Kitten with a whip (14 page)

David gritted his teeth. Reminiscences like that were as disastrous a lure as last night's whisky. He didn't dare retreat into memory any more than he dared hide in unconsciousness. He had to stand up on his hind legs and do something, make his move, force the issue somehow. The situation was already barbed with peril as those little gray-furred cacti, and growing with every twitch of the clock's hands. The cacti looked so sort and strokable until you noticed the fine black hooks sticking out of the fuzz, hooks efficient and mean. They reminded him of Jody.

He straightened and turned toward the door. He would wander back into the Hving room and signal Buck. The two of them could go out back to talk and he'd see if he could arrange with Buck to take Jody with them when they left. Buck had mentioned that he was broke. Maybe twenty or thirty dollars would look pretty good to nim.

David was still in the kitchen, rehearsing to himself the persuasion he would use on Buck, when the door swung open. Jody came in, accompanied by a blast of sound. She closed the door again but even so had to raise her voice to be heard. "What you doing out here?"

"Hiding," he said bitterly.

She struck a petulant pose. "Come on back in there with me. All the rest of them are loving-up and I got nobody. Come on, please. I want to be proud of you, David."

He thought he'd better get back to the living room, all right. He didn't know what was going on in there but from what Jody said, it was some kind of amorous group activity and he was going to put a stop to it.

As he started to leave the kitchen, the doorbell rang.

He heard it only because he happened at that instant to be standing directly under the chime. He stared at Jody and she stared back, both of them rigid with surprise.

He put into words his one slender hope. "More of your friends ?"

Wide-eyed, she shook her head. "I didn't call anybody else. You expecting anybody? You think it might

be . . . r ^

"The cops?'* he finished for her. "I don't know." The doorbell rang again.

He took a deep breath. "I guess I better go see." He headed for the front door. He had no choice.

Chapter Twelve

On his way toward the unknown, David spun the volume knob on the hi-fi, bringing the din down to a sensible level. Buck and Midge, coupled on the floor in an open-mouthed kiss, started to protest but he growled, "Someone at the door," and they sat up warily. Pancho and Nina, sprawled on the sectional, didn't even notice. The goings-on that Jody had referred to as "loving-up" weren't as far gone as David had feared. Buck's hand had been under Midge's sweater in back and Nina's skirt had inched above her bare knees—which were soiled, like a first-grader's—but it wasn't the orgy that his overworked imagination had pictured.

And, as if to emphasize how jangled his nerves had gotten, there was nothing to fear on the front porch. He turned on the porch light and opened the front door and the menacing unknown was only his next-door neighbor, JuUan Clark. "Hi," they said to each other, and David stepped outside, closing the door behind him.

He didn't know the Clarks very well. In the few months since they had taken over the payments on the house next door, neither couple had found it convenient to get together for drinks. Virginia had reported that man and wife both seemed quite nice, if somewhat colorless. They were in their twenties, a decade younger than the Pattons, and the wife, until lately, had been embarrassed almost to the point of seclusion by her massive pregnancy. Now they were tied down by their < first baby. David couldn't even remember the sex or how many weeks old.

Such was the extent of their acquaintance; speaking over the fence and lending a couple of things back and forth, even though both men worked at the same plant. Technically, as a red badge man and a supervisor, Julian Clark outranked David's candy-stripe status. How-

ever, all he supervised was a typing pool of some twenty girls and his pay was much less than David's. No, there was nothing to fear in any way.

"! don't mean to bother you," said JuHan Clark, hovering nervously. He was a narrow bony young man with a haggard look of too much responsioility.

"Inat's all right," said David easily. ReUef had made

: him almost buoyant. 'What can I do for you?" Clark's

I wife called him JuUe but the name felt awkward on

David's hps so he generally avoided using any name

at aU when speaking to him.

"We were wondering—well, it*s so hot and our baby*s having a hard time sleeping, anyway—and with tne noise . . ."

"Oh, you mean the hi-fi? I just turned it down."

I From the comer of his eye he saw a slat shift in the

»Venetian blind as someone peeked out. An instant later

the volume was turned up again, the primitive music

pounding at full capacity. David raised his voice. "Don*t

worry about it. 1*11 take care of it."

