Hamilton, Donald - Novel 02 (9 page)

 
          
Emmett
folded the clipping slowly along the original creases and gave it back. He had the
same sense of unreality and of resentment that he had felt when, in the
lunchwagon the night before, the doctor and nurse had told him the story of the
girl beside him. He did not like to be reminded that these things had happened.

 
          
“Well,”
he said after a pause, “that doesn’t really prove anything, either.”

 
          
“I’m
sorry,” Ann said. “If I knew what you were trying to prove…”

 
          
He
said, “Listen, people have been falling over themselves to tell me things about
you, Nicholson. It embarrasses me to think how much I know of your private
life; maybe it embarrasses you, too. But in passing on this mass of
information,” he went on bitterly, “everybody seems to have overlooked a murder
that occurred, presumably, yesterday afternoon or evening.
That,
I’ve got to learn the hard way, from a country sheriff. It
makes me wonder what else I should know about you, that people have neglected
to warn me about.”

 
          
She
did not say anything. After a while she pushed the clipping slowly back into
place behind the mirror, and put the mirror away in her purse.

 
          
Emmett
found his pipe in his pocket and began to fill it mechanically. He said, “I
keep wondering who you are and what it is you’ve forgotten, Nicholson. I mean,
as an amateur psychologist, when I heard what they had to say about you I took
for granted that all this double-talk had to do with whether the Nazis had
raped you or not… Well, it’s the thing that comes to mind, isn’t it?” he said
defensively as she glanced at him, startled, and shook her head quickly in a
movement that was very close to a shudder, rejecting the idea. He said, “But if
that were your trouble, I think you’d have had a stronger reaction when that
sheriff searched you; and I don’t think you’d be quite so casual about picking
up male strangers on the roadside and coming to hotels with them. The situation
is getting too complicated for a simple question of virginity, anyway; and I’m
just wondering, that’s all.”

 
          
She
was looking at him, flushed and uncomfortable and indignant. A knock on the
door stopped her retort. The boy came in with a carton of Coca-Cola and a bowl
of ice cubes, which he set on the dresser.

 
          
“All
right,” Emmett said, “now let’s try you on something hard. Let’s see how many
Chicago
papers you can find.” When the door had
closed again, Ann rose quickly and went past him to the dresser without looking
at him. He watched her struggle to get the cap off one of the bottles with the
patent opener, succeed, charge a glass with ice cubes, and fill it. Then she
caught sight of herself in the mirror. He saw her slowly put the glass aside,
startled by her appearance, and push at her untidy hair. “I looked rather nice,
this time yesterday,” she said, a little sadly.

 
          
Emmett
rose to fix a drink for himself. “You worry about the damnedest things,” he
said. “How you look, what people are going to think about you… Why don’t you
try worrying about who’s dead?” He filled his glass and looked at her. “Are you
sure you’ve got the last couple of days all straight in your head? There aren’t
any blank spaces? You can follow through from getting up in the morning to
going to bed at night? You haven’t waked up somewhere with a smoking revolver
in your hand?”

 
          
“Please,”
she protested. “They only said material witness.”

 
          
“That
may just mean they aren’t sure,” he said cruelly.

 
          
“I
really haven’t any idea who might have been killed, Mr. Emmett,” she said
stiffly. “Don’t you think I’ve been wondering, worrying about it? And do you
have to act as if you thought I were a fraud?” she demanded, her voice rising a
little. “Do you think I
like
not
being able to remember—?”

 
          
“What?”
he demanded.

 
          
She
stared at him over her glass, suddenly silent.

 
          
“What
is it you don’t remember?” he asked. “What is it you want Kissel to tell you
didn’t happen to you? Goddamn it, if you’re afraid of it, you must know what it
is. Something’s haunting you, Nicholson, something makes you want to crawl into
a hospital bed and draw the covers up over your head, something that happened
back there has got you scared of living, am I right? Well, you can tell me you
don’t know whether it happened or not, and I’ll take a chance of believing you,
but I’ll be damned if I’ll let you tell me you don’t know what it is.”

 
          
After
a little she picked up her drink and carried it back to the bed, sat down, and
looked at him again as if trying to make up her mind about something concerning
him.

 
          
“Did
Dr. Kaufman—?” She hesitated. “Did Dr. Kaufman tell you to ask me that?” she
asked, the words coming, at last, in a rush.

 
          
Emmett
shook his head.

 
          
“Did
he… want you to try and make me talk?”

 
          
Emmett
nodded.

 
          
“And,
of course, tell him?”

 
          
Emmett
said, “He wanted that. But I didn’t agree to it “

 
          
“Why
not?”

 
          
“I
don’t know,” he said. “I don’t make a habit of repeating what people tell me.
And I didn’t particularly like him.”

 
          
“He’s
a nasty little man,” Ann said. “A man has to be a little peculiar to want to
pick people’s brains, don’t you think?”

 
          
“Well,
it helps, I guess,” Emmett said with sudden caution, wondering where she was
trying to lead him.

 
          
“And
she,” her voice went on, “is a vulgar, oversexed bitch, and I think they sleep
together. Not that it’s any of my business.”

