He glanced down at her and thought, fleetingly, that there was some wild justice in the fact that she had borne a child who was a mutation. He wondered how many Billys would follow the atomic war. The bomb had heralded the era of outrage, and perhaps the whole human race had already started its slow migration back to the sea. She was, then, not a throwback but a forerunner, carrying in her womb the maculate egg, the imperfect gene that doomed the world.
She sensed his withdrawal, and tried to call him back. “Don’t start thinking again, will you? Don’t start trying to talk me out of your life. I’m in it. You can’t evict me with words.” She clung to his arm, as if he had made an almost imperceptible motion to rise and walk away. “I’ll tell you everything, Mark, everything you want to know about me. After what’s happened I couldn’t have any secrets from you. I want to open my whole life to you.”
“Better not. You feel a little submissive now, but it won’t last.” He took her hand, and closing the fingers one by one, made it into a fist. “Hang onto your secrets. Keep them all cozy in here for another twenty-four hours and you’ll be safe. Maybe no one else will ever come so close to figuring you out.”
“You’re awfully vain.”
“You intend to destroy me,” he said. “I couldn’t be more certain of it if you had a gun in your hand.”
“Why don’t you run away, then?”
“I can’t. I’m stuck, like the remora, the fish that lives by attaching itself to the belly of a shark. You like analogies. How do you like that one?”
“It’s very interesting.”
“I think so, too. The remora is, naturally, safe from the shark as long as it’s attached to the belly. On the other hand the shark isn’t always safe from the remora because fishermen use it sometimes for bait. They tie up the remora alive, and throw it overboard, and off it goes looking for a shark’s belly. In spite of its small size the remora applies enough suction to pull in the shark.” He added, “We published a book on fishing once. That’s the only thing I remember about it, because it made me wonder how you go about catching a live and unattached remora. Have you any ideas on the subject?”
“No.”
“You might ask the sea for an explanation.”
“Damn your irony,” she said, “and your two-bit horoscopes. Damn everything about you!”
“With one slight exception which shall remain unnamed?”
“Damn you, damn you.” She hid her face against his shoulder, weeping. But the tears came only from her eyes, they did not moisten her dry heart.
He made no attempt to comfort her. When she finally raised her head she saw that he wasn’t even looking at her. He was watching the horses on the hillside. Excited by the rising wind, they raced downhill and kicked up dust.
Turning, he saw her resentment.
“I like horses,” he said. “Don’t you? Not in the third-at-Pimlico sense, simply to look at.”
“I don’t want to discuss horses.”
“Very well. Anything you say.”
She knew that he was ready to leave. Leaning against his arm she could feel its tenseness.
“Mark, don’t go yet. Please.”
“I have to. There are a few amenities to be observed. I said I was going into town for a haircut. It was the truth, too. I didn’t expect to see you.”
“Are you glad now that you did? You’re glad I came?”
“Glad! Christ!”
“You’re sorry then.”
“Both,” he said. “A bushel of both.”
“Mark. Darling. I’ll see you again, won’t I? Promise me. Say it.”
He shook his head, looking bleakly out toward the sea. “I don’t know.”
She sat where she was, in the trampled weeds, until she heard the jeep go down the road. Then slowly she began putting on her shoes.
The horses had gone back to the top of the hill again. She thought about Mark, and about the man who owned the horses. He was a deputy sheriff named Bracken, and she had first met him a year ago, the night John was found at the bottom of the cliff.
17
He had tried twice. The first time he wrote a note and left it on the drawing board in his study along with the key to his safe deposit box and a copy of his wilclass="underline"
“Janet, I can’t think of any other way but this. Don’t blame yourself. I’ve been getting more and more confused lately. Please destroy this, and notify Roy Standish who will handle everything for you. John.”
He went down the stairs and outside. The night was quiet. The sea roar was muted to a whisper, and even the inexhaustible mockingbirds had been silenced.
He didn’t know what time it was, except that it was after midnight and everyone was asleep. He had always had a strong sense of time; it was one of his vanities that Janet encouraged... “No, I won’t need my watch with John along.”... “It’s wonderful how John can just look at the sun and tell...”
Tonight there was no sun, and the moon cruised behind clouds. He didn’t care about the time anyway. He was stepping beyond it, out of its reach, eluding the innocent trap of the hours.
The air was cold and he was wearing only his pajamas and slippers. He had been lying in bed, not actually thinking about dying at all. He had turned from his right side to his left side and back again perhaps ten times before he thought what a relief it would be not to wake up in the morning. He felt quite sorry while he was writing the note to Janet, sorry in a detached way for the poor foolish fellow who signed his name John, and who had to take such drastic measures because he wasn’t strong enough to compromise.
Poor John, he thought. Poor fellow. It can’t be helped, though.
He crossed the driveway carrying a flashlight but it wasn’t necessary to turn it on yet. His eyes — all his senses — seemed to be alerted, sharpened. Even without his glasses he saw distinctly the golden discs of marigolds beside the garage, and the bristly red pompoms of the castor bean bush. The smell of kelp was overpowering, and to his ears the sound of his feet on gravel was explosive. The pebbles jumped like corn popping.
Though he had made no plans, everything worked out perfectly at the beginning. The garage door was unlocked and slid open without a squeak. The old garden hose was coiled on a nail on the wall. The ceiling light, which had burned out a week ago, had been replaced, and Janet’s keys were in the ignition of the Lincoln.
He cut off a long piece of hose with a hedge clipper, and got down on his back under the rear of the car with the hose lying across his belly like an affectionate snake. He turned on the flashlight and saw that the hose was too narrow to fit over the exhaust pipe. He lay there for quite a while, wondering what he could use to bind the hose and pipe together.
It was rather pleasant lying under the car, smelling the oil and dust and gas, and looking up at the intricate mass of steel, the insides of the sleeping giant. He thought of starting the engine, leaving the throttle open a little, and then coming back to the rear of the car and breathing in the exhaust fumes, holding his mouth right up against the pipe like a child suckling. It would be very quick that way, but he somehow didn’t like the idea of being found on the floor, like a victim. He preferred to be found in the driver’s seat, so that people (except Janet, of course, and Roy Standish, his lawyer) might think his death was an accident, that the wind had blown the garage door shut before he’d had a chance to drive the car out. That was silly, though. The door was too heavy to be blown shut, and anyway he was in his pajamas.
He regretted not having stopped to put on his clothes, but if he had taken that extra time he might have lost his nerve. Though he was stepping beyond the reach of time, he hadn’t yet taken the final step. It was still important, he realized. Time to think, to wonder about his destination and speculate on turning back or taking a detour.