*Well, thanks," Clark said gratefully. David got the

[clear impression that he had imdertaken this mission

' with misgivings, by virtual order of his wife, and was

tremendously reUeved that it had been accomplished

so easily. *1 don*t mean to spoil your party or anything,

it's just that—you know."

"It*s not really a party. Friends dropped in and they wanted to hear the set but Lord knows there*s no reason it has to be that loud." He rapped on the picture window and yelled, "Hey!" authoritatively. There was no lessening of the din and his brief moment of feeling good began to lessen to irritation. He swore.

*lt has a beautiful tone," Clark said apologetically. He didn*t want trouble, no matter which way it was directed. Possibly it was his shy inclination to soothe that had put him in charge of twenty girls. "I*ve been wanting to get one myself, but with the baby and everything, you know how the money goes. What kind of set it is?"^

"Components. A couple of boys down at the lab put it together for me."

I*d like to take a look at it sometime. Beautiful

114 KITTEN WITH A WHIP

tone." Clark was hinting to be invited in. A fine thing, David thought, I hardly exchange two words with the guy in four months and tonight he wants to be sociable. Not tonight, Julie boy. It would have been so easy to say something politely noncommittal about, sure, well do that sometime. Instead, David said, 'Tou about through,! with that spreader, by the way?"

He despised himself before the words were out of his mouth. He was the one in the wrong. Those monsters i inside were the enemy, not Julian Clark. But no, he i wasn't man enough to stand up to them. He had to take it out on an innocent neighbor, poor guy.

Clark said, puzzled, "Golly, I didnt understand you were in a rush to get it back or I'd have had it back before this." Then it sank in that this was a little battle,, that his complaint about the noise was being countered with another complaint. He frowned at the door mat, momentarily not blowing what to do except look hurt. Gradually, his mouth tightened. "I can bring it back over toni^t if you're in that much of a rush."

"No. Hell, I didn't mean that."

"No, that's aU right. But we'd appreciate it if you'd turn that volume down." Clark backed down the steps and, angled oflE across the lawn into the darkness.

'Goodnight, Juhe," David called after him. Sick of himself and his penny-ante viciousness, he stalked back into the house. It was like walking into the drop-hammer section of the plant; you could almost see the shock waves of reverberation. Pancho and Nina had vanished into another part of the house and Buck and Midge had moved up onto the sectional. Jody, out of boredom, was playing in her fresh drink with her forefinger.

David advanced on the record player and flipped it down to a whisper. "Who the hell turned this thing up again?"

Buck raised his face from Midge's neck. "I did. What about it?"

"From now on, it stays down, remember that. That was one of the neighbors to complain."

"Well, I like to feel the beat. The neighbors can go crap." Buck got to his feet.

'I mean it," David warned, blocking his path to the set. "It stays low or I turn it oflE altogemer."

"Ah, what's a litde music?" Jody said, licking oflE her finger. "I saw the homo through the window. You should have told him to shove it.

David wheeled on her. "Where do you get talk hke that, Idd? He's a nice guy and a friend of mine and no gang of punks is—"

"Shove it, is right," growled Buck and pushed by David, reaching for the dials. David grabbed his arm and swung him around. This was the last straw and he had to make up for the way he'd treated JuHan Clark. Buck—all of them—had to get it through their thick heads that this was David Patton's house and David Patton ran it. The last straw, by God.

He didn't see the blow coining, didn't actually feel it hit. All he knew in his first head-ringing iustant of comprehension was that he was sitting on the carpet. Not sprawled flat dramatically, the way it always was on TV, just sitting there, gazing stupidly up at Buck who looked a mile high. He could taste the salt blood in his mouth.

Jody said disgustedly, Tor Christ sake, Buck, do we have to do this showoflF bit every time?"

"You go crap," Buck told her. "You think I'm going to let baldy here get away with that stuff?" He caressed his knuckles, glancing around arrogantly at his limited audience. His belly was sucked in, his chest thrust out grandly. He toed David in the stomach with his shoe, not hard but contemptuously. "I don't like you much. You goLQg to remember that?"

