“Oh, God! Threats again! I’d like to remind you that it’s you who had better be careful of what you say and do.”
“I suppose you’re harping on that old hit-and-run stuff again.”
“That’s right. I am.”
“You were with me when it happened. Remember? If you told on me, you’d only get yourself into trouble, too.”
“Like hell I would!” Maggie flared. “The cops would be tickled to death to have a witness.”
“I’ve told you what I’ll do if you ever tell.”
“God, yes! You’ve told me and told me and told me.”
She was leaning back against the table, staring at him contemptuously. After a moment, with deceptive casualness, he walked across and took her by the hair with one hand and the throat with the other. She did not resist or stir, but continued to stare at him with no change of expression whatever.
“Maggie,” he said, “come away with me.”
“Don’t start that again. You know I won’t.”
“I don’t want to hurt you. I’d be sorry afterward if I did.”
“I’ll say you would. You don’t know the half of it,” she told him.
“Maybe I’ll kill you.”
“Maybe you will, and maybe you won’t. Most likely you won’t.”
His soft grip on her throat tightened for a moment almost imperceptibly, and then relaxed. Turning away with a sigh, he walked to the door, where he stopped with one hand on the knob, looking back at her.
“It’s no use,” he said. “It’s absolutely no use.”
“That’s right,” she said. “It isn’t.”
He went out, closing the door behind him, and she had in the first few moments after his leaving a strange feeling of emptiness that was nearly loneliness.
This feeling did not last long, however, and she went over and sat down on the hassock again and lit another cigarette and began to wonder if he would really try to cause her trouble. Considering the matter and Buddy’s basic nature, she didn’t think he would. It was much more likely that he would go into a wild spell, as he sometimes did, and get himself into some kind of trouble instead, or maybe even kill himself in one of the fits of despair that often took hold of him.
And if he did the latter, she thought, it might be the best possible thing for himself and everyone else concerned.
12
The year had turned, the holidays had come and gone, and it was a cold, clear night. Though the outside temperature was below zero, it was warm in the car with the engine idling and the heater fan turning a low speed. It was a kind of anesthetic warmth that was just faintly scented with exhaust fumes.
Below the bluff on which the car was parked in a grove of leafless trees, a river in the moonlight was a silver shield of ice above black water still moving.
Maggie was drowsy. Turning her head in Brad’s lap with the soft sound a kitten makes, she pressed a cheek against his thigh and reached up lazily to trace with the tips of fingers the hard lines of his jaw.
Beneath her cloth coat, drawn loosely over her like a cover, he stroked the satin surface of her shoulders, her lean and narrow back and compact rump. She shivered, drawing her knees up closer to her belly.
“Are you cold?” he asked.
“No, no. Not cold. It’s not that.”
“Perhaps you had better put on your clothes.”
“In a little while. When it’s time to go.”
“It’s time now. Almost eleven.”
“Really? So soon? Darling, we have so little time together. It’s not fair.”
“I know. I’m sorry. It may be that we will soon have no time together at all.”
“Don’t say that. I don’t like it,” she complained. “Why do you say such a thing? ”
“Never mind. I’m just depressed, I guess.”
“No. Something’s happened. You’ve been worried all evening. I can tell. What is it?”
“Nothing that you can do anything about,” he stated flatly.
She sat up suddenly beside him, drawing her coat over her shoulders like a cape.
“Don’t be too sure of that. I’m often quite clever at doing something about things when I set my mind to it. Are you in serious trouble?”
“Serious enough. I don’t think I can stand much more, to put it honestly. It’s impossible to go on as I am, at any rate.” A deep frown ridged his brow and his eyes held a bleak expression.
“Has your wife learned about us somehow? I don’t see how she could. Darling, we’ve been so careful about everything. I haven’t taken even the slightest chance.”
“It’s not Madelaine. It’s Cornelia, God damn her. She’s obviously determined to drive me insane, and I’m almost convinced that she’s insane herself.”
“It serves you right. I simply can’t understand why you ever got involved with such a woman. Ugh! It’s disgusting to think about.”
“All right. Please don’t start that again. I wish now that I hadn’t told you about her. But I thought you might be a little understanding, especially after your own experience with that oaf of a Buddy. You’re hardly in a position, darling, to be critical of my taste.”
“Oh, well, we musn’t quarrel,” she murmured. “You had your Cornelia, and I had my Buddy. Maybe it was a mistake that we were honest and confided in each other. It’s often a mistake to be honest about private matters. What has Cornelia been doing?”
“Anything to harass me and keep me uncertain and disturbed. The woman’s sick in the head, that’s all. It’s a wonder I didn’t see it sooner.”
“That’s because you were busy looking at other parts, darling, although they aren’t so damn attractive either, if you ask me. What has she been doing specifically?”
“Telephoning me at home. Leaving the most dangerous and incriminating notes in my box at school. God knows what she will do next, if I don’t find a way to stop her.”
“Don’t be absurd,” Maggie declared. “There’s nothing at all that you need to do. After a while she will stop of her own accord. A phony bitch like her would never hurt herself to hurt someone else, which is what she would have to do. She’s only trying to frighten you as a kind of revenge, or to make you come back to her on her own terms. Can’t you see that? You mustn’t be a coward and permit it to spoil things for you and me. It’s not exactly pleasant to spend our time talking like this when we might be saying and doing things much more interesting and exciting.”
“It’s easy enough for you to call me a coward and to say that nothing needs doing. In my position, it’s a little more difficult to be so assured where Cornelia’s concerned. I wish to God that she were dead, and that’s the truth.”
His voice was petulant and his face in profile, touched by the weak light of the remote moon, was the face of a sulking boy.
She began to laugh at him, the wicked little aspiration that seemed to come from some inner, inexplicable glee. Suddenly as if by compulsion, she took hold of his head and pulled it down against her naked breasts and held it there tightly, as if he were truly the injured boy he had seemed to be. Her voice had nearly the quality of a croon, the expression of a half-dream.
“You’re such a child,” she said. “Truly you are. In spite of being important and intelligent and all that, you are much more a child now than I have ever been, even though I am not important at all and have practically no intelligence whatever. You’re a bad child, however. You are always doing bad things.
“I imagine that you have been getting yourself into fixes like this for years. Somehow you have always survived and been forgiven for being bad. Now you are afraid and hurt and angry because you think you may have to face the consequences of what you are and can’t help being.