The Cry of the Owl (33 page)

“Your mother needs me also.”

There was no persuading him, and Greg gave it up. After all, it might be better if he went, Greg thought. There was no telling what Nickie might come out with. His father reminded him again that he would have to telephone the police. Greg told his father to give his mother his love, and then his father was gone down the steps, the car motor starting in the driveway. It seemed no time at all before he heard a car zoom into the driveway and stop with a scrape of gravel. She and his father must have passed on the street. He looked out his window and saw Nickie getting out of a low-slung black Thunderbird, slamming its door. She looked up, saw him, and without a smile or a greeting walked to his door. Greg ran down the steps to let her in.

“Hi,” she said. “By yourself, I trust.”

“Sure, Nickie. Come on up.”

She went ahead of him up the stairs, and turned and faced him as he came into the room. “So—you’ve made a fine mess of it, haven’t you?”

“Listen, Nickie, if we talk this thing over, come to an agreement about what we tell the police—”

Nickie laughed. “You seem to have done quite a bit of talking already. Are you going to talk
more
to them? What do you think my husband thinks of all this? What do you mean by popping off to every dope who looks at you that I kept you in New York? That’s a hell of a way to pay me back, isn’t it?”

Greg glanced at his windows, then went and pushed down the window he had opened. Nickie was talking loudly, and she kept on. He couldn’t put a single word in. He had expected her to be annoyed, angry with him, but she was like a volcano, and he knew that he could never placate her now, never win her back to his side.

“You are about the
lowest
son of a bitch …”

He interrupted. She only talked louder, and when he tried again to interrupt, she uttered a lot of gibberish in a shrill tone—“
Luddle duddle-duddle-duddle!
”—as if she were really out of her mind, just to drown him out. She talked of his ingratitude, his stupidity, his crumminess, his complete disregard for her. Greg was shaking now, with anger and fear. Nickie was going to make his situation worse. She had already said a lot to the cops, she said, and she wasn’t through yet.

“
It hasn’t occurred to you that my husband can divorce me on this?
” she yelled in a grand climax. “It hasn’t occurred to you that he’s going to do
just that
?” Her manicured hands clenched and unclenched as she spoke, flew from her hips in a wild gesture and returned, clenched in fists. She was wearing the black slacks she had worn the second and last time she had slept with him, in the Sussex Arms Hotel. He remembered her smiling at him, remembered her confident voice
that day. Now her eyes were bloodshot, her lipstick gone except at the outside edges of her lips.

At last he shouted through her words: “What the hell have I done that’s so awful?”

“You’re such a heel, you wouldn’t know! You’ve wrecked my life, you crumb. And I’m going to see that yours is wrecked, mark my words.” She lit a cigarette, snapped her lighter shut. “I know how to get back at people, don’t think I don’t. Crumb,” she said in a low tone, swaying from side to side restlessly as she gathered herself. Then she burst forth again in a torrent. “You should have heard the argument I’ve been having all night with Ralph. He wants to divorce me on this, sue
me
, get it? Where do you think I’ll be then? This is going to be in the papers, because Ralph wants it there. He won’t
buy
it out. Do you realize how much money he has?”

“All right, all right!” Greg yelled. “Just what the hell do you want me to do about it?”

“First go to the police and take back what you said to them—about me. Get your God-damned coat or whatever, and let’s go,” she said, and swung herself half around, away from him.

He watched her angry eyes glancing here and there in the room.

“Listen, Nickie, I can’t—”

“Don’t tell me anything about what you can and can’t. Let’s get going. We’re going to Rittersville, wherever the hell that is.”

“Nickie, I’ve lost my job. What else do you want to do to me?”

“Your job? Your lousy job? If you think that’s all you’re going to lose! Come on.” She started toward the door.

Greg was rigid and breathless. He watched her open the door and turn to him, her hand on the knob. “I’m not going,” he said quickly.

“Oh. So.” She nodded mockingly. “You’re not going. All right, stay. I can talk for you.” She turned to the door.

“You’re
not going!” Greg said, wrenching her around by one arm.

The movement flung her back against the kitchenette sink, and for one instant her eyes looked at him, wide and frightened, then she plunged head down toward the door again.

Greg put his arm out and caught her across the chest, held her with her back to him, and her fists flailed, but only briefly. Greg caught one of her wrists in a grip that stopped her.

