Clemmie (17 page)

“What’s that?” he demanded. His voice sounded too loud.

She spoke from the bed. “I spoiled it, darn it all.” Her voice was dancing with amusement. “You were supposed to crawl in and find yourself confronted with a bundle of girl. I unscrewed the bulbs. Then I had to snicker and spoil it.”

“How the hell did you get in?”

“You don’t have to roar. I kicked a cellar window in.”

“Did anybody see you?”

“I’m pretty sure nobody did. You worry about that sort of thing, don’t you?”

“You’re damn right I do. You’re getting out of here, right now. What are you trying to do?”

“Didn’t I tell you I’d fix it?”

“What do you think this proves?”

“You just don’t understand the Clementina Bennet system for handling a conscience. I’ve used it for years and
years. Here’s the way it works. Suppose you do something and it kind of bothers you and your conscience itches a little. Then you use the system. You go right back and do it again, only more so. You just hammer your conscience into submission. You teach the darn thing it can’t go around making you feel uncomfortable. That’s what I’m here to help you do.” She moved quickly, walked on her knees to the foot of the bed, took hold of his wrists and tugged at him. “With my help you’ll find it absolutely painless, dear. Just like a shot of Novocain. And that old conscience will go away and leave you alone.”

He pulled his hands free roughly. He went over and leaned against the bureau and lit a cigarette. “We’ve got to talk.”

“Later. Do you know I’ve been here since five o’clock? This is a terribly grim house. Did you know that?”

“I’m aware of it.”

“It’s been a dull six and a half hours. But not as dull as it would have been without the game.”

“What game now, for Christ sake?”

“He only uses me on the most delicate missions. The colonel, you know. He said, ‘Miss Bennet.’ No, he didn’t. He called me Z-3. He said, ‘Z-3, we have an operation where we can use your photographic memory, your intuition, your superb judgment of character. Go at once to 1109 Federal Street. The house will be empty. Gain admittance, unobserved. Find out every last thing you can about the occupants of that house. Take no notes. Leave no sign of your search. Report back to me.’ ”

“So you spent the time prying.”

“Don’t you see? Without the game, it would be prying. With the game it’s investigation. If I wasn’t Z-3 I would have felt real queasy about reading Maura’s letters. But it didn’t bother me at all.”

He stared into the dark in her direction, utterly incredulous. “Why, God damn you!”

“Shush, now. You shouldn’t mind at all. She writes a very lovely letter. Intelligent, and a nice sprinkling of humor, and a very ladylike whiff of sex.”

“But you have no right!”

“Well, it’s sort of like in that joke about the doctor and Marilyn Monroe where he says to her, ‘Gosh, I shouldn’t even be doing this.’ ”

“I just don’t understand how you can act as though this is a big jolly deal.”

“You know, I do have one mystery for the colonel. It’s about you. I found a lot of college stuff and army stuff and so on—by the way, that’s a perfectly darling medal—but nothing at all about you before you went to college. Just one frighteningly perfect transcript of a high school record. A pure monotony of ninety-sevens and eights and nines.”

“Would you—could you shut up for a minute and listen?”

“Of course, dear. Anything you ask of me.”

“This is my home. It’s on the grubby side, but it’s mine. Actually, it’s only half mine. Both our names, Maura’s and mine, are on the deed. We’ve done what we could with it, but there wasn’t a great deal to start with. Are you following?”

“Yes.”

“We have lived here for many years. In our own corny middle-class way, there are things that are known and dear to us here. Little private things that couldn’t mean anything to a third person. At heart I am a very stuffy and conservative guy. I am in favor of apple pie and Mother’s Day and the innocence of childhood. That double bed you are in. The inner springs and mattress were new last year, but it is the same bed where my younger daughter was conceived. Maybe, in a sense, Maura and I are a little like hermit crabs. This house is a part of us. That bed is a part of us. The clothes she didn’t take are in that closet. This house is full of things she bought me and I bought her. It makes me feel actually, physically ill to have all of this violated by somebody who apparently doesn’t give the least damn about my feelings. Or hers. It sickens me. I want you to get up very quietly and get dressed and go home. You’ve just made a hell of a bad estimate of what I am, and what I’m capable of. Okay, so I got carried away for a time. I was ready, or vulnerable, or whatever the right word is. And I’m over it. This isn’t a game. You’re attractive in a quaint, ferrety, fidgety, juvenile way. You’re half fourteen years old, and half a thousand years old. As far as having you around, I’d rather have a comb in my pocket. You’re a strikingly accomplished performer in bed. But it isn’t that necessary to me. The fact that you
could think for a minute that I’m capable of climbing in with you, here, in this house, in that bed, is the damnedest insult to my sensitivity, or what I call my sensitivity, that I’ve ever heard. Now, get out!”

