Kay muttered something under her breath.
Claggett leaned forward. “I didn’t hear you! Speak up!”
“I…” Kay wet her lips. “No, sir. I don’t want you to.”
“Don’t want me to do what?”
“Don’t!” I said. “For God’s sake, drop it, Jeff.”
He gestured curtly, ordering me to butt out. To mind my own business and let him mind his. I said I couldn’t do that.
“You’ve made your point, Jeff. So let it go at that. You don’t need to watch her bleed.” I crossed over to Kay, spoke to her gently. “Want to go up to your room? It’ll be all right with the sergeant, won’t it, Jeff?”
“Yeah, hell, dammit!” he said sourly.
“Kay.” I touched her on the shoulder. “Want me to help you?”
She shook off my hand.
She buried her face in her hands, and began to shake with silent weeping.
Claggett and I exchanged a glance. He stood up, jerked his head toward the door and went out. I took another glance at Kay, saw that her trembling had stopped and followed him.
We shook hands at the front door, and he apologized for coming down hard on Kay. But he seemed considerably less than overwhelmed with regret. The little lady had been under official scrutiny for a long time, he said, and her conduct today had simply triggered an already loaded gun.
“I’m not referring to catching her in the raw with you. I had to bawl her out for it, but that’s as far as it would have gone—if there’d been nothing more than that. It was her attitude about it, her attitude in general, the things she said. If you know what I mean.” He sighed, shook his head. “And if you don’t know, to hell with you.”
“I know,” I said. “But she was pretty upset, Jeff. If you’ll look at things from her viewpoint—”
“I won’t,” said Jeff. “You can be fair without seeing the other fellow’s side of things, Britt. Keep doing that and you stop having a side of your own. You get so damned broad-minded that you don’t know right from wrong.”
I said that I didn’t always know now, and he said I should ask him whenever I was in doubt. “Incidentally, I spoke to a lawyer about the way you’d been gypped out of your property for that city dump, and he thinks you’ve got a hell of a good case. In fact, he’s willing to take it on a contingency for a third of what he can recover.”
“But I’ve told you,” I said, “I just can’t do it, Jeff. I’m simply not up to a courtroom battle.”
“My lawyer friend thinks they’d go for an out-of-court settlement.”
“Well, maybe,” I said. “But Connie would be sure to find out about it, and I’d still be up the creek. She’d grab any money I got, and give me a good smearing besides.”
“I don’t see that.” Claggett frowned. “You’ve been sending her quite a bit of money, haven’t you?”
“Better than four thousand since I got out of the hospital.”
“Then why should she want to give you a bad time? Why should she throw a wrench in a money machine? She hurts you, she hurts herself.”
I nodded, said he was probably right. But still…
“I’m just afraid to do it, Jeff. I don’t know why I am but I am.”
He looked at me exasperatedly, and seemed on the point of saying something pointed. Instead, however, he sighed heavily and said he guessed I just couldn’t help it.
“But think it over, anyway, won’t you? You don’t need to commit yourself, but you can at least think about it, can’t you?”
“Oh, well, sure,” I said. “Sure, I’ll think about it.”
“That’s a promise?”
“Of course,” I said.
He left. I returned to Kay who was well-prepared to receive me.
“I could simply kill you!” she exploded. “You made me lose my job, you stupid old boob you!”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I’m sure you were much too good for it.”
“I was not! I mean—why didn’t you speak up for me? It was all your fault, anyway, but you didn’t say a word to defend me!”
“I thought I did, but possibly I didn’t say enough,” I said. “I really don’t think it would have changed anything, however, regardless of what I’d said.”
“Oh, you! What do you know, you silly old fool?”
“Very little,” I said. “And at the rate I’m aging, I’m afraid I won’t be able to add much to my store of knowledge.”
She glared at me, her face blotched and ugly like a soiled picture. She said angrily that I hadn’t needed to act like a fool, had I? Well, had I?
