know what was going to happen, but I knew something was going to happen. I was slowly losing all control. Propinquity, whatever, I could not combat it. I wanted her. The gods could have thrown me women from on high, of all shapes and sizes, and they wouldn’t have meant a thing. Only Petra.

When I thought of Madge, it was like another day, another year, a bygone something that had never occurred. Chicago was someplace without existence. Only Petra.

Save when my conscience ate at me. That was when I started for the bottle. Not much. Only a bit. Just enough to stave off the sudden touch of the knife edge of despair.