“I guess my mood was wrong,” she sighed.

“Everything is wrong.”

“That was certainly a … a staunch speech, Fitzfellow. You make me feel as if I took my bongo drum to a funeral.” Her voice was dreary.

“Are you going?”

“With one quiet little word of defense. I’m beginning to know you. And I made a very good guess as to what this would have done to you—if it had worked. It would have been a very nasty bit of deliciousness, and vice versa. In retrospect, it would have shocked you right all the way down to your honorable core. It would have shocked you so badly, you would have had to turn one whole part of your psyche numb just in self-defense, almost the way a lizard shucks its tail.”

“I didn’t know you ever organized anything so carefully.”

“Oh, I’m a plotter, Fitzcautious. It would have been the first big, healthy shovel-load.”

“Of what?”

“Weren’t you aware? I’m digging a grave.”

“For whom?”

“For your love for her. A nice deep one. One day it will be deep enough and we’ll have a simple ceremony and afterward you can help me pat the dirt smooth with my shovel, and we’ll go off arm in arm. Then she’ll be a stranger to you. Just a big, limey blonde going a bit to seed. Somebody you knew once.”

“That won’t happen.”

“For the first time I’m not quite sure it will.” Her voice seemed to choke. There was a shift of movement, half seen, a pat of bare foot on the rug, and then she was small against him, shivering and shuddering, and he automatically put his arms around her, his hands moving tentatively awkwardly, feeling the warmth and firmness of her back, the shifting velvety skin-sheath over the firm fibers, the pronounced crease between her shoulder blades that flattened as it neared the small of her back where he could feel the smooth rounded knuckles of the vertebrae close
under the skin. She held her clenched fists close under her chin, and as she cried she hit him softly in the chest with alternate fists, each blow traveling no more than an inch. She seemed very small and curiously alone. He sensed that if he continued to hold her, he would, in a very few moments, become aroused. He let his hands fall to his sides. She held her breath and then backed away.

“That wasn’t another device, Craig. Not really.”

“I’ll accept that.”

“But there are other devices, second lines of defense. I hid my clothes. That was in case you got stuffy.”

“Which I did.”

“And then I was going to … the hell with it. Go in the bathroom. I’ll fix the bulb and get dressed.”

When he came out she sat at Maura’s dressing table, using an old brush of Maura’s to brush her hair. He made a mental note to inspect carefully for long shiny black hairs. She finished and tilted her head to the side. “An Italian hairdo would really suit me, you know. I’ve been tempted to fly to New York and have Caruso give me one. But there is no such thing in this world as a short-haired ballerina. And I’ve learned that when I can keep thinking of myself as a ballerina, I adjust a lot better to any number of things. I couldn’t think that way with short hair.” She turned a bottle around and looked at the label. “This Maura of yours goes for the flower scents, doesn’t she. She doesn’t seem to own a single ounce of tiger sweat. Give me the musky ones.”

“Are you ready?”

She stood up. She struck a pose that he imagined was one of the basic ballet poses and said, “Look at me! Only a damn fool in love would put on clothes like these on a bake-oven day like this. I suffer just for you. Like the outfit?”

It was a curious shade, not quite peach, not quite salmon. The color suited her very well. There was a soft sweater in that shade, and beautifully tailored slacks, high-waisted, and so closely fitted he wondered how she got into them.

“It’s a very … unusual outfit.”