 
          
The
quick viciousness of her voice brought his mind sharply to attention. He was a
little shocked. There were girls who could talk about certain things and use
certain words and you would think nothing of it; and then there were girls,
like her, who could not.

 
          
He
glanced at her and was suddenly aware that he did not really know what kind of
a girl she was. He had only known her for twenty-four hours, although it seemed
much longer. He glanced at her and realized that, in thinking about her, he had
actually been thinking about an imaginary person—not even the quiet,
well-dressed if slightly hot and rumpled, girl he had met in the garage the
previous evening, but the girl he had never seen, who had gone to the cocktail
party where something had happened to send her rushing off across country
without exchanging her party clothes for something more suitable for traveling.
He had been thinking of her as the girl he thought her to have been the day
before, not as the girl he was actually seeing, sitting rather carelessly on
the bed, shoeless, her expensive skirt and blouse showing clearly that she had
not had them off for twenty-four hot breathless hours.

 
          
He
had not been thinking of her as the girl who would pick up a strange man by the
roadside; who would flee from a sheriff in utter panic and fight him like an
alley cat when he caught her; whose voice could hold a sharp vixenish note when
referring to another girl whom, a few hours earlier, she had claimed to like
very much.

 
          
“This
morning you said you liked Miss Bethke,” he reminded her quietly.

 
          
She
did not say anything. After a moment she rubbed her eyes painfully with both
hands, after putting her glass aside; then suddenly threw herself face down on
the bed. He heard her harsh breathing as she fought back the tears. After a
long time she turned over on her back, raised herself to arrange her clothes,
and lay back again, looking up at him from the pillow. Her face looked almost
gaunt in the harsh bright light from the window that faced the afternoon sun,
gaunt and fragile, as if the skin had drawn tight over the fragile bones, and
as if the bones themselves had no more substance than paper. As she lay on the
bed, the thin damp material of her blouse revealed the shape of her small
breasts, stirred by her shallow breathing, and the heavier stuff of her skirt
outlined the contours of her flat stomach and slender thighs. Emmett looked
away and busied himself relighting the dead coals in his pipe.

 
          
“If
I… told you something…” She waited, but he did not let himself look at her. “If
I told you something… would you promise not to tell anybody?”

 
          
“No,”
he said.

 
          
He
heard her breath catch, and he turned to face her. “Listen,” he said, “we’ve
come some distance from the subject, but the subject is still a murder in
Chicago
. I don’t especially want to hear any more
of the story of your life, and if I did promise not to tell, I’d break the
promise in a minute if a policeman asked me to. Or even if nobody asked me to
and I thought they ought to know… Christ,” he said wearily, “I started this by
picking you up or letting you pick me up, or whatever happened back there, in
the innocent hope that I’d get to know you well enough to make a pass at you.
And now look at me! Here we are in a hotel room together and I know you so damn
well that all I do is stand and talk to you. We might as well be married.” He
stared at her with dislike. After a while, he said, “I’ll listen, but I won’t
promise a thing.”

 
          
She
said, “You’re not being very nice. Or very fair.”

 
          
“I
can’t afford to be,” he said. “I don’t have a papa who gives me convertibles
for my birthday. I’ve got to earn my own living. And there are always questions
on the employment blanks: have you ever been arrested, and for what?”

 
          
“They
used a dental drill,” she said. He saw that her fingers had come up to touch
the tiny scar on her lip. “This… is where it slipped.”

 
          
He
did not say anything. It seemed to him that even when he looked away, he could
feel the steady regard of her gray eyes, watching him, unwavering. The words
came slowly at first, then, as she lost herself in the memory, in a rush.

 
          
“After
a while I fainted. I remember that they took the chair away when they left. I
was lying on the floor when I woke up. There was nothing else in the cell
except a big mirror on the door. I don’t know whether it concealed a peephole
so they could watch me, or whether they just wanted me to see what was happening
to me. They never turned out the light in the cell. It was quite bright, all
the time… They came back several times. Again and again. I remember that it was
morning when I was in the office again, but I don’t remember which morning.
When they took me back, a man was just being taken from the cell next to mine.
There was something wrong with his foot so they had to half carry him; there
was blood on his face and he was dirty and almost naked… I hadn’t realized
until then, in spite of the mirror, what I must look like. I looked just like
that, except that I could walk. The guards made a big show of introducing us to
each other. Frau Monteux, bitte to meet the eminent physicist, Dr. Reinhard
Kissel. Dr. Kissel, make the acquaintance of the lovely wife of the eminent
resistance leader, Georges Monteux… They made him kiss my hand. You know what
men like that think is funny. Then I was back in the cell again. I tried to
break the mirror with a bowl they had given me food in, so that I could use the
splinters to kill myself, but the mirror was steel and wouldn’t break.” She was
silent for a while. Then she went on without a trace of expression in her
voice, “That’s the last I remember, Mr. Emmett. Trying to break the mirror. But
it wouldn’t break.”

 
          
Emmett
stood quite still, not looking at the girl or at anything in the room. He found
himself considering the irrelevant fact that she had been married, as if it
were important. When he drew on his pipe it made a ridiculous gurgling sound
and he took it hastily from his mouth.