“I just wanted to kiss you good-bye,” she said. They kissed, and then she showed him what she had written: “While you’re gone I’ll burn this and flush the ashes down the toilet.”
It was a relief to be out of the apartment, a further relief to be out of the building. But it was not until he had picked up Robin and turned her over to Warren and Anne that he felt the tension drain off. Only then did he realize what a strain he had been under.
And the extraordinary thing was that it had not seemed such a strain at the time. There was something almost enjoyable about it. And that, of course, was the most horrible part of all.
It was a game. Gretchen played it like a game with the deadly seriousness of a child at play, played it like a game despite the absolute reality it held for her. And he, too, played it as a game and did so with the same intensity. It was real for him, too, but their two realities had nothing in common. She at least could devote herself completely to the world she lived in. He had to match her commitment to that fantasy world in a way that would never arouse her suspicions — and suspicion was a way of life to her — and while he did so he had to keep in touch with reality.
Whatever in hell reality was.
His mind began to play little games with him. Paranoia was tempting; he had never before realized how seductive it could be. Once you bought the first premise you could fit absolutely anything into your theory. The villains could be anyone — the Communists, the Elders of Zion, the Martians, anyone at all. People who did one thing were villains or dupes. People who did the opposite were playing along in order to deceive you. It had been startlingly easy for him to revise her fantasies along the lines he wanted to. And he had not by any means anticipated all her questions and reservations. She’d been throwing him curves all morning, and he’d gotten wood on every last one of them.
It scared him that he was able to do this. Did his mind work that much like hers?
And it upset him that everything he did worked primarily not because of any brilliance of his, but because of her trust in him. She trusted him. He fought his way out of those thoughts. It was the speed talking, he knew. There was some truth in there that he could worry about later, but the speed was turning things in on themselves, and that was no good.
He heard the noon whistle. The spansules were supposed to deliver a balanced dose of speed over an eight-hour period. He had taken one at four, so it was time to take another. Of course the eight-hour thing was approximate. And if you took them too closely together, they could jam up on you, and if you waited too long, they could drop you and leave you strung out.
He swallowed a pill. Twelve o’clock, the end of the longest morning of his life. He could kill an hour now, maybe a little more than that. He could explain that long an absence in any of a hundred plausible ways.
But there was no way to make an hour last forever. Sooner or later he would have to climb those stairs and be with her again, and he wasn’t sure he could do it.
Twenty-seven
When the nurse came to give Clem his bath, Olive excused herself. “I don’t know if I dare leave the two of you alone,” she said, “but there’s a call I have to make.” She turned, a smile on her lips, and left the hospital room.
A young nurse’s aide passed her in the corridor and almost dropped her bedpan. What she witnessed was transformation that looked like a camera trick worked by means of time-lapse photography. An attractive middle-aged woman emerged from a room, shoulders squared, eyes bright, face radiant. In an instant she changed into a hopeless old woman. Her shoulders slumped, her eyes were vacant and dull, her face was lined with grief, and she walked wearily as if with great effort.
At the pay telephone Olive brought herself back to life again. She dropped a coin into the slot, dialed a number. An operator asked for more money, and she deposited another coin.
When Linda answered, she said briskly, “Olive, Linda. How’s business?”
Business, it seemed, was going well enough. “Then I won’t keep you,” she said. “I’m still at Doylestown General. He’s coming along nicely, but I’ll be here another week at the least. Just carry on in your usual capable fashion. Oh, there is one thing. Don’t sell any of Clem’s paintings.”
“It’s good you told me. Someone almost bought one about an hour ago. He was going to bring his wife back after dinner, but I’ll tell him it’s not for sale.”
“No, don’t do that. That’s not what I meant.” Her voice almost broke; she stopped herself in time and waited for a moment. “Not what I meant at all. I want you to give them away.”
“Pardon me?”
“Whenever anyone admires one, give it away free of charge. Only if the admiration is serious. Take the tags off, and if anyone asks the price find out if they’re really interested, and then make them a gift of whatever it is. Just one to a customer, though.”
“I think I understand. Just the ones on the wall or the ones in back as well?”
“All of them. There are only a few in back.” She chuckled. “At these prices they ought to move quickly. There’s a key to my house in the lockbox in back. Could you do me a favor? If you start to run out of canvases, take a run over to my place and replenish the supply. Start with the unframed canvases in the little room off the kitchen. Those should last out the week, but if they don’t, you can help yourself to the ones on the walls downstairs.”
“Won’t you want to keep some of them?”
“My favorites are upstairs on the second floor. I’d like to see the others given the widest possible exposure.”
“Olive—”
“I can’t talk anymore, Linda. You’ll do that for me, won’t you? Thank you.”
Her hand shook as she replaced the receiver. She walked back down the corridor as she had walked to the phone, slowly, wearily, a picture of resignation. But another transformation occurred before she reached the door of their room, and it was as if the film the nurse’s aide had seen were run in reverse. She entered smiling and had already thought of a bright and cheerful opening line.
Warren folded the piece of paper and tucked it into the inside breast pocket of his jacket. He drank some coffee, checked his watch, looked across the table at Peter.
“You had no trouble getting it?”
“She got the point right away. If they had Robin’s birth certificate we were in deep trouble. I’m glad she didn’t ask why. I guess I would have come up with something but God knows what.”
Warren nodded.
“Then she couldn’t find it. She was looking in the wrong drawer and she figured out that they already had the fucking thing and was sure we were going to be completely shafted. You want to hear something crazy? She had me terrified. I was dreaming up all kinds of shit — that they really had it and there really was a conspiracy—”
“Good grief.”
“I don’t think I ever really believed that. I was just afraid I was going to start believing it any minute. And I also thought she saw through everything and was stringing me along and purposely not finding the birth certificate. I may be more paranoid than she is.”
“But she did find it. That’s a blessing. Robin is quite content to be with Anne. A remarkably agreeable girl.”
“Well, she knows Anne. That helps.”
“I was speaking of Anne, though Robin is agreeable, too, I’ll admit. Anne’s rather extraordinary. I’ve told her everything, by the way. I saw no reason to keep any of it back. As far as Danny’s concerned, she went to her doctor, and he sent her to a clinic for tests, and I gave her a ride there in my car. So there are four of us who know about this. You and I and Anne and the good Dr. Loewenstein.”