If Larry Connor had sounded drunk, Nancy would simply have jumped up from the bench and gone away. But he did not sound drunk. On the contrary, he sounded cold stone sober, even deliberate, as if he were thinking a serious problem out aloud.
“You mustn’t say things you’ll be sorry for later, Larry,” Nancy said. “There’s Lila and Jack. Let’s join them.”
She started to get up from the redwood bench, but Larry seized her hand and pulled her back. She was not aware until later that he held on to her all the while he was talking.
“Wait a minute, Nancy, I was going to tell you how Lila and I met. It was in Kansas City. I was in an office there with two older accountants, and everything was going fine. There was even a girl I was thinking about marrying. Then I went to this cocktail party one night and met Lila. She was sitting by herself in a corner with a Martini in her hand. I went over and began to talk to her. We left together and had dinner and went on to her apartment. She began to tell me about herself. She had just got a divorce, she told me, from a sadist who’d got his kicks out of making her suffer. I was furious and protective, and I built up quite a hate for the poor slob.
“None of it was true. I met him after Lila and I had been married about a year, and he turned out to be as nice a guy as you’d ever want to meet. Furthermore, he hadn’t been her first husband, as she claimed. He’d been her third; I’m her fourth, and she’s only twenty-six now. She started early, at sixteen. She’d been divorced by husbands one and three. Number two committed suicide.”
“Larry, you simply must stop. I don’t want to hear any of this.”
“Don’t you believe me?”
“I just don’t want to listen.”
“Please, Nancy. You’re the only one here I give a damn about. I’d like you to know so you’ll understand anything that may happen later.”
“Don’t talk like that, Larry. You’re scaring me!”
“No, no, I don’t mean to frighten you. It’s a kind of therapy to be able to talk, Nancy. Please, let me. Have you ever wondered why Lila and I moved here a year or so ago?”
Nancy settled back. “You came to take over old Mr. Campbell’s business, didn’t you? I heard that you bought into it just before he died.”
“The truth is that I thought Lila and I could start over in a small town. She’d run up about ten thousand dollars’ worth of bills I couldn’t pay, even though I had a good income. I thought maybe she’d be different here. She isn’t. I still owe about half the Kansas City debt, and she’s getting me over my head in debt all over again. I’m half out of my mind, Nancy. Maybe I’ll just cut and run.”
“Running wouldn’t do any good, Larry.” Nancy was terribly uncomfortable.
“I wonder. Sweet neighbors you’ve got, Nancy.”
“We think so. David and I both,” Nancy murmured fatuously.
“That’s because you didn’t know the truth, and probably don’t believe it now that you’ve heard it. Thanks, anyhow.”
“Yes, Nancy,” Lila’s voice said suddenly from behind the bench. “It’s kind of you to say so. Larry darling, have you been entertaining Nancy with your drunken fantasies? Why is it you’re always impelled to tell such monstrous lies when you’re stoned?”
Nancy jumped up, startled and ashamed. Lila Connor was regarding her husband with the strangest smile. Jack Richmond, beside Lila, was wearing the professional expression of his consulting room. Larry merely shrugged, not bothering to turn his head.
“Must you sneak up behind me like that, Lila? I was just telling Nancy what a psychopath you are.”
“I heard you. Nancy, you’ll have to forgive him. He’ll say or do anything to gain a little sympathy from a pretty woman.”
“Forget it,” Jack Richmond said. “Let’s have another beer.”
“I think we’d better not,” Lila said. “I think we’d better go home. Don’t you think we’d better go home, Larry?”
“Yes.” Larry sighed and rose, a picture of defeat and weariness, as if he had lost and lost and lost again. “Good night, Nancy, Jack. Next time, Jack, be more discriminating in your guest list.”
The accountant walked off into the darkness beyond the terrace toward his house. From Lila Connor came a brittle little laughing sound. She seemed about to say something. But then she raised her arms, and dropped them, and walked off after her husband.
“Well,” Jack said, “they’ve done it again. What in the world was all that babbling about, Nancy? I only heard a bit at the last.”
“I’d rather not discuss it, Jack.”
“Right,” the doctor said instantly. “Let’s go see if we can stamp out more fires, Nancy. I think Mae’s lighting into old Stanley again.”
But Mae and Stanley Walters were in a truce for a welcome change, and soon, without further incident, the Walterses said good night and went home across the alley. Jack and David had a last beer while Nancy helped Vera clean up the terrace; then Nancy and David went home, too, across the Connors’ backyard. Although it was still early, about eleven o’clock, they saw only one light in the Connor house, coming from a room upstairs.
3
“Darling,” Nancy Howell said, “what do you think of Lila?”
“She’s beautiful, sexy and delightfully promiscuous,” David Howell said. “I discovered it tonight behind a spirea bush. The promiscuous part, I mean.”
David was lying on his side with his back to Nancy, who was sitting on the opposite side of the bed in a pale yellow shortie nightgown. There was only a dim light burning, the lamp on the bedside table, because David wanted to go to sleep, which was why he had his back turned and why he said what he did in answer to Nancy’s question. What he said was supposed to be a stopper; and what he meant, instead of what he said, was, in effect, to quit-talking-for-God’s-sake-and-turn-out-the-light-and-get-to-sleep. Unfortunately, Nancy wasn’t sleepy in the least.
“I guess that was when Larry and I were making love on the redwood bench,” she said. “Really, though, David. What do you think of Lila? I mean really. What you think, I mean, when you don’t intend to tell anyone, at all, ever.”
“I just told you.”
“Larry said she doesn’t know the difference between right and wrong.”
“Larry’s right. She has absolutely no morals, I’m happy to say.”
“Larry says she’s a natural-born liar.”
“I’m all for lying myself,” said David, sleepily. “Like you, for instance, lying right now — lying down and turning out the light. Good night, lover.”
“Lover! I can’t even keep you awake.”
“It’s too soon after Lila, lover. Contact me first thing in the morning.”
“Aren’t you even interested in what Larry said?”
“Larry was drunk. What a man says when he’s drunk is seldom interesting.”
“I’m not so sure Larry was drunk. He didn’t talk or act drunk.”
David’s response was a deliberate snore, which meant that he was damned if he was going to say another word. So Nancy sat quietly on the edge of the bed thinking over Larry’s evaluation of his wife. Nancy didn’t want it to be true, for she genuinely liked Lila. On the other hand, she didn’t want it to be untrue, either, for she liked Larry just as genuinely.