“Well,” he said, “you knew I was there. You called me there.”
She said, “I called you everywhere. I called you at the station and at your place here and at my place. And then I called you there.”
“I was there.”
“Does it mean anything?” She was wide awake, staring up into the darkness. “She asked me to stay with her. Until Art showed up. So I did.”
She waited, but that was all; he was silent. “Did you live there?” she asked finally. “Is that what you mean?”
“Not exactly. She’s peculiar.”
“It was mostly meals. She wanted me to be there when she came home, so she could cook for me.”
“Peasant,” Pat said. “Dinner table. The farm.”
“I hung around in the evening until she went to bed, and then I left.”
“What about in the morning?” Two mornings, she thought.
“Nothing.”
“Are you telling me the truth?” she said.
“Of course I am.”
She said, “I’m scared of Rachael.”
“I know you are.”
“Will she do anything?”
“She has Art back.”
“Yes,” she said, encouraged. “That’s right.” She rose to put out her cigarette. “What do you think of her?”
“I don’t know.”
Lying back, Pat said, “Maybe she’ll stab him.” Jim laughed. “Maybe. Maybe he’ll beat her up.”
“What would you do if he beat her up?”
“It’s not my business.”
“How would you feel?”
He did not answer. She waited; she listened. Had he gone to sleep? To herself she said: I paid for what I did; I was sick in the bathtub. Isn’t that enough? Doesn’t that do it?
On the bedroom floor was her package of cigarettes, and she reached to pick them up. She lit another cigarette and lay, on her back smoking. The man beside her did not stir. He was asleep, she thought; he was.
This is perfect, she thought. I see that. I understand that. Don’t I deserve it?
Her cigarette glowed and she studied it; she tapped it against the ashtray which she held, and she thought: This is where I make my stand. This is where I put up my fight. For this. For what I have here.
In the morning she got up early, at seven o’clock, to telephone the station. Jim slept on. Without awakening him, she put on her robe, closed the door to the bedroom, and seated herself in the living room by the phone. “Hello,” she said. “Mr. Haynes?”
“How have you been, Patricia?” Haynes said in his formal voice. “We’ve been concerned about you. Not a word from you in what is it, two days?”
“I’m better,” she said. “Could I come in late?”
“You don’t have to come in at all today,” he said. “Don’t come in until it’s completely gone.”
At first she could not imagine what he meant, and then she realized that he was talking about the flu. “Thanks,” she said. “Maybe I’ll wait until tomorrow. I don’t want to give it to anybody.”
“Is it that intestinal kind?”
“Yes,” she said. “I was sick . . . at my stomach.”
“Cramps? That’s the kind that’s going around. Don’t drink any fruit juices, just toast and eggs and custard. Mild foods. No acids, tomatoes or pears or orange juice.”
She thanked him and hung up.
Returning to the bedroom, she tiptoed to the bed and saw that Jim was awake. “Hi,” she said, kissing him.
“Hi.” He blinked owlishly. “You up?”
“Stay in bed,” she said. “I want to take some of my things back to my apartment and get some things that are still there.”
“How do you feel?” he said.
“Much better.”
“Your eye looks better.”
While she was in the bathroom, she examined her eye. The swelling was gone, but it was black; the color, the deep smudge, remained. Maybe, she thought, forever.
“I won’t be gone long,” she said to him. “You look so luxurious in bed . . . stay there until I get back. Okay?” Again she kissed him.
As she drove along the early-morning streets, she thought to herself that in some respects this was the best time of day. The air was cold, but it was bright; it smelled good and it seemed to her to be healthier. The night fog was gone and the haze had not yet arrived.
Parking the Dodge before her old apartment building, she carried a suitcase upstairs. As rapidly as possible she hung the clothes up in the closet, took what she needed, and with the first armload returned to the car.
By the car waited a girl in a brown coat. Her legs were bare and she had on flat slippers. In the morning sunlight she frowned as she started toward Pat, her hands in the pockets of her coat. She squinted and, raising her hand, shielded her eyes.
I know her, Pat thought. Who is she? I’ve seen her before.
The girl said, “Where’s Jim?”
“He’s at his place,” she said. Her head buzzed and she felt giddy. She did not feel frightened, only a little shocked to recognize her. “I’ve only seen you once in my life,” she said.
Rachael opened the car door for her. “Are you taking your things over to his place?”
“Some,” she said. “One more armload. I just saw you that time we came by, that one night.”
Behind her Rachael remained by the car. Patricia ascended the stairs, gathered up the rest of her things, and started back down. On the stairs she halted to get her breath. Light streamed through the front door of the building, into the lobby; she saw Rachael still at the car, still waiting for her.
When she emerged, Rachael said to her, “Are you going over there now?”
“Yes,” she said, putting her armload into the back seat.
“I’d like to come along.”
Protest was impossible. “Why not?” she said. “Get in.” She switched on the ignition, and as she put the car in gear Rachael got in beside her.
At eight-thirty she was back at Jim Briskin’s apartment building. She and Rachael stepped out onto the sidewalk; she carried one armload and Rachael carried the other. Together they went upstairs to the apartment. She let herself and Rachael in with the key he had given her.
He was out of bed, sitting at the kitchen table. In his blue bathrobe, his hair uncombed, he regarded her and Rachael with a mixture of expressions.
“Hi,” Rachael said.
His head inclined. And then he said to Pat, “Did you get your things?”
“What I needed,” she said. “Most of it’s here. Have you had breakfast?”
“No,” he said. “Are you just sitting?”
Rachael had gone to the living room window. Her coat over her arm, she stood, specter-like, off to one side. Jim said to her, “What’d you do about Art?”
“When he showed up I told him, and he went off,” Rachael said.
“You told him what?”
“That he couldn’t come back.”
Jim said, “Where’d he go?”
“Over to the loft, I guess. I haven’t seen him today. That was last night, real late.”
“Did you get any sleep?”
“A couple of hours.” Her words were pinched off.
“Did you talk to him at all? Did he tell you anything about it?”
Rachael said, “He had a lot he wanted to say.”
“But you didn’t listen.”
“I listened to some of it.”
Pat said, “He beat me up.”
“No,” Rachael said to her, “he didn’t beat you up; he hit you once and that was all. Is that what you call getting beat up? His father used, to beat tip his mother, and sometimes he beat up Nat, his older brother. They were always fighting. Italians fight like that. Where we live people all fight like that.”
Getting up from the kitchen table, Jim walked into the living room . . .. He lit a cigarette and offered Rachael the pack. She shook her head . . .. “Did you expect me to come back last night?” he said.