“You didn’t even give him time to open his mouth before you were cracking your silly jokes! Saying that I couldn’t wear my gun because it didn’t match my birthday suit, and a lot of other stupid silly stuff. Well, you weren’t funny, not a doggone bit! Just a plain darned fool, that’s all you were!”
“I know,” I said.
“You know?”
“It’s a protective device.” I nodded. “The I-ain’t-nothin’-but-a-hound-dawg syndrome. When a dog can’t cope, he flops over on his back, thumps his tail, wiggles his paws and exposes his balls. Briefly, he demonstrates that he is a harmless and amusing fellow, so why the hell should anyone hurt him? And it works pretty well with other dogs, literal and figurative. The meanest mastiff has never masticated me, but I’ve taken some plumb awful stompings from pussycats.”
“Huh! You think you’re so smart, don’t you?”
“Meow, sppftt,” I said.
24
It was a pretty grim weekend.
Mrs. Olmstead decided to replace her usual grumbling and mumbling with silence—the kind in which conversation is omitted but not the clashing and crashing of pans, the smashing of dishes and the like.
Kay performed her nurse’s duties with a vengeance, taking my pulse and temperature every hour on the hour or so it seemed to me, and generally interrupting me so often in doing her job that doing my own was virtually impossible.
Sunday night, after dinner, there was a respite in the turmoil. Kay had retired to her room for a time, and Mrs. Olmstead was apparently doing something that could not be done noisily. At any rate, it seemed to be a good time to do some writing, and I dragged a chair up to my typewriter and went to work. Or, rather, I tried to. The weekend’s incessant clatter and interruptions had gotten me so keyed up that I couldn’t write a word.
I got up and paced around my office, then went back to my typewriter. I squirmed and fidgeted, and stared helplessly at the paper. And, finally, I went out into the kitchen for a cup of coffee.
I shook the pot, discovering that there was still some in it. I put it on the stove to warm, and got a cup and saucer from the cupboard. Moving very quietly, to be sure. Keeping an eye on the door to Mrs. Olmstead’s quarters, and listening for any sounds that might signal a resumption of her racket.
I poured my coffee and sipped it standing by the stove, then quietly washed and dried the cup and saucer and returned them to the cupboard. And suddenly I found myself grimacing with irritation at the preposterousness of my situation.
This was my house. Kay and Mrs. Olmstead were working for me. Yet they had made nothing but trouble for me throughout the weekend, and they had certainly not refrained from throwing their weight around before then—forcing me to cater to them. And just why the hell should things be this way?
Why had most of my life been like this, a constant giving-in and knuckling-under to people who didn’t give a damn about my welfare, regardless of what they professed or pretended?
I was brooding over the matter, silently swearing that there were going to be some changes made, when I became aware of a very muted buzzing. So muted that I almost failed to hear it.
I looked around, listening, trying to locate the source of the sound. I looked down at the floor, saw the faint outline of the telephone cord extending along the baseboard of the cabinetwork. And I yanked open the door of the lower cupboard and snatched out the telephone.
Just as Manny was about to give up and hang up.
She asked me where in the world I’d been, and I said I’d been right there, and I’d explain the delay in answering when I saw her. “But I’m sorry I kept you waiting. I wasn’t expecting any calls tonight.”
“I know, but I just had to call you, Britt. I’ve been reading the manuscript you gave me on erosion, and I think it’s wonderful, darling! Absolutely beautiful! The parallel you draw between the decline of the soil and the deterioration of the people—the lowering of life expectancy and the incidence of serious disease. Britt, I can’t tell you when I’ve been so excited about something!”
“Well, thank you,” I said, grinning from ear to ear. “I’m very pleased that you like it.”
“Oh, I do! In its own way, I think it’s every bit as good as Deserts on the March.”
