At last she got up very slowly. It took a great effort. She took care of the case first, rinsing the glasses again, drying them on one of her soft towels before putting them back into the rack on the bar. She rinsed the Thermos. One sliver of ice was left. She reached in through the wide mouth and dried the inside carefully and put it back in the compartment under the bar. She replaced the bourbon bottle and soda bottle and bottle opener in their customary places. She put the overnight case in the luggage locker in her dressing room.
After her long, hot shower, and after she had toweled her hair to dryness, used her array of sprays, astringents, lotions which were so ordinary and comforting a part of her bedtime routine, she put on a short nightgown and turned her bed down. She took the pillow she had used for the torso, the rolled bath towels she had used for the legs, the wig and wad of toweling she had used for the head, and put everything away carefully. She had had to go out onto the terrace a half dozen times and come back in and pat and plump and adjust until the shapes of round hip, dip of waist, shoulder, sprawl of legs had looked real to her. She rolled up the damp soiled clothing she had worn. She spread the slacks on the floor, put the shirt, bra, pants, socks and boat shoes on them, and rolled it all into a tight, stubby cylinder and tied it with twine, then remembered the kerchief and got it and stuffed it into one end of the cylinder. They were all old, all ready for discard. She put the bundle in the back of her closet and washed her hands.
She unlocked the inner door, drifted silently through the dark house and put the spatula back into the kitchen drawer and went back to her bedroom, leaving the inner door unlocked. The intercom master was fastened to the wall just inside the door to the dressing room. She depressed the button under the designation Apt, pressed the speak bar and said in a drowsy voice, “Francisca? Francisca?”
She released the bar and waited, and just as she was about to try again, the girl said, “Yes? Yes? Yes?”
Crissy frowned. There was no teaching her not to put her mouth so close to it and speak so loudly.
“Sorry to wake you up, dear. What time is it, anyway?”
“From — uh twelve in the night is maybe ten minutes later.”
“Is that all? I had to get up and then I couldn’t go back to sleep. I took a hot shower and that didn’t help a bit. If I take another one of those pills, I’ll feel terrible tomorrow. Would it be too much trouble to bring me some hot cocoa, and maybe some crackers?”
“Oh, no! No troubling!”
“Just put a robe on, dear.”
“Soon, soon,” the girl said in her high, happy voice.
Crissy opened the draperies to the same gap as before, opened the inner door a few inches, turned off all but the night light and the bedside lamp, then rolled and turned and tossed until the bed lost its too-fresh look.
Francisca knocked and came in with the cocoa and crackers on a small lacquered tray. She wore a quilted robe in a lurid shade of bright lime yellow. Crissy hitched herself up, put another pillow behind her back and reached for the tray.
“Thank you, dear. This is pretty silly.”
“No is,” Francisca said firmly.
“Did he come by and collect his sailboat? I tried to see but it’s too misty to see the boat basin.”
“Is gone.”
“Did he give you any trouble?”
“Oh, no! Never see him.”
“You don’t have to wait for the tray, dear. Go on back to bed. I think this will do the trick.” She put her fist in front of a wide yawn. The girl said goodnight and went out and closed the door quietly.
Just as she was lifting the cup to take the last few sips, Crissy began a violent and uncontrollable trembling. Cocoa spilled on the front of her nightgown and on the top sheet. She put the tray aside quickly, and when it kept on and on, she went across to the bar and poured a half tumbler of dark rum. She had to hold it in both hands. Her teeth chattered against the thick rim. Once it was down she was almost certain she would lose it. But then her stomach accepted it. She turned off the light and curled up in her bed in the same position as when she had lain on the floor.
The trembling stopped like something slowly running down. While she was thinking about getting up and taking a pill, she fell off the edge into sleep.
Twenty-two
As dusk became night, Mrs. Mooney had begun to fight a familiar battle with her conscience and with her desire.
After she had fed the three old dogs, she turned the lights out in the house. She plodded from room to room, muttering to herself. From time to time she would climb the stairs and go into her bedroom and stand at the window overlooking the row of rental cottages and see through the leaves those fragments of yellowish glow from a light in Number 10, a light in that Mr. Stanley’s bedroom shining through the pale worn shade.
The logic of it was beyond question. With such dense shrubbery, the cottages had a lot of privacy. And on a night so hot, there could be but one reason for pulling the shades down.
She had fought it and won the other night. But tonight it was stronger. Like a terrible gnawing. It was so unfair that it should keep going on and on into these years when she thought it would be over, when she would have rest and peace.
She roamed the dark house, muttering her complaints, and explaining how terrible a thing it was, telling it all to Mr. Mooney, years in his grave now, reminding him that it had begun way back even when he was still alive, and how he had caught her at it once and given her the beating she deserved, told her they could send her off to jail, told her she was an evil woman, and even after she had promised she would never do it again, he had been nasty-polite to her for weeks.
She turned the television set on and sat to watch it, then found herself roaming back and forth across the living room in the pallid flickering light of the horses running, the men shooting and shouting.
The next time she went upstairs she avoided looking out the window and instead went to her big desk in the corner and turned on the desk light and opened the big scrapbook atop the litter of old invoices and receipts.
The three old dogs had already gotten into her bed for the night, and they lifted their heads to look at her, their eyes glowing in the reflected lamp light. She turned the pages, and looked for a long time at the clippings about her marriage to Michael Mooney on the Fourth of July in the center ring of the Coldwell Brothers Circus in Topeka, Kansas. Mr. Mooney had one of the best small-circus dog acts in the business, and she had worked the act with him, had done clown on the side, and had sewed a thousand costumes for the dogs during all the circus years.
All gone now but the three old dogs, all of them single-trick puppies, all eagerness, in the last months before it all came to an end. All gone but Jiggs and Tarzan and Maggie, fat and going blind.
Maybe, she thought, Mr. Stanley had been taken sick and it would be an act of Christian charity to go check on him...
And remembered that she had told herself exactly that same thing back in April when that same Mr. Stanley had taken a cottage for just one night. When their car had local plates and they checked in alone, for an overnight, you knew what the rascals had on their minds.
If I hadn’t slipped that last time, she thought, it wouldn’t be gnawing so terrible now. Maybe it wouldn’t count as a separate sin, but as a part of the sin of the last time.
She closed the scrapbook, reached and turned the desk light off, hit the closed book with her fist. The mind kept making up the shiny, easy excuses to make everything seem all right, and afterward you knew the reasons were dirty, but by then it was done and you were eased and you could say never, never, never again; you could say it was over forever.
She wondered if that Mr. Stanley had noticed how it had unsettled her to have him show up again. Usually you never saw them again. Her heart had bumped and her hands had been shaky. He was one of the ones who had to share the blame of it, leaving the lights on for it instead of liking darkness for it like decent folk.