3
But I cannot help it. My blood runs in your veins...
At noon Jim called and asked her to meet him downtown for lunch. They ate soup and salad at a café on State Street. The place was crowded and noisy, and Daisy was grateful that Jim had chosen it. There was no need to force conversation. With so many others talking, silence between any two particular people seemed to go unnoticed. Jim even had the illusion that they’d enjoyed a lively lunch, and when they parted in front of the café, he said, “You’re feeling better, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“No more skirmishes with your unconscious?”
“Oh no.”
“Good girl.” He pressed her shoulder affectionately. “See you for dinner.”
She watched him until he turned the corner to the parking lot. Then she began walking slowly down the street in the opposite direction, with no special destination in mind, only a strong desire to stay away from the house as long as she could.
A rising wind prodded her, and on the tips of the purple mountains storm clouds were gathering like great plumes of black smoke. For the first time that day she thought of something unconnected with herself: Rain. It’s going to rain.
As the wind pushed the storm clouds toward the city, everyone on the street was caught up in the excitement of the coming rain. They walked faster, talked louder. Strangers spoke to strangers: “How about that, look at those clouds...” “We’re going to catch it this time...” “When I hung up the wash this morning, there wasn’t a cloud in sight...” “Just in time for my cinerarias...”
“Rain,” they said, and lifted their faces to the sky as if they were expecting not just rain but a shower of gold.
It had been a year without winter. The hot, sunny days, which usually ended in November, had stretched through Christmas and the New Year. It was now February, and the reservoirs were getting low, and large sections of the mountains had been closed to picnickers and campers because of the fire hazard. Cloud seeders were standing by, waiting for clouds, like actors ready with their roles waiting for a stage to appear.
The clouds came, their blacks and grays more beautiful than all the colors of the spectrum, and suddenly the sun vanished and the air turned cold.
I’ll be caught in the rain, Daisy thought. I should start for home. But her feet kept right on going as if they had a mind of their own and would not be led by a timid girl afraid of getting a little wet.
Behind her, someone called her name: “Daisy Harker.”
She stopped and turned, recognizing the voice immediately — Adam Burnett’s. Burnett was a lawyer, an old friend of Jim’s, who shared Jim’s interest in cabinetmaking. Adam came over to the house quite frequently as a refugee from his family of eight, but Daisy didn’t see much of him. The two men usually shut themselves up in Jim’s hobby shop downstairs.
All morning Daisy had been thinking off and on of going to talk to Adam, and this sudden meeting confused her, as if she had conjured up his person out of her thoughts. She didn’t even greet him. She said uncertainly, “How funny, running into you like this.”
“Not so funny. My office is just two doors down the street, and the place where I eat lunch is directly across the road.” He was a tall, heavily built man in his forties, with a brisk but pleasant professional manner. He noticed Daisy’s confusion immediately but could think of no reason for it. “I’m pretty hard to miss, in this neck of the woods.”
“I’d — forgotten where your office was.”
“Oh? For a moment when I first spotted you, I thought you might be on your way to see me.”
“No. No.” I didn’t, I couldn’t possibly have, come this way deliberately. Why, I didn’t even remember his office was near here, or I can’t remember remembering. “I wasn’t on my way to anywhere. I was just walking. It’s such a lovely day.”
“It’s cold.” He glanced briefly at the sky. “And about to be wet.”
“I like rain.”
“At this point, don’t we all.”
“I meant, I like to walk in the rain.”
His smile was friendly but a little puzzled. “That’s fine. Go right ahead. The exercise will do you good, and the rain probably won’t hurt you.”
She didn’t move. “The reason I thought it was funny running into you like this was because — well, I was thinking about you this morning.”
“Oh?”
“I was even thinking of... of making an appointment to see you.”
“Why?”
“Something has sort of happened.”
“How can anything sort of happen? It happens or it doesn’t.”
“I don’t quite know how to explain.” The first drops of rain had begun to fall. She didn’t notice them. “Do you consider me a neurotic woman?”
“This is hardly the time or place to discuss a subject like that,” he said dryly. “You may like walking in the rain. Some of us don’t.”
“Adam, listen.”
“You’d better come up to my office.” He consulted his wrist-watch. “I’ve got twenty-five minutes before I’m due at the courthouse.”
“I don’t want to.”
“I think you want to.”
“No, I feel like such a fool.”
“So do I, standing around in the pouring rain. Come on, Daisy.”
They took the elevator up to the third floor. Adam’s receptionist and his secretary were both still out to lunch, and the suite was quiet and dark. Adam turned on the lamps in the reception room; then he went into his office, hung up his wet tweed jacket to dry on an old-fashioned brass clothes rack.
“Sit down, Daisy. You’re looking great. How’s Jim?”
“Fine.”
“Has he been making any new furniture?”
“No. He’s refinishing an old bird’s-eye maple desk for the den.”
“Where did he get hold of it?”
“The former owners of the house he bought left it behind as trash. I guess they didn’t know what it was — it had so many layers of paint on it. Ten at least, Jim says.”
She knew this was part of his technique, getting her started talking about safe, impersonal things first, and she half resented the fact that it was working. It was as if he’d applied a few drops of oil to the proper places and suddenly wheels began turning and she told him about the dream. The rain beat in torrents against the windows, but Daisy was walking on a sunny beach with her dog, Prince.
Adam leaned back in his chair and listened, his only outward reaction an occasional blink. Inwardly, he was surprised, not at the dream itself, but at the way she related it, coldly and without emotion, as if she were describing a simple factual chain of events, not a mere fantasy of her own mind.
She completed her account by telling him the dates on the tombstone. “November 13, 1930, and December 2, 1955. My birthday,” she said, “and my death day.”
The strange word annoyed him; he didn’t understand why. “Is there such a word?”
“Yes.”
He grunted and leaned forward, the chair squeaking under his weight. “I’m no psychiatrist. I don’t interpret dreams.”
“I’m not asking you to. No interpretation is necessary. It’s all quite clear. On December 2, 1955, something happened to me that was so terrible it caused my death. I was psychically murdered.”
Psychic murder, Adam thought. Now I’ve heard everything. These damned silly idle women who sit around dreaming up trouble for themselves and everyone else...
“Do you really believe that, Daisy?”
“Yes.”
“All right. Suppose something catastrophic actually happened on that day. Why is it you don’t remember what it was?”