Twenty thousand dollars. Now he'd have to redo his budget. But he could juggle the figures till he was blue, there wouldn't be enough money. He'd have to borrow against the house after all. Not till near the end, though. To buy the countertops and chair rails, the carpet and window treatments. Twenty thousand dollars. That was the most expensive love affair he ever heard of that didn't actually include any sex.
Why am I doing it?
Not for Cindy. Nothing chivalrous about this. I'm just buying my way out of death row. I really am ready to kill somebody. I'm paying them to get out of my life so I don't have to kill anybody.
He sat on his cot eating the pizza as mechanically as if he were driving nails. He heard the telltale footsteps on the stairs. She was making another foray into his territory. She seemed determined not to learn.
But instead of barking at her he just closed the pizza box and slid it across the floor. It stopped right in the doorway between the parlor and the entry. He saw her appear behind it, looking at him gravely.
"Nothing special, just pepperoni and sausage," he said. "I've had all I want."
"Thanks," she said.
"Yeah yeah."
"Why can't I say thanks and you just say you're welcome like a normal person?"
"Why can't I just..." He had meant to say, Why can't I just say leave me alone and have you go away like a normal person.
"Why can't you just what?"
"Finish the pizza, it's still warm."
"No thanks," she said. "I'm not hungry."
"Then don't eat it," he said.
"I just came down to say I'm sorry."
"For what?"
"For always wanting to watch what you're doing. I can't help it, nothing's happened in this house for so long."
"I ought to sell tickets."
"And the work you do, it's kind of dangerous, isn't it? Like you're tearing up the house."
"It's safe enough." Especially if you stay out of the room while I'm working.
"No, I mean, dangerous to the house. It feels like it's being knackered, you know? Cut up and boiled down for glue and fertilizer."
"I know what knackering is," said Don.
"You're not hurting it?"
"The lath and plaster is nothing. It has to come off so I can bring the house up to code. I'll put new studs in between the timbers to take nails for, like, hanging pictures or whatever. And for outlet and switch boxes and TV cable outlets. Then I'll put on wallboard and it'll be good as new. Better."
"I don't know how it could be better than new," she said. "It was so beautiful then."
"You weren't there," said Don.
"But can't you just feel it, here in the house? How he loved her?"
"Who?"
"Dr. Bellamy. He built this for his bride. I looked it up in the library, back when I was a student here. That's what I majored in, you know. Library science. I was going to take a job in Providence, Rhode Island. I was about to get my master's degree."
"And?"
"Oh, I found all kinds of wonderful things about the Bellamys. They were so much in love, and so much a part of life in Greensboro. Soirees, parties, dances. Not a month went by without some mention of him or his wife or their house in the newspaper."
"Any pictures?" asked Don.
"Some lovely ones. When they were young. And later, too, when they were getting into late middle age. Not a one when they were old. When they died they ran youthful pictures of them. I think that's the way everyone thought of them their whole lives. Forever young."
"I meant, any pictures of the house. To help in my renovation."
"No," she said. "Except the outside, but I don't think that's changed all that much."
"I suppose not. No obvious add-ons, anyway."
"Sorry I couldn't help."
"No, it's fine. I'm not restoring the place anyway, I just thought if there was some special touch or something—doesn't matter."
"There are all kinds of wonderful things in this house," she said. "But the house keeps its secrets." Then her face darkened. "I'm sorry I've been bothering you. I know it drives you crazy, but I just can't seem to stop myself. My old roommate Lissy used to do that to me. Sneak up behind me while I was studying or something. And all of a sudden I'd sense she was there and nearly jump out of my skin."
"Well, you've never done that to me."
"Of course not, but you know, looking over your shoulder—that drives you crazy."
He waved it off as if it were nothing. Then cursed himself silently for being a hammered man. Grow up Southern, and you just can't help but do the polite thing even when you've already decided not to do it.
"Drives everybody crazy," she said. "Lissy was just... difficult."
She had been going to say another word. Something nastier.
"So why did you room with her?" said Don.
"Younger girl, took her under my wing," said Sylvie. "She was a senior, and I don't think she would have graduated."
"Would have?" asked Don.
"She left," said Sylvie. "She was never that serious about school."
"But you didn't finish either?"
Sylvie shook her head.
"So you were close after all? I mean, why else would her leaving cause you not to finish your program and go take that job?"
Sylvie shook her head. "My life story is too boring for anyone to waste a minute on it." She smiled wanly. "I hated her at the time, but you don't know how often I've wished I could just see her again. Now that she's not annoying me, you see. I miss her a little. She was so exuberant. Headstrong. She found this place. The owner was going to close it down, but she was able to talk him into letting us stay here till we both graduated at the end of the next year."
"What did your family think when you dropped out?" asked Don.
"They did what they always do. They stayed dead."
It sounded like a joke, and then it didn't. "Do you mean that?" he asked. "They're dead?"
"I'm an orphan. Put myself through school. I had a scholarship, but housing and books and food and all that, I earned it all. And grad school, I worked for every dime. And I wasn't in debt, either. I paid my way."
Well, not anymore, Don thought churlishly.
"Dr. Bellamy and his wife lived here until they died in the flu epidemic in 1918. But they were so old by then it wasn't sad, really, it was kind of sweet that they went together, so neither one had to stay behind and grieve."
Don had nothing to say to that. How often had he wished he could have died in the same car that killed his baby?
"But how awful of me," said Sylvie. "I was forgetting. Your wife and daughter."
"What do you know about them?" he snapped at once. Then relented: "I'm sorry. I just don't talk about them usually."
"No, I just... your engineer friend told that realtor lady the first day you came here. How your ex-wife got custody of your daughter and then they died in a car accident."
"What the newspaper didn't tell you was that my wife was so drunk and drugged up she didn't even fasten the car seat to the car."
"Was it in the papers?" asked Sylvie. "I don't get a paper."
Don could hardly imagine how isolated her life in this house had been.
"How many years have you been living like this?" he asked.
"I don't know. A long time."
"What happened to you? I mean, you were in grad school, you were going somewhere. You had a job lined up."
"They were expanding the children's section of the city library, starting some new programs with grade school kids. That was my thesis project, kind of. The effects of competitive versus cooperative reading programs for children in community libraries."
"So why didn't you finish your degree and take the job?"
"For a man who lives and works alone, you sure have a lot of questions."