“Try looking in his wallet,” somebody said from under the table.
Nobody had thought of that, either.
“Bring it to me, Frank,” Father F. said.
“He was my one friend, let someone else,” Frank declined.
Father F. went over and turned the blanket down and reached in and brought back Joe’s wallet.
Joe’s wallet, fat as sausage, full of money green as leaves. But when he laid it on the bar it just lay there, so thin, so flat, so gone, it looked like it must have had some sort of little stroke of its own. When Father F. reached in, all there was one thin single, nothing more.
Everybody pushed to see.
“What was he doing when he went?” Father wanted to know.
“Playing poker, Father,” we told him.
“Penny ante?”
“Two-dollar limit.”
“Put on Perry Como,” I told one of the kids, because I didn’t care how I spent just then.
Perry came on singing Whither Thou Goest I Shall Go. Oh, he sang it so easy, he sang it so free. And while he sang Phil poured a shot for John and a shot for me. He poured a shot for Father F. and a shot for Sam and a shot for Al and a shot for Frank. Then he poured a shot for himself and lifted his glass.
“To Joe, old Joe,” he made a kind of toast.
“Oh, Frank,” I heard a whisper from under the table. “How you massage! So good! How God is going to punish!”
Deadly Charm
by Stuart Friedman
“My wife told me what you did,” Colby informed his partner. “Sit down and write out a suicide note...”
1
Colby tuned the record player down and went over and sat on the edge of the sofa where Lucy lay on her back, listening. Only a filter of dusk light came through the draped picture window, but she drew light to her like a jewel and her round, pert face was cleanly defined as he bent to kiss her forehead. When he sat up away from her he was aware of leaving the delicately scented cloud of warmth hovering over her body, and the air seemed chilly, flavorless. She blinked, waited, her dark, glossy eyes watching him. He mustn’t nag; she’d told him repeatedly she felt fine; she wasn’t sad, just serious.
“I... uh... just came to tell you I’m going to shower.”
“All right.”
He was reluctant to break the contact of his hip against the curve of her waist.
“You’re not ready to come in and start dressing for the dinner?”
“There’s time. Will you make it a little louder again?”
He returned gloomily to the bedroom. She usually frisked her delicious body around in scanties, tantalizing him beyond endurance, just for the pure hell of turning his logical theory into a shambles. Colby reasoned that because he was homely and dull and bound to be outshone socially by the other junior partners, he needed a certain edge of discontent, a crackle of excess energy. Therefore it would be unwise to make love, for he would feel too good afterward, and look stupidly smug. He had explained it once and Lucy had said: “If you’re all done talking you can start loving me, lover.” Which he had done. Since then there had been no discussion, and she simply went about the business of making herself irresistible. Colby stood feeling aimless and listened hopefully for the dance sound of her step. Maybe she was just teasing.
But there was nothing teasy about the big, pretty bedroom... no stray shoes, no disarray on her dressing table, no clutter on the chairs. In fact, for a week, the whole house had been tidy and subdued. He went in and turned on the shower and kicked off his slippers angrily. Her chaos exasperated him; but he was secretly proud of it, it gave him a sort of pleasantly wicked feel. Hell, he didn’t want her changed. He plodded, she flew. He only resisted her flightier impulses and emotionalism for her own protection. When he took her out he felt like the toad with the precious jewel on its head; she was the magic touch to his life. What hideous irony if instead of Lucy enlivening him he had ground her down to his own dismal, orderly level!
He tested the shower spray without getting in, then dried his hand, frowning. What kind of a man sulked around waiting to be seduced?
He shut off the music and knelt by the sofa. His hand felt coarse, thick, as he groped and found her softly graceful little hand.
“Baby... are you sure you’re all right...?”
“Vin, you promised to stop worrying about me. I’d tell you if anything was wrong, you know that.”
He suddenly yearned for the easy fluency he scorned in some of his colleagues. He was masterful at building solid cases but totally unable to present them in court.
“Lucy,” he began huskily, praying that the depth and sincerity of his feeling would force the words out. “I want you to know, Lucy...” Words, phrases, teemed profusely in his mind... but his tongue failed him, as always, as always... and this was why he was condemned to drone in the library and stay shunted into the background. “Lucy... I respect... adore... love...” he said, feeling an agony of unworthiness. “You’re everything worth anything... I’m nothing...”
She freed her hand, pressed her fingers to his lips. “I don’t like your forever criticizing yourself when you’re a million times better than you think.”
Something in her tone... not anger but impatience... made him cringe. How long before his contemptible unassertiveness turned a high-spirited girl’s sympathy to disgust? Maybe it had already happened. Abruptly, he stood on his knees and thrust his hands under her robed thighs and back. She pushed against him as he started to lift her on his arms, and he felt a run of tension through her slim, exciting body.
“What are you doing?... No... Please...”
His pulse quickened with the feel of her precious softness against the taut muscles of his arms and chest. He held her tight and got to his feet with her, an exultance of male strength flooding through him like a drug. She began to writhe and struggle and cry out in a sharp little voice.
“You’re hurting me... please...”
2
Entering the bedroom there was a bright glaze over his eyes. He neither knew nor cared if her struggle was genuine, the unaccustomed feel of it keened him wildly. She was holding her robe shut at the throat with one hand and pushing at him with the other, and she began to kick violently, exposing her legs to the knee, and one slipper flew off.
He lowered her to the bed. She clutched her robe and rolled frenziedly away from him. Colby moved with jungle-swift reflexes, pouncing as on a prey. He seized the arm nearest him and she gasped and lay as though felled, unresisting. He started across the bed toward her, releasing his hold on her arm. Abruptly she rolled herself clear off the bed, and scrambled to her feet.
“The light,” she said and started for the wall switch. He caught a flying corner of her robe, and felt it come off. He twisted his head, trying to glimpse her, but the light went off. He heard her returning to the bed, panting a little. “Darling,” she whispered, seating herself. “Darling...”
“Just a second...” He reached cautiously across and suddenly snapped on the bedlamp. Surprised, she tried to pull the overhang of the satin spread over her, while she stared at him.
He looked at her naked body in silent horror. Her upper arms were purpled with bruises; one soft breast was discolored with ugly marks as though crushed by the vicious grip of a hand; there were heavy slotches on her thighs and on the gentle round of her hip.
He felt suddenly paralyzed and so weak he could barely draw breath. Tenderness and revulsion gripped him alternately. He looked at her face without seeing her and then at the stamp of violence on her, saying nothing, his jaw dropped weakly open. He felt a little dizzy. His face had become very pale, his mouth chalk dry. He couldn’t say anything. She lay totally inert now, staring up at the ceiling. There was no sound in the room except the remote sizz of the forgotten shower. Her eyes welled and he saw the tears glide down her temple into the massed dark ringlets of hair, but she didn’t lift her hands. She just lay there, abused and shamed, crying silently, hopelessly and he wanted to cry with her and caress her and whisper his love, but there was a coldness in his breast, and he just waited, watching her.