“Of course you do, my dear. I mean that you are, besides other things, a pathological liar.”
“Well, I can see that you are angry and determined to accuse me of all sorts of things that aren’t true, and I don’t believe I feel like listening to it.”
“Oh, come, my dear. It’s time we were honest with each other. Shall I tell you exactly what you did last night? You went, as you said, to the Italian restaurant, and then you went, as you also said, to several places in the Village. After that, however, you deviated slightly from the truth. Instead of going to Bernardine’s you went off with Milton Crawford to a nightclub in the vicinity of Sheridan Square. You left that place alone and walked down the street to another place named Duo’s, and it was there that you picked up the piano player — and I want to compliment you on your good taste and discrimination in picking the piano player instead of the bartender or the porter. Eventually, omitting the details, you went with him to his room or apartment in a residence south of Washington Square, and you stayed there with him for the rest of the night. What did you do while you were there, my dear? Please tell me what you and the piano player did to amuse yourselves.”
“I’ve already told you where I went and what I did, and it’s obvious that you have decided not to believe that or anything else I may say, so I don’t care to talk about it.”
She kept watching him from the corners of her eyes, her fear of him assuming a kind of supernatural quality, for she felt that he must surely be at least a minor malignant deity who was capable of knowing by extrasensory perception everything she did and thought, and every place she went. He was still looking at her as if she were a curiosity, and his voice had not raised or shaken while he was telling her about last night and Joe Doyle, but the thin scar was now dead white against his skin, and there was a bright sheen to his eyes that made him appear to be blind. She knew that he was certainly furious, but she was suddenly aware that he was also feeling something besides fury, a violent ambivalence of some sort, and then immediately she realized what it was he was feeling. He was looking at her and thinking about what he had just asked, what she and Joe Doyle had done together in the room in the house just south of Washington Square, and he was by his thinking excited carnally. Knowing this, she had the oddest notion that her robe had simply disintegrated to leave her naked in front of him, and she was ashamed of her nakedness, which was something she had not been for a long time.
“Surely you’ll tell me,” he said. “Remember that I’m your husband, my dear. Don’t you think that I have earned your confidence?”
She merely shook her head, not answering, and he walked across to her slowly, and she thought with a queer kind of detachment that the sheen of blindness on his eyes was very much like the shimmering intense heat on the surface of the streets on a blistering day.
“Did you do this?” he said. “And this? And this?”
She had not dreamed his hands could be so compelling and strong, nor that they could draw from her imperiously what she did not wish to give, and afterward, long after he was gone, she lay exhausted and immobile in her shame.
Chapter 9
She lay and listened and heard Oliver leave at seven. She concentrated for a few minutes on remembering what day it was and what Oliver regularly did in the evening of that day, and pretty soon she remembered that it was the day when he had dinner at his club and played bridge afterward. He would be home again not earlier than ten-thirty and not later than eleven.
A few minutes after Oliver had gone, Edith knocked on the door and asked through it if Madam was dining in, and Charity replied that she was not dining in or out or anywhere, not dining at all, and Edith said, “Very well, Madam,” and went off. After that, Charity began to think about how much she hated Edith and to wonder what she could possibly do to make Edith suffer in some way, but there didn’t seem to be anything possible that wouldn’t take far too much effort.
Thinking of Edith made her feel hot and angry, and feeling hot and angry made her feel thirsty. She wanted another Martini, which surely wouldn’t hurt her, and so she got up and went into the bathroom and got the bottles and shaker out of the tub and carried them into the bedroom and set them on the table beside her bed. She had no ice, however, and if she didn’t want to drink her Martini warm, which she didn’t, it would be necessary to go again to the kitchen for ice. She stood looking at the bottles and shaker, considering the problem, and she decided that it was just as well that she had to go to the kitchen anyhow, for she was simply going to have to eat something, in spite of what she’d told Edith, if she expected to continue having Martinis without unfortunate results, or results even more unfortunate than she frequently had.
Carrying the shaker, she went to the kitchen softly, without encountering Edith. She set the shaker on a table and opened the refrigerator, but there wasn’t a thing to eat there that appealed to her, and after considering several things and rejecting them, she got some ice and put it in the shaker and closed the refrigerator door. What she wanted, she thought, was something quite salty. Not caviar; caviar was salty enough, but she didn’t much care for it otherwise. Something more like anchovies was what she wanted. Yes, anchovies were just right. They were extremely salty and had, unlike caviar, no objectionable quality besides.
She found a can of anchovies and opened it with difficulty and put the anchovies on a small plate. Then she found a box of cocktail crackers and put several of them on the small plate beside the anchovies. Carrying the shaker in one hand and the plate in the other, she returned to her room, still without encountering Edith. There, she ate one of the anchovies on one of the crackers and then mixed three more Martinis in the shaker and poured one of them into her glass.
This is all, she thought This is absolutely all. I’ll drink these three Martinis slowly during the entire evening, and when they’re gone I’ll not drink another single one, not even a very last one the last thing before sleeping.
She sipped the first one while she ate all the salty anchovies on the little crackers, after which she began a difficult period of resolutely refusing to drink the second one too soon. Refusing would have been much easier if only she had had something to do to occupy her mind and time, but there wasn’t anything she wanted to do, and as a matter of fact almost everything she thought of was something she positively didn’t want to do. Television was depressing, and listening to hi-fi would have necessitated leaving her own room, and reading was something she hadn’t done for such a long time that it didn’t really occur to her as a serious possibility. One of her big problems was occupying her mind and time when she didn’t have anywhere to go. Once she had thought that she would occupy herself at such times by writing down her personal story, but she had learned in thinking about it that there was hardly a thing she had ever done for which she could give a credible reason, and it would be incredible to write about herself doing all those things for no reasons at all.
She wished she could dress and go out, but she didn’t think it would be wise in the situation that had developed. Not that she was given to doing what was wise in most situations, but sometimes, as now, she was compelled to do what would have been wise if she had done it a little sooner. Anyhow, though she couldn’t go, she could at least think about where she would go if it were possible, and the moment she began to think along this line, the place she wanted to go was Duo’s, and the reason she wanted to go there was to see Joe Doyle. It had been about twenty hours since she had first seen him, and only about eight since she had last seen him, and now she actually wanted to see him again already, instead of never wanting to see him again, as was usual regarding men in such cases, and this was disturbing. Especially in the situation as it had developed.