“No, you’re not. You’re perfect.”
“No. I don’t have enough of a figure, you know?”
“I have a rough idea.”
“I look terrible in a strapless evening gown. I tried one on in a store once. My collarbones project.”
“I happen to be very fond of projecting collarbones,” he said. “It’s a regular complex.”
“You know what I mean. I’d like to be perfect for you. I’d like myself to be perfect and things to be perfect.”
“If you and things were perfect, you wouldn’t look twice at me.”
“Oh, I would,” she said passionately. “I couldn’t help it.”
“The town isn’t so bad. There are worse climates, and you could always go home for visits.”
“I know.”
“We can work things out. Things don’t work themselves out.”
She looked up at him, still pale and still solemn. “On top of everything else, you’re nice, aren’t you?”
“Sometimes I think so. Not often.”
“The climate — people get used to it, don’t they? And I bet it’s pretty in the spring, isn’t it?”
“Very pretty.”
“With little green sprouts and buds coming out all over. I think I’ll like that part of it very much.”
“I think you will.”
“Anyway, I don’t feel quite so hollow anymore.”
“That’s good.” He lifted her tinseled hair and kissed the soft nape of her neck. Standing there, with his mouth against her skin, he felt that he loved all women because he loved Alice.
“We’ve never even had a date together,” she said. “Isn’t that funny, Meecham?”
“Yes.”
“We haven’t had a chance to fall in love. How did it happen? How could it have happened?”
“If I knew I’d go out and tell the world.”
The buzzer on his desk sounded, harsh and sudden, like an alarm clock disturbing a dreamer.
He reached over and turned on the switch. “Yes?”
“There’s a Mrs. Hamilton on the phone,” Mrs. Christy said. “Do you want to talk to her?”
“No, but I will.”
“O.K., go ahead.”
He turned off the switch and reached for the telephone. Alice put her hand on his arm to stop him. “Did she say — Mrs. Hamilton?”
“Yes.”
“Tell her I’m not here. Tell her you haven’t seen me or heard from me.”
“All right, if that’s what you want me to say.” He picked up the phone. “Hello.”
“Mr. Meecham, this is Mrs. Hamilton. How are you?”
“Fine. And you?”
“I’m fine too. Everything is.” She sounded so falsely cheerful that he wondered if anything at all was fine. “We seem to have a bad connection, Mr. Meecham. Will you talk louder?”
“All right.”
“The fact is, I’m a little concerned about something. I suppose it’s absurd to worry about a sensible girl like Alice. But then it’s sometimes the sensible ones who do and say silly things, isn’t it?”
“Sometimes.”
“Have you seen her this morning?”
“No, I haven’t.” He looked across the desk at Alice. She was sitting on the window seat again not watching the street, but watching him, her eyes wide and anxious. He smiled at her reassuringly but she didn’t smile back. “What reason have you to worry, Mrs. Hamilton?”
“Perhaps I haven’t any reason. I’m not sure. She’s acting peculiarly.”
“In what way?”
“It’s hard to... well, I think she’s avoiding me. This morning, for instance, she left the house, without breakfast, without saying a word to anyone. She disappeared, in fact.”
“She’s probably downtown shopping.”
“Then why didn’t she tell me where she was going? Surely that would have been the natural thing to do? I was right there, having breakfast with Virginia and Paul in the dining room, and Alice went past the door and that’s the last I saw of her. It seems odd, doesn’t it?”
“Everything seems odd until it’s explained.”
“Outside of the family, you’re the only person she knows in town. I had the notion that she would come to you, if something was — if she had anything on her mind.”
“What would be on her mind?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea.” It was a positive yet somehow unconvincing statement.
“She might come here. If she does, I’ll let you know.”
“Thank you. You realize that I’m very fond of Alice, she’s a very dear girl.” She paused. It was a significant pause, Meecham thought, and he waited for the but. It came. “But I didn’t hire her to go running off like this.”
She emphasized the word hire quite carefully, as if to put Alice in her place, through Meecham. Meecham resented her tone, but stronger than his resentment was his feeling that Mrs. Hamilton was a desperate woman fighting with her back to the wall against shadows that Meecham couldn’t see and shapes he didn’t recognize. He thought of Mrs. Loftus in her twilit world where everything was shadow, and shapes were molten and confused. The two women had nothing in common but despair. Yet it seemed that somewhere, at some point, their separate worlds had collided like wandering planets, and one had lost part of itself and the other had cracked through the middle.
“Mr. Meecham, are you still there?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll let me know for sure then, if Alice turns up?”
“I’ll let you know. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye, Mr. Meecham.”
Meecham replaced the telephone on his desk, and looked at it thoughtfully, then moved it half an inch to the right. “You could have told her you were going shopping.”
“I didn’t want to face her.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t trust her any more. She’s changed.”
“That’s why you came here, to tell me she’s changed?”
“No.” Alice turned and looked down at the busy street. “A man came to see her last night. I saw him, and I think she knows I saw him.”
“Who was it?”
“I don’t know. But I’m sure she didn’t want me to see him, that the meeting was to be a secret.”
“How did you get in on it?”
“I heard a knock on the front door, not the chime, just a short knock, like a signal. I’d been in my room lying in bed, sort of thinking things over. When I heard the knock I got up to answer it because I... well, I thought it might be you. That’s another bad sign, isn’t it? Every time the phone rings or there’s a knock on the door or footsteps on the sidewalk, every time a car stops I think it might be you.”
“That’s the worst yet,” he said, smiling. “Go on.”
“I put on my robe and slippers and went down the hall. I got as far as the corner where the hall bends and then I heard voices. I looked around the corner and saw Mrs. Hamilton standing at the door talking to a man, a stranger. I don’t know why but I suddenly felt furtive. I wasn’t spying or eavesdropping, I couldn’t even hear what they were saying. But I had the feeling that the meeting was wrong somehow and the man shouldn’t have been there at that time of night.”
“What time?”
“Nearly eleven.”
“Where was the rest of the household?”
“Carney sleeps out, and the cook was in her room... She has a television set and hardly ever leaves it. And Virginia went with Paul to a movie. The celebration dinner had been kind of a flop. Virginia was terribly nervous so someone suggested a movie.”
“Which someone?”
“I think Mrs. Hamilton mentioned it first. Virginia agreed that it was a good idea, and she invited me to go along. It was very — thoughtful of her, wasn’t it?”
“Very. But I wonder what the thought was.”
“You mean they were trying to get rid of me for the night, Virginia and Mrs. Hamilton?”