“No!”
“All right. If you'd rather have the nuthouse.”
She took her hands from her face and sat there shuddering. She was looking into the future and seeing nothing but darkness. “Well,” I said, “I tried to tell you, but you won't listen. Now you've got to get out of here.”
“... Roy.” It was barely a whisper. “Please... don't send me away!”
“I told you I'm through with you. I told you what's wrong with you and what you need to set you right. That's all I can do.”
I took her arm and pulled her out of the chair. I guided her to the door, made sure that the hallway was clear and shoved her out.
I was through with Dorris Venci.
I've made that clear, I thought, even to her. I'm through with her. If she wants to kill herself, that's fine with me. If she winds up in a nuthouse, that's fine too, I just don't give a damn what happens to her. But she had better keep away from me!
I got myself calmed down, finally. I went to the bathroom and rinsed my face with cold water and felt a little better. Crazy damn woman!
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“HOW DO YOU like it?”
“It's beautiful! It's positively beautiful!”
“Come on in the bedroom and look at yourself in the mirror.”
“Really, you shouldn't have done this! It's much too expensive!”
“That's nonsense. All good things come expensive, I learned that long ago, while dishwashing my way through college.”
It really was a hell of a coat. To be perfectly truthful, it was much more coat than I had figured on at first, but the minute I saw ft I knew that nothing else would do. It was a French import, a Balmain, with an exterior of oyster white nylon velvet which is absolutely the most decadent material ever created by the hand of man, and it was completely lined with natural wild mink. The fantastic extravagance of lining a coat with wild mink had completely fascinated the more bizarre aspect of my nature. When they first showed it to me I had burst into laughter. How many Frenchmen would go without shoes this winter, how many Parisian bellies would be empty—and who gave a damn? “That coat,”” I had told the sales girl, “is absolutely the god-damnedest, most decadent example of a completely lost civilization that I have ever seen—and I'll take it!”
Pat hugged the coat around her and studied herself from all angles in the bedroom mirror. She had the kind of poise that could not be taught, it was the result of a long purebred bloodline and nothing else. She was class, every inch of her, and that coat was just for her.
“It comes off pretty well,” I said. “If there are any changes you want on it, the shop it came from will take care of it.”
“I wouldn't have it touched!” she said. “Not for anything in the world! It's just perfect... but it frightens me when I think what it must have cost!”
It had cost damn near as much as the Lincoln, but it was worth it, every penny. I said, “From now on we don't consider price tags, we don't even look at them. Now how about some wine?”
“... All right.”
She kept posing, turning, staring at herself in the mirror. Strangely, she hadn't smiled, not once. From the time she opened the package she had registered a good many emotions, but she hadn't smiled. She had wrapped the coat around her, tightly, hugged herself in it, almost as though she were trying to lose herself in the sheer luxury of it. There was a bright ecstasy in her eyes as she burrowed deeper and deeper into the incredible softness of the fur, and for a moment I imagined that she was trying to hide, that she was receding into the soft, secure folds of fur.
I had learned some things about Pat Kelso, and I understood a little of what she must have felt at that moment. At one time the Kelsos had had everything. They were an old family, and very proud, but unfortunately the ability to make money had not grown with their great pride. Pat's father had been forced into bankruptcy, and later, suicide. It must have been quite a comedown for this girl of beauty and breeding. And I could appreciate how she must have felt, smothering herself in a four thousand dollar Paris coat, returning to the past for a moment, in that symbol of lost glory.
I understood. I was pleased.
I had found her Achilles heel, as I had found Dorris Venci's. Now I knew to what frequency Pat Kelso vibrated, and I could control her as surely as an audio oscillator could control the wave form in an amplifier.
Yes sir, I thought, in this world a man must be audacious. With audacity and brains, there's nothing a man can not do.
Nothing!
“This is absolutely the most beautiful coat I ever saw!” she said.
“If you can tear yourself away from that mirror for a minute we'll get on with the serious business of tasting the wine.”
“What wine can possibly be as important as this beautiful coat!”
“This wine. I went to a lot of trouble finding it, and there are damn few bottles left in the world.”
She glanced around as I broke the wires on the neck and very gently began nudging the cork back and forth to loosen it. When it came out with the familiar pop, she said, “Oh. Champagne.”
“My dear lady, it's more than Champagne, much more than that. It's a life blood, it's the very last of the truly great Ambonnay's.”
Age had robbed the wine of nothing, which is more of a rarity than the casual wine sipper might think. It hit the bottom of the glass with plenty of life, it's wonderful bouquet as delicate as moonlight. I handed a half filled tulip glass to Pat and she sipped, still trying to sneak glances at the mirror.
“Ummm. Good.”
“Good!” I was actually becoming impatient with her. “If you were anybody else,” I said, “anybody else in the world, and I had just handed you a glass of this nectar and you had taken a distracted sip and mumbled 'ummm, good' do you know what I would do?”
“That's a bit involved, but what would you do?”
“I would throw you the hell out of my apartment.”
“But only if I were anybody else in the world?”
“Yes.”
“Then I needn't worry.” And she smiled, strangely. But it was the first smile of the day and my impatience dissolved. “Okay,” I grinned, “the wine is ummm, good, and if you'd like to swig it from the neck of the bottle, that's all right with me. This is no day to get bogged down in a lousy bottle of wine.”
I was in a rosy mood again. There's nothing like a really significant conquest to put spice and zest in this business of living.
I said, “How about some food? I'll put a plate together for you and you can get it in front of the mirror.”
She laughed softly. “Thank you just the same. But a girl simply doesn't fall heir to a coat like this every day of her life. I'm much too excited for food... do you mind?”
“Not at all. This is my day not to mind anything, this is my day to indulge in sweetness and light, even if it chokes me. But I do get hungry once in a while. It's the peasant in me, no doubt.”
She laughed again, and it was a fine sound. Nodding at the table, she said, “Please don't let me stop you.”
“From this day forward nothing will ever stop me.”
I helped myself to the iced shrimp and Russian dressing. Then some white meat topped with a thin slice of ham; and finally some hot sweetbreads. Pat simply couldn't stay away from that mirror.
I laughed and she looked around.
“What's the matter?”
“Nothing. Not a thing in the world!”
“You're awfully satisfied with yourself today, aren't you?”
“I sure am,” I said. “It's been a wonderful day, and it's only beginning.” When I finished eating I went into the kitchen and iced down another bottle of wine. She had finally torn herself away from the mirror.
“Don't you want to tell me about it, this wonderful day of yours?”