Chase (14 page)

‘You're very punctual,’ she said. ‘Come in.’

He stepped past her as she closed the door, and said, ‘You live in a very nice neighbourhood here.’

She shrugged prettily. ‘I'm one of those people who doesn't bother saving a dime. The way I figure it, I might die next week and not have gotten any fun out of a fat savings account - or, if I don't drop off, all my hard-earned nest egg will have been whittled away by the inflation. Those are my rationalizations, anyway.’ She took his arm and led him to the couch, where she sat beside him. ‘What could I get you to drink?’

‘Scotch?’

‘On the rocks?’

‘Fine,’ he said.

‘Be right back.’

He watched her as she rose and crossed the room, disappeared down a short corridor that evidently led to the dining room and kitchen. In those shorts, her legs were phenomenal, so unbelievably long that he thought they looked as if they ought to twist and bend like rubber. If Louise Allenby had remained in his thoughts at all, Glenda drove the girl out. There was clearly no chance of competition between them.

While she was gone, he looked over the large living room, which was decorated with ultra-modern furniture and fixtures. A crushed-velvet couch and two matching chairs, all the colour of cocoa. A stack of light-boxes against the far wall, not turned on at the moment. One light: a fifty-pound block of marble from which a twelve-foot steel pole curved out and ended in a silvery hood that could be twisted from one area of the room to another. A coffee table. A few bright paintings, a statue of a nude girl and boy embracing, a potted rubber plant that had grown almost to the ceiling. Nothing more. The tasteful combination of ultramodern and spare decoration was a feeling that he could agree with, and he felt comfortable here.

She came back with two glasses of Scotch and handed him one. This time, when she sat down, she took the chair directly across from the couch. That was actually better, he decided, than having her sit beside him, because he could appreciate those lovely legs more easily this way.

She said, ‘Do you like fondue suppers?’

‘I've never had one,’ he said.

‘Well, I'm sure you'll like it,’ she said. ‘If you don't like it, no more Scotch for you.’

He laughed and settled back, at ease for the first time since he had come in.

Conversation was easy with her, and the subjects ranged from food to mixed drinks to furniture and design. She talked about the best places to go in town for dinner or for music, and he listened. He had been too much of a recluse to offer anything on the subject, but even if he had socialized a great deal, he would not have had much to add to what she had to say; she knew all the good places. He supposed she had a dozen suitors willing to pay her way anywhere she wished to go; she was exquisitely sensuous.

Dinner was delicious: baked potato, tossed salad, zucchini and the beef fondue that crackled and hissed as a background to their conversation. For dessert, there was crème de menthe pie, cherry liqueur to dawdle over.

‘Shall we adjourn to the living room?’ she asked.

He said, ‘What about the dishes?’

‘Let them sit,’ she said.

‘I'll help, and we'll get them done twice as fast.’

She stood up and put her napkin on the table. She said, ‘You're the first man I've ever had to dinner who's offered to wash dishes.’

‘I thought maybe I could
dry,’
he said.

She laughed. ‘Still, you're unique.’

‘Shall we get at them, then?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘For one thing, I don't think guests should have to bother with that. For another, I'm not in the mood myself. I'd like to have a few more drinks and listen to music and watch the light-boxes while we talk.’

‘Good enough,’ Chase said. ‘But later, the dishes.’

There were twelve light-boxes, each an eighteen-inch square, full of shifting patterns of red, blue, yellow, orange, white and green light. With no other lights burning, they cast strange images on the walls and ceilings and on the two of them as they sat together on the couch with their legs propped on the coffee table. Glenda's legs were covered with blue splashes, white squiggles, now a burst of red dots and concentric, wavery circles of yellow.

‘You're not at all like I thought you'd be,’ she said, terminating a lull in the conversation.

‘How did you think I'd be?’ he asked, not quite understanding what she meant.

‘Oh, very gung-ho, very stern and conservative and cold, you know.’

‘Is that the way I seemed when I came to your office?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I was surprised then. That's what I mean. Right from the start, you didn't act like a war hero, no swelled head, just very polite and a little bit shy.’

