And Nell sat on, drink in hand, still smiling, still humming.
She was alone at last...
Emma did not die.
She lay in traction from head to foot in the hospital to which she had been taken. Her back had been so shattered that she was given little hope of ever being able to walk again. A wheelchair possibly, after months spent in bed.
Nell did not go to see her. Not, that is, until Emma fully regained consciousness. She went then only because the hospital called her and said that Emma was asking for her and that since she was Emma’s only living relative — “I am not a relative,” said Nell sharply. “I am her landlady only.”
But she went. Emma smiled wanly from the bed. “Hello, dear,” she said. “It’s so good to see you. I’ll bet you were here every day while I was unconscious.”
Nell said nothing.
After a brief silence Emma said bluntly, “The bills are enormous. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“Well, I’m sure the county will take care of you. They always do in cases like yours.”
“County! What do you mean, county? I have never accepted charity from anyone.”
Oh, no? Nell thought. No free rent, no free transportation, no free food half of the time? “And,” the pathetic little voice continued, “I don’t intend to start now.”
“Then what do you propose to do?” said Nell, monumentally uninterested. “You certainly can’t pay these bills yourself.”
“I don’t have to!” said Emma triumphantly. “You know that nice Mr. Brown who used to bring me home after I sat with his kids? Well, he’s a lawyer, and he was the one who pointed out how rickety those stairs were, so he was in to see me this morning and he told me—”
There was an uneasy silence. Then Nell said, not really wanting to know, “Well? What did he say?”
“He said,” Emma explained carefully, “that you should have had those stairs fixed after I complained about them, and that undoubtedly your insurance company would come through with plenty of money to take care of me—”
There was a brief silence. Then Nell spoke. “Emma,” she said carefully, “there is no insurance company.”
“Then of course you should have had the stairs fixed. Mr. Brown inspected the hole where the post had been and he said it looked as if the post had been even more damaged than when he first saw it.”
“The storm—”
“No,” said Emma. “The storm knocked away the post but the hole was cement and it was broken all around the top — he said the post must have been hanging by a thread when the storm came. No insurance, hm? Well, dear, then I guess I’ll just have to sue you personally.”
“Sue me? What do you mean? You know I haven’t done anything to be sued for — it would just be a waste of money on your part. You can’t get blood out of a turnip. It wasn’t my fault the storm blew down the steps, so there’s no use your threatening me with a lawsuit—”
Nell’s voice rose hysterically, and the impulse to murder was there in her hands. She could almost feel them moving of their own volition, twisting in her lap, struggling to be free in order to silence this hateful creature forever.
“I have nothing, do you hear?” she cried, her voice rising out of control. “Nothing!”
“Well, then, what am I to do?” said Emma helplessly. “And of course you have something, dear. Your little house — you told me once it was free and clear — and your car and your little, or big, savings account that you plan for when you retire— Oh dear me, yes, you have a lot and of course it is only fair for you to take care of me for the rest of my life since you ought to have had the stairs fixed, you ought to have had the stairs fixed, you ought to...” She smiled contentedly, and dozed off.
Bill Pronzini
Under the Skin
In the opulent lobby lounge of the St. Francis Hotel, where he and Tom Olivet had gone for a drink after the A.C.T. dramatic production was over, Walter Carpenter sipped his second Scotch-and-water and thought that he was a pretty lucky man. Good job, happy marriage, kids of whom he could be proud, and a best friend who had a similar temperament, similar attitudes, aspirations, likes and dislikes. Most people went through life claiming lots of casual friends and a few close ones, but seldom did a perfectly compatible relationship develop as it had between Tom and him. He knew brothers who were not nearly as close. Walter smiled. That’s just what the two of us are like, he thought. Brothers.
Across the table Tom said, “Why the sudden smile?”
“Oh, just thinking that we’re a hell of a team,” Walter said.
“Sure,” Tom said. “Carpenter and Olivet, the Gold Dust Twins.”
Walter laughed. “No, I mean it. Did you ever stop to think how few friends get along as well as we do? I mean, we like to do the same things, go to the same places. The play tonight, for example. I couldn’t get Cynthia to go, but as soon as I mentioned it to you, you were all set for it.”
“Well, we’ve known each other for twenty years,” Tom said. “Two people spend as much time together as we have, they get to thinking alike and acting alike. I guess we’re one head on just about everything, all right.”
“A couple of carbon copies,” Walter said. “Here’s to friendship.”
They raised their glasses and drank and when Walter put his down on the table he noticed the hands on his wristwatch. “Hey,” he said. “It’s almost eleven thirty. We’d better hustle if we’re going to catch the train. Last one for Daly City leaves at midnight.”
“Right,” Tom said.
They split the check down the middle, then left the hotel and walked down Powell Street to the Bay Area Rapid Transit station at Market. Ordinarily one of them would have driven in that morning from the Monterey Heights area where they lived two blocks apart; but Tom’s car was in the garage for minor repairs, and Walter’s wife Cynthia had needed their car for errands. So they had ridden a BART train in, and after work they’d had dinner in a restaurant near Union Square before going on to the play.
Inside the Powell station Walter called Cynthia from a pay phone and told her they were taking the next train out; she said she would pick them up at Glen Park. Then he and Tom rode the escalator down to the train platform. Some twenty people stood or sat there waiting for trains, half a dozen of them drunks and other unsavory-looking types. Subway crime had not been much of a problem since BART, which connected several San Francisco points with a number of East Bay cities, opened two years earlier. Still, there were isolated incidents. Walter began to feel vaguely nervous; it was the first time he had gone anywhere this late by train.
The nervousness eased when a westbound pulled in almost immediately and none of the unsavory-looking types followed them into a nearly empty car. They sat together, Walter next to the window. Once the train had pulled out he could see their reflections in the window glass. Hell, he thought, the two of us even looked alike sometimes. Carbon copies, for a fact. Brothers of the spirit.
A young man in workman’s garb got off at the 24th and Mission stop, leaving them alone in the car. Walter’s ears popped as the train picked up speed for the run to Glen Park. He said, “These new babies really move, don’t they?”
“That’s for sure,” Tom said.
“You ever ride a fast-express passenger train?”
“No,” Tom said. “You?”
“No. Say, you know what would be fun?”
“What?”
“Taking a train trip across Canada,” Walter said. “They’ve still got these crack expresses up there — they run across the whole of Canada from Vancouver to Montreal.”