“All right,” she said, gasping. “All right, you’ll write it. Sit down and write it.” She shook her wrist free. “Where’s a piece of paper?”

Obediently, he got out a writing tablet, found a ball-point pen among a lot of pencils in a glass on a kitchen shelf. “Write what?” He sat down on his bed, and pulled the bridge table toward him.

“Write that it was not true that you slept with me in New York, and that the money I gave you was to get back to Pennsylvania.”

“What’s the date?”

“May 31st.”

He wrote the date, then:

It is not true

and stopped. “My hand’s shaking too much. I’ve gotta wait,” he mumbled. “Christ, I wish there was something to drink here.”

“I’ve got something in the car. Would that help?” Nickie went out.

Greg heard her car horn blow loudly, and heard Nickie’s “Damn it!” Then the clink of a bottle against metal, and the slam of the car door. Then Mrs. Van’s high-pitched, moaning voice. Greg went to the window.

“Sure, I’ll tell him,” Nickie said to Mrs. Van.

Mrs. Van was standing on her back porch, behind the screen door.

Nickie came up with a bottle of White Horse. “Your landlady wants to talk with you.”

Greg shoved his palms over his hair and went down. Mrs. Van was just going back into her house, but she turned when she heard his step. “You wanted to talk to me, Mrs. Van?”

“Yes, Greg.” She cleared her throat. She spoke to him through the screen door. “I wanted to tell you, Greg, that I’d just as soon—I’d just as soon you’d look for another place, after this month.”

“All right, Mrs. Van. I understand.” Greg paid his rent on the 15th of the month, but hadn’t paid it this month, which was why it had been due now for two weeks. So he had two more weeks to find another place.

“I’m sorry, Greg, but that’s the way I feel,” she said gently, but her mouth trembled to a firm line. Her chin was jutted forward in a righteous way as she looked at Nickie’s car, then up at the windows of Greg’s apartment.

“I’ll pay you the rent right away, Mrs. Van, and I’ll try to be out before the fifteenth,” said Greg, thinking he was being very agreeable, more than fair, but Mrs. Van said only, “That’ll be fine,” coldly, and walked into her house.

Greg ran up to his room. “Jesus!” he said. “My landlady wants me to move.”

“Surprised?” Nickie was sitting in Greg’s armchair with a drink.

Greg went to the bottle on the drainboard and poured himself a strong one. He took a few sips of it before he turned around. Then he went back to the paper on the bridge table. He knew what he had
to say, but it took him a long time. He covered both sides of the paper, and signed his full name, Gregory Parcher Wyncoop. Nickie had gotten up twice to get drinks, and now she was humming as if she were in a better mood.

“Finished? Read it to me,” she said.

He read it, and when he had finished, Nickie said, “Not very smooth, but it sounds like you. It sounds fine.”

Greg poured another drink, and put into it one of the ice cubes from the tray Nickie had set on the drainboard. He felt better. Another drink or two and he wouldn’t be so anxious about any of this.

“And—what’s Mr. Forester doing today?” Nickie asked.

“How should I know?” Greg sat down on his studio bed and leaned back against a pillow. “I suppose he’s celebrating because I was caught.”

Nickie made a sound between a laugh and a grunt.

“That doctor—that doctor in Rittersville might die,” Greg said. “It’s too bad.”

“Hm-m. Is he a friend of Bobbie’s?”

“Seems to be.”

“Bobbie’s getting it right and left, isn’t he?”

“What?”

“People dying. He used to talk about it—till I told him to go to an analyst and shut up about it. People dying. Death.”

Greg sat up. “Do
we
have to talk about it? Forester’s not dead.
He’s
O.K.”

“Oh, trust him.” Nickie looked sleepy, leaning back in the big chair. Her lips were faintly smiling.

“If that doctor dies, I’m guilty of murder, they said.”

“Murder?” Nickie’s eyes opened wider. “Not manslaughter?”

“No. Murder.” Greg finished his drink and stared at his empty glass. Then with a vague, scared smile, he stood up and went to the bottle. When he turned around, Nickie was looking at him. “Murder,” he repeated.

“All right. I heard you.”

Greg looked at the paper he had written and wondered if he could avoid showing it to the police. Would Nickie trust him to hand it to them? Greg doubted that. And how much good would it do, if he were going to be guilty of murder anyway?