He could not manage to contain his surprise. ‘You knew me from the very start?’

‘Well, your picture
had
been on the front page twice that week.’ She sipped her drink, put it down on the end table beside the sofa.

‘But you never said anything.’

‘I'm sure you're sick to death of being congratulated.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Even more sick than that.’

She said, ‘When I came back from the storage room and saw you were gone, I thought you
were
angry about not being waited on when you should have been.’

‘That wasn't it at all,’ he said. ‘I remembered another appointment that had slipped my mind, and I was already late.’ Now, for the first time all evening, he remembered what he had come here for tonight: to question her about the people who had used the morgue Tuesday, about Judge. But he could not think of any reasonable way to broach the subject. Besides, he didn't want to. All he wanted was to go on like this, sitting side by side, drinking, talking, the music behind them and the lights ahead.

‘Were you really looking for parts of your family history?’

‘What else?’ he asked.

‘It just seemed out of character then,’ she said. ‘And twice as out of character now that I know you better.’

‘Maybe I'm more complex than you suspect,’ he said.

‘I'm sure of it,’ she said.

They watched the lights some more and said very little. There was actually no need to talk, for there was that easiness between them that allows no embarrassment at silence. She mixed them each another drink, and when she sat down again, she was closer to him than before.

Much later, after more conversation, more music, other silences and one more drink, she said, ‘You are very much the gentleman, aren't you?’

‘Me?’

‘Yes.’

‘I wouldn't have thought so.’

The way you asked for a date on the telephone - and then offering to help with the dishes. Besides, if you weren't a gentleman, you would have made a pass at me by now.’

‘Should I have?’ he asked.

‘Please do,’ she said. She moved against him and tilted her head back, offering her lips to him and, perhaps later, everything.

He held her and kissed her for a long while. She was blue, spotted with yellow, edged with crimson as the light-boxes played.

‘You kiss very well,’ she said.

And perhaps he should have stopped at that point, before he had proven that there was nothing else at all he could do but kiss. He wanted her, and he thought that what he needed was bed with her, but he found that she was like a recorder of the past and that his touch activated the tapes; she radiated his memories of other women, dead women, became a history of his guilt. As herself, she was desirable, but as an archetype, she destroyed desire unknowingly.

‘I'm sorry,’ he said as they lay on her bed, staring at the dark ceiling that seemed, at times, only inches away from their faces.

‘For what?’ she asked. She was holding his hand, and he was glad for that.

‘Don't humour me,’ he said. ‘You were expecting more.’

‘Was I?’ she asked, rising on one elbow and peering at him beside her in the gloom. ‘Well, even if that's so,
you
were expecting more too. If I use your reasoning
, I
owe
you
an apology.’

His attitude toward her consideration was distinctly ambivalent, for though he appreciated the way she spared his feelings and tried to coax him into good humour, he
wanted
to be humiliated. He did not know exactly why he should feel that way.

He said, ‘You're wrong about that, because I really wasn't expecting anything more.’

‘Oh?’

‘I haven't been able to,’ he said. ‘Not since - since I came back from Nam.’ He had never told anyone but Dr Cauvel the history of his impotency, but now he seemed to be using it to elicit the scorn she had been withholding.

She moved closer to him, and rising further, began to gently brush the hair from his forehead. She said, That's a bitch all right, but it isn't everything. You can still stay the night, can't you?’

‘After this?’

‘I said this wasn't all,’ she snapped. ‘It would be very nice just to have someone to sleep with, to warm the other half of the bed. All right?’

‘All right,’ he said.

‘Hungry?’ she asked, changing the subject before he could find some other point to drag the original conversation on. ‘Let's go fix an omelet.’

He gripped her hand more tightly than before and said, ‘Wait a bit yet.’ They lay side by side, quiet, as if listening. When he wasn't crying any more, he let her turn on the light, and they went to make a snack.

At breakfast the next morning, Chase said, ‘If I - if we'd made love last night, would that have been normal for you?’

