"House dick," I said. "Open up."
She came to the door holding a big bath towel in front of her. When she saw it was really me-I-she dropped the towel and stood back for me to come in. She locked the door and walked over to the bed and lay down.
"That's all right," I said, sitting down by her. "You can put something on if you want to."
"Do you want me to?"
"I don't want you to catch cold," I said. She said she wouldn't.
I gave her a drink out of the part of a pint, and lighted a cigarette for both of us. She sat up on one elbow and coughed and choked until I had to slap her on the back. I remembered then that I'd never seen her smoke before and that that was the first drink I'd ever given her.
"Is that the first time you smoked a cigarette?" I asked.
"Yes, Joe."
"And that's your first drink of liquor? What'd you take it for?"
"You gave it to me."
"Hell," I said, "you didn't have to take it."
There was a little finger of hair hanging down the middle of her forehead. She looked at it, turning her eyes in to be more cockeyed, and blew upward over her nose. The wisp of hair rose and settled down on her forehead again. I laughed and patted her on the bottom. I put my head down against her breast and squeezed. She freed one of her hands…
We had supper in her room-club sandwiches, waffle potatoes, apple pie with cheese, and coffee. I stood in the closet when the waiter delivered it. She'd never seen waffle potatoes before. She kept turning them around in her fingers, and nibbling the squares off a little at a time.
"Did everything go all right today?" she said finally.
"Pretty good."
"Why are you worried, then? Did something happen at the newspaper office?"
"Nothing much," I said; and I told her about it. "It's a good joke on Elizabeth. She's always acted like we didn't have good sense, and- -"
"Maybe we don't have."
"Huh?" I said. "What do you mean, Carol?"
She'd never spoken up much before, and it surprised me; and I guess I sounded pretty abrupt. She dropped her eyes.
"I'm afraid, Joe. I'm afraid Elizabeth's trying to get us into trouble."
"Why, that's crazy!" I said. "We're all in this together. She couldn't make trouble for us without making it for herself."
"Yes, she-I mean, I think she could," said Carol. "You and me have to do everything. We run all the risks."
"Well, but look," I said. "I admit I got pretty much up in the air at the time. But what's actually the worst that could have happened there at the newspaper office? All they could have done was to refuse to take the ad, isn't that right?"
She shook her head as though she hadn't heard me. "Anyway, she's trying to get me in trouble. Why did she have to have me register here as Mrs. J.J. Williamson?"
"Why not? We had to agree on some name so we could reach you in case of emergency. You had to have some name to receive answers to the ad."
"But not that one, Joe. I got to thinking about it today; it's the same initials as yours. It kind of sounds like yours."
"Well-well," I said. I laughed, not very hard. "It's just a coincidence. What harm could it do, anyhow?"
She didn't answer me. She just shook her head again.
"If anyone made any boners it was me," I said, and I started telling her about Hap Chance. "It looked suspicious, see? With all the product I've got, why should I want sixteen reels of junk from him?"
Carol shrugged.
"You explained it to him."
"Yeah, but it didn't look so good, particularly with me forgetting to buy paper."
"Well."
"It made it look like I didn't intend to play the picture. I almost might as well have told him I wanted that sixteen-reeler because of its length. Because it would make twice as hot a fire as-"
It wasn't true. The slip couldn't have meant anything like that to Hap, and Carol knew it. She saw I was just trying to divert her from Elizabeth.
We'd turned off all the lights except the one in the bathroom, and I was holding her on my lap in a big chair in front of the window. She began to breathe very deeply. I turned her face away from my chest, and I saw that she was crying.
"Don't do that," I said. "Please, Carol."
"Y-You're in love with her," she said. "She treats you like a dog, an'-and you go right on loving her."
"The hell I do!"
"Y-You do. And it's not fair! I'd do anything in the world for you, anything, Joe! And she hates you.
And-a-and it doesn't make any difference. Y-You k-keep right on-"
"But, damnit, I don't!"
"You do, too!"
It would have gone on all night, but I didn't let it. As the guy said on his wedding night, it was no time for talking.
5
It was the next afternoon, and I was feeling pretty low.
Coming out of the city I'd passed a guy walking, a tired shabby-looking guy that looked like he needed a good night's sleep and a square meal; and I started to stop for him. And then, just when he was about to catch up with me, I stepped on the gas and drove off. It was a mean thing to do and I hadn't intended doing it. What I meant to do was carry him down the road as far as he was going, and give him some food and change. Instead of that, I'd torn off when he almost had his hand on the door.
All of a sudden it came over me why I'd had so many blue spells lately. It was because I felt like I didn't amount to much any more. It was because I didn't feel that I was as good as other people-that I shouldn't put myself with people who wouldn't do what I was doing.
Subconsciously, I'd been afraid that hitchhiker might sense something, like maybe he'd pass up the car or ask to be let out after he got in. Subconsciously, I'd felt like he ought to.
I wondered again, like I had a thousand times, how the hell it all started.
One time, years ago, I sat in on one of Elizabeth's literary club meetings when they were discussing some lady poet. This poetry, this stuff this lady wrote, wasn't like real poetry. It wasn't like anything, in fact. It was just a lot of words strung together about God knows what all, and they'd say the same things over and over.
Well, though, it seemed like the stuff did make sense, once you understood what this lady was trying to do. She was writing about everything all at one time. She was writing about one thing, of course, more than the others, but she was throwing in everything that was connected with it; and she didn't pretend to know what was most important. She just laid it out for you and you took your choice.
I'll have to do the same thing.
Offhand, you'd say it began with Elizabeth catching Carol and me together that Sunday afternoon. But if there was a murder every time a husband or wife got caught like that there wouldn't be any people left. So-
It might have begun with the time I closed up Bower's house, and moved part of his equipment up to our garage. Or the time, right after we were married, when Elizabeth and I each took out twelve thousand five hundred dollars' insurance on the other. Or the time when I was delivering film for the exchanges, and it was raining, and I drove her up to her house in the company truck.
It may have started with Carol's old man being pinched for stealing hogs. Or the pushing around I took in reform school. Or at the orphanage-although it wasn't so bad there. The head matron was an old Irishwoman, weighing about three hundred pounds and so cross-eyed she scared me stiff the first time I saw her. But an angel couldn't have been any better. But- Well, I'll tell things the best way I can.
One night I lost my key ring and couldn't lock up the show. Elizabeth wasn't in the house and she carried her keys with her, so I went out to the garage, upstairs, where she was checking some film.