Even so, the marriage still seemed okay, superficially. Cora seemed comfortable with him. She liked the security of their life, and now that her parents were gone, she seemed desperately inclined to cling to what remained, which was Rigley and their stagnant marriage together. She surely must have realized just how desperate a deadend it was they were both heading down, and that probably helped explain the drunkenness.
But the possibility of divorce had never occurred to Cora, as far as Rigley knew. And he was glad. Divorce meant disaster to Rigley. He doggedly continued being nice to her. Complimenting the way she looked. Ignoring her drinking, as much as possible. Kissing her cheek goodbye in the moming and hello coming home at night And never, ever arguing with her.
Maybe theirs had always been a superficial marriage. Maybe even before these sexually barren last five years, they had had an empty marriage. Who could tell? Rigly figured he certainly wasn’t the only guy who, with a wife who shared his marital apathy, went through the paces of marriage, putting in time like somebody who keeps at a job he hates in hopes of eventual retirement. He wasn’t the only guy who enjoyed brief, relatively meaningless affairs with the wives of friends. Surely a marriage like this one wasn’t anything out of the ordinary these days.
In fact, the only thing he imagined was out of the ordinary where their marriage was concerned was the lack of arguments.
They almost never argued.
Because Rigley felt he couldn’t risk arguing with Cora.
Divorce was something he did not want to even think about
Not with a wife who was worth well over half a million dollars.
Rigley excused himself with Jackson and walked over to the serving table and nibbled at some chip and dip and made himself a Manhattan.
“You should be playing bartender, honey,” Cora said, coming up behind him.
He turned and looked at her. Her large brown eyes were droopy with drink, but they were still attractive. Her lips were perfectly formed, lovely. The facial skin was smooth, and her low-cut hostess gown gave hints of a body that was still something to see as she lolled around that pool outside all through the summer. Too bad she screwed like a faggot shakes hands.
“I’m sorry, baby,” he said, touching her cheek with Manhattan in hand. “Jackson cornered me and started babbling about the local elections.”
She turned and smiled at Jackson, who was well out of earshot, and said, “He’s such a poop. Why the board hired him is beyond me. If Daddy were alive...”
“If Daddy were alive, he’d be proud to see how pretty his baby looks this evening.”
“Thank you, dear. Hey... what’s the matter? Are you still acting sick? You’re not going to get out of going to this play just by playing sick.”
“I’m not playing sick. I’ve felt lousy all day — you know that.” He had told her earlier that he thought he was getting the flu.
“Now listen to me,” she said, smiling much as she had to Jackson and speaking in the same only-you-can-hear-me-George undertone. “You are not going to spoil tonight for me. You are going to the damn play and that is that.”
And she smiled some more and patted his cheek and threaded her way through the room, talking momentarily with everyone.
At seven people began filing into the den, where they’d left their coats. There was an eight o’clock curtain at Hancher and a forty-five-minute drive, not counting the madhouse of the Hancher parking lot, and the cocktail party was over.
And finally only the Harrisons, the couple the Rigleys were riding with, their oldest and dearest friends in Port City, remained.
Ray Harrison was a lanky bald man who looked like Ray Milland and sounded like Ernest Borgnine; his wife was a vapid, pretty little aging blonde lady who didn’t speak often enough to sound like anyone. Rigley gathered the Harrisons and Cora by the door, everyone having climbed in their coats but him, and said, “I’m going to have to cop out on you tonight, I’m afraid.”
Cora said, “George,” the way a razor slices across a wrist.
“Baby,” he said, “I’m just not up to it. And I’m not going to let myself ruin the night for you by going along and complaining constantly. You go on with the Harrisons. I insist. You’ll have a fine time without me. I’ll just be a party-pooper tonight, and you know it.”
“Well,” Cora said, softening slightly, but still with an edge, “I’m not about to stay home. I’m not going to miss this play. It’s supposed to be one of Neil Simon’s best.”
Ray Harrison said, “I just don’t understand why we should have to drive all the way to Iowa City for a little culture.” He obviously would have liked to stay home himself, but was being bullied into it by his publicly silent but apparently privately vocal wife. He made a plea to Rigley. “This restaurant we’re going to try ought to be worth the trip, George. The Pier. Ever tried it before?”
“Uh, no,” Rigley stuttered. “Never have.”
“Say,” Ray said, “you do look sorta sick at that.”
And then Cora finally gave in, as there wasn’t that much time to waste arguing, with an eight o’clock curtain to make. And, too, she’d buckled under the element of surprise, as she always did when they argued. They fought so seldom that when Rigley did stand up for his rights, he almost invariably won just on the sheer novelty of it. He’d been counting on that.
He was alone in the house now, with the aftermath of the cocktail party: the discarded glasses and napkins and half-eaten sandwiches and the general disgusting mess well-to-do people leave behind them after such affairs. He wandered aimlessly through the rambling house, sipping his Manhattan, thinking about his wife, his life, his situation. He ended up in Cora’s bedroom. Their bedroom, before he started sleeping across the hall. Blue wallpaper with open-beam wooden ceiling. Cream-color satiny spread on the queen-size bed. Nightstand by the bed. Their wedding picture was on it He went to the nightstand and opened its single drawer. Amidst the jewelry boxes was the gun. The .32.
He didn’t touch it He just looked at it, pearl-handled silver .32 automatic there with the jewelry in the drawer, and thought about his wife.
And suddenly he was sick.
Sick with fear and self-hatred and God knows what other wretched emotions, and the emotional sickness brought with it physical sickness as well, and he rushed to his wife’s private bath and heaved into the stool, heaved out all the cocktail-party booze and chip-dip and crust-trimmed sandwiches, heaved till there was nothing left to heave and then heaved some more.
When he was finished, he went across the hall and got out of the suit and took a shower and got into some comfortable, casual clothes. It was Saturday night. He had a meeting to go to.
Bank business, of a sort.
11
Nolan rode. Jon drove. It was Jon’s car, the Chevy II. Thursday night they’d taken the Buick, Nolan’s car or, rather, the car Nolan had been left to use by his business partner, Wagner, who was currently enjoying the Florida warmth while Nolan and Jon froze their asses off in Iowa. Nolan felt it unwise to have one certain car seen several times in the area of the Rigley cottage within these few days, even though the cottage was pretty well isolated and there wasn’t really much chance of anybody seeing either car. When he explained all that to Jon, the boy said, rather skeptically, “Well, I guess it doesn’t hurt being careful.”