How had Oliver learned about last night? And how long, if there were to be another night, would it take him to learn about it too? Her rational mind insisted that he had been informed by a spy, either a hired professional or someone who had seen her and followed her and told Oliver out of pure malice, but she couldn’t lose the irrational feeling that there was something super-normal about it, the employment by him of some frightening ability to know things that an ordinary person couldn’t possibly know. More disturbing still, now that his information had been secured by whatever means, how many other instances did he know about? How many times, when she had thought him deceived, had he known everything all along? And why had be never before said anything or done anything to her directly?
This line of thinking took her inevitably to the men who had been mysteriously beaten, which was a direction she didn’t want to go, and she decided that enough time had lapsed since the last Martini to justify another. She poured it and drank half of it too fast and went on wanting to see Joe Doyle. She didn’t want to want to, for she didn’t want, incidentally, to get him into trouble and herself into more trouble than she was already in, but the knowledge that it was perilous and unwise to see him again actually made her desire it all the more. Finishing more slowly the second half of the second Martini, she began to see him again with remarkable clarity as she had seen him in various situations from the beginning to the end of their experience, and she was just counting his true ribs when Edith interrupted by knocking on the door.
She wished Edith would go away, and she remained silent in the hope that Edith would, but after a few moments Edith knocked again and called through the door, and Charity went across to the door and opened it. Edith was standing with the expression on her face that managed to be poisonously insulting by being so carefully courteous, and the instant Charity saw her, she began to feel angry and compelled to say something that would make a scene.
“What do you want?” she said.
“Do you have any further use for me, Madam?” Edith said. “If not, I’d like to retire.”
“Certainly I have no further use for you, Edith,” Charity said. “Surely it’s always been perfectly clear that I’ve never had any use whatever for you at any time.”
“Yes, Madam. I understand.”
“Furthermore, now that you’ve brought it up, Edith, why is it that you always retire and never simply go to bed? What, precisely, is the difference between retiring and going to bed? Is there something vulgar in going to bed, Edith? Is it somehow more proper to retire?”
“I’m sorry, Madam. I didn’t mean to offend you. May I go to bed?”
“No. I think you’d better retire, after all. Now that you’ve said it, I can see that going to bed doesn’t suit you in the least. I am more the type who goes to bed. Isn’t that so, Edith?”
“If you say so, Madam.”
“Yes. I was sure you’d agree with me. I simply can’t imagine your going to bed, no matter how hard I try, but you, on the other hand, certainly have no difficulty in imagining it of me.”
“I have never thought about it at all, Madam.”
“Oh, nonsense, Edith. There’s no use in trying to be deceitful. You not only have thought of it, but have made innumerable points of suggesting it to my husband. Isn’t it true that you discuss such matters with my husband?”
“No, Madam.”
“Well, you’re a dreadful liar, of course, and I didn’t expect you to admit it. Tell me, Edith, how long has my husband been having me followed?”
“I don’t know what you mean, Madam.”
“Of course you know what I mean. I have no doubt at all that you are somehow mixed up in it.”
“I never discuss your personal affairs with your husband, Madam.”
“Really? That’s very honorable of you, Edith. I’m convinced that you’re the most honorable spy and liar and bitch alive.”
“Thank you, Madam.”
“Not at all. I’m very happy to tell you.”
“May I retire now, Madam?”
“Certainly. Retire, Edith. Please do. Perhaps you will never wake up.”
Well, she had made another scene, as she had known she would, but this time she did not feel bad about it, not at all ashamed and degraded, and as a matter of fact she felt rather exhilarated. Closing the door, she went back and stood looking at the shaker. She wished that there were something left in it, or at least that she had not resolved to mix no more Martinis tonight, not even a last one before sleeping. It disturbed her when she broke resolutions almost immediately after making them, which she almost always did, and now she tried to think back to what the resolution had been exactly, if it had not possibly been just a random thought instead of a genuine resolution, and while she was thinking she mixed a last, large Martini just in case she was enabled to drink it by finding a loophole in the resolution. The resolution seemed to be impregnable, however, and so she finally acknowledged that she had trapped herself in another unpleasant commitment and would have to avoid it simply by ignoring it. Pouring what she could of the large Martini into her glass, she left the glass sitting on the table beside her bed while she took off her robe and turned out the lights, and then she sat down and picked up the glass and emptied it slowly and lay back on the bed and tried to go to sleep.
Sleeping was always made difficult by thinking. She had often tried to discover a way of making her mind a perfect blank, and she had been told once by a strange little man at a cocktail party that this was actually possible if you could only learn the trick, but he had been unable to tell her how to learn it, although he claimed to know it himself, and she had had no success in discovering it by her own methods or in finding anyone else who knew it and could explain it more clearly than the strange little man. Another thing she had tried was thinking only of pleasant things, and once in a while she was able to accomplish this, but unfortunately thinking was a matter of association, and every pleasant thing she could think of was associated in some way with unpleasant things, or was both pleasant and unpleasant in itself.
Tonight she tried to think of her father, which was something wholly pleasant, except when it came to the time when he had died, and then, to avoid most of everything that had happened since his dying, she jumped all the way in her mind to Joe Doyle, and she still wanted to see him and be with him again, but she couldn’t think of him without thinking of Oliver in association, and that was bad. She tried, however; she lay quietly trying for more than an hour before she finally decided that she would absolutely have to have two or three sleeping pills after all. But while she was getting up to go after the pills, she remembered the part of the large Martini that hadn’t fitted into the glass, and she thought that maybe it would be just the right amount more to get her to sleep with the soporifics.
She poured it and drank it and tried the sleeping again for a whole half hour, but it was no use. This time she got the pills from the bathroom and swallowed them on top of the Martinis, and eventually, because of one or the other or both, she went to sleep and slept fairly well until after noon of the next day.
She thought instantly of Joe Doyle. His name and image were waiting patiently in her mind for the return of her consciousness, as one might wait all night in a dark room for the coming of light, and it seemed only last night that she had been with him, instead of the night before, as if the time between had never been, although the things that had happened were remembered and real. Considering all the gin and soporifics, she felt remarkably good. She even felt moderately hungry and capable of thinking seriously of food, and she decided that she would dress and go out somewhere for lunch.