Drinking at the dinner table has always seemed to me to be an abomination.
“Better have one. Part of your contract.” Goetz could not abide a refusal of any request.
The silvery voice of his wife broke into the building tension. “Don’t press it on him, Ray,” she said. “Some people don’t like to drink at dinner.”
“So they don’t,” said Goetz. “So they don’t.” He took a deliberate swallow of his drink. “You know something?” he said. “Mrs. Goetz doesn’t like to drink at dinner either. That is, she doesn’t like for me to drink at dinner. I have a very stylish wife, Mr. Wainright.”
My eyes went from one to the other, searching for a clue to the relationship between them. She was smiling sweetly, her even teeth bright in the candlelight.
“My husband is a drunken pig, Mr. Wainright,” she said, her gentle voice calm as she began her dinner. Goetz rose out of his seat, his face murderous. “Sit down, Ray,” she said. “Eat your soup.”
Force coupled with gentility is power. Mina Goetz had depth, more than Ray Goetz could ever understand. Also I had begun to sense a fact which should have been obvious from the very beginning. Ray Goetz loved his wife, and was rendered desperately helpless by her. She could hurt him, and did several times before the interminable dinner faltered to a close, Goetz glowering and affable by turns, filling his whiskey glass again and again. Mrs. Goetz and I covered up our reaction to his condition with small talk, carefully engineered by my hostess, for whom my admiration continued to grow.
In many respects I found the situation captivating. I’ve always been titillated and intrigued by violence of any kind, and so I found our efforts to keep the conversation going an exciting counterpoint to the unpleasantness of my host and client. It was fatiguing, however, and I felt relieved when we moved to the living room for coffee. For a moment I envied the servants their escape, as I heard their cars going down the drive; then I thought of the days of peace the eight hundred dollar commission for the pool would buy for me. The peace I’d have until the next time, of course. Until the next Goetz stood in my way.
“How are your fingers?” I asked. Goetz, searching for a safe subject of conversation.
“They hurt some.” He waved the glass in his hand. “This stuff makes a good anesthetic.”
“Would you like me to look at them?” Mina asked.
“Let ’em alone. Practice on the poor.”
Goetz went back to his drink. I must have looked questioningly at her.
“I was a nurse once,” she said.
Goetz was weaving over her, his slack mouth gone hard again. “You want to know why I asked him here?”
“Yes,” she said, “if you want to tell me.”
“Wanted you to see what you might have got for yourself,” he said. “Look at him! Fancy clothes. Fancy college. I’ve been pushing him around all day and he hasn’t got the guts to tell me off.”
I’d risen to my feet. The little vein began to throb in my temple, a rhythmic thump, thump, as he went on.
“Looks like me, doesn’t he? Doesn’t he? Except for one thing. He ain’t got two dimes to rub together!” He stood over me, his drunken face a loose sneer. “He stands there taking this — for a commission, for a two-bit commission!”
I could feel his rage now, a pleasant tingle in my fingertips. Aria da Capo, I thought. Song of the end. This is the way. Always, Always...
Mina Goetz’s voice cut into my concentration.
“Ray, stop it,” she said. “Stop it, now!”
“Sure, I’ll stop it! I’ll stop it!” He reached into his coat pocket. “Here’s your contract, pool salesman!” He threw it on the floor. “Take it. Go on, take it. And get out!”
The scene was a tableau for a moment, Mina standing to one side, Goetz raging and dominating the room, my head swirling, swirling. After a moment, I stooped to pick up the contract.
“It’s not signed, Mr. Goetz.” I said, making my voice as calm as possible.
“And it’s not going to be signed, pool salesman.”
I tried again, patiently, the little shocks going through me now, again and again. “You can’t do that, Mr. Goetz. Why, I’ve the signed order from your secretary.”
“My secretary? She’s long gone, Mr. Wainright.” He was spitting my name now. “Nobody but an idiot starts construction without a contract.”
The waves were coming now, rolling up from my feet, slowly, slowly. “Do you mean you’re not signing, Mr. Goetz?”
“Get out,” he told me.
“I’ll pay it, if he doesn’t, Mr. Wainright,” Mina Goetz said.
Goetz turned on her savagely. “No, you won’t baby. I got you tied up. All tied up. You couldn’t buy him a hamburger if he was starving.”
The waves swept over me, calming me, soothing me. I gathered myself again. Goetz was glaring at me. It was wonderful, exhilarating. I faced him for the last time. “Fattura della Morte.” I said. “Fattura della Morte.”
“Get out!” he shouted.
I struck him, solidly, on the chin and mouth, relishing the impact of my fist. He went down, pausing for a moment on all fours, his bloodied mouth working, his eyes insane. It was good to be alive again, focused, feather-light. I struck again as he rose to his feet, a short chopping blow to the solar plexus. He would have been easy, even without the liquor. I stopped his clumsy rush with the cut to the windpipe, tripping him without difficulty, sending him crashing elaborately into the ornate coffee table.
Mina Goetz was holding the door open. “Get out of here,” she said. “Run!”
Our eyes met and held while I shook my head. The room was caught in a static moment of time, unreal, a ballet scored with violence. Careless, I assumed Goetz was unable to continue. I turned just in time to avoid the direct force of his next lunge, his right hand grasped a metal statuette which had rested on the table. For a moment we circled each other, Goetz turned animal, the effects of the liquor lost in fury. He lunged at me again, bringing down the statuette with crushing force on my shoulder, the pain beyond memory, a streak of fire. I struck him again and again with my good left arm, hard, to the face, to the body, trying desperately now for the killing cut to the back of the neck, terribly handicapped by my injured shoulder. I managed the kick to the ulnar nerve area of the arm which forced him to drop the statuette. But he leaped at me again, maddened fingers clawing for my throat. We fell, Goetz’s face a nightmare before my eyes, as I felt the inexorable pressure on my throat. I fought for breath, for vision, still hearing the animal sounds, the endless cursing that poured from his lips. Out of the whirling red haze I could see the man’s wife standing over us, the statuette raised high above her head, saw her bring it down once and then again, Goetz going limp upon me as she did so. I crawled from under him and staggered to my feet. Mina Goetz was looking down at the still form of her husband, her eyes wide, her breath coming in great gulps, the bloody statuette still in her hand.
“I hate him,” she said. “I hate him.”
I leaned over the table, gathering myself again, forcing strength into my exhausted body. When I looked up, the woman was on the floor beside her husband, her hands busy and professional. She held me with her eyes.
“He’s dead,” she said. “I killed him.”
I crossed over to Goetz and turned him over, feeling for a pulse as did so.
“He’s dead,” she said again. “I know.”
“What do we do now?” I asked her.
“Sit down. Rest. Let’s rest first.”
It was a singular moment. I was intrigued by the reaction of the woman. And I was surprised that she had not given the body of her husband a second look after assuring herself that he was dead, that she had made no protestations of sorrow or of concern, that she simply sat, thinking calmly, her long fingers quiet in her lap.