"If you need food or any kind of help, can't you get it from her?"
She shook her head with sudden startling violence. Her hair streamed over her eyes and mouth. She flung it back in an angry two-handed movement, like someone peeling off a rubber mask.
"I don't want her kind of help. She wants to take away my freedom-lock me up in a nursing home and throw away the key." She got up clumsily onto her knees, so that her blue eyes were on a level with mine. "Are you a shrink?"
"Not me."
"Are you sure? She threatened to turn the shrinks loose on me. I almost wish she would-I could tell them a thing or two." She nodded vengefully, chopping at the air with her soft chin.
"Like what?"
"Like the only thing they ever did in their lives was fight and argue. They built themselves that great big hideous house and all they ever did was fight in it. When they weren't giving each other the silent treatment."
"What were they fighting about?"
"A woman named Mildred-that was one of the things. But the basic thing was they didn't-they don't love each other, and they blamed each other for that. Also they blamed me, at least they acted that way. I don't remember much of what happened when I was a little girl. But one of the things I do remember is their yelling at each other over my head-yelling like crazy giants without any clothes on, with me in between them. And he was sticking out about a foot. She picked me up and took me into the bathroom and locked the door. He broke the door down with his shoulder. He went around with his arm in a sling for a long time after that. And," she added softly, "I've been going around with my mind in a sling."
"Downers won't cure that."
She narrowed her eyes and stuck out her lower lip like a stubborn child on the verge of tears. "Nobody asked you for your advice. You are a shrink, aren't you?" She sniffed. "I can smell the dirt on you, from people's dirty secrets."
I produced what felt from the inside like a lopsided smile. The girl was young and foolish, perhaps a little addled, by her own admission drugged. But she was young, and had clean hair. I hated to smell dirty to her.
I stood up and lightly hit my head on the paper butterfly. I went to the screen door and looked out across the balcony. Through the narrow gap between two apartment buildings I could see a strip of bright sea. A trimaran crossed it, running before a light wind.
The room seemed dim when I turned back to it, a transparent cube of shadow full of obscure life. The paper butterfly seemed to move in some sort of actual flight. The girl rose and stood swaying under it.
"Did my mother send you here?"
"Not exactly. I've talked to your mother."
"And I suppose she told you all the terrible things I've done. What a rotten egg I am. What a rotten ego." She giggled nervously.
"No. She is worried about you, though."
"About me and Fred?"
"I think so."
She nodded, and her head stayed down. "I'm worried about us, too, but not for the same reason. She thinks that Fred and I are lovers or something. But I don't seem to be able to relate to people. The closer I get to them, the colder I feel."
"Why?"
"They scare me. When he-when my father broke down the bathroom door, I climbed into the laundry hamper and pulled the lid down on top of me. I'll never forget the feeling it gave me, like I was dead and buried and safe forever."
"Safe?"
"They can't kill you after you're dead."
"What are you so afraid of, Doris?"
She looked up at me from under her light brows. "People."
"Do you feel that way about Fred?"
"No, I'm not afraid of him. He makes me terribly mad sometimes. He makes me want to-" She bit off the sentence. I could hear her teeth grind together.
"Makes you want to what?"
She hesitated, her face taut, listening to the secret life behind it. "Kill him, I was going to say. But I didn't really mean it. Anyway, what would be the use? Poor old Fred is dead and buried already, the way I am."
I felt an angry desire to disagree, to tell her that she was too pretty and young to be talking in that way. But she was a witness, and it was best not to argue with her.
"What happened to Fred?"
"A lot of things. He comes from a poor family and it took him half his life just to get where he is now, which is practically nowhere. His mother's some kind of a nurse, but she's fixated on her husband. He was crippled in the war and doesn't do much of anything. Fred was meant to be an artist or something like that, but I'm afraid he's never going to make it."
"Has Fred been in trouble?"
Her face closed. "I didn't say that."
"I thought you implied it."
"Maybe I did. Everybody's been in some kind of trouble."
"What kind has Fred been in?"
She shook her head. "I'm not going to tell you. You'd go back to my mother with it."
"No, I wouldn't."
"Yes, you would."
"You care about Fred, don't you?"
"I've got a right to care about somebody in this world. He's a nice boy-a nice man."
"Sure he is. Did the nice man steal the nice picture from your nice parents?"
"You don't have to get sarcastic."
"But I do sometimes. It comes from everybody being so nice. You haven't answered my question, Doris. Did Fred steal the picture?"
She shook her head. "It wasn't stolen."
"You mean it climbed down off the wall and walked away?"
"No. I don't mean that." Tears overflowed her eyes and ran down her face. "I took it."
"Why?"
"Fred told me-Fred asked me to."
"Did he give a reason?"
"He had a good reason."
"What reason?"
"He told me not to tell anybody."
"Did Fred keep the picture?"
"I guess he did. He hasn't brought it back yet."
"Did he say he was going to bring it back?"
"Yes, and he will, too. He wanted to make an examination of it, he said."
"An examination for what?"
"To see if it was genuine."
"Did he think it was a fake?"
"He wanted to find out."
"Did he have to steal it to do that?"
"He didn't steal it. I let him take it. And you're not very nice."
VI
I was beginning to agree with her. I left her and walked down the stairs and out to my car. For over an hour, while the afternoon shadows of the buildings lengthened across me, I sat and watched the main entrance of the Sherbourne.
There was a natureburger place in a geodesic dome up the block, and now and then the uncertain wind brought me the smell of food. Eventually I went and had a nature-burger. The atmosphere in the place was dim and inert. The bearded young customers made me think of early cave men waiting for the ice age to end.
I was back in my car when Fred Johnson finally came. He parked his blue Ford directly behind me and looked up and down the street. He went into the Sherbourne and took the elevator up. I took the stairs, fast. We met in the third-floor hallway. He was wearing a green suit and a wide yellow tie.
He tried to retreat into the elevator, but its door closed in his face and it started down. He turned to face me. He was pale and wide-eyed.
"What do you want?"
"The picture you took from the Biemeyers."
"What picture?"
"You know what picture. The Chantry."
"I didn't take it."
"Maybe not. But it came into your hands."
He looked past me down the hall toward the girl's room. "Did Doris tell you that?"
"We could leave Doris out of this. She's in enough trouble now, with her parents and with herself."
He nodded as if he understood and agreed. But his eyes had a separate life of their own, and were searching for a way out. He looked to me like one of those tired boys who go from youth to middle age without passing through manhood.