Girl on the Best Seller List (8 page)

Then there were the shots, one after the other,
bang, bang, bang! …

• • •

Milo jumped to his feet. He stood in the living room, momentarily dazed. The dream was done. The banging continued.

Then he realized that someone was pulling on the front screen door, which he had locked just after his migraine had started. He had lain on the couch, intending to rest for only a few minutes, but he must have slept for twenty.

The clock on the mantle read eleven-forty. As he started toward the screen door, he could not deny that there was a certain sense of gratification in him, accomplished through the dream. He could not help it; it had started at the dream’s point when he had pulled the trigger on the gun. Only it was not a gun in the dream; it was an arsenate of lead bomb, the kind he had used last April to rid the iris of borers. But it had worked like a gun would; it had shot Gloria. He had awakened as she fell forward, clutching at her stomach.

• • •

Over and over in the past weeks, he had dreamed of killing his wife. The stuff of his dreams was theatrical, as though his unconscious mind were putting forth its whole imaginative effort to stage Gloria’s murder with every bit of uncanny creativity possessed by Milo. Once, last week, he had dreamed that Gloria was Saint Febronia. He had seen the angry mobs pull seventeen teeth from her mouth, tear her breasts off, and ultimately burn her. Another time, Milo had dreamed he was bent over a proud bi-colored narcissus in some dream garden, when he noticed that the tissues of the plant seemed soft and rotted. At the moment in the dream when he said, “This plant will die. It has Bortrytis Bulb Rot!” the yellow and the white of the flower faded together and became skin and the skin became Gloria’s face.

• • •

At the same time that Milo felt the gratification he felt sick in his heart. It was the same sickness that overtook him whenever he was reminded, in his gardening, or in his study of the saints’ lives, that the whole living world constituted a colossal cannibalism, a holocaust in which life continues only at the cost of death. Man lives because of the sacrifice of plants and animals, and in his own turn is a sacrifice to the birds and the worms, or to the bacilli which effect his death. Gloria, in his dreams, was sacrificed to his inmost hostile fantasies, just as he had been to hers in her novel. He smiled forlornly at the thought, and then found himself in his front hall, facing an even more forlorn fellow.

Unlatching the screen door, Milo said: “Come on in, Stanley. She isn’t home yet. I suspect she’ll be along in a while.”

“I thought you’d be at the track meet,” said Stanley, as he waddled past Milo. He was perspiring, and his glasses were steamed. Under his arm he carried two boxes; one small, like a jewelers box, the other with
SPHINX TYPEWRITER PAPER, ESQUIRE BOND
printed across it. He followed Milo into the living room, bumping into a chair en route. His face turned a brilliant red as he mumbled an inane apology to the furniture.

“I’m going to the meet in a very short while,” Milo told him.

About the only way Milo could communicate with Stanley Secora was to demonstrate his own ineptness. Milo himself stumbled as he bent over to pick up his sport coat from the couch. He said something equally inane: “Whoops-a-crazy-daisy.”

Both men laughed, and blushed, fidgeting nervously.

Milo remembered how he had quite inadvertently sculptured Saint Felix of Cantalice in a way which bore a very good likeness to Stanley. Even Gloria, who commented less and less on Milo’s sculptures, noticed the resemblance. She had said, “Migod, this one looks like Stanley Secora. Some saint he’d make, the blundering ox!”

“In a sense,” Milo had explained, “St. Felix
was
an oaf, but I really hadn’t intended to draw a parallel.”

“You talk about them as if they were people you knew. How do you know St. Felix was like Secora?”

“I don’t. I never said they were alike. It was just an impression I wasn’t even aware of…. But it’s not too far wrong.”

“Well, you better get Saint Felix on the phone; the windows in the front need cleaning.”

“Saint Felix,” said Milo, “was always apologizing for himself — the way Stanley does. You know, as though he’s in the way. Felix wore a shirt studded with iron spikes, and he never wore shoes, and if anyone did something mean to him, he always said, ‘I pray God that you may become a saint.’ “

“Some kind of masochist, if you ask me,” said Gloria.

“Most of the saints were, when you think about it.”

“I’d rather think about the Marquis de Sade,” said Gloria. “That’s what makes horse races, ah, Milo?”