‘Having a man overnight, on the first date?’ she asked.

‘Yes, that.’

‘Not normal, no.’

‘But it has happened before?’

She mopped up the yellow of her last egg with a piece of buttered toast. ‘Twice before,’ she said.

He finished his eggs and picked up his coffee. He said, ‘I wish -’

‘Stop it!’ she said, with much more force in her quiet voice than he had heard before. ‘You really are the masochist, aren't you?’

‘Maybe.’

She leaned back, finished. ‘But you'd like me to tell you it was something special with you, even though we didn't actually do anything.’

‘No,’ he said.

She smiled. That's a lie, Ben. You do want me to say it was something special, but you won't believe me if I say it was.’

‘How could it have been?’ he asked.

‘It was,’ she said. She blushed, a fact he found both old fashioned and delightful in such a liberated woman. ‘Ben, it was rather special, and I like you very much.’

‘Perhaps it wasn't special,’ he said. ‘Just different.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘The fact remains that we didn't -’

She interrupted him. ‘I feel more comfortable with you, happier, more myself than I've ever felt with anyone in my life. And all of that, only the morning after our first date.’

‘You feel comfortable because you feel safe.’

‘A lie,’ she said.

When he looked up a moment later, to see the cause of her abrupt answer and the ensuing silence, he was surprised to see tears in her eyes. He said, ‘Okay, Glenda. I'm sorry. And I want to see you again, if that's all right with you.’

‘Christ, you're dense,’ she said. ‘That's what I've been trying to get you to say all morning.’

At the door, he kissed her and found that it was not at all awkward, that they might have been long-time lovers.

She said, ‘I'm sorry to have to drive you out so early, but it's my mother's day to visit. I've got to straighten the place up and remove all traces of my illicit behaviour.’

‘I'll call,’ he said.

‘If you don't, I'll call you.’

Outside, the day was bright and hot, and a breeze only barely stirred the trees by the kerb. In his present state of mind, however, no degree of uncomfortable weather could affect him. He got in the Mustang, rolled the window down to get some fresh air, and was slipping the key in the ignition when it happened. Behind him something snapped with a curiously brittle sound, followed by a solid
thump.
When he turned, he saw a bullet hole in the centre of the rear window. Judge was up early on this bright, warm day.

Chase fell sideways on the seat, below the level of the windows, with the back of the front seat to protect him from Judge's present position, and he heard the second shot star the back window in almost the same instant. On his side, with his head pressed against the vinyl of the passenger's seat, he could hear the slug slam into the upholstery, could feel the seat jerk a bit as it absorbed the shock. A silenced pistol was quiet, but it also packed less of a punch, since the extended, baffled muzzle cut the bullet's velocity appreciably. Ordinarily, it might have come through the thin stuffing of the bucket seat.

He waited long minutes for a third shot.

It did not come.

Cautiously, he raised his head and looked around. He could not see anything unusual, and he was not shot at again. He started the engine, pulled away from the kerb and tramped the gas hard.

Twenty minutes later he was certain that he was not being followed, for he had driven so many side streets and made so many abrupt turns into alleyways while he watched the rearview mirror, that a tail could not help but reveal himself. He found the crosstown three-lane and headed home.

For a few hours he had forgotten Judge, though Judge had quite obviously not forgotten him. He was shaking badly, and he felt an itch at the back of his head about where the slug would have split his skull if Judge had been a better marksman. Indeed, he was shaking so badly that he twice thought he would have to stop the car and gather his wits. At first that seemed like an unreasonable response to the incident, especially for a man who had seen ground action in Southeast Asia. But then he realized that now he had something to lose, something to be afraid of being denied: hope, Glenda, whatever it was that might develop between them. He must not forget Judge again; he must be twice as careful as ever before.

It occurred to him, as he parked in front of the house, that Judge might have gone ahead, anticipating his destination to take a position here, waiting for Chase to return. He sat in the car a long while, unwilling to get out and test that theory. At last, when he realized that Judge could have shot him in the car as easily as on his way to the door, he got out.