Come Destroy Me (13 page)

Was she going to ask him? Oh, God, Evie Wright, don’t. You’re walking right into fire. Why embarrass him? Yet she remembered his eyes, the night she had held his hand to her lips, she had seen something there. She had not imagined it. Why was it better left alone? She knew why. She was afraid that it would be like ripping a Pandora’s box open and watching all the hope and magic go. When the magic went it was always bad. Don’t let the magic go, Evie Wright.

In a way Evie was rather pleased with herself for having such thoughts. She had never before sat on a bus in Azrael and pondered over problems such as these. She was sure too that no one else on the bus was thinking the way she was. The woman across the aisle was planning her grocery list. The man in front of her was thinking about money, worrying about unpaid bills. The little boy on the front seat was wishing he could be a bus driver when he grew up. No one else on the bus to town was thinking big thoughts. Only Evie. It made her feel special and sensitive and dramatic. She seemed to have a mission, really. A mission.

• • •

When she was announced through the intercom by his secretary, Russel Lofton’s first reaction to Evie’s visit was one of extreme pleasure. The next reaction was certainly a darn fool one. He thought, Lordy, how will it look to have Evie paying calls on me during working hours? How will it look to everyone? That
was
a darn fool thought. Geehosopher, he didn’t have anything to hide about his friendship with Em Wright’s daughter. Anyone in Azrael would testify that he had been an intimate friend of the Wrights for years and years and years.

She looked pretty. She sure looked pretty. The front locks of her dark hair were damp, and her skin seemed to glisten, her eyes were soft and earnest in their expression, and when she slipped out of her raincoat, she was wearing a skirt and a tailored white blouse. Lofton had always liked white blouses on women. There was something about it. Something innocent and defenseless, young and vulnerable.

He got up and crossed his office to take her hand. “Well, well, this is a surprise. Well, sit down, E-venus.”

He realized he had used her nickname. Well, heavens, it wasn’t as if she were with him in a private place. The Azrael National Bank Building was just about as public as you could get. Evie did not correct him and he was grateful. He sat down beside her on the brown leather couch in his office and for a moment they only looked at each other. Evie seemed satisfied merely to watch his eyes, now and then looking up at his forehead and his hair and then back to meet his glance. Lofton was nervous and uncomfortable. He wanted to think of something to say and he said the rain was awful but we needed it.

“I was thinking about it ever since it started,” she said.

“Were you now?”

Lofton didn’t know why he didn’t want to start a serious discussion there in his office, but he didn’t want to. Suppose Miss Bates walked in. Now what would Miss Bates think? Then Lofton remembered last night’s experience and he thought of telling Evie about it, but he checked himself. He did not want her to know he had gone to Jill Latham’s to plead with her to hire Evie. It would sound foolish or something.

“Want a cigarette?” he said.

“I have some.” Evie pulled a crumpled pack from the pocket of her skirt and Lofton flicked the table lighter to flame.

“Yes,” Evie said, “I was thinking about the rain, and about you.”

Lofton laughed. “Golly,” he said, “you were doing a lot of thinking.” How could he stop her from continuing? It was a quarter to five. Miss Bates left at five-fifteen.

“I wish I knew how to say something,” Evie said. She sat back on the leather couch with her arms behind her head, her cigarette near her hair. Lofton told her to watch out or she would singe her hair. She was awfully pretty, all right.

“Tell me something,” Evie said. “What have you thought about our friendship so far?”

Lofton got up and began to walk around pointlessly. “What do you mean?” he said. He chuckled. “What’s on your pretty mind?” he said lightly.

“Don’t make jokes of this, please.”

She was dead serious. Lordy, he ought to be able to say something about being busy. He felt guilty as sin because he couldn’t respond. There was just something about it. Here in his office and all. It just wasn’t the proper place.

“I’m sorry. Guess I don’t think well during office hours.”

“Are you sorry I came?”

“Sorry? Am I sorry? Gee whiz, E-venus, you know I’m not sorry. Why should I be sorry? I’m delighted, that’s what I am! Not every day something nice like this happens!”