David began to come out of his daze. From the sectional. Midge regarded him tranquilly; no flicker of emotion one way or the other disturbed her plump features. Jody was more annoyed with Buck than concerned for him. With his tongue he explored his Ups, then the iaside of his mouth. He foimd the cut where the blood was oozing and the unfamiHar roughness beside it; the blow had broken one of his teeth. One more thing to explain to Virginia. He shook his head so the ringing would stop and he tried to understand. He hadn't been punched in the face Hke this since an aftergame fight in his high-school football days. Strangely, he didn't feel angry, not for the moment. He had been

put down SO quickly and ignobly that, as the time for anger dribbled away, he could only see himself as ridiculous. It was as if he were fresh out of normal reactions, as if he deserved what had happened as part of the pattern of this weekend nightmare.

Buck nudged him again with his foot. "You stiU got objections?^ His tone was hopeful, his fists still clenched. Then his head jerked around apprehensively. "What's thatr

It was a clanking sound on the front porch. Metal scraped across concrete, feet clomped down the steps and vanished in the night. Juhan Clark had returned the spreader.

David got to his feet and snorted derisively at Buck. "Scared?" He stiU felt worse about the way he*d treated Clark than about what Buck had done to him. He was fully expectant of another punch in the face, not that it really mattered except mat he wanted to get in a couple of his own before he got flattened again. "Go ahead, play it as loud as you like," he said heavily. *Wake up the whole block. That guy next door's ready to caU tne sheriff. Go ahead, if that's what you're after."

Buck hesitated. "The cops can go crap."

"Oh, sure," Jody said. "ReaUy gutted up, aren't you? You leave the thing alone, like David says."

"You pushing me around too, now?" Buck demanded. If I have to learn you, so help me, you'll bleed." They faced each other, glaring, and despite the difference in their size, Jody showed no awe. Her left hand was poised to throw her drink, her right hand was clawed to tear. Finally, Buck's eyes shifted. "Lousy biscuit, anyway-stinking beat." He slouched down on the sectional and reached for the bottle.

"Guyl" Midge murmured. "You're so great, you know?" She snuggled against him and he drove his elbow hard into her breast. She clutched herself and bit her Hp. A tear formed in the comer of each eye but she didn't say anything. Buck took a long gurgling drink out of the bottle and sneered around at the world in general.

David felt wrung out. He went into the bathroom and rinsed his mourn with antiseptic. The bleediug had stopped. He inspected his teeth in the mirror and found

where the crown of one of his lower molars was broken. It wasn't causing him any pain.

As he returned along the hall, he could hear Nina giggling from the direction of Katie's room; the light was on and they hadn't bothered to shut the door. He hesitated at the sacrilegious creak of the innerspring but didn't investigate. He didn't want to stir up another hornet's nest in there.

Without the savage heartbeat of the music, the living room was peculiarly dead. Both girls were sitting sullenly on opposite sides of the room and Buck's face was slack with drink. A dead place but ominous, like the crater of a volcano.

David's return was enough to stir up an eruption. Buck said suddenly to Jody, "Come over here."

She laughed harshly and didn't budge from David's big easy chair.

*God damn it, I'm telling you to."

David said, "That's my chair." Jody moved up onto the arm and he sat down. "Now if everybody 11 Usten, I'm going to set a few things straight around here."

Nobody Hstened because Buck was wavering to his feet. "You haul your tail over here, I saidl" Midge caught hold of his pants pocket and he slapped her hand away.

"That's not fair," Midge complained. Tm your date and she's with David. That's what we all agreed ahead of time."

"I'm sick of you. I changed my mind."

"You better wipe it before you change it," Jody gibed. It's my party-party, and any swapping that's going to be done, I decide." She sHd off the diair arm onto David's lap and squirmed her bottom aroimd tauntingly. "If you can't stana it, you didn't have to come."

"Buck lover, we can do that," Midge pleaded, but she didn't lay hands on him this time.

Buck glowered for a few seconds, collecting his thoughts. "I haven't noticed he wants you very bad," he told Jody. "You keep rubbing up to him but he doesn't want you very bad. Bet you been playing virgin, got him scared of jailbait. Bet you didn't tell him you're my wife—Mrs. Vogel."