“No,” he said. “Not again! Please.”
She whooped, whirled, bounded through the doorway and slammed the door. He could hear her in there, sounding like a small stampede heading through swamp country. He slowly paced back and forth until the sound diminished and finally died away. He sat in a chair, his back toward the bedroom door.
“Wilma!” he called.
“In a minute,” she answered, her voice husky from weeping.
He took the gold watch out. He looked cautiously through the little telescope and shivered. He was studying the intricate monogram on the back of the watch when the bedroom door opened.
“He always carried that,” she said. “Always.”
“I guess I will. I’ll have to wear a vest or get some kind of a belt clip arrangement.”
She was behind him, looking over his shoulder. Suddenly he was inundated by an almost strangling cloud of perfume.
“Sometimes he’d look through that little telescope and then he’d chuckle.”
“I bet.”
“I asked him about it once. He wouldn’t let me look through it. He said I didn’t speak the language. I didn’t understand. Will you let me look through it?”
“I — uh — maybe when — uh—”
She came around the chair. She made a wide circle around it and stood where he could see her for the first time, some eight feet away. He tried to swallow but could manage only half the process. “Bought it two years ago,” she said in a grave whisper. “Tried it on once.”
She had brushed the brown hair until it gleamed, and for the first time he saw the reddish highlights in it. She was facing him squarely, but she had her face turned away from him. She stood like a recruit who had just been chewed out for bad posture. She was not trembling. Rather she seemed to be vibrating in some galvanic cycle too fast for the eye to perceive. He had the feeling that if he snapped his fingers all the circuits would overload and she’d disappear in a crackle of blue flame and a hot smell of insulation. He slowly began to strangle on the half-completed swallow. She wore a single garment. He could not guess at what possible utility it might have. There was an inch-wide ruffle of black lace around her throat. There were similar visible ruffles around her wrists. There was a third circling her hips, apparently floating in air several inches away from the pale and slender thighs. The three visible bands of black seemed joined together by some incredible substance as intangible as a fine layer of city soot on a windshield. Miraculously affixed to this evanescence, and perfectly umbilically centered, was the pink, bloated, leering face, on some sturdier fabric, of the most degenerate looking rabbit he had ever seen.
He completed the swallow with such an effort, it felt as if he were swallowing a handful of carpet tacks. For a tenth of a second he marveled at the uncanny insight of one Hoover Hess, and with a sobbing sound of guilt, inadequacy and despair, he roared out of the apartment and down the corridor toward the stairs. He heard a howl of frustration, and a long, hoarse, broken cry of, “Oh you baaaaaaas-taaaarddd!” As he clumped down the stairs the corridor fire door swung slowly shut, and he heard those hoots of laughter again, heard them begin to soar upward, and then the door closed and he could hear no more.
Two blocks from the apartment building he suddenly heard himself saying, “For God’s sake, Wilma!” and realized he had been saying the same thing over and over for some time. The gold watch was still clutched in his hand. Two old ladies were staring at him with strange expressions. He slowed his headlong stride, put the watch in his pocket and gave them an ingratiating smile. One old lady smiled back. The other one tilted her chin at the sky, braced herself, and with a volume that made every car in that block give a startled swerve, screamed, “Stop thief!”
It panicked him into a dead run, but as soon as he was around the next corner he slowed down, his legs trembling. He stood staring blindly into a bookstore window until his breathing was normal. He oriented himself and discovered he was seven or eight blocks from the Hotel Birdline. Suddenly, for the first time since telling it, he remembered the lie about Uncle Omar’s personal records. He remembered how crafty he had felt when telling it. Sober, he knew it was a blundering stupidity.
He went to the Birdline. The one without any space between his eyes was at the desk, the one with the volcanic acne. The clerk leaned into the small office beyond the switchboard and yelled to Hoover Hess. Hess came out, rubbing his hands, projecting the smile of agony.
“Kirb, buddy, you ready to talk business? You can’t make a better—”
“Not right now, Hoover. I’m a little too rushed. I was wondering about my stuff you’ve got here. I thought I’d—”
“Understand, I’m a guy appreciates a sweet gesture, but I told you so long as I got the room down there, the storage was on the house, right?”
“Yes.”
“And I’m the kind of a guy wouldn’t change the deal on account of you inheriting big, right?”
“But—”
“So what I mean is, I’m touched by the fifty bucks, Kirb. It was a nice thing to do, believe me.”
“Fifty?”
Hess looked shocked. “Was it more? Did those slimy bastards take a clip out of it on the way over here?”
“Uh... no. It wasn’t any more.”
“Rest easy, Kirb. They come and got the trunk and the big wooden case along about eleven this morning.”
“Who?” he said weakly.
“The guys from the Elise! In the truck from the Elise! Chrissake, don’t you even remember who you sent after it? Look, if you could come in and sit down for just five minutes, Kirb, I could fill you in on the whole picture. The way I figure, in exchange for consolidating the mortgages and bringing it down to an interest rate that makes sense, instead of the cannibal rates I got to pay, what you should have is a piece of it. I even got an inspiration about your name, to go with the place. The Winter House. How about that!”
“Some other time, Hoover.”
“Any time you say. I’ll drop everything. Everything.”
Kirby headed across the lobby toward the pay phone. He had to skid to a stop to let a sailor by. The sailor had considerable velocity. He was skidding across the tile floor, revolving slowly, his eyes closed. He was smiling. He carried on into three short wide men in tense argument over a racing form, catapulted the three of them into a couch and went on over with them as the couch went over backwards.
He dialed Betsy’s memorized phone number.
“Kirby! I was about to come looking for you. I tried the hotel a thousand times. Are you there now?”
“No. Look, I think you were right, at least a little bit right anyhow.”
“Thanks a lot!”
“Don’t be so sarcastic. The way things are going, how am I expected to trust anybody?”
“Why Kirby, dear! Your teeth are showing.”
“I think I did a stupid thing. I mean I thought it was shrewd, but I was drunk at the time.”
“It’s a poor week for it.”
“I know. But it worked, sort of. But I’ve got the idea they’re going to be awfully damned mad. And I was supposed to meet her at two o’clock over there. She was going to take me shopping.”
“Standard procedure. She has a wonderful way of getting all her men to end up looking exactly alike. They all end up looking like fairy ski instructors. I think it’s the tan, the sideburns and the ascot that does it. She’s mad for ascots. And it’s a long way after two, Kirby.”
“I have the feeling it wouldn’t be too smart to go over there now. Let me tell you just what—”
“Come on over here. We can talk. I hate phones.”
“I’d rather tell you over the phone.”
“Come on over here. I’m alone. We can thrash it all out.”