He sat down in the swivel chair behind his desk and Evie stayed on the couch. There was a sign in front of him, a printed sign with an advertisement for life insurance. The lead sentence was in bold block print: A YEAR FROM NOW WHAT WILL I WISH I HAD DONE TODAY?

He wished she had not come. He kept wishing she were not there. He knew it was a terrible way to act and he tried not to show it. He said, “What do you think of my little place?”

Evie’s face was sullen. “It’s fine,” she answered, “fine.”

“Yes, sir,” Lofton said. “This is my hangout, you might say.”

He was startled when Evie said, “You’re different at the office, aren’t you?”

“Nonsense!”

“You are.”

“Don’t be silly. Why would I be different? What reason would I have to be different?”

“I don’t think you wanted me to come,” Evie told him.

He picked up a plastic letter opener and tapped it against the green blotter on the top of his desk. “You know better than that. Now, don’t be silly. My land, I’m glad to have a young lady caller. You know life gets pretty stodgy when you have nothing but fat old men trooping in and out of your office all day, carrying their brief cases and smoking their cigars. Yes, sir, it just — ”

Lofton stopped and stared at Evie. He sat forward and stared at her. Then he dropped the letter opener and ran around the desk to the couch. He said, “E-venus, E-venus, you’re not
crying?”

Her arms came around his neck and her face burrowed into his chest and the sobs started loud and heavy. Lordy, Miss Bates would be in before you could say Jack Robinson and what would she think of him when she saw this situation? A young girl crying in his arms!

He said, “Hush now, hush now. What’s the matter? Hush now, that’s no way to be. What’s the matter?”

“I love you,” she sobbed. “I’m in love with you.”

Russel Lofton felt himself quake inside. He wanted to be touched by this, to be terribly, terribly touched, to know this moment as a very tender moment, an important moment when he would be able to handle this emotion with all the reverence due it. With the reverence and the dignity he knew he should feel himself, with the control and maturity he knew he should show. It might be true that he had somehow expected and anticipated this moment, when this girl — this pretty and wonderful girl-would tell him she loved him. He had thought that it would happen, yes, he had, and he had hoped for the wisdom he knew he was capable of, the wisdom Evie herself would have expected from him on reflection. But he had never expected it to happen in his office in the Azrael National Bank Building, one wooden door and two desks away from Martha Bates, the secretary whom he had employed for thirteen years. Lordy, he had a reputation to think of. How had it ever happened? How had he let it happen? Let it go this far?

He found himself saying, “I’m an old man, Evie, you know that. You just have a schoolgirl’s crush on an old man. That’s all.” He resisted an impulse to stroke her hair. He thought, geehosopher, he sure had got himself into a pair of pretty odd situations in the last two days. It wasn’t even like living in Azrael any more. It was like living in New York City or someplace, where anything could happen!

Evie seemed to stop sobbing abruptly. She shrank away from him and pulled her handkerchief from the pocket of her skirt. She blew her nose and sniffed, turning her head from him. Neither of them said anything and Lofton finally said, “There now. There now. Feel better?” It was a grossly inadequate thing to say. He was a clumsy small-town bumpkin. Worse than that. He knew something that made him worse than that. He knew that once he got her out of his office, once he could relax and not worry and think about this, he would imagine what he might have said. He would play out his own emotional reaction. He would tell himself that a beautiful girl had come to his office and confessed her love and he would wonder what might have happened if he had held her and put his lips on hers. Because sometime during the midst of all of it, he knew he had thought of doing just that. He could feel the warmth churn through him in his stomach near his belt buckle, but he was afraid. He was not the eternally young person he had told his mirror he was last night. He was old and staid and cautious and there was not an ounce of sophistication in him. For once and for all it was settled. He was a hick lawyer, short on fire and fully aware and afraid of how easily fire started, how rapidly it spread.

Evie did not look at him. She stood up and held her head down.

She said, “I’m an awful fool.” Her words were clipped and sour.

“Nonsense. Look, don’t even think about it.”

He knew he was responsible, he had let it go this far. He had spent time with her he had no right to spend. He had known what it would lead up to and he had waited. He knew that now. He would admit it at that second of that moment if he never admitted it again.

