Ray Dunston had provided her with another good excuse for boozing it up tonight. The first thing she said was, “He came by the agency this morning. Ray. Right after he left your office.”
“You talk to him?”
“No. But Donna-the receptionist-said he seemed weird. He left his card and asked her to have me call him.”
“Did you?”
“God, no.”
She shrugged out of her trenchcoat and sank down on the couch next to me. A big curl of her copper-colored hair hung over one eye; the rest of it had been roughed up by the wind. Some other time I would have felt like putting my hands all over her. Not right now, though.
I said, “Cop friend of Eberhardt’s checked up on the Church of the Holy Mission and the Moral Crusade,” and went on to tell her what Eb had told me.
She didn’t interrupt or offer any comments; she just sat there looking pained. When I was done she laid her head back, exposing the slim white column of her throat, and closed her eyes and said, “Oh Lord, what am I going to do?”
“What are we going to do, you mean.”
“All right, we.”
“He showed up on my doorstep this morning, remember?”
“I said all right.”
“And getting looped isn’t going to help, you know.”
She opened one eye. “I’m not looped.”
“Close to it.”
“Nonsense. You’re not going to start in on me, are you?”
I didn’t say anything.
“I only had four glasses of wine,” she said.
“Only four glasses? That’s a lot of wine.”
“No, it isn’t. I’m a big girl; I go potty by myself and everything. Besides, I needed it. I had a rotten day. And Jim Carpenter was nice enough to invite me out to MacArthur Park for drinks.”
“Him, huh?” I said. “Good old Jim.”
She had both eyes open now and she rolled them in one of those martyred expressions women put on now and then. “We’re not going to start that again, too?”
“What again?”
“You being jealous of Jim Carpenter.”
“Why the hell should I be jealous of him?”
“That’s a good question. You sure act like you are.”
“Well I’m not.”
“I can’t even go out for a couple of glasses of wine-”
“Four glasses of wine.”
“-without you getting jealous, for God’s sake.”
“I told you, I’m not jealous. Screw Jim Carpenter.”
“Isn’t that what you’re afraid I’m doing? Or will do?”
“Goddamn it,” I said, and then I couldn’t think of anything else to say. So I sat there with my mouth shut, feeling impotent.
She was silent, too, for a time. Then she made a face and sniffed the air like a poodle and said, “What’s burning?”
“Nothing’s burning. That’s the chicken for dinner.”
“Smells like it’s burning.”
Kerry got up and went into the kitchen. I followed her. She opened the oven, looked inside, made a face, and shut the thing off. “Charcoal,” she said.
I took a look for myself. It wasn’t that bad-some of the pieces showed a little black around the edges, that was all. I said as much to her. She said, “Then you eat it,” and closed the oven door and went to the refrigerator.
“What are you looking for in there?”
“Some wine,” she said. “Isn’t there any damn wine here?”
“No. You drank it all up two nights ago.”
“Well, why didn’t you buy some more?”
“Why didn’t you? I don’t drink that stuff.”
“Stuff? You make it sound like poison.”
“It is if you guzzle enough of it.”
“Here we go again. Guzzle. Hoo boy.”
“You can’t deny you’ve been drinking a lot lately.”
“I’ve had a lot of problems lately.”
“Sure, I know. Pressures at work.”
“That’s right.”
“And now there’s your Looney Tunes ex.”
“That’s right. And then there’s you. ”
“Me?”
“You. I hate it when you moralize at me.”
“I don’t moralize-”
“Yes you do. You act like a prig sometimes.”
“… Did you say prick?”
“I said prig. But the other applies just as well.”
“Now listen, Kerry-”
“Oh shut up. God, you can be stuffy sometimes.”
“If it’s too stuffy for you here why don’t you go home?”
“That’s a good idea. At least I can have a glass of wine at home without a male Carrie Nation looking over my shoulder.”
“Male Carrie Nation. That’s very funny.”
“Pretty soon you’ll start quoting the Bible at me. You’re about one long step from joining the Moral Crusade yourself, you know that?”
“Quit shouting, will you?”
“I’m not shouting!”
“You’re being hysterical-”
“And you’re being an asshole!”
She stormed out of the kitchen, hurling the swing door after her with such force that it came back through the frame and almost whacked me in the face. I clawed at it, cussing, and went on through into the living room. She had her coat and her purse and was heading for the door.
“Where the hell are you going?”
“Home. You told me to go home.”
“I didn’t tell you to go home-”
“Goodbye, you jerk,” she said, and out she went, slamming the door behind her.
I stood there shaking. I wanted to hit something, but the only object handy was me. Fifteen seconds passed, and I was still standing in the same place, and there was a scraping sound in the latch and the door opened again and she came back in.
“I don’t want to go home,” she said in a small, tired voice. And she started to cry.
All the anger went out of me at once; in its place, also at once, came feelings of awkwardness and inadequacy. I do not deal well with crying women. Crying women, especially if I happen to be the one who made them cry in the first place, give me the craven urge to slink off somewhere and hide. Instead, I kept standing there. She kept standing there too, bawling her head off.
Nothing happened to change the tableau for maybe half a minute. Then we sort of groped toward each other at the same time, and clung together mumbling apologies, and a couple of minutes after that we were in bed making love. And a couple of minutes after that, she sighed and said, as if nothing at all had happened and she had just walked in the door, “God, what are we going to do about Ray?”
Sometimes I think I lead a strange life. And then there were times when I knew damned well I did.
Chapter Ten
We left the flat together at nine on Friday morning. I usually leave earlier-eight-thirty or so, in order to get to the office and have it open for business at nine; but today, for two good reasons, I waited for Kerry, who didn’t have to be at Bates and Carpenter until 9:30. One reason was that I wasn’t going to the office first thing. (So I had called Eberhardt, waking him up, and asked him to go in early for a change and open up.) The second reason was that I liked to sit around with Kerry in the morning, lingering over coffee and indulging in the mild fantasy that we were old married folks. The mild fantasy was all mine, unfortunately, and likely to remain just that. She wasn’t having any more of marriage after her experience with Ray Dunston-not that I could blame her much. She also kept refusing to move in with me. She didn’t want to give up her apartment on Diamond Heights, she said, even though it cost her a thousand dollars a month; and she liked the feeling of independence living alone gave her. This in spite of the facts that we already shared some expenses, we each kept part of our wardrobe at the other’s, and we slept together-either at her place or mine-an average of four times a week.
There was no discussing the subject with her; she got defensive and angry whenever I tried, which usually led to a fight. I hoped the same thing wasn’t going to happen with the subject of her alcohol consumption. It was a matter we hadn’t discussed any further last night. What we had discussed, at great length and to no conclusion whatsoever, was the Reverend Dunston and his relationship with the Right Reverend Clyde T. Daybreak. I think we both had the same fantasy on that score: that he would just disappear again, as magically as he had appeared yesterday morning, and we would never have to deal with him again.