“I’ll take you to the police later, so you can give them that,” Nickie said, nodding toward the bridge table. “Don’t you have to report to them today, anyway?”

“Just—phone in.”

“Well, we’ll go in. Together. But first let’s call Mr. Forester and see what he’s up to.” She got up a bit unsteadily, but she was smiling, cheerful.

“Call him why?”

“Because I want to. How far away is he from here?”

“Oh—fifteen miles.”

“Is that all? What’s his number?”

Greg thought for an instant, found he remembered it. “Milton 6-9491.”

“Have to get the operator?”

“Well—get her, yeah.” Greg watched Nickie uneasily. She’d probably been drinking all night, too, he thought.

“Milton—
Mil-ton
,” Nickie was saying to the operator. “Is that strange to you? Milton 6—What was it, Greg?”

He repeated it, Nickie repeated it, then looked at Greg and said, “Milton, Miltown, what’s the diff? Hello. Bobbie? This is your loving wife. … Well, I’m in Humbert Corners, of all madly gay places, and I’m with Greg. … Yes, and we wondered if you’d like to come over for brunch.” She laughed.

Greg wandered across the room, drifted toward the sink, and added a bit to his drink.

“Oh, ‘busy.’ Not
too
busy, are you? We’d like to see you, wouldn’t we, Greg?”

Slowly, sadly, Greg shook his head.

“Greg says no, but I say yes. … Oh. What’re you running from now, Bobbie?” she asked through a laugh. She held the telephone a little away from her ear, clicked the bar a couple of times, then put the telephone down. “Hung up. I’ll try him again in a minute,” she said with a wink at Greg. “Meanwhile, I think I’ll try my husband and tell him—tell him about that,” she said, pointing to the paper on the bridge table.

Ralph was not in. Nickie tried another number where she thought he might be, and could not get him there, either. It annoyed her.

Nickie’s call came at ten, and after Robert hung up, he went back to his sweeping of the balcony, one of the last chores before he left the house. He swept slowly, because his arm had begun to hurt. They had changed the bandage for him at the hospital last night, had probed it or scratched out the penicillin the doctor had put in, and it had hurt him ever since. It made him a bit giddy, maybe a little delirious. He had the feeling the call from Nickie hadn’t really happened. It was so unlikely, so unbelievable she would be at Greg’s place in Humbert Corners, drunk at ten in the morning—that Greg would be there with her, presumably drunk and merry also.

When he had finished upstairs, he sat down on the couch with a cup of coffee. The telephone rang again, and Robert did not move to answer it. Then, after ten rings, he thought it might be someone else besides Nickie, so he picked it up.

“Bobbie, darling, we’d like you to come over,” Nickie said. “Brunch—if you bring the eggs.”

Now Robert heard Greg’s laugh. “Come on, I’m sure you can do fine without me. I’m just about to leave the house, just walking out the door.”

“Oh, you are not,” said Nickie teasingly. “Don’t you want to see Greg? The man you—you defeated?”

“Thanks, I’ve seen enough of him lately.” Robert put the telephone down in anger. It was ten-seventeen. He had told the Nielsons he would come by around eleven with the two suitcases and the cartons they had offered to keep for him, but he decided to take them over now. The sooner he left the house, the better. If he didn’t answer the telephone for half an hour or so, Nickie might give it up.

He loaded the suitcases and the cartons into his car and drove off. So Greg was back in his apartment, getting drunk with Nickie. It didn’t make any sense. Nothing seemed to make any sense. Greg was out on bail, Robert supposed, and he wondered if Nickie had put up the bail for him. It all seemed so easy for those two, to Robert. The police, the neighbors, ordinary people seemed to cooperate with Greg and Nickie to make things easier for them. The police had not bothered, for instance, to tell him that Greg had been found last night. Robert had been at the hospital beside the doctor’s bed from just before eleven until after twelve, but when he got home, it was not the police who called to tell him about Greg, but the Nielsons, who had heard it on their radio at midnight, they said.

Betty Nielson was baking something when Robert arrived. The sight of their small, sunlit living room, the smell of baking from the kitchen, put a smile on Robert’s face, a smile that he felt nearly cracked it.

“Where’s Kathy?” Robert asked. Kathy was the Nielsons’ little girl.

“Sunday school. Then she’s having Sunday dinner with a friend,” Jack said, smiling. “Are you still planning to take off today?”