“Well, I just hope you’re not speaking with a forked tongue,” I said. “These are very precious words, lovingly typed on top-grade erasable-bond paper, and God pity you if you louse them up.”
“All right, Britt…”
She did sound like she was, so I turned back around. I helped her up from the love seat, gave her a small pat on the bottom, and pressed the envelope into her hands. As I walked her to the front door, I told her a little about the manuscript and said that I would look forward to hearing from her about it. She said that I would, no later than the day after the morrow.
“No, wait a minute,” she said. “Today’s Friday, isn’t it?”
“All day, I believe.”
“Let’s make it Monday, then. I’ll see you Monday.”
“No one should ever see anyone on Monday,” I said. “Let’s make it Tuesday.”
We settled on a Tuesday p.m. meeting. Pausing at the front door, she glanced out to where her own car stood in the driveway and asked what had happened to mine. “I hope the company hasn’t pulled another boo-boo and come out and gotten it, Britt. After all the stupid mix-ups we’ve had in the past, that would be a little too much.”
“No, no,” I said. “Everything is as it should be. I believe that exposure to the elements is good for a car, helps it to grow strong and tough, you know. But since I haven’t been using it these several weeks, I locked it up in the garage.”
“Yes?” She looked up at me curiously. “But you get out a little bit, don’t you? You don’t stay in the house all the time?”
“That’s what I do,” I said. “Doctor’s orders. I think it’s pretty extreme, but…” I shrugged, leaving the sentence unfinished.
Again, she gave me a curious frown. “Very strange,” she murmured, a slight chill coming into her voice. “I was certain that the doctors would want you to get a little fresh air and sunshine.”
I said that, Oh, well, she knew how doctors were, knowing that it sounded pretty feeble. Actually, of course, it was not the doctors but Claggett who had absolutely forbidden me to leave the house.
Manny said, Yes, she did know how doctors were. “I’ll say good-bye here, then. I wouldn’t want you to go against orders by walking to my car with me.”
“Oh, now, wait a minute,” I said, taking a quick look over my shoulder. “Of course I’ll walk to the car with you.”
I tucked her arm through mine, and we crossed the porch and started down the steps.
We descended to the driveway and sauntered the few steps to her car. I helped her into it and closed the door quietly.
Mrs. Olmstead was out shopping per usual, so she could not reveal my sneaking out of the house. But I was fearful that Kay might spot me, and come storming out to yank me back inside again.
“Well, good-bye, darling,” I said, and I stooped and hastily kissed Manny. “Take care, and I’ll see you Tuesday.”
“Wait, Britt. Please!”
“Yes?” I threw another quick glance over my shoulder. “I love being with you, dear, but I really shouldn’t be standing out here.”
“It’s just me, isn’t it? You’re afraid of being here with me.”
“Dammit, no,” I said. “That isn’t it at all. It’s just that, I—”
“I told you nothing more would happen to you, Britt. I’m all right now, and there’ll never be anything like that again, and — Don’t you believe me?”
Her voice broke and she turned her head quickly, looking at the scantily populated countryside across the road. There were a few houses scattered over a wide area, and land had been graded for a number of others. But everything had come to a halt with the advent of the garbage dump on former Rainstar property.
“Manny,” I said. “Listen to me. Please listen to me, Manny.”
“Well?” She faced me again, but slowly, her gaze still lingering on the near-empty expanse beyond the road, seeming to search for something there. “Yes, Britt?”
“I’m not afraid of being here with you at all. You said that nothing more would happen to me, and I believe you. It’s just that I’m supposed to stay in the house — not to come outside at all. And I’m afraid there’ll be a hell of a brouhaha if—”
“But you’ve been going out.” Manny smiled at me thinly. “You’ve been going out and staying out for hours.”
“What?” I said. “Why do you say that?”
“Why?” she said. “Yes, why do I? I’ve certainly no right to make an issue of it.”
And before I could say anything more, she nodded coldly and drove away.
I looked after her as her car sped down the driveway and turned into the road, became lost in the dust of the ubiquitous dump trucks wending their way toward the garbage hummocks.
I turned away, vaguely troubled, and moved absently toward the porch.
I went up the steps, still discomfited and puzzled by Manny’s attitude, but grateful that Kay had not discovered me in my fracture of a strict order. One of the few unhappy aspects of sex is that it places you much too close physically while you are still mentally poles apart. So that a categorical imperative is apt to be juxtaposed with a constitutional impossibility, for how can one kick some one — or part of some one — that he has laved with love.
I couldn’t face up to the consequences of Kay Nolton’s throwing her weight around with me again. No sadist I, I could not slug the provably and delightfully screwable.
I reached the top step, and—
There was a sudden angry sound at my ear, the buzz of a maddened hornet The hornet zoomed in and stung me painfully on the forehead, the sting burning like acid.
I slapped at it, then rubbed the tortured flesh with my fingers. As a boy, growing up on the old place, I had been “hit” by hornets many times. But I could remember none having the effect of this one.
It was numbing, almost as if I had been hit by an instrument that was at once edged and blunt. I felt a little dizzy and faint, and—
I took my hand away from my head.
I stared at it stupidly.
It was red and wet, dripping with blood, and more blood was dripping down onto the age-faded wood of the porch.
My knees buckled slowly, and I sank down to them. My eyes closed, and I slowly toppled over and lay prone.
My last thought, before I lost consciousness, was of Manny. Her indirect insistence that I accompany her to her car. The hurt in her voice and her eyes when I had hesitated about leaving the safety of the house — hurt which I could only expunge by doing what I had been sternly ordered not to do.
So I had done as she wanted because I loved her and believed in her.
And then, loving and trusting her, I had remained out in the open, exposed to the danger which is always latent in loving and trusting.
I had lingered at the side of her car, pleading with her. And she had sat with her back turned to me, her gaze searching the landscape, apparently searching it for…? A signal? A rifle, say, with a telescopic sight.
I heard myself laugh, even as the very last of my consciousness glimmered away. Because, you see, it was really terribly funny. Almost as funny as it was sad.
I had always shunned guns, always maintaining that guns had been known to kill people and even defenseless animals, and that those who fooled around with guns had holes in their heads. And now, I… I… I had been… and I had a hole in my…
When I came back into my consciousness, I was lying on my own bed, and Kay was hunkered down at the bedside, staring anxiously into my face.
I started to rear up, but she pressed me back upon the pillows. I stammered nonsensically, “What… why… where… how… and then the jumble in my mind cleared, and I said, “How did I get up here? Who brought me up?”
“Shhh,” said Kay. “I — we made it together, remember? With me steering you, and hanging on to you for dear life.”