“I designed it. I’m a very talented child. Cashmere sweater and matching doeskin flannel slacks. You will note, sir, that the slacks prevent me from gaining an
ounce where I least care to gain.” She pirouetted, stopped, slumped, sighed. “What a hell of an empty routine! I feel like I was behind a cafeteria counter, pushing hard to unload all of the day’s special. Does your brittle honor permit you to escort me to the door?”

“Of course, Clemmie.”

She paused halfway down the stairs and looked back up at him. “It’s
such
a dull house. I’m a horrid snob, I know. It doesn’t suit you.”

“What would?”

“You? A lot of paneling. Gun racks. Leather furniture. The sea beyond your windows.”

“Too bachelor. Married people live in this house. And two small girls. Where’s your car?”

“Down around the corner.”

When he half-reached around her to open the door, she pushed his arm away and turned and put her back against the door, hands behind her. “I was wrong, Craig. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. Maybe I was too rough.”

“You weren’t. But I would like to make a counter offer. Will you listen?”

“I’ll listen, but—”

“I said something once to you. About a summer affair. Then I tried to make more out of it. So I can’t. I know this is a table stakes game. I thought a flush was good enough, but you have—a full house. And I lost my stake. But I don’t think I can stand being dealt out of the game all the way. I don’t think I can stand and watch.”

“What do you want?”

“You won the pot. I want a small loan. Just enough to put me back in business. Back on the basis of the summer affair. I won’t hurt you and I won’t embarrass you, and I won’t try to buck this full house again. I’ll be—just a usable thing, disposable after a reasonable service period.”

“Clemmie, I …”

“Begging isn’t pretty to do, or pretty to listen to. I’m abject and I’ll stay abject. Slave girl. When you purchase me, Mahster, I hope you be kind to Fatima. I hope I be house girl, not work in fields. I be perfume for you, and all love, asking only food, and to work for you. I am daughter of many kings, Mahster. In my own land I had slaves. Now you own me and always I do as you tell.” She
bowed deeply, gracefully, almost to the floor. “Come now to slave girl tent,” she whispered. “This night.”

“Clemmie, I don’t …”

She came up quickly, fiercely. Her voice was harsh, and her pale blue eyes seemed more bleached. “What
harm
is there in it? What
harm
can it do? For the love of God, stop your posturing. You’ve won. You’ve picked up all the money. Do you have to grind me down to nothing? I’ll be at my place. Come if you want to. If you don’t you can stay right here and compose little odes to the superb texture of your righteous little soul, you damn superior hypocrite.”

The door banged behind her with a force that rattled the living-room windows. He moved to a window. She walked swiftly down the block, head high. Soon he could no longer see her.

He turned the light out and sat down in the dark living room. She was quite right. He had won. It had been a very close thing, because he did not know if he would have been able to win had he gotten unsuspecting into bed and then had her slide over against him, her strong arms around him. And there would have been no more vicious thing he could have done to Maura. There was a curious wisdom in Clemmie. He sensed that had he done that to Maura, the shame would have been so great that the only possible adjustment would have been to invent some way of resenting Maura. It is so easy to despise those we hurt, and those who help us.

But he had been strong. He had handled it well. Yet strength should not be an inflexible, unforgiving thing. Small mercies should be possible. Now the relationship was on a new basis. He was in command. Since that had become established, the potentialities were not as dangerous as before.

He shifted in the chair, scratched his bare chest.

In a sense he had cured himself of her. Or she had cured him, by trying to trick him. What could be the point in grinding her down all the way? A man could become entirely too fond of his own righteousness. The major battle had been won last night. The war had been won this past hour. From now on there might be minor skirmishes with the remnants of the defeated army, but those could be easily won.

Why not? What harm is there in it? There could be more harm in an artificial denial of need. It might cause curious tensions that could affect his work. A normal man was not physiologically capable of spending a celibate summer without strain. Her fangs had been pulled.

She had seemed so small, so hurt and so helpless. She was there to be used. It would be no defeat to go to her now. Actually, it could be thought of as an affirmation of strength—proof that this new confidence was well founded.

Do you have to grind her down to nothing?

What harm could there possibly be in seeing her one more time? And that would give a good chance to explain more gently than he had explained tonight why he could not see her any more.

It was the kind thing to do. The fair thing to do.