I mumbled, pleased, saying nothing that made any sense, I’m sure. Even to be mentioned in the same breath with Dr. Paul Sears’ classic work was overwhelming. And I knew that Manny wasn’t simply buttering me up to make me feel good.
“There’s only one thing wrong with what you’ve done,” she went on. “It’s far too good for us. You’ve got to make it into a full-length book that will reach the kind of audience it deserves.”
“But PXA is paying for it. Paying very well, too.”
“I know. But I’m sure something can be worked out with Pat. I’ll talk to him after I talk to you, let’s see, the day after tomorrow, is it?”
“That’s right,” I said.
“Well, I haven’t read all you’ve done, and I want to read back through the whole manuscript before our meeting. So…” She hesitated. “I’m not sure I can make it on Tuesday. Suppose I call you Wednesday, and see what we can set up?”
I said that was fine with me; I was glad to have the additional time to work. We talked a few minutes more, largely about the work and how well she liked it. Then we hung up, and I started to leave the kitchen. And Mrs. Olmstead’s surly voice brought me to a halt.
“What’s going on here, anyways? Wakin’ folks up at this time o’night!”
Her face was sleep-puffed, her eyes streaked with threads of yellowish matter. She rubbed them with a grayish-looking fist, meanwhile surveying me sourly.
“Well,” she grunted, “I ast you a question, Mis-ter Rainstar.”
“Hold out your hands,” I said.
“Huh?” She blinked stupidly. “What for?”
“Hold them out! Now!”
She held them out. I put the phone in them, took her by the elbow and hustled her out to the hallway writing desk. I took the phone out of her hands and placed it on the desk.
“Now that is where it belongs,” I said, “and that is where I want it. Can you remember that, Mrs. Olmstead?”
She said surlily that she could. She could remember things a heck of a lot better than people who couldn’t even remember to mail a letter.
“I tell you one thing, though. That phone’s out here an’ I’m back in the kitchen, I ain’t sure I’m gonna hear it.”
“All right,” I said. “When you’re actually in the kitchen working, you can keep the phone with you. But never put it away in a cupboard where I found it just now.”
She shrugged, started to turn away without answering.
“One thing more,” I said. “I’ve noticed that we’re always running out of shopping money. No matter how much I leave for you, you use it. It’s going to have to stop, Mrs. Olmstead!”
“Now you listen to me,” she said, shaking a belligerent finger at me. “I can’t help it that groceries is high! I don’t spend a nickel more for ’em than I have to.”
I said I knew groceries were high. I also knew that Jack Daniel’s was high, and I’d noticed several bottles of it stowed in the bottom cupboard.
“You’ll have to start drinking something cheaper,” I said. “You apparently do a great deal of drinking in bars when you’re supposedly out shopping, so I can’t supply you with Jack Daniel’s for your home consumption.”
She looked pretty woebegone at that, so I told her not to worry about it, for God’s sake, and to go to bed and get a good night’s sleep. And watching her trudge away, shoulders slumped, in her dirty old robe, I felt like nine kinds of a heel. Because, really, why fuss about a little booze if it made her feel good? At her age, with all passion spent and the capacity for all other good things gone, she surely was entitled to good booze. Drinking was probably all that made life-become-existence tolerable for her as it probably is for all who drink.
I went to bed and to sleep. Thinking that the reason I hated getting tough with people was that it was too tough on me.
The next day went fairly well for me. There was practically no trouble from Mrs. Olmstead. I avoided any with Kay by simply submitting to her ministrations.
I got in a good day’s work, and continued to work until after nine that night.
Around ten, while I was toweling myself off after a shower, Kay came into the bathroom bearing a thermometer.
I took her by the shoulders, pushed her outside and locked the door.
When I had finished drying myself, I put on my pajamas, came out of the bathroom and climbed into bed. Nodding at Kay who stood waiting for me, prim-faced.
“Does that mean,” she said icily, “that I now have your permission to take your temperature?”
“If you like,” I said.
