Hamilton, Donald - Novel 01 (14 page)

     
She looked at the clock by the bed.
"Eleven-thirty," she said.

     
"Put on the same clothes you've been
wearing," he said. "Leave me the suitcase. Don't take anything out of
it. That long-nosed bitch has been through it and she's the kind that would miss
a bobby pin if you took it away with you."

     
"But darling!"

     
He pressed his fingers into her knee
through the satin. He found that he wanted to hurt her a little. "I'm
going to take them off your neck," he said. "Don't argue with me.
You've got enough money to buy another trousseau."

     
"What are you going to do?"

     
"I'm going to get a telephone call
from you in the morning," he said, moving his hand in a gesture that was a
little too rough to be a caress, and taking it away when she looked at it, not
annoyed, but questioning. "While I'm at breakfast," he said, "so
I'll be paged all over the hotel. Then I'll inform my girl friend down the hall
that one dose of hot poker was enough and I'm on my way home. I'm going home to
mama and have her kiss my feet and make them well.
If they
want to be damned fools and follow me, all right."
He grinned.
"After the phone call, you can bet they will. I'll get off at some
jerkwater stop up the bay and make as if I was trying to lose them and then put
on a big disappointed act when you don't run up to kiss me at the hotel. If you
don't have a clear trail by that time it's your own damned fault."

     
The feeling of wanting to cry was with him
again as he looked up into her face, no longer reserved and distant, but smooth
and young and a little flushed with the experience they had shared. Her hair
was loose and there was more of it than you would ever think, seeing it always
neatly coiled about her head. It had a soft, smoky look about her shoulders.

     
"I think," he said. He licked his
lips. "I think this is the best plan, sweetheart. It gives you an open
field."

     
"Yes," she said.

     
"We'd have a hell of a time with
them," he said, "if we tried it together."

     
"Yes," she said. "I suppose
so."

     
"Christ," he said. "Isn't
it a hell of a note?"

     
She slipped off the desk and stood beside
him, and pushed her fingers gently through his hair. "Have you considered
... ?"

     
He did not look at
her."What
?"

     
"Have you considered, darling,"
she said breathlessly, as if she were forcing herself to speak against her
better judgment, "that they will be very angry when they find you have
tricked them?"

     
He pulled her against him, looking up at
her. "You aren't trying to talk me out of it?"

     
"It isn't very smart of me, is it,
Phillip? But you will be careful?"

     
"Well, don't cry about it?
he
said," grinning. "It's a good plan, isn't
it?"

     
She nodded, looking at the window.

     
"You just want to put yourself on
record as having warned me," he said. "Don't you, darling?"

     
She said stiffly, "Is that what you
think of me?" Then, before he could speak, she smiled and said, "I'm
really ... very fond of you, Phillip. Don't let them ..."

     
He laughed and slapped her smartly across
the narrow buttocks. "I was afraid of that," he said heartily.
"Now for God's sake go put some clothes on, Toots, I can't keep my hands
off you when you look like that."

     
He
lay
in bed
smoking, watching her iron dry the blouse that she had insisted on washing,
with the small traveling iron from her suitcase, using the wooden arm of the
largest chair in the room for a board. The domesticity of the scene hurt him
and he wondered how she got along with Louis. Then she was ready and he sat up,
putting aside his pipe.

     
"Don't get up, darling," she
said.

     
"I'd better see if the coast is
clear," he said, and limped to the door and looked out. The hall was
empty. He turned and kissed her.

     
"I'll call you," she said
breathlessly, stepping back.
"At nine-thirty."

     
He nodded.

     
"I ... had better go now."

     
He nodded again, and watched her hurry out
of sight toward the rear stairway, not turning to look back; and he closed the
door softly and leaned against it, feeling empty and shaken. It did not seem
possible that he might never see her again.

IN
THE MORNING he ran the shining satin of her nightgown through his fingers,
pleased with the texture of it, before packing it away, with the other articles
she had left out, in her suitcase. Well, he thought, that's over; and he
carried the small black bag into the bedroom and set it by the door. You were
always losing part of yourself to other people. He debated keeping the
nightgown as a remembrance but was deterred by the knowledge that, when he got
home, his mother would inevitably find it; and it was a silly idea anyway.