“I’ll be going,” Evie said.

, Lofton wondered if her eyes were red from crying. Lordy, he could simply tell Miss Bates she had some kind of problem with her mother. He hated himself for thinking this way, but that was it. That was the kind of fellow he was.

“Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll drive you home.” He could make it better in the car. Make it all seem better.

Evie shook her head and walked to the door. He could tell by the back of her head that it was too late now to make anything better. He could never describe what it was about the back of her head that made him know, but it was obvious and clear and he did not protest when she said, “I’m sorry I bothered you. Good-by.”

After the door shut he stood dumbly in his office. It was as though a tornado had whirled into his office and whirled out again, taking something of his from him. It was uncanny and very nearly comical and for a second or two he really believed that it would all be forgotten. That it was one of those things that happens sometimes, one of those inexplicable crazy things that happens between two people for no reason. It was like a dream that happened during a brief nap and yet was so intense that even after waking it seemed real. Russel Lofton shook his head and walked to the window to stare out at the rain beating down on the gray stone steps in front of the building.

A slight figure in a raincoat and a red bandana hurried down the walk, and as Lofton watched it fade into the distance he wondered why he felt nothing. Why he only watched her go as though he had always known this was inevitable — as though it was one of those inevitabilities that he would like to think really mattered.

Suddenly, and with a vague feeling of relief, Russel Lofton turned from the window and walked directly to the desk. He dialed the number with a determined manner, and when he spoke to Em Wright his voice was resonant and confident. He began, “Look, Em, a little something has happened I think you ought to know about. When Evie comes home, I think she’ll be a little upset. Nothing she won’t get over or anything like that, but you see, the kid’s going through some sort of a stage now — you understand….”

He continued to explain, and as he did, he surprised himself too with the simple logic of the situation. Young girls got crushes on older men all the time.

The first thing Charlie thought when he got home was: Do they know? There was something different in the atmosphere, something concealed. He thought of plenty of wild possibilities. Jill might have told Russel Lofton that he had been drunk the other night at her house, that … Hell, though, she kissed
me,
Charlie thought again. I didn’t start it all. But what would his mother say if she knew? God, what would she say? Maybe she did know.

All she had said to him since he walked in the door and put his books on the hall table was: “If you’ve been to the library all afternoon, you won’t need to go tonight, will you, son?”

“Huh?”

“I’d rather you stayed in tonight.”

“I was
going
to,” Charlie said.

“Evie doesn’t feel well and I’d rather we all went to bed early.”

“Suits me,” Charlie said. He waited for his mother to say what was wrong with Evie, but she did not, and finally Charlie said, “What’s eating Evie?”

“Nothing important,” his mother said. “She doesn’t feel well.”

Oh, Charlie knew all right how Evie moped around after Russel Lofton. He knew how his sister felt about Old Daddy Lofton. Maybe that was it. Maybe Lofton had told her he was in love with Jill. Goddamn his eyes. He could
be
in love with the lousy owner of the Red Clover Bookshop, for all Charlie cared, and he just hoped Lofton had to sit around and listen to her scratchy record all day, for the love of Peter and Paul.

He was the knower, all right. Charlie was the knower. If anyone in this whole damn house knew all he knew, they’d die, that’s all. But knowers didn’t fall in love. Ah, no, not knowers. Charlie could feel his eyes sting. It was awful the way his eyes could want to cry over anything at all. If a pin dropped, his eyes would sting. He’d like to put his stinking eyes out with a poker.

“I’m going to my room,” Charlie told his mother. “What time’s dinner?”

“I thought we’d have sandwiches. I made a lot of them, chicken and tuna fish. They’re in the kitchen. You can take them in your room if you want. Help yourself, honey.”

He wanted to say, “Aw, what’s the matter, Mom? Aw, Mom, look, what’s the matter? I’m old enough to understand. If you only knew the things I understand. Let’s sit down and have a long talk.” Then the thought made him cringe inside. He didn’t want to sit around and gush with his mother. Hell, she didn’t even love him! She didn’t love anyone! She was an automaton.