He froze, his hand extended in midair, while she picked up the phone.
“Hello, Sheila,” she said at once. “Yes, as soon as the phone rang, I knew it was you. You’re going to the hospital to be with Linda, aren’t you? Uh-huh, just my ESP at work.” She gave a little laugh. “Give Linda my love. No, I can’t tell you if it will be a boy or a girl, but it will be perfect. Yes, see you next week. Bye.”
He turned the TV off. He couldn’t focus on the game anymore. All he could do was stare at Nelda, his mind going round and round like a carousel, round and round and round in the same dizzying circle, getting nowhere.
She was bending over the bed, shaking him. “Hugh, wake up. Wake up! It’s almost nine o’clock. You’ve overslept.”
He turned over and groaned, opened his eyes then closed them again. “Go away,” he mumbled.
“You’re already late,” she persisted. “Get up.”
“I’m not going to the office today.”
“Are you sick?”
Instead of answering, he pulled the sheet up over his head. He was sick, yes. Sick of all the craziness that had taken over his life. He felt that last night had been the ultimate blow to what was left of his sanity. He wasn’t sure at this moment whether he could distinguish reality from fantasy anymore.
Yesterday he had decided that he was being overly cautious in seeing Sonja only during lunch, so after he left the office at five, he dropped in on her at the Cromley. It was nearly eight when he got home and Nelda met him at the door. “Hugh, the most peculiar thing…” she began. “Maybe you can explain it for me.”
“What?” He was totally enervated and the last thing he wanted right now was conversation.
“When you didn’t get home at the usual time, I started worrying, and then suddenly, my mind went blank for a second or two, and after that I started seeing those still-life pictures again. I saw a hotel room, not the same one I saw before, but — and this is what’s peculiar — there were the same family pictures around the room that I saw in that other room where you had the meeting. And the same woman was there, that dark-haired woman, and…”
He didn’t listen to any more. He started trembling and knew that if he didn’t get out of her sight at once, she would notice that he was having an acute attack of anxiety. He rushed upstairs, calling as he went, “I’ve already eaten, so don’t make any dinner for me.” He went straight to bed.
The trembling lasted a long time; it was as though he were having a hard chill. Finally it stopped and he took long, deep breaths. Something had to be done. Things couldn’t continue this way. He didn’t want to give up Sonja, but he couldn’t afford any scandal in his life right now (and Nelda would sure as hell divorce him if she found out) because Jim Beldon and Harry Nelms were both strong family men and absolute Puritans about practically everything. He’d have to stop seeing Sonja until after he made partner. Then he could relax a little and resume the relationship.
Nelda sat down on her bed and leaned toward his. “Hugh, I had the most peculiar dream last night.”
Kee-rist, please! He didn’t want to hear about her dream.
“You were in that room — the one I told you about with the pictures and the dark-haired woman — and all of a sudden a man came bursting in wearing a mask and with a gun in his hand. He said, ‘You don’t belong here, this is my territory,’ and he shot you right through the heart. Then he took the mask off and went to the dark-haired woman and said, ‘If I ever catch you fooling around again, I’ll kill you too.’ Then he kissed her and took her into a bedroom and…”
He came out from under the cover. “Nelda, for God’s sake, have you lost your mind completely? That’s the craziest thing I ever heard.”
“I thought so too,” she said calmly, smiling. “That’s why I told you about it, so we could both have a good laugh.”
Instead of laughing, he got out of bed and headed for the shower. “I’m going to work after all,” he said.
His first thought had been to go to Sonja at lunchtime to tell her he couldn’t see her again for a while, but then he decided he’d wait until the middle of the afternoon. He didn’t call ahead, just went at three o’clock. Sonja seemed only mildly surprised to see him. “Gee, Hugh, I never know when to expect you anymore. You’ve gotten to be a real drop-in visitor.”
He was trying to think of some way to break it to her gently that he was going to have to drop out for a while. “Sonja, baby, look, I’ve got something to tell you. I’ve got to…”
At that moment the door to the hall was thrown open and a man came in quickly and closed the door behind him. Hugh’s first thought was, He’s not wearing a mask; that’s a stocking over his head. And then he saw the pistol in the man’s hand, and he began shaking. “No!” he screamed. “Don’t shoot. For God’s sake, don’t shoot.”
“You don’t belong here,” the man said. “This is my territory.”
He was going to be shot, killed. He had to get out. How? The man was between him and the door, and it would do no good to go to the bedroom because the man would follow. Sonja had backed against the far wall and was cringing there like a terrified animal. The hell with Sonja; her other lover wouldn’t shoot her. Nelda had said as much.
He remembered the fire escape just under the balcony. If he could make it to that before the man pulled the trigger… He ran to the balcony and was climbing over when he saw the man coming out on the balcony, the gun aimed at his head. “Don’t shoot, please don’t shoot,” he cried, reaching for the fire escape.
His foot slipped on the first rung and he tried to catch hold of the balcony rail but missed. He fell fourteen stories, landing on the concrete beside the Cromley’s pint-sized swimming pool. The last sound he heard was Sonja’s scream… or was it his own?
He was already sitting in the back booth when she arrived at The Tea Kettle. His name was Ivan. He was forty years old, had blond hair turning gray which looked the color of pale sand, brown eyes, a mottled complexion which probably was a result of teenage acne, and he was tall and skinny as a telephone pole. He had been a private investigator until his license was revoked three years ago. Now he clerked part time in a furniture store and took on “special jobs” investigating whenever one turned up, which was infrequently.
She slid in the booth across from him and, without a word, took a long white envelope out of her pocketbook and slipped it across the table to him.
Without opening the envelope, he pocketed it. “Gee, Nelda, it was so much fun, I should be paying you.”
She knew this was a bit of fawning, not truth. “You’ll find a little bonus in there, along with your fee.”
“I wasn’t expecting that,” he said, obviously pleased.
“That last episode may have been a little hairy,” she said. “You deserve something extra.”
“I’d have settled for a few explanations from you about how you managed it all.” He looked at her admiringly.
“I couldn’t have done it without your help,” she told him. “Not just any P.I. would have suited. Did I tell you I interviewed three before someone recommended you?”
“I get most of my jobs word of mouth. What’ll you have?” he asked as a waitress stopped at the booth. “My treat today. Shall we celebrate?”
“I’ll just have a cup of tea and an English muffin,” she said. “They don’t have the wherewithal for celebrations here.”
He ordered coffee and a pastry and as soon as the waitress left said, “Now tell me how you did it with what little information I gave you.”