“Could you move your hand off my knee, Mrs. Shaw?”
“Of course,” she said, loosening her grip and sliding her hand up my thigh.
“That’s not what I meant,” I said, standing up.
Before I could get cleanly away, Caroline’s mother goosed me.
“What is going on here?” I said, perhaps too loudly, but I believe my pique was understandable. “Are you all crazy?”
“It’s just Caroline,” she said, laughing. “She is so prone to exaggeration. Come sit down, Mr. Carl,” she said, patting the bed beside her. “I’ll be good.”
“I’ll stand, thank you.”
“You must think me a pathetic old witch.” She lifted her face to me and paused, waiting for me to inject my protestations. When I didn’t say a word she laughed once more. “You do, don’t you. Such an honest young man. Caroline always knows how to find them. But before you judge me too harshly, Mr. Carl, consider how noxious I must appear to myself. I wasn’t always like this, no, not at all, but the same forces that have rotted out this house have turned me into the wondrous creature you see before you. You’re better off without any of us, Mr. Carl.”
“I just came for dinner,” I said.
“Oh, I know the attraction, heavens yes. Just as Mother Shaw, may she rot in peace, brought Franklin here for Caroline, she brought me here for Kingsley. She had that way about her, of taking destiny by the hand and turning it to do her will. I had no intention of staying. It was a part-time job, to read to her son in the evenings, that was all. He was forty already and had difficulty reading for himself. I was only twenty and still in school, but already I believed I knew what I wanted. You want to know how pathetic I really am, Mr. Carl, know that this was what I wanted, this house, this name, this life, from which now I run to France to escape whenever I am able. The French say that a man who is born to be hanged will never be drowned. I was born to be rich, I always thought, in the deepest of my secret hearts. And see, I was right, but I suppose I was born to drown too.” She stood, and without looking at me, walked to the door. “Do yourself a favor, Mr. Carl, leave tomorrow morning as soon as the road clears and don’t look back. Leave tomorrow morning and forget all about what you think you want from Caroline.”
She closed the door behind her. I stared at it for a moment and then my stomach growled. I stepped to the bureau and whisked off the cover of the plate. It was a sandwich all right, but beneath the stale bun the slices of tongue were so thick I could still see the whole of the muscle lolling between the slabs of teeth in the mouth of its cow, brawny, hairy, working the cud from one side of the mouth to the other. I went to sleep hungry.
4. Allegro con Fuoco
I had thought about keeping the bedside lamp on the whole of the night to discourage any other unwelcome visitors, but I found it hard enough to sleep in the must and damp of that room, with the splat, splat splat, splat of leaking water dropping into the chamberpot and the groans of that ancient house collapsing ever so slowly into itself, so I turned out the light and, while lying in the darkness, I thought about Claudius Reddman, grand progenitor of Reddman Foods. His legacy seemed a dark and bitter one just then, except for the wealth. One daughter dead, another run off, the third widowed by her own son’s hand, and all the while Elisha Poole railing drunkenly at his ill fortune before silencing his wails at the end of a rope. Then there was the grandson, Kingsley Shaw, shooting his father on the portico of the house on a rain-swept night. Then there was the ruin that was Selma Shaw, brought to the house by Grandmother Faith to be Kingsley’s wife and doomed to become the living embodiment of all her false expectations. And, of course, there was the house itself, reverting to a wild and untamed place filled with decay, like some misanthrope’s heart. It was almost enough to have me swear off my desperate search for untold amounts of money. Almost. For I was sure if I was ever to be given the gift of glorious wealth I would do a better job of handling it than the Reddmans. A bright airy house, filled with light, maybe a converted barn with a tennis court, clay because I was never the swiftest, and a pool, and a gardener to mow the acres of lawn and care for the flowers. And there would be parties, and women in white dresses, and a green light beckoning from across the sound.
I lay in the bed and shivered from the damp and thought about it all, not even realizing I was slipping into somebody else’s reverie, until I fell, eventually, into a dark, empty sleep. That it was dreamless was merciful, what with all I had been through and learned that night. I slept curled in a ball and stayed like that until I felt the scrape of teeth at the back of my neck.
I sprung awake and spun in the darkness, first this way, then that way, searching desperately for the rat. But it wasn’t a rat. I could only make out the outlines of a figure in my bed and I pulled myself away before I heard a throaty laugh and the soft silvery rustle of metal on metal and smelled the sweet smell of vermouth.
“Jesus dammit,” I said. “I thought you were passed out.”
“I revived,” said Caroline, in a glazed voice. “I didn’t know you’d be so jumpy.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I thought we should maintain our cover with a late-night rendezvous. There are always eyes open in this house.”
“We could have let our cover slide, I think. They’ll know soon enough, as soon as they talk to your fiancé. You didn’t tell me about you and Harrington. Another lie?”
“The love of my life,” she said. “And you’re right, they will tell him, of course, and he will tell them exactly who you are. I guess the jig is up.”
“Are you still drunk?” I asked.
“Maybe.”
“You were pounding them down like an Australian frat boy.”
“I have a small problem sometimes. My therapist says I’m a situational alcoholic. It’s one of the many things we’re working on.”
“What situations specifically?”
“Family situations, like tonight.”
“I really can’t blame you, Caroline. This family of yours is the screwiest I’ve ever seen. It makes mine look like the Cleavers, and believe me, no one ever confused my mother and father with June and Ward. And besides their general weirdness, it seems each and every one of them has the damnedest desire to have sex with me.”
She gave a hearty laugh. “You said you wanted to meet them all, so I arranged it.”
“You arranged it?”
“I told them you were a polymorphously perverse sexual addict and hung like a horse.”
I let out a burst of embarrassed angst just as I heard the rustle of covers. I felt her palm land on my stomach and rub and then slip south, reaching under my boxers.
“Well maybe I overstated it a bit,” she said, “but it is mighty perky for this late at night.”
“Cut it out,” I said. I reached down to grab her wrist and brushed her breast accidentally, feeling something hard and cold against the back of my hand, something round, metallic. “You’re drunk and you’re a client. The ethical rules say I can’t get involved with a client.”
I tried to pull Caroline’s hand away but it stayed right where it was. She kissed my nose and cheek and then bit my upper lip. She didn’t bite it hard, not at all like Kendall turtle-snapping my ear, she bit it softly, tenderly, teasing it out from between her teeth as she pulled away.