“Well, thank you so much!” she said.
She took my temperature. I held up my wrist, and she took my pulse, almost hurling my hand away from her when she had finished.
She left then, turning the light off and closing the door very gently. Some twenty minutes later, she tapped on the door with her fingernails, pushed it open and came in. Through slitted eyes I watched her approach my bed. A soft, sweet-smelling shadow in the dim glow of the hall light.
She stood looking down at me. Then her hands came out from behind her, and went up over her head. And they were holding a long sharp knife.
I let out a wild yell, but the knife was already plunging downward.
It stabbed against my chest, then folded over as cardboard will. And Kay fell across me, shaking with laughter.
After a time, she crawled over into bed next to me, shedding her shorty nightgown en route. She nuzzled me and whispered naughtily in my ear. I told her she wasn’t funny, dammit; she’d damned near scared me to death. She said she was terribly sorry, but she’d just had to snap me out of my stiffishness some way. And I said, Oh, well.
We were about to take it from there when I remembered something, and sat up abruptly.
“My God!” I said. “You’ve got to get out of here! This place is going to be full of cops in about a minute!”
“What? What the heck are you talking about?”
“The walls are bugged! Any loud cry for help will bring the police.”
“Britt, darling,” she said soothingly, “you just lie right back down here by mama. You just shut your mouth so mama can kiss it.”
“But you don’t understand, dammit! Jeff Claggett couldn’t stake the place out, but I was afraid to come back here without plenty of protection. So—”
“So he told you that story,” said Kay, and determinedly pulled me back down at her side. “And he gave you me. It’s all the protection he could give you, and it’s all you need. Take it from Officer Nolton, Britt. Soon-to-be-resigned Officer Nolton, thanks to your dear friend, the sergeant.”
“Knock it off,” I said crossly. “I had an idea all along that I was being kidded.”
“Why, of course, you did,” Kay said smoothly. “And, now, you’re sure.”
And now, of course, I was, since my yell for help had brought no response. Jeff had deceived me about the house being bugged, just as he had about Kay’s status. He had done it in my own best interests, and I was hardly inclined to chide or reproach him.
Still, I couldn’t help feeling that uneasiness which comes to one whose welfare is almost t
otally dependent upon another person, no matter how well-intentioned that person may be. Nor could I help wondering whether there were other deceptions I didn’t yet know about. Or whether something meant for my own good might turn out just the opposite.
25
My sense of uneasiness increased rather than diminished. It became so aggravated under Kay’s incessant inquiries as to what was bothering me that I blew up and told her she was.
“Everything about you is getting to me,” I said. “That blushing trick, the prudish-sweet manner, the cute-kiddy way you talk, like you wouldn’t say crap if you were up to your collar in it, the—Oh, crud to it!” I said. “You’ve got me so bollixed up I don’t know what I’m saying anymore.”
We were in my bedroom at the time—where else—and I was fully prepared to go to bed—by myself.
Kay said she was sorry she got on my nerves, but I’d feel a lot better after I had something she had for me. She started to climb into bed with me. I put a leg up in the air, warding her off. She tried to come by the other way, and I stuck up an arm.
She frowned at me, hands on her hips. “Now, you see here, I have as much right to that bed as you have.”
“Right to it?” I said. “You talk like a girl in a wooden hat, baby.”
“You said you didn’t think I was awful. Because I did it, I mean. You said you’d marry me if you weren’t already married.”
“Which I am,” I said. “Don’t forget that.”
Kay said that part didn’t matter. What was important was that I wanted to marry her, and that kind of made her my wife, and this was a community property state so half of the bed was hers. And while I was unraveling that one she hopped over me and into the bed.
I let her stay. For one thing, it is very hard to push a beautiful, well-built girl out of your bed. For another, while I knew she had skunked me again, that I had fallen for her act, it was a very good act. And what did one more fall matter to an incurable fall guy?