At those times, Milo Wealdon felt no streak of hatred in him toward her. He was
all
hatred, with a streak of forgiveness in him toward Gloria, so tiny that it was like a sliver in the backside of a rhinoceros. Still, his hatred was impotent. He was left quaking with it, helpless. It was like a migraine. He just had to wait until it went away.

Stanley Secora’s voice cut into his reverie.

“Yes,” Stanley repeated, “I thought you’d be over at the high school, Mr. Wealdon.”

“Oh, I’m going there,” Milo said. “Mrs. Wealdon ought to be along any minute.”

Stanley sank into the folds of the couch. “Tempus fugit,” he smiled.

Milo was about to say something compulsive and idiotic like “It certainly does fugit,” but both of them were saved from the preposterous conversation by Gloria’s sudden appearance.

To Milo she said, “Well, I hear you’ve won the Fultons over to your side! Playing the part of the great all-suffering husband, ready to forgive me anything!” She punctuated her sentence with that little
Psssss
noise she made whenever she wanted to ridicule something.

She said to Stanley, “It must be mental telepathy, Stanley. I was just noticing that our car could use a good bath.”

“Stanley is here to discuss writing with you,” Milo told her.

“Don’t get that supercilious tone in your voice, J.C.,” she answered sarcastically, standing legs spread and arms akimbo, with her head cocked to one side. “You’re
such
a martyr, aren’t you,
dear
good Milo?”

Stanley was squirming in his seat, his fat hands twisting the manuscript box flap in an anguished manner.

Milo realized something had gone wrong at the Fultons.

Again, he felt the tentacles of pity reach out from him, felt his anger and embarrassment fade. He wanted to say: how sorry I am, Glo; at the same time he pictured the benign face of Freddy Fulton, and thought how quiet and subtle their friendship had always been. Only a few days ago, when Milo had felt an almost overwhelming urge to talk to someone about his plot for revenge, he had gone through the shortcut in the fields to visit with Freddy. He had stood beside him before the lycium halimifoliums, and they
had
talked, but not a word about his plot. Freddy’s unshakable dignity had sustained Milo in that moment of weakness, had saved Milo from the vulgar experience of unburdening himself to another person.

He had never stopped admiring Freddy for the way he had handled himself in his affair with Edwina Dare. Even Gloria had never gotten wind of that chapter in the Fultons’ life; so few in Cayuta had. There were rumors among some of the town’s businessmen at the time, but the girl’s name was not known. Sometimes Milo wondered whether it was a fluke, or an act of faith on Freddy’s part, that Freddy did something that told Milo who she was.

He had done it one evening back in 1953. He had taken Milo aside at one of the country club buffets, and had said that he wanted his advice about something. He had a friend, he said, who was a Catholic. He wanted to give this friend a medal of some kind, as a gift. A sort of going-away present.

“You know about the saints and all that, Milo,” said he. “What could you give someone who was around books all the time?”

“St. Catharine is the saint of learned men,” Milo had told him.

“Isn’t there a saint for someone who sells books?”

Edwina Dare, the girl who worked at The Book Mart … plain, quiet, nice Edwina Dare. Milo had often been waited on by her in the Mart, when he ordered the Peterson field guide series, or the texts for his classes in skin and scuba diving. Memory is an uncanny confederate. He could remember then an afternoon out near Hubbard’s nursery, on the outskirts of Cayuta, when he had come across Freddy’s Buick, parked and empty. Milo had pulled up and parked beside it, and as he was getting out to see if he could find Freddy, he found him, sitting on a log just at the entrance to the woods, with Edwina Dare. They had exchanged pleasantries. Freddy had made no attempt to explain what he was doing there in mid-afternoon with Edwina, and Milo somehow had not thought that peculiar. He had been only slightly surprised at seeing Edwina with Freddy, yet not surprised enough to dwell on it. Perhaps the most peculiar part about the whole incident was that later in the day, when Milo and Gloria had a drink in the backyard with Freddy and Fern, neither man referred to the meeting. It was as though their silence on the matter was simply understood. And yet, until Freddy asked Milo about the saint who sold books, it never occurred to Milo that Freddy was deeply in love with Edwina Dare.

Milo had simply answered, “St. John Port Latin is the saint you want.”