     
As he left the room he glanced at his
watch; it read a little after nine. He went down to the dining room and ate
breakfast slowly under the ancient ostentatious chandeliers that always looked
a little tawdry in daylight, like the tinsel on a Christmas tree. Beyond the
porch the day was a dull gray color and the trees were stirred by brief gusts
of wind, but it was not raining.

     
From the table he had chosen he could see
the door to the lobby without turning his head; and he watched the people
coming in and, having breakfasted, leaving. Constance
Bellamann
was not among them, and none of the others were in evidence. Now in the morning
he did not feel very strongly about them. His feet, having blistered, were
uncomfortable but not excessively painful. Everyone had to do what he had to
do, he told himself philosophically; if he had been kicked around enough
perhaps he would be screwy too.

     
Then the old colored waiter came up to
refill his coffee cup and he looked at his watch and it read a quarter of ten.

     
He could not sit there indefinitely,
obviously waiting for a call that, if genuine, he would have wanted to keep
desperately secret and, filling his pipe, he wandered out into the lobby. He
walked to the front door and stood at the top of the high steps looking about
him. The wind was not so strong this morning. He wondered if she would get
seasick in the boat; and how the cold would affect her, and if she would be
afraid. It was seven minutes of ten, and suddenly it seemed to him that he knew
very little about her, after all; he did not know the thing that, in the normal
course of events, you always ]earned first about a girl: whether she was
punctual or would keep you waiting. He could recall the sound of her voice and
the shape of her mouth and the texture of her hair, but like a girl met in a
dream, she had only physical characteristics.

     
He shivered a little, turned abruptly, and
went inside; everything that had happened suddenly churning inside his head
like a series of newsreel snapshots played too fast.

     
"I'm checking out," he said to
the clerk at the desk. "Will you get my bill ready?"

     
"Shall I send a boy
...
?"

     
"I'll call. I haven't packed
yet." He ran up the stairs to his room and began to throw his belongings
into his suitcase. There was, he knew, a bus at ten-thirty; but he knew also
that this was not the reason for his haste. He had to get out before the
telephone rang. He could not hear her voice again. He had to get out of it.

     
Leaving his suitcase on the bed, he took
the small black bag down the corridor to Constance
Bellamann's
door. The girl did not answer immediately to his knock; he heard her moving
inside while he stood waiting. At last the door opened minutely and a segment
of her face looked out at him. The door began to close again.

     
He frowned and put his foot into the crack
and, leaning his weight against the panels, forced himself inside. When she
whirled to run he seized her arm and felt her resistance cease with sickening
abruptness, as if the touch of his hand had been the crack of a whip. She stood
quite still, facing him, wearing a faded blue flannel robe over a rumpled pink
cotton nightgown. Her face was strangely shiny and her short hair was untidy
and looked damp. He watched the childish smile come to her lips, knowing it now
to be as mechanical as her obedience to his touch; and he shivered a little as
his mind unbidden formed pictures of the conditions under which she had learned
these reactions.

     
"Please," she whispered.
"I'm not dressed."

     
She gestured helplessly at her robe and
gown; then her face seemed to contract and became ugly and frighteningly pale;
he kicked the door shut behind him, set down the suitcase, and led her to a
chair. She crouched in the chair, hugging herself. He could hear her breathing
short and harsh with pain behind him as he went to the tumbled bed and quickly
straightened the bedclothes. Returning, he picked her up and carried her to the
bed.

     
"Do you want your robe off?" he
asked.

     
Speechless, her teeth tightly clenched,
she made a small movement of taking it off; and he untied the sash and helped
her out of it; and covered her with the blankets as she rolled over to her
stomach, pressing her face into the pillow. As she hugged the pillow to her it
exposed a small automatic pistol that had been hidden beneath it. He put this
quickly into his pocket.

