“I do care, very much.”
“No... You listen to me, Thelma. I’m the boss. I want fried chicken for dinner tonight. Hear that?”
“Yes.”
“I make all the decisions from now on. Is that clear?”
“Of course.”
With a sound of desolation he turned and buried his face in the pillows.
She stood looking down at him, tight-lipped, cold-eyed. “I’ll need the car keys if I’m going to do the shopping. Are they in your pocket?”
He didn’t respond. She waited for several minutes, still as a stone, until Harry began to snore. Then she bent over him, and, moving with delicate precision, she took the car keys from one pocket and the gun from the other, and put them both in her purse. Blake watched her from the doorway with the awed expression of a man witnessing the dismantling of an unexploded bomb.
When she turned and saw that Blake was still in the house she seemed surprised and displeased. “I thought you’d left.”
“No.”
“You’re free to go any time.” She went into the hall, closing the door behind her, and began putting on her hat, arranging the black veil over her face, tucking in wisps of hair. There was a mirror built into the hall rack but she didn’t even glance toward it. “You’re free to go,” she repeated. “You were so anxious to leave a few minutes ago.”
“Naturally. What did you expect me to do, tackle a crazy man?”
“He’s not crazy. He’s emotionally exhausted.”
“Same difference, as far as I’m concerned. You’d better watch out for yourself, Mrs. Bream.” He appeared reluctant to leave, as if he had misgivings about his behavior and wanted to confess and apologize but didn’t know how to go about it. “What are you going to do about the gun?”
“I have no idea. What does anyone do about a gun?”
“Unload it, that’s the first thing. Let me see it.”
She opened her purse. She knew nothing about guns but it seemed odd to her that it wasn’t heavier, more substantial.
“It’s not real,” Blake said, in a high, tinny voice.
“Pardon?”
“It’s a toy, a cap pistol.” The color of shame and fury spread across his face. “A cap pistol. And I was taken in. I was...” I was a coward. I was scared by a toy gun and a little man years older than I am. Scaredy-cat, scaredy-cat.
“I’m so relieved,” Thelma said. “I should have guessed, of course. Harry just isn’t the type to harm anyone even if he wanted to. People can’t get away from their own type no matter how hard they try.”
“Can’t they?”
“Poor Harry. A toy gun. Well, I suppose we’ll all look back on this some day and laugh. I mean, there was I, scared out of my wits, and you — I thought you were going to faint, you looked petrified.”
“I wasn’t frightened in the least,” he said, and giving her a look of hatred, he turned and opened the door and ran down the porch steps, fleeing from his own identity, pursued by his own shadow.
Thelma started to call after him, to tell him not to bother about the water-softener, but at that moment the telephone began ringing again. This time she answered it promptly because she didn’t want Harry to wake up.
“Hello?”
“Thelma, this is Ralph. I’ve been trying to reach you for hours.”
“I was out.” I don’t even have to lie, she thought. I was out. Out of patience. “Is anything wrong?”
“Maybe. Harry came to my office this morning. He looked in terrible shape, as if he’d been on a binge for a week. I know that can’t be true, though. He’s afraid to drink since he had to pay that two hundred dollar fine after the accident.”
“Why worry about him?”
“He was talking — well, pretty unrealistically. About you, and going home, and how he intended to get a firm hand on the reins, that sort of thing.”
“So?”
“I thought you should be warned. He’s a hell of a good guy, Thelma, it’s up to us to keep him out of trouble.”
“Not us,” Thelma said dryly. “You.”
“What does that mean?”
“He’s here now. Sleeping. After making a delightful scene in front of a total stranger. It’s the last straw. If he’s going to be kept out of trouble you’ll have to do it, you and Bill Winslow or Joe Hepburn. You’re his friends. I’m not.”
“What are we supposed to do?”
“I’m going out now, to Ron’s funeral — and you can start raving and ranting about bad form or anything else, but it won’t do any good. I’m going. And when I get back, I want Harry out of here, out of this house. If he’s still here when I come back, I’m going to phone the police and have him arrested for threatening me with a gun.
“A gun?”
“Oh, just a cap pistol, as it turned out. But the threat was real and I have a witness. Harry can be arrested.”
“You wouldn’t...”
“Wouldn’t I? Listen, I’m fed up. I’m sick and tired and fed up. These scenes are tearing me apart. I have my health to consider, and my baby. I need peace and quiet, relaxation. How can I get any, with him barging around like a maniac? I would do anything to get rid of him. And I will, if you don’t prevent it.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“He won’t be here when I come back?”
“No.”
“Promise?”
“Yes.”
“I suppose I should thank you in advance, only — well, whatever you do will be for Harry’s sake, not mine. I ask no favors from anyone.”
“I understand that. Go-it-alone Thelma, as usual.”
“I’m not quite alone.” She hung up.
In the living room Harry lay crushed among the pillows, dreaming of triumphs and defeats, the rhythm of his gentle snoring broken now and then by a catch of his breath, a pause, a sigh.
What long eyelashes he has, Thelma thought. Then she said softly, “Good-bye, Harry.”
Eighteen
Harry remained at home and slept through the funeral, partly from a desire to escape it, partly from genuine weariness. By the time Turee and Bill Winslow arrived at the house, he was awake and sitting up on the davenport, though still dazed.
“How did you fellows get here?”
“Thelma left the door unlocked,” Turee said.
“No, I mean, what brought...?”
“Action now, explanations later. Come on, Harry.”
“Come on where?”
“To my house.”
“I don’t want to go to your house. I’m staying here. I’m waiting for Thelma.”
“Thelma’s not coming back until you leave.”
“But she has to. She promised to make me fried chicken for dinner. I commanded her to.”
“Oh, great, great,” Winslow said. After the funeral, he’d had three quick, long martinis which had submerged his sorrow but left a lump of anger sticking in his throat like an olive pit. “You commanded her to. Fine. With a toy gun. Even better. What makes you pull such damnfool stunts?”
“I was only trying to prove...”
“What you were trying to prove and what you proved are a couple of light-years apart. You threaten a woman and she gets frightened. But after the fright goes away, what’s left? Revenge.”
“Not Thelma.”
“Exactly Thelma. Get it through your thick skull that she wants you to get lost, or else. All these damnfool antics of yours, I don’t blame her. Now let’s hurry up and shove out of here. I need a drink.”
“Well, gee whiz,” Harry said plaintively. “What’s everybody so sore about?”
“Who’s sore?”
“You are.”
“The hell I am.”
“Quiet, both of you,” Turee said. “Come on, Harry. Bill has his car, he’ll drive us over to my house.”