“Thanks,” Freddy had said. He had clapped Milo across the shoulder, and they had gone back to join the others.

That had been all there was to it.

Now, Milo supposed, Freddy was somehow making it obvious to Gloria that he did not approve of her, making it obvious, undoubtedly, through Fern. It was a vote of confidence in Milo, but like all of them he had received in the past, it made Milo want to protect Glo, protect her even from his own inevitable pity.

• • •

He said nothing more to her. He walked from the living room with his sport coat hung across his shoulder, leaving her with Secora, thinking for the first time that day that he did not want any revenge, that, God help him, he was all she had, wasn’t he? The word Pitts came to mind, but he thought only of seedy old peach and olive pits, and of all things left-over and unwanted, things no one loved, and his anxiety and bitterness knew a respite in sadness and sympathy, which in fact had always been an asylum for him.

G
LORIA
reached into her frontier pants for her package of cigarettes. She lit one and blew smoke from her nostrils as she strode across to the picture window, feeling quite a lot like Bette Davis. Except for the stomach ache, another one of her damn nervous stomach aches. She could not forget Fern’s remark about Freddy being stuffy — the reason he was (how had she put it?) never “overly-fond of
you,
dear.” That’s rich, she thought, oh that
is
rich. Freddy Fulton stuffy!

“And so,” she said as she stared out at the Japanese quince, “you want to be a writer, Stanley.” She sucked in smoke, turning then in a fast movement, facing him.

Stanley Secora looked as though he were going to faint. Instead, he nodded. He was perspiring and his face was the color of a lobster. Gloria thought of the hero of Victor Hugo’s novel about Notre Dame — Quasimodo, the deaf, deformed, grotesque bell-ringer of the cathedral, who was in love with the beautiful Esmeralda.

She said, “What have you written?”

“A book. My war memories, Mrs. Wealdon.” He held out the manuscript box. A timid smile crossed his countenance. “Don’t be nervous, m’am.”

“Nervous, Stanley?”

“I’m sorry. I mean, I can’t thank you enough for giving up this time to read it.”

“You mean read it right now?” She laughed. “I just can’t sit down and start to read it now.”

She took the manuscript box and placed it on the end table. “I have a date for lunch.”

Stanley fumbled in the pocket of his sweater jacket until he found the other box, the small one. “I brought you some candy.”

“Is this a bribe? I
do
have a date for lunch.”

She felt sorry for him, and irritated that she did.

“Oh, it’s no bribe, Mrs. Wealdon. Oh no, m’am.” He shuffled his feet and held out the small box. “Coconut ice. Your favorite, I heard.”

He had the top of the box off, and when he unfolded the tissue paper there were two pieces of candy.

“Not now, Stanley. Put them by your manuscript.”

“You don’t want any, Mrs. Wealdon?”

“Not before lunch…. About the book, I’d be glad to read it. You’ll have to give me plenty of time.”

“I made that candy myself, Mrs. Wealdon,” said Stanley, backing into a chair.

“I appreciate it. Thank you. I’ll have it when I come home from lunch. For dessert. I really
do
have a lunch date, and I’m in a hurry.”

He looked blankly at her.

“I’ll read it within the next week,” she said.

He rubbed his hands together, and she noticed the bandages. “Did you have an accident?”

“I burned myself, making the candy.”

“Sorry.”

“I wish I knew if you liked it. I wish you’d have some.” “I have to dress now, Stanley.”

She ground out her cigarette emphatically. “I’m in a hurry.”

“I’ll take it back,” he said, “if you don’t want it, then I’ll — ”

She was suddenly exasperated. She whirled and, very nearly shouting, said, “Good heavens, Stanley, don’t behave so stupidly! I’ll eat your candy and I’ll read your book, but you must go right now!”

Perhaps she really had shouted, for, without saying another word, Stanley fled.

“When does he arrive, Gloria?” Milo’s voice said behind her.

“When does who arrive?” She pulled her shirttail out of her pants, began pulling the socks out of her hair, and started walking toward the bathroom. “I thought you’d gone.”

“You know who. Your literary agent.”

“Oh? So you
are
aware that he’s coming?” She bent and turned on the water in the tub. “He’ll be here tonight.”