     
"Can I get you something?" he
asked, standing by the bed. She shook her head minutely. "Do you want me
to call a doctor?" he asked.

     
She answered with the same brief movement
of her bead. "Is there anything I can do?"

     
There was nothing he could do, and he sat
down in the chair and looked at his watch. Well, he thought, I can always catch
the next one. He did not want to look at the girl. It was always unpleasant and
unfair to watch anyone suffer. He took the gun out of his pocket and examined
it. To his inexpert eyes it seemed unbalanced and strangely formed, and he
turned it over and read,
Waffenfabrik
Mauser
,
Oberndorf
a/n 6.35 mm.
His limited experience with the big service Colt did not tell him whether this
weapon was on safe or not, and he dropped it gingerly back into his pocket. His
mother had never allowed him to own a gun.

     
He heard a movement in the bed and looked
up to see the girl lying on her side watching him without raising her head from
the pillow.

     
"Do you want a glass of water?"
he asked.

     
"No," she whispered. "No.
Nothing."

     
"You should have a doctor," he
said.

     
"No," she whispered. "I ...
just walked too far yesterday. When I overexert myself ... and the cold
... "

     
"I hit you," he reminded her.

     
She shook her head almost imperceptibly.
"Just the cold.
Walking."

     
He said uncomfortably, "I didn't mean
to barge in on you like this. But you acted ..."

     
She licked her dry lips. "Yes."

     
"I just dropped in to say
good-bye," he said.

     
She lay watching him without speaking, her
small face colorless against the cheap brash pink of her nightgown. At last
with an effort she raised herself and pulled the gown straight and drew the
robe about her shoulders, sitting up.

     
"You ..." She licked her lips
again. "Leaving?"

     
He nodded. "There's her suitcase, in
case you find her."

     
"And ... the
money?"

     
He said irritably, "I'm sending it
back to Haskell, what did you think? After last night I'll be damned if I'm
going to contribute thirty-seven hundred dollars to your war chest."

     
He watched her a moment to see if this
looked reasonable to her. She brushed mechanically at the matted damp hair on
her forehead, looking small and plain and sick in the big bed. He was not even
quite sure that she knew what he was saying.

     
"I suppose,"
he
said, "I suppose there's no use claiming I'm not leaving because I'm
scared."

     
Constance
Bellamann
smiled, making her eyes focus on him. "Does it.., matter, Mr.
Branch?" she whispered.

     
He grinned abruptly. "I guess not. Anyway,
I gave her a chance to turn up. She can't expect me to spend all my leave in
this hole...." After a moment he said, "You ought to have a
doctor."

     
She shook her head. "I will be all
right."

     
"Here's your popgun," he said,
rising to throw it to he covers. She did not move to take it and he stood by
he
bed looking down at her, feeling angry and helpless.
"Goddamn it," he said roughly, "why don't you get a doctor to
fix you up? What do you want to trail round with this gang for if you're sick?
It seems to me..."

     
"What?" she whispered, not
really interested, and obviously praying silently for him to leave
quickly.
He gestured aimlessly. "To go through all that
and then risk killing yourself with a lot of half-ass melodramatics. I know
damned well that if I'd lived through it I'd be so tickled at being alive that
you wouldn't find me even crossing a street in the middle of the block. I
wouldn't take any chances at all."

     
She licked her gray lips. "If you
knew you were all ... all wrong inside?
And up here?"
She rubbed her forehead. "You don't know," she whispered wearily.
"After a while ... it doesn't make much difference."

     
As he turned away he was aware of her,
desperately furtive, slipping the pistol under her pillow and then, exhausted,
lying back to stare at the ceiling. He went out quickly, feeling angry at
everything; irritated even at the girl herself, because of course something
could be done about it. There was always something that could be done about it,
and somebody ought to do it. He could not see that it was in any sense his
problem, but as he walked back to his room he had a feeling of evading
responsibility. Then he heard the telephone ringing inside the door and he
stood with his hand on the knob for a long moment, listening to it, hoping it
would stop, but it did not stop, and he shivered a little and went inside.