And when I saw the black leather purse on the bed, large, rather shiny, with a short black strap and a big clunky chrome clasp on the top in the shape of a rose, I knew exactly who’d moved in here. Even before she got the door open — still unused to the complexity of city locks — I knew Dale Wormley’s mother had taken up residence in his abandoned nest.
She must not see me. She must not find me here. I looked around the room, knowing she would come in here first to hang her coat in the closet — if she then went into the bathroom, I’d have an opportunity to make my escape — which meant I couldn’t hide in the closet. Nor in the bathroom. Which meant, God damn it to hell, there was only one choice.
I went under the bed.
Fortunately, it was a king-size bed, so there was room to get all of me underneath it, but it was very low to the floor, so that every time I lifted my head from the carpet I hit the bottom of the box spring. I felt absurd, as though I’d wandered into a very old farce indeed, but this situation was serious and very dangerous. This woman was suing me. She had publicly accused me of killing her son. I could not be found in this apartment, wearing a disguise, hiding under the bed. It was impossible even to think about the consequences, and therefore it could not be permitted to happen.
The bed had a skirt, almost to the floor, but under its hem I could look out and see her feet as she came into the bedroom. She crossed first to the closet, as expected, to hang up her coat, but then, instead of going to the bathroom, she went back out the way she’d come in, and a minute later I heard water in the kitchen being run into a kettle.
I didn’t dare move. I could only wait, and hope, and feel like the world’s prime idiot. What if I’d stood my ground when she’d come in? What if I’d claimed to be an old friend of Julie’s, showed the keys Julie had given me? It was too late for that now, but what if I’d done it at the very beginning?
No. In the first place, I hadn’t yet realized who was living here when I made my decision to duck into the bedroom. And in the second place, with the lawsuit coming up, it was just too dangerous to actually meet the woman, in disguise, pretending to be somebody else. Whatever credibility I might have in court would vanish, if she ever recognized me.
The kettle boiled. When I heard a voice a minute later, in the living room, I thought at first she’d turned on the television set, but then I realized it must be her own voice, and that she was on the phone.
I squirmed out from under the bed. Tiptoeing, I crossed to the doorway, and leaned against the wall to listen:
“...another two or three weeks. Julie’s still in Florida, avoiding me, you know the way she is — Helen, she was never what you would call warm to me when Dale was alive, and nothing has— Well, that’s very forgiving of you. Yes, she probably does feel that way, I don’t doubt it. But I am not going to call her, because then it would look as though I was asking permission to stay in my own son’s apartment, which I am not. Those newspaper people haven’t thought to look for me here, so it’s been very restful.”
Could it be she was embarrassed to be going behind Julie’s back this way? Could that be why she sounded so aggressive? In any event, she abruptly changed the subject, apparently at the instigation of Helen, because she suddenly said, “Him! Well, he’s disappeared!”
That was me she must be talking about. I leaned closer to the doorway, listening.
“Yes, the detectives are watching his house. Both his houses, you know he has one here, too. But he’s just gone, and nobody knows where he is. McCormack says I shouldn’t worry, but I think he’s up to something.”
McCormack was her attorney, or one of her attorneys. I remembered the name from those legal papers that had been dumped on me.
I didn’t much like Mrs. Wormley’s voice. (I couldn’t remember her first name; probably blocking it.) It was a hoarse voice, as though it had been used too much, and there were arrogant, impatient, imperial tones in it. Some spoiled brats remain spoiled brats all their lives, and from the sound of her voice I would guess Mrs. Wormley was one of those.
Now she was saying, “McCormack thinks it’s possible he’ll never even show up in court, just do it all through his lawyers, not even really contest anything.”
Don’t count on that, I thought.
“No, Helen, it would not. I’d hate it. Why, because I want to confront the man, that’s why. He thinks he’s above it all, doesn’t he, wouldn’t deign to even notice the likes of us. Well, I’m going to rub that man’s nose in it, you see if I don’t.”
I remembered Julie Kaplan’s suggestion that suing me had become this woman’s vicarious life, to take the place of her previous vicarious life through her son’s acting career. It seemed to me, now, listening to her, that Julie had been right but incomplete. Another part of Mrs. Wormley’s motivation was just good old-fashioned envy. Spite can make a wonderful fuel.
“Yes,” she was saying, “no more than two weeks. Then I’ll have to come back for the trial, of course, but God knows when that will be. Yes, I will. Be sure to water the plants, now. Yes, I will. Yes, I will. I have to go now, Helen, I’m supposed to call McCormack this morning, I was just out to get the paper. I have no idea, I haven’t really looked at it yet, but there hasn’t been anything for days now, because there isn’t any news, you know. When we find Sam Holt, though, and serve the rest of the papers on him, then there’ll be some news. I bet we make the TV again.”
Nasty old bitch, I thought, while Mrs. Wormley slowly wound down her conversation with Helen, repeating things, agreeing to things, adding one more reminder about watering the plants. Why does the nasty old bitch, I thought, have to live her life through me? Why doesn’t she devote herself to good works? Become a Gray Lady, join the Peace Corps, go down among the lepers. Maybe she’d catch something.
At last she ended that phone call, and I heard her immediately dial another one. “Mr. McCormack, please. It’s Laura Wormley.”
Laura; somehow the name seemed inappropriate. She should be a Hannah, or a Bertha. Of course, I still hadn’t seen her, but I visualized the kind of battleaxe who used to give W. C. Fields so much trouble. I was so happy with this image that I didn’t even want to know the truth.
“Mr. McCormack? Laura Wormley. Did they find him yet?”
Me again.
“Really?” Sounding very interested. “Right here in New York? Are they sure?”
I leaned almost through the doorway, listening.
But then, sounding disappointed, she said, “Oh, them. I know that kind of paper, they don’t know anything, they just make it all up.” And I leaned back again.
Then she said, “Do I have to? Well, yes, of course I want to flush him out. Well, it just seems all I do is go to your office and sign things, and nothing ever happens.” A long put-upon sigh; poor lady. “Well, if I have to, I will. But it takes forever to get way over there from here, I’ll be lucky to be back in time for lunch.” Another sigh; but then, in a steelier voice, she said, “You know I’m not losing interest, Mr. McCormack. I told you at the beginning, I’ll do whatever it takes. All right. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
She cradled the phone, with an exasperated sniff, and I went back under the bed.
33
At last the door slammed shut behind her. Then she rattled the knob from outside, to be certain it was locked. And then there was silence.
I waited three or four minutes, lying there, to be sure she hadn’t forgotten something that would make her come abruptly back, and then finally, feeling stiff by now — I hadn’t been exercising or swimming my laps lately, and it was beginning to tell — I crawled out from under the bed for what I hoped was the last time.