I turned up the alley and drove slowly past the shop. Louis Sneed was at the front bench, working on his hi-fi speaker system, the one he claimed would revolutionize the audio world and cancel out all previous speaker system designs.
I parked the truck in the parking area, lining it up carefully with the other beside me. One truck was out on call, apparently. Twenty-four hour service, that’s what. All this so you could stay comfortably in debt at the end of every week, with money in your pocket that wasn’t yours, because you had to float it big to make it pay off big someday.
I looked across at the back of the building, at the shop. Big my foot. It was penny ante.
Someday, sweetheart.
I went over to my car, walking quietly. It would be just like Grace to hide on the floor by the back seat. It was okay, she wasn’t there. I got in and drove home.
There was no sign of Grace anywhere. I drove once around the block before pulling into the apartment garage, but the streets were quiet. She wasn’t hanging around the front of the building, either.
I went on up and took a shower, then mixed a drink. I kept thinking about this Shirley Angela, and how she looked, and how she’d run off at the mouth.
Young and tender.
I went to bed.
In the middle of the night, the phone kept ringing. I got up. It was after three. It was Grace. She’d been drinking and she was crying. She wanted to make sure I knew she was crying.
“I’ve got to see you, Jack.”
“No.”
“This isn’t fair. It’s awful, what you’re doing. Don’t treat me this way. It isn’t fair. It isn’t fair.”
“Go sleep it off, Grace.”
“Please, Jack. Let me come up?”
I hung up and went back to bed. I was half nuts for morning to come so I could get out to Shirley Angela’s place again.
Next morning I hung around the store till ten, getting ready. Pete Stallsworth finally helped me load a couple TV sets on the truck; an RCA console, and a Philco table model for hanging over the bed. I worked up some ideas for brackets, and told Pete I was doing something for a good friend and would handle the whole deal myself. I took along a lot of junk—pamphlets, consumers’ reports, pictures, room layouts, good come-on stuff. Why the hell it is, I don’t know, but customers always insist on having a mob of phony literature, all glossed up in technicolor. The set itself doesn’t matter, it’s the folders and pamphlets and crap that really count. Then they hardly look at them.
On the way, I stopped off at Timothy’s Radio Supply and signed for four different kinds of intercom units, and told the guy he’d probably have a nice sale on his hands. I drove past the front of the house slowly. It looked different in daylight. Just a house, with palm trees out front, and St. Augustine grass, and the sloping ramp leading to the front porch.
Well, I could be wrong.
I turned in the drive and parked under a tree. The Australian pine hedge between the drive and the neighboring house ran from out back clear to the street. Everything was quiet. I felt low. I had planned to do this whole job myself. It meant carrying TV sets, putting up an antenna, wiring, the works. It wouldn’t be easy.
“Hello, there.”
“Hi.”
She was on the porch, waving.
It didn’t make me feel any better, seeing her. I couldn’t get it out of my head; something like that, doing what she was doing, prisoned for Christ only knew how long with an old bastard who wouldn’t die.
“Morning,” I said. “How’s everything?”
“Fine.”
She was really a knockout this morning. She had on a pair of black toreador pants, skin tight, with little slits at the calf. On top she had somehow managed to squeeze into a thin white sleeveless sweater, so nobody could possibly miss what she had up there. She had plenty. She wore sandals, and a bright smile. Her hair was auburn, all right, and brushed to a sheen.
She came off the porch and around front and along the drive.
“I was expecting you earlier. I phoned, but they told me you’d left.”
“I wish now I’d come earlier.”
That didn’t get me anywhere.
“I’m very anxious to get started,” she said. “It’s like Christmas—buying all these things.”
I got out of the truck and came around to where she stood. I opened the door and hauled the loose-leaf notebooks and the carton of pamphlets off the seat.
She said, “I suppose I could have come down to the store. Doctor Miraglia comes twice a week. That’s when I go out to shop, and everything.”
“I see.” I didn’t ask her what “everything” was.
“But I like it this way,” she said. “If it’s not too much trouble for you.”
“Well?”
“Well.”
I grinned and nodded toward the house, and she nodded, and started walking that way. I followed her inside. “We can check through this stuff first,” I said as we entered the living room. “You can kind of make up your mind. Then we’ll get down to brass tacks.”
“Swell.”
The bedroom door was closed. But I could see him in there, in my mind’s eye, staring bleakly into the past....
“Good morning, Ruxton.”
Something stopped ticking inside me for a second, then started again. It was Spondell. He stood in the dinette, staring at me with those eagle’s eyes. He had on a blue corduroy bathrobe and slippers, and his hair was combed. He held a cup of coffee.
“Well,” I said. “Glad you’re feeling better.”
He started to say something, but she jumped in fast with the lifeline. “Victor, you’d better toddle back to bed, now. You’ve been up over a half hour. You know what Doctor Miraglia said.”
“The hell with him.”
“Now, Victor.”
“All right, baby.” He grinned. “Glad to see you, Ruxton—you old son of a bitch.”
“Victor!”
He had already turned away. He set the coffee cup on the dinette table and walked on through the room to the bedroom door without looking at us. He opened the door and went through and closed it.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
I went over to the couch and sat down, and put the carton and the loose-leaf notebooks on the floor.
“He says things like that to everybody,” she said. “He seems to think it’s funny.”
“Gave me a jolt, seeing him.”
She came over by the couch, speaking quietly. “I think he tries to prove he’s strong by talking like that. He hasn’t been quite right—mentally—for some time. I hate to say it, but I think he’s getting worse. He was always very sharp. He still is, but he says and does crazy things, sometimes. It worries me.”
She was at it again. Telling me her business. I decided to go along with it. “You told his doctor?”
“No.” She hesitated. “He’ll pay for staying up on his feet, like that. He shouldn’t be up at all. But the doctor lets him stay up for ten minutes at a time.”
She wanted me to feel sorry for her. “He’ll get well.”
“No.” She was firm. “He’ll only get worse and worse.”
“Until he dies.”
She nodded.
“How long?” I said.
“Hard to tell. It could go on and on.”
I didn’t say anything for a minute. She looked sad and tired, and she wanted me to know it.
“Sit down,” I said. “We’ll have a look at this stuff.”
Her voice was flat. “It would be a terrible expense if he were in a hospital.”
“Thought you said he was wealthy.”
“Oh, yes—he is. Very.”
“Why would it matter to him, then?”
“It wouldn’t matter to him.” She paused, then added quickly, “I mean, the expense wouldn’t matter. He could practically buy the darned hospital. But he just won’t go to a hospital. Not him.”
“I see. Well—here’s some things I’d like you to look at.”