On the fifth ring (plus two) a woman’s voice said “Hello”.
“Is this the Clarvoe residence?”
“Yes.”
“Mrs. Clarvoe?”
“She’s not in.”
“But I recognize you, Mrs. Clarvoe.”
A sharp sound came over the wire, like a metallic object striking the floor. “Who... Is that you, Evelyn?”
“Didn’t you expect to hear from me again?”
“Yes. Yes, I expected to.”
A pause at the other end of the line, then a flurry as if people were moving about, and a man’s voice, low and hurried, but distinct: “Ask her about Helen. Ask her where Helen is.”
“Who’s that with you?” Evelyn said. As if she didn’t know. Poor old bungling Blackshear, looking for her all over town, like a blind man feeling his way through a forest. One of these days I will pop out at him from behind a tree.
“No one’s with me, Evelyn. There was, but I... I sent him away. I felt you — you and I could talk better alone. Evelyn? Are you still there?”
Still there. Safe, warm, secluded, the poet in the playhouse, the child in the ivory tower.
A man, barrel-chested, bald, passed the phone booth, and she peered out at him through the dirty, narrow glass door. But he didn’t even notice her. His mind was on other things.
“Evelyn? Answer me. Answer me.”
“Well, you needn’t shout,” Evelyn said coldly. “I’m not deaf, you know. I have a 20–20 hearing.”
“I’m sorry I — shouted.”
“That’s better.”
“Listen to me, please. Have you seen Helen? Have you talked to her?”
“Why?” She smiled to herself because she sounded so sober and earnest when all the time she was bursting with laughter. Had she seen Helen? What a marvelous joke. Prolong it. Draw it out. Make it last a bit. “Why do you want to know about Helen, Mrs. Clarvoe?”
“She was due here hours ago. She said she was coming home.”
“Oh, that.”
“What do you mean? Have you...”
“She changed her mind. She didn’t really want to come home anyway. She didn’t want you to see her in her present condition.”
“What is her — condition?”
“I promised not to tell. After all, we were friends once, and I ought to keep a promise to a friend.”
“Please. For God’s sake...”
“You keep shouting. I wish you wouldn’t.”
“All right,” Verna whispered. “I won’t shout. Just tell me, where’s Helen and what’s the matter with her?”
“Well, it’s a long story.” It wasn’t really. It was short and sweet, but Mrs. Clarvoe must be taught a lesson. It was rude to shout.
“Evelyn, please, I beg of you...”
“No one has to beg me for the truth. I give it freely, don’t I?”
“Yes.”
“Whatever else people say about me, I’m not a liar.”
“No. Of course not. You’re not a liar. About Helen, she’s all right, isn’t she?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you said...”
“I didn’t say she was all right or all wrong. All I said was that she changed her mind, she’s not coming home.”
“Where is she?”
The barrel-chested man passed again, on his way back to the door. He had glass eyes and wooden lips.
“She’s working,” Evelyn said, “in a call house.”
She began to tremble in excitement and anticipation, waiting for Verna’s reaction, shock, disbelief, protest. None came.
“Did you hear me, Mrs. Clarvoe? Helen’s working in a call house. It’s down on South Flower Street. No place for a lady, I can tell you. But then, Helen never wanted to be a lady. A little excitement, that’s what she needs. She’ll get it, too. Oh my, yes. She’ll get it.”
Still no answer, not even the click of the receiver. The excitement began to spill out of her, like blood from a severed artery. She stuffed words into the wound to stem the flow.
“I got her the job. I met her outside her hotel this morning. She said she was sick of the idle life she was leading, she wanted to have something interesting to occupy her time. So I said I knew of something. Come with me, I said. And she came.”
“Now I know you’re lying,” Verna said flatly. “Helen would never have gone anywhere with you. She’s been warned.”
“Warned? About me?”
“What have you done with her?”
“I told you, I got her a job.”
“That’s preposterous.”
“Is it?” She hung up softly.
It was preposterous, nothing could be more preposterous than poor old Helen in a call house. Yet it was true.
She began to laugh, not ordinary laughter, but sounds with claws that tore at her chest and at the tissues of her throat. Burning with pain, she stumbled out into the street.
Chapter 14
During classes she was known as Dr. Laurence, but after five she was Claire and she lived near the U.C.L.A. campus in Westwood with her husband, John, and an overweight spaniel called Louise. She was a tall, well-built young woman with long, beautiful legs and black hair which she wore in a coronet of braids. The style was old-fashioned and not particularly becoming, but it made her look unique, and she was well aware that this was about as much as she could expect with her limited equipment.
Frank, intelligent and unpretentious, she got on well with her students and had a great many friends, most of them university people. Her closest friend, however, had nothing to do with the faculty.
She had met Evelyn Merrick about eight months previously on a double date with one of John’s fraternity brothers. On the way home she asked John, “Well, how do you like her?”
“Who?”
“Evelyn Merrick.”
“She’s O.K.,” John said.
“You certainly are enthusiastic.”
“Thank God one of us doesn’t form snap judgments of people.”
“Snap judgments are the only valid ones.”
“How so?”
“Otherwise you get to like people, just because they satisfy a need in you and not because of their intrinsic worth.”
“Don’t look now, but your Ph.D. is showing.”
“Let it show,” Claire said. “I’ll bet she’s suffered. And don’t say who again. You know perfectly well who.”
“Most of us suffer here and there.”
“I don’t think it was here and there with Evelyn. It seems to me that she’s had a tremendous shock of some kind.”
“Maybe she had shock treatments.”
“You meant that to be funny, I suppose.”
“Very, very slightly funny.”
“As a matter of fact, I’ve seen people just after they’ve had shock treatments, and they show the same kind of wary attitude. Even if they hear a question the first time, they like to have it repeated. Things like that.”
“So you think your new friend is a parolee from Camarillo.”
“I think nothing of the sort,” Claire said briskly. “My opinion is that she’s suffered a shocking experience. I wonder what it could have been.”
“Well, I know you, angel, you’ll have the whole story out of her the second time you meet.”
He was wrong. During the next few months the two women met frequently, sometimes accidentally, since they lived only eight blocks apart, and sometimes by arrangement, for lunch or dinner or an early movie; but whatever Evelyn’s shock had been, she didn’t mention it, and any hints that Claire put out or direct questions she asked, were met with silence or a gentle remonstrance. At first, Evelyn’s ability to keep a secret tantalized and annoyed Claire, but in time she came to respect it.
When John, who taught in the biology department, had to go away on field trips, Evelyn frequently came over to spend the night because Claire was nervous about being alone.