“You may do as you wish. First, however, I would like to go home.”
“It’s impossible. I have guests. I can’t take you home now.”
“I will not stay here any longer. I didn’t want to come, and you compelled me, and now I will not stay any longer.”
She could see that he was angry again, as he had been at home in the living room, and she thought that the only reason he did not strike her now, as he had then, was that they were now exposed to the public. His anger did not disturb her. She regretted a little, perhaps, that she was causing him so much trouble, for she felt sincerely that he did not deserve it, but it was quite evident by now that the trouble was inevitable, something to which she was party but over which she had absolutely no control, and so the regret was really futile and not worth expressing.
Standing, she said, “I’ll go outside to the car. If you want to come, you can come. If not, it doesn’t matter.” She walked across the room and outside, and it was quite a long walk with everyone watching her, the kind of situation that would usually make your arms and legs go in all directions at once, but she felt strangely at ease, not in the conviction that the worst of the night had passed, but in the serenity of resignation to progressive: evil, and she walked gracefully with her head back and her slight body erect. She went to the parking area and got into the front seat of Avery’s black Caddy and sat there with her eyes closed, and after quite a while a man came and got in beside her. The man was not Avery, but she knew instantly without opening her eyes just who he was, and she began to laugh quietly with the merest whisper of sound because it was so perfectly part of the pattern that he should be who he was.
“Avery didn’t want to leave his guests,” Emerson said. “He asked me to drive you home. Do you object?”
“It would not matter if I did. You would still drive me home.”
“If you prefer, I’ll tell Avery to ask someone else.”
“No. It was necessary that he ask you and that you should agree.”
“Why do you say that? I don’t understand you.”
“Don’t you? Perhaps it’s just as well.”
He backed the Caddy out of its position between two other cars and drove out of the parking area.
“Didn’t you drive Avery home from your place one night?” she said.
“Yes. A long time back.”
“I know. In November. The night before he left for Miami. I disgraced myself tonight, didn’t I? Everyone will be talking about it. It was a very beautiful public spectacle, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know, Lisa.”
“Of course you know. How ridiculous to say you don’t. You were there and saw it all quite clearly. Do you know why I burned that fool’s cheek with my cigarette?”
“Knowing Merlin, I can imagine.”
“Because he pawed me? He did that, of course, but it wasn’t the real reason. It was just a kind of precipitant. Would you care to know the real reason?”
“No.”
“Are you sure? I’m just in the mood for telling you if you’d like to know.”
“I’m quite sure.”
“Oh, very well. Be as smug as you like. Do you know that you are very smug?”
“I don’t try to be.”
“Of course you don’t try. It just comes naturally. Because you are a nice guy who does things. That’s what you are. A nice, smug guy who does things.”
“I’m sorry you find me so unpleasant.”
“You say that you’re sorry, but you’re not. You don’t care at all. You don’t care because you despise me.”
“I don’t despise you, Lisa.”
“Certainly you despise me. Shall I tell you why? You despise me because I’m despicable. That’s very logical, isn’t it? How can you deny anything as logical as that?” She was very pleased with this. She had reasoned logically and confounded him completely. She began to laugh again quietly to herself, continuing to sit with her head back and her eyes closed, and it wasn’t long before she was aware that the Caddy had stopped, and then she opened her eyes and saw that they were parked in the car port beside the house.
“Here we are,” Emerson said. “I’ll see you to the door.”
She looked at him slyly. “Won’t you come in for a drink?”
“No, thanks, Lisa. I don’t think I’d better.”
“You see? I said you despise me, and you do. You won’t even come in for a drink when I ask you. It would only be common courtesy to come in for a drink.”
“God damn it, I do not despise you. I like you very much. I just think it would not be a good idea to come in for a drink.”
“Why? Are you afraid I would seduce you?”
“Certainly not.”
“Would you be surprised if I tried?”
“I don’t think you are going to.”
“Why? Do you think I am incapable? Is that what you think?”
“I don’t think anything about it at all.”
“Perhaps you don’t trust yourself. Is that it? Are you afraid you could not resist?”
“All right, Lisa. Perhaps that’s it. Anyhow, whatever it is, I am not coming in for either a drink or a seduction, and I will take you to the door and no farther.”
“No. Wait a minute.”
He had started to open the door beside him, and now he paused and turned back toward her in the seat, and she moved suddenly with incredible speed and was upon him in an instant, her mouth over his mouth and her body pressing against his body, but he was of course only the necessary medium, and the mouth and the body she sought were not his nor even present, and in her was the wild, aberrant unleashed hunger, and her harsh whisper in her throat had a strangled, dying sound.
“Here,” she whispered. “Right here, right now.”
He sat passively under the attack, neither resisting nor responding, thinking that she would soon withdraw, but she continued to press upon him and devour him, and he began to think that he himself would surely strangle and die. Raising his hands to her wrists, he tried to break her grip but couldn’t, and so he took the fingers of her hands and pried them loose and pushed her away from him. Then he opened the door and got out quickly and went around the car and opened the opposite door. She was now sitting quietly in the seat with her hands folded in her lap, and he felt for her a deep, bitter pity that was like nothing he had ever felt before.
“Come on, Lisa. Let me take you to the door.”
She got out and started to walk toward the front of the car, but when he took a step after her, she stopped and whirled around with that incredible and savage speed, her voice a thin projection of venom that shocked him and made him feel suddenly withered and sick.
“Go away! Go away at once before I kill you!”
Turning, she went on alone around the car and up across the porch and into the front hall. She stood just inside the door and listened to the Caddy’s motor start and diminish and die away, and whatever it was that had been waiting in the house all day and had been waiting when she had left the house at the end of the day was still waiting now that she had returned to the house in the middle of the night. She stood there for a few minutes, wondering where she should go and what she should do, and then she walked into the living room and turned on a light and began walking slowly around the room, stopping and looking at things and picking them up and setting them down again. After a while she came to a console radio-phonograph that was hardly ever used by anyone, and she got down on her knees and began to look through the records in the cabinet, and after she had looked at perhaps a dozen she came to one called Death and Transfiguration. She remained on her knees in a posture of prayer, looking at the label on the record and thinking that she had tried in a way to achieve a transfiguration, and it had not worked, it had only gone from bad to worse to worst, and perhaps after all death was the only transfiguration, the only possible real change, and anyhow this would surely be a solacing record to listen to in the ruins of this worst of all nights. Getting up from her knees, she put the record on the machine and sat down to listen to it, and she found in the music a great and cathedral-like gloom that was tremendously satisfying. When the record was finished, she sat still and permitted the mechanism to start it playing again, and she continued to sit still and listen while the machine repeated the record a number of times, and one of the remarkable things about it was that in all this time, which was considerable, she didn’t even seem to want a drink. Not until the Caddy came back into the drive did she get up and stop the machine and go upstairs. In her room, she took off her dress and her shoes and lay down on the bed in darkness and listened to the small sounds involved in the elimination of time and space between her and Avery, his entrance into the house, his ascent of the stairs, his entrance into the room, his sigh as he sat on the edge of her bed.