“Okay.”
“Or we could stay up here and screw. That would probably be more exciting than milk and cookies.”
“Why do you have to talk like that?”
“Why not? It’s an interesting way to talk.” He turned his face from her and pitched his voice deliberately low. “Besides,” he said, “if we ever get around to screwing, think how exciting it’ll be for you.”
“For me?”
“Think of the suspense. I could go any minute.” She couldn’t see his face now. “When I was five years old I had rheumatic fever,” he said. “Sometimes it can have an effect on your heart. That’s why I don’t take gym, in case you were wondering. Also it’s why my parents were worried about the extra flight of stairs, but that’s just stupid because stairs aren’t that much of a strain. Sometimes I’ll run up both flights one after the other and it’s not a strain. I might be breathing hard afterward but so what? In fact I could take gym and it would probably be safe enough but I hate gym anyway and the teacher’s a real creep so why not get out of it if I have the chance?”
“Sure.”
“You just get all sweaty. That’s all gym is, getting sweaty and smelling like a locker room for the rest of the day.”
“That’s why you run up the stairs.”
“I just happen to like to run up stairs,” he said. “A certain amount of exercise is good for a person.”
“Sure.”
“It’s actually good for the heart. That’s why men go out and jog. There’s a man who runs past this house every morning about eight. He wears a sweatshirt and white pants and he has this dog that runs along with him. The dog’s a German short-haired pointer. I don’t know if you ever saw them.”
“I never saw the man but there’s a dog like that who comes around our street sometimes.”
“It’s probably the same dog. The dog looks okay but the man really looks stupid running around like an idiot. But it must be good for his heart.”
“I guess so.”
He looked at her. He had taken off his glasses, and without them his eyes looked normal, even attractive. “Anyway,” he said, “anybody could pop off any minute. You could be lying in bed and a tree could fall on your house and crush you. Not you in particular, but you know what I mean.”
She thought of Caleb.
“So if you want to screw I guess I’ll take my chances, Ariel.”
She gazed steadily at him. He blinked, started to avert his eyes, then met her stare.
“I was adopted,” she said.
“You’re late,” Roberta said. “Dinner’s almost ready. I was starting to worry about you.”
Sure, she thought.
“Go wash your hands and get ready. Where were you?”
“Erskine’s house.”
“Do I know who that is? Is it the odd-looking little boy I’ve seen you walking with?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve seen him before. Of course. He was at the funeral, wasn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“What did you say his name was?”
“Erskine Wold.”
Roberta looked at her. “Well, at least you have a friend,” she said at length.
Ariel went to the lavatory, ran water, washed her hands and face. Well, at least you have a friend, an odd-looking little friend. If Erskine didn’t like adults in general, he’d really get a bang out of Roberta.
She thought of the conversation they’d had in his third-floor room. She could have gone on talking for another hour or more. She had told him things she’d never said to anyone but herself.
She still wasn’t sure if she liked him. There were things about him that bothered her, and getting to know him didn’t make him any less weird. Not that the weirdness bothered her, necessarily. But the grossness did, and all the sex talk. She was pretty sure he just did it for effect, and maybe he’d stop it as they got to know each other better.
Well, she thought, echoing Roberta, at least you have a friend.
Six
David sat in his ground-floor study, smoking a lovat-shaped Barling and watching the blue smoke rise to fill the little room. There was a bottle of brandy on one shelf of the built-in chestnut bookcases, and his eyes fixed on the bottle as they had done every few moments since he had entered the room. He wanted a drink, longed for a drink, but he had made the decision earlier not to have one. Not tonight, anyway.
It was his nighttime drinking that was becoming a problem. He never drank in the morning — only alcoholics, for God’s sake, drank in the morning. He was apt to order a drink at lunch — a Bloody Mary generally, occasionally a martini — but he never had more than one drink at that time, and frequently had a sandwich at his desk or a quick bite at the Greek place down the street and passed up his noon drink without giving it a thought.
He always had a drink after work. That was ritual. His after-work drink was scotch on the rocks with a twist of lemon, Teacher’s if he remembered to ask for it by brand name, otherwise whatever the bartender poured. At the Blueprint Room, just around the corner from Ashley-Cooper Home Products, the barman knew him and he didn’t have to specify his brand. He’d have one drink there, or at the Cliquot Club, or at Hardesty’s. Once in a while, on a Friday, say, he might have a second. Never a third.
He’d have another drink upon arriving home. Sometimes he and Roberta would have a drink together in the front room, but if she was busy or not in the mood he’d have it himself. Teacher’s on the rocks, but no twist of lemon this time. And only the one drink.
And that would be it for him until after dinner. A total of three drinks, four on exceptional occasions, sometimes only two if he missed his lunchtime cocktail. Some years ago, he recalled, he and Roberta had gotten briefly into the habit of wine with dinner. They made a mini-hobby out of it, trying different wines, reading books on the subject, drinking from elegant Waterford stemware. They’d given it up because neither of them had really liked wine all that much, and he had especially disliked the way it made him sleepy. Whenever they shared a bottle he was apt to doze off in front of the television set.
Now, curiously, he drank brandy after dinner to help him get to sleep. And brandy was the worst choice for that particular purpose, as he well knew. There was something distinctly stimulating about it, and on the one occasion when he’d taken it on an empty stomach he’d been rewarded with palpitations and jangling coffee nerves. It didn’t really make him sleepy; enough of it, though, and it would knock him out.
Yet it was what he wanted after dinner. Pipes to smoke and books to read (or at least turn the pages of) and brandy to sip, here in this little room that was solely his.
Well, tonight he was breaking the pattern. He’d had his Bloody Mary at lunch, his scotch at the Blueprint Room, a second scotch while he read the evening paper in the front room. And that was enough. He didn’t need any more. Hell, he didn’t even want any more.
His eyes rose again to the brandy bottle. Force of habit, he told himself, drawing on his pipe, watching the smoke rise. Force of habit, ritual, routine. It was that simple. And he would break the habit, the ritual, the routine, just as simply — by not taking the drink.
Because he felt he had the opportunity to take charge of his life, to grab hold of it and turn it around. His life, his marriage, his household — he sensed that everything was at some sort of crossroads. Things had been proceeding in a certain direction, and then Caleb had died abruptly, and now—
His pipe had gone out. He tried to relight it but there was nothing left to relight. He knocked out the dottle, ran a pipecleaner through the stem and shank. He returned the pipe to the rack, selected another one automatically, then put it back and left the little room.