“Daiquiri here, if you want one, dear,” she said. “Help yourself.” She smiled at me in a shy, tentative way.
I went near her and poured the drink. It had a tart clean taste. “Good,” I said.
“Your clothes were messy with that sun lotion.” “I’m a mad, impulsive creature.”
“You wouldn’t want to take them to the hotel. I’ve bundled them up. I know where I can drop them off myself and pick them up and keep them here until you can collect them. I... laid some things out on the bed.”
I went over and looked. The things from my pockets were spread out. There were shorts, socks, a white shirt still in its retail cellophane, slacks that would look well enough with my jacket.
“You don’t mind?” she asked in a meek voice.
“Somehow I can’t get worked up about taking over his clothes. I’ve moved in on something more private than that.”
“He wore those slacks twice. They’re just back from their first trip to the cleaners. Everything else is brand new.”
She had laid out my belt, tie and shoes. “I told you it isn’t important. How could it be, now?”
“But you had me first!” she said with such despair I turned and looked across the room at her. Dusk had come into the room. Her face was a paleness against shadows, just a little duskier than her blouse. “Long before him! You had me first!”
“That gives me special rights?” I said. I dropped the towel. She turned and looked out the window and sipped her drink. I dressed in my brother’s clothing. The slacks were too big in the waist and too short, but not ludicrously so. The shirt sleeves were short. I dressed and put my jacket on and refilled my glass and sat on the couch, facing her.
“Gevan.” she said softly, “we both knew it would happen sooner or...”
“You were saying that he had fallen asleep and you had covered him with a blanket.”
“Gevan! Darling!”
“What happened after you covered him with the blanket?”
“But this is cruel! I want to talk about us.”
“Baby, I thank you sincerely for the shower, the clothes, the rum and the roll in the hay, but don’t make the mistake of thinking I am going to let you milk it for kicks by talking circles around it. You were telling me you covered him with a blanket.”
She looked down into her drink for a long time. At last she shivered and straightened and lifted her chin and looked at me without expression. “I read until I finished my book. It was midnight. I went in and shook Ken awake and told him the time and told him I was going to bed. He said he had a headache and he was going to go out and see if the night air would help. I told him less liquor was the only thing that could help him. He didn’t answer me. That was the last thing I ever said to him. It’s a very loving farewell, isn’t it?”
“You never know about such things in advance. How could you?”
“Thanks, darling. I came in here and went to bed. The bed on the right is mine. I left his bedlamp and the bathroom lights on. I was drifting off so quickly that when I heard the shot I thought it was part of a dream that had just begun. I began to wonder if he had fallen, or knocked something over. It’s unbelievably quiet up here at night. I tried to go back to sleep, but I kept wondering what I had heard. I put on my robe and slippers and went through the house, calling him, but there wasn’t any answer. I went outside and called. I knew I could be heard a long distance in the stillness. I walked around the whole house, and finally I was yelling so loudly I got hoarse the next day.
“I got a flashlight and went down the drive toward the gate. He was on the grass just inside the gate, near the lilacs. It isn’t a gate really, just two posts with lights on top that you drive between. You saw it when you came here. The lights were out.
“When I found him I didn’t think it was him. He looked so shrunken and little and flat against the ground, and his clothes looked too big for him. His face was bulging and horrible, and they say that happens because of the pressure of the bullet on the brain and...” She lost control for a few moments. She sat very still with her eyes shut, but when she opened them she continued in the same level voice.
“I can’t really remember running to the house. The police came quickly. I had put a blanket over him. I knew he wouldn’t want people looking at him the way he was. It was the same blanket I’d used to cover him after his drinks knocked him out. A lot of police came, and Lester and Stanley came. There were a lot of questions. I started to go to pieces. My doctor came and gave me a shot, and a nurse stayed here with me. I didn’t wake up until late Saturday morning. I phoned you then but... I couldn’t get you. You know the rest.” She carefully refilled her glass.
“Yes,” I said. “I know all the rest, including your mourning methods.”
She stared at me. I wanted to smash her with my own guilt. But I had pushed it too far. She laughed at me, with derision and amusement. “My mourning methods! Oh, you are so blameless, Gevan Dean!” I knew, even in the dusk light, how the blue of her eyes had deepened. I saw the arched lines of her mouth, arrogant and sensuous. “Are you going to convince yourself you were raped, darling? It was a good trick, if you were, you know. My back was turned, wasn’t it? Were you just trying to do the best job of oiling a lady’s back that had ever been done? For God’s sake, let’s both try to be honest. It might be the only virtue we have left, you know. We’ll call it our mourning procedure — for husband and brother. You see, darling, I have less to regret than you. I’m the one who didn’t love him.”
She rose to her feet and took two slow steps to stand tall over me, tall and mocking, sleek and resilient in her skin, smug in the aftermath of satisfactions. Long before, when we had known we would be married, we had found in each other an endless hunger for physical love. She had been marvelous to be with. She had demanded her pleasures with a boldness and a joy which had been a constant source of re-excitement to me. But the Niki I had known then was but an inquisitive emotional girl compared to the woman of riper body who stood before me, laughing at me. This one was in a full torrent of her maturity, aware of her strengths and their uses, her driving needs and just what would be most assuasive to them.
I lowered my face into my hands and felt her sit quickly beside me. She wrapped gentle fingers around my right wrist. “Let’s not try to hurt each other,” she whispered.
“You make it sound easy.”
“Maybe we can do incredible things, darling. Like turning the calendar back a long way. It was all so good once upon a time. If we look for it, maybe we can find it again. Remember me? My name is Niki. I’m your girl.”
The room was almost dark. She had created a special mood wherein I could find myself wanting to believe that somehow we could make the four lost years seem like an absurd mistake, and be together again.
I turned and looked at her. Her face was inches from mine. “I remember you very well,” I said.
“And I remember you, Gevan. You are the man who had all the drive and all the energy, and one day you just... came to a stop.”
“Because there wasn’t anything worth working for.”
“Do you feel guilty about that?”
“Why should I?”
“I had to ask. It’s easier to ask things in the dark. Important things, darling. I don’t want you all steamed up to get back into the rat race.”
“What has that got...”
“Hush!” she said and touched my lips. “I have a crazy plan for us. It’s no good here for us. Too much happened here. We’d have to live in a new way to catch up on all we’ve lost. We lost so much, darling. Let’s go away together just as soon as we can. There’s all the money we can ever use. We could get a boat, a motor-sailor we could crew ourselves, and